Two Row Wampum Treaty
The treaty is spiritually and culturally revered and widely accepted among the Indigenous peoples in the relevant territories, and documented by the wampum belts and oral tradition.
The Two Row Belt, as it is commonly known, depicts the kaswentha relationship in visual form via a long beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel lines of purple wampum along its length – the lines symbolizing a separate-but-equal relationship between two entities based on mutual benefit and mutual respect for each party’s inherent freedom of movement – neither side may attempt to "steer" the vessel of the other as it travels along its own, self-determined path.
Just as a navigable water course facilitates mutual relations between nations, thus does kahionni, "the river formed by the hand of man", serve as a sign of "alliance, concord, and friendship" that links "divergent spirits" and provides a "bond between hearts".
"[14] Parmenter has investigated the extent to which Haudenosaunee oral tradition is corroborated by surviving documentary (written) records and found that "the documentary evidence, considered in the aggregate, reveals a striking degree of consistency over time in the expression of fundamental principles of the kaswentha tradition by Haudenosaunee speakers", with "the fullest single written source that corroborates the early seventeenth-century origins of a kaswentha relationship between Iroquois nations and the Dutch appear[ing] in [...] 1689".
Mark Meuwese has examined the history of Dutch-Indigenous relations in Africa and Brazil and found that, before 1621, "Dutch traders did not conclude treaties with Native peoples in the Atlantic world.
Historians debate whether or not the technology required to construct the sophisticated two-row style wampum belt (including, most importantly, tubular purple beads) was available to communities in the region prior to 1613;[24] however, Parmenter indicates that archeological evidence does not rule out the possibility that two-row wampum belts may have featured in the initial treaty negotiations between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee.
[25] The significance of the two-row style of wampum, according to Parmenter, is that it captures the original "ship and canoe" metaphor present in the Haudenosaunee understanding of the kaswentha relationship.
Exchanges of wampum belts also occurred commonly in association with renewals of the alliance at treaty negotiations in which neither Iroquois nor New York authorities were recorded making explicit recitations of the kaswentha tradition.
[29]Beyond the direct evidence represented by the recitations, additional documentary sources amplify our confidence in the deep roots of the fundamental concepts of the kaswentha relationship: its beginnings in the early decades of the seventeenth century, its rhetorical framing in terms of an "iron chain" forged and renewed with the Dutch prior to 1664, and its early association with the "ship and canoe" discourse present in the explicit "Two Row" articulations of the tradition that appear after circa 1870.
As illustrated in the recitations [...], the idea of a rope, and later a "chain" of iron, then silver represented a critical component of the tradition that bound the two peoples together in friendship as a necessary precursor to the kind of relationship embodied by two vessels travelling along a parallel route.
The latter idea, in other words, related to the former concept – the two were neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive.Diana Muir Appelbaum has written that:[30]there is no evidence that such a thing as an "original" two-row wampum belt ever existed.
[...] Kaswentha relations were not static – they evolved over time as ties between the Iroquois and the Dutch (and the latter's English and American successors) deepened and sociopolitical circumstances grew more complex – but they did exist.
Indeed, [...] it is incumbent upon all scholars considering the historicity of indigenous (not only Haudenosaunee) oral traditions (especially regarding something as fundamentally significant as kaswentha), to do more than simply identify a single document as a fake, or to set the bar for evidentiary proof of a concept's existence to practically impossible standards – such as requiring a surviving "physical" Two Row belt from the colonial era that can be explicitly associated with a documentary source.Onondaga leaders state that the oral tradition which accompanies the wampum belts is evidence that an agreement was made in 1613.
The Two Row Treaty contradicts the 15th Century Doctrine of Discovery, which decreed that Christian European nations could seize lands of non-Christian peoples whom they encountered in the New World.
Their theory is that this written version is a forgery because it contains what they argue are grammatical anachronisms; that a blend of handwriting styles from the 17th and 20th centuries is used; that the names of villages and not chiefs are used; and that the writing is "too smooth" to be made by a 17th-century quill pen.
"[42] Robert Venables, a retired Cornell University professor, is among those who remain convinced that the document version is also valid,[1] and concurs with other scholars who point out that any inconsistencies in language and pen strokes can be explained by the fact that it was copied by hand years after 1613.
[1] In July and August 2013, hundreds of Native Americans and their allies took part in a river journey to recognize and renew the Two Row Wampum Treaty.
Canoeing and kayaking across New York State, the participants called attention to the treaty and its significance for native land rights and environmental protection.
The paddlers traveled from Onondaga, birthplace of the Haudenosaunee league, along the Mohawk and Hudson rivers to New York City, ending at a special session at the United Nations.
On August 9, the paddlers arrived in New York City to attend a UN session for Indigenous Peoples Day with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and member state representatives.
