This class focuses on early Native adaptations to the creation of European settler colonies and the circulation of European goods. The readings describe seventeenth-century contact and European concepts of land and property. 

The third reading is related to the political system of the Iroquois or the Haudenosaunee. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch, English, and French encountered the five Iroquoian nations that made up a league of peace. The Mohawks, Senecas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas occupied a region encompassing the Hudson Valley and going as far west as Lake Erie. This league of peace was meant to address a violent cycle of killing and retribution that the Haudenosaunee perpetuated through mourning wars in which they tried to replace or avenge deceased family or clan members through warfare and captive-taking (we will read more on this in the second class for this week). According to Haudenosaunee stories, Hiawatha learned condolence rituals from Dekanahwideh (a Huron or Mohawk man) that allowed him to console grief without further killings and these rituals became part of the Iroquois League. The below text is an "official version" of the laws of the confederacy written down in 1900 by the Six Nations Council of Grand River in Ontario (the sixth nation, the Tuscaroras joined in in the eighteenth century).

The final documents was written by John Locke, and it demonstrates circulating ideas regarding property and concepts of civilization. Locke's ideas on property and the formation of societies and governments are important to understanding the ideology behind European settler colonies and European interaction with Native peoples. His text especially will be useful to keep in mind in the following weeks.

 Study Questions

1. What do you remember about the story of the purchase of Manhattan? How has it been mythologized? Read Peter Schagen’s letter to learn more about the purchase. What does his letter demonstrate about the purchase of Manhattan from the Lenape and also about the Dutch colony of New Netherland?
2. In "The Dutch Arrive on Manhattan," John Heckwelder records a story told by Delaware and Mahican individuals that details the arrival of the Dutch on ships. How do you read a story told about an event (or series of events) that occurred over 100 years earlier? What can you learn from this story? What parts of contact between the Dutch and the Delawares (Lenape) and Mahicans stand out and what does this tell us about Indian perceptions of Europeans? 
3. How did the Iroquois Confederacy work? What are the duties and rights of the chiefs? What role do women play in the Confederacy?
4. Do the rules and workings of the Confederacy seem similar to other forms of government?  What purpose do the metaphors and rituals serve and what are their meanings? Do any of the symbols seem familiar?
5. What did John Locke mean when he wrote in Section 49 that "in the beginning all the world was America?"  How does Locke understand the creation of private property? Also, explain the concept of taming the wilderness explicated by Locke.  How did this idea relate to European colonialism and interaction with Native peoples and governments? Compare Grotius to Locke--what does Grotius say about possession and the rights of discovery? Cite specific textual references and elaborate.  

We will expand on the idea of the Atlantic World (a creation of the transatlantic exchange of ideas, peoples, goods, and institutions) during this class. Also, we will consider the "Native New World": Native spaces connected to empire through trade and alliances but still distinctly (and often demographically) Native and politically autonomous from empire. While many places were affected by European diseases and indirectly by goods and ideas, they were part of a larger continent where the Atlantic World did not always reach. Here we will think about what the concepts of an Atlantic New World and Native New World bring to our study of this history.    

Richter's  and Perrot's document continue discussions from the last class session's material. Since the members of the Iroquois Confederacy were no longer fighting each other, they were able to expand their territory and often negotiated with Europeans from a position of strength. Perrot discusses the warfare between the Iroquois and other Indian nations, such as the Huron, Illinois, and Anishinaabe peoples (such as the Ojibweg and Odawaag). This document also discusses the importance of trade and the alliances between the French and Great Lakes Indian groups. 

Study Questions

1. How did Iroquoian warfare differ from European warfare? What was its purpose?
2. How were Iroquois politics and economics affected by the Europeans? How did the conflict between the French and English affect Iroquoian mourning wars? How did the mourning wars and other cultural rituals help the Iroquois navigate the changing landscapes?
3. What role did the Iroquois play in French relations with other Indians, especially Algonquian-speaking groups around the Great Lakes and Hudson's Bay? What kind of alliances did the French have with the people of these areas? What does this tell us about their relationships with the missionaries? In other words, how might they have viewed French missionaries who talked about the Iroquois and Onontio (this term was given to the governor of New France who was known as father in the alliance system)?
4. How did the Indians react to the Jesuit missionary? How do we see the institutions of the Atlantic World moving through this part of North America--what affects did these institutions and goods have on the Native New World? 
5. What is the importance of trade in intertribal warfare? What types of trading relationships are being established and maintained in these texts, especially in Perrot's Memoir?