Reviving the Peace Queen: Revelations from Lewis Henry Morgan's Field Notes on the Tonawanda Seneca

Abstract

Reviving the Peace Queen:Revelations from Lewis Henry Morgan's Field Notes on the Tonawanda Seneca Anthony Wallace (bio) and Deborah Holler (bio) In the course of research on the life and times of Caroline Parker Mount-pleasant—who is best known to history as the sister of Lewis Henry Morgan's youthful collaborator, and later Civil War General Ely S. Parker—we came across documents that deserve the attention of students of Haudenosaunee history and history of anthropology. Preserved in the Lewis Henry Morgan Collection at the Rush Rees Library at the University of Rochester are Morgan's journals of visits to Tonawanda and Tuscarora reservations in 1858 and 1875. On these visits, Morgan recorded dozens of pages of ethnographic information, including information on social organization, as if he were considering possible revisions of his book on the Iroquois. Except for Tooker's use of items concerning material culture, these notes seem to have been neglected by later students of Iroquoian ethnology (Tooker 1994). Morgan's League of the Hodenosaunee, or Iroquois, originally published in 1851, failed to include more than a brief one-paragraph account of the founding of the League by Dekanawidah and Hiawatha.2 The nations were, at the time, separate and hostile bands, although of generic origin, and were drawn together in council to deliberate upon the plan of a League, which a wise man of the Onondaga nation had projected, and under which, he undertook to assure them, the united nations could elevate themselves to a general supremacy. Tradition has preserved the name of Da-ga-no-we-da as the founder of the League, and the first lawgiver of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee. It likewise points to the northern shore of the Ga-nun-ta-ah, or Onondaga lake, as the place where the first council-fire was kindled, around which the chiefs and wise man of the several nations were gathered, and where, after a debate of many days, its establishment was effected. (Morgan 1901[1851], 1:57) [End Page 90] Elsewhere, Morgan mentioned that it was Ha-yo-went-ha (Hiawatha) who combed the snakes out of the wizard Ta-do-da-ho's hair and that he was the speaker for Da-ga-no-we-da. (Morgan 1901[1851], 1:63–64, 96). In 1858, the year after the Tonawanda Seneca Reservation had been rescued from the clutches of the Ogden Land Company, Morgan returned to visit the Parker family on Tonawanda and kept a journal of new ethnographic information. The topics range over social organization, material culture, and history. While browsing over this material, we encountered several pages that aroused a "Eureka!" response. First, Morgan recorded the circumstances by which Caroline Parker came to be invested with the name "Je-go-sa-sa" (Jiconsaseh), a name known to later historians of the League as that of the woman who helped Dekanawidah and Hiawatha in their mission, and also recorded as the name of the seventeenth-century Queen of the Neutral Nation, or "Peace Queen." The fact that Morgan recorded his version of the founding of the League immediately following his note on Caroline's naming as Jiconsaseh refers back to the woman who was present during the founding of the League. Morgan's notes state that this investing took place about 1855 and was conducted by Jimmy Johnson (Sosehawa), the Faithkeeper and preacher of the Code of Handsome Lake at the Tonawanda Longhouse. But the larger part of his notes on "Je-go-sa-sa" concern her career as Peace Queen of the "Erie" Nation. Morgan's identification of Jiconsaseh with the Eries is puzzling. The Eries were a separate nation or confederacy settled on the shores of Lake Erie, adjacent to the Neutral Nation on the Niagara Peninsula (Pendergast 1994). Historians who knew the Parker family agree that a woman named Jiconsaseh was known as the Peace Queen of the Neutral Nation. According to some versions, it was her perceived duplicity that caused the Seneca war on the Neutrals around 1649. French chronicles also recognized such a female leader among the Neutrals (Rotstein 1988:14–15). According to Arthur C. Parker and other authorities, Caroline was...