The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River

Abstract

Susan M. Hill’s The Clay We Are Made Of provides both an excellent introduction to Haudenosaunee cultural history and a narrative of the Grand River Territory to 1924. Beginning with the Creation Story and extending through the Great Law of Peace (formation of the Haudenosaunee league) and the Code of Handsome Lake, Hill provides a clear and concise overview of essential aspects of Haudenosaunee history that serves as an interpretive lens for the book’s narrative. Equally significant was the Covenant Chain, a diplomatic and trading relationship that the English and Haudenosaunee developed during the late seventeenth century. Hill identifies a pledge of noninterference in internal affairs as the most important aspect of this relationship. The Grand River Haudenosaunee drew on this tradition to contest British (and Canadian) efforts to undermine their sovereignty.While offering keen insight into Haudenosaunee cultural history, the book’s examination of the Haudenosaunee’s complicated relations with other Native nations would benefit from equally nuanced historic and historiographic analysis. Regarding mid-seventeenth-century conflicts with Iroquoian neighbors, Hill contends that the “grief” experienced by epidemic-stricken people explains Haudenosaunee expansion more than the “imperialistic desires” identified by historians (88). However, the scholarship cited does emphasize grief manifested in the “mourning war,” a captive-taking and adoption process that was also characterized by violence downplayed in The Clay We Are Made Of. In 1701 at Montreal, the Haudenosaunee made peace with the French and Native nations throughout the Great Lakes, while strengthening a relationship with the English through the Nanfan Treaty at Albany. Here they granted northern and western lands to “the protection of the King” (103). While correctly stressing the distinction of protection rather than sale, Hill does not unpack the complications of assigning “protection” rights to lands claimed by a rival empire and occupied by other Native peoples, who had pushed the Haudenosaunee back to Iroquoia proper. Similarly, Hill stresses that the landmark Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), where the Haudenosaunee tried to stave off settler encroachments through a huge land cession, had not been done for “financial compensation” but reflected the “Dish with One Spoon,” a reciprocal relationship that British settlers tarnished by trespassing (127). But much of the land that the Haudenosaunee ceded—in an unprecedentedly expensive treaty (£10,000 in cash and presents)—actually belonged to the Shawnee, who launched their own war against encroachment in 1774.Hill’s emphasis on continuity highlights the failures of the British and subsequent Canadian governments to honor their obligations as allies following the American Revolution and the establishment of Grand River. These disappointments began early when, in 1793, Lt. Governor John Graves Simcoe reduced by a third the Grand River lands promised by Sir Frederick Haldimand. During the 1830s and 1840s, the Haudenosaunee contended with squatters and Indian Affairs mismanagement of trust funds invested in the Grand River Navigation Company, which flooded and damaged their land. Hill observes that as Haudenosaunee military significance declined, “government policies shifted from protecting (at least in name) the sovereign rights of the Six Nations toward attempts to ‘civilize’ and integrate them and their lands into the fabric of Upper Canada” (190). With a provision to replace hereditary leadership with an elected council, the Indian Act of 1869 embodied this shift toward assimilationist policies. Yet, drawing on Grand River Council records, Hill examines patterns of internal cultural continuity and repeated assertions of sovereignty. The book concludes in 1924, when the Canadian government declared the traditional Confederacy Council invalid and insisted on an elected council, which Hill notes was largely unrecognized by those it allegedly represented. The Clay We Are Made Of is an effective study of this troubled history.