Iroquois: The Past and Present of the Haudenosaunee
Giving Thanks Every morning and afternoon soft voices recite a prayer in Iroquois community classrooms Speaking in native languages they give thanks to all of nature for plants animals people water stars and sunshine The children might feel thankful for strawberries they ate for a snack They might remember the butterfly on the playground They might feel thankful for a teacher's help Iroquois ancestors have passed this thanksgiving prayer down through thousands of years The Iroquois weave their history and traditions into every part of their lives today ancestor family member who lived a long time ago tradition custom idea or belief passed down through time
An illustration depicts the prayer of thanksgiving
Chapter 1 Life Before European Contact An engraving from the early 1700s illustratesthe Peacemaker speaking to members of the five tribes urging them to work together
For more than 4 000 years Iroquois tribes have lived in what is today upper New York State and Ontario Canada The Mohawk Onondaga Oneida Cayuga and Seneca tribes lived near each other and spoke similar languages But they also fought bloody wars against each other Today the Iroquois tell the story of a man called the Peacemaker He convinced the five tribes to work together as a confederacy He showed them how a bundle of arrows was more difficult to break than a single one The Peacemaker introduced the Great Law of Peace He urged the five tribes to solve problems without fighting The tribes organized themselves into the League of Nations possibly as early as 1142 or 1451 In the early 1700s the Tuscarora Nation became the sixth tribe to join the confederacy confederacy union of people or groups with a common goal
