Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 16 - The Haudenosaunee and the Great Law of Peace (Part 1)
47 Plays23 days ago
Before European colonizers made their way to North America and subsequently the Great Lakes, an established democracy had already been built by the Haudenosaunee. Tamarack takes control in this two part episode series and Heather demonstrates her biggest blindspot in North American history.
Heritage Minute:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/peacemaker
We now have a Patreon!
https://patreon.com/shawiniganmoments
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
Recommended
Transcript
Weekend Observations and Host Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
I noticed something strange over the weekend. Oh yeah? Yeah. I'll let you come back. I like to cross the department, I'm sorry. ah Yes, you noticed something strange. My podcast host that I don't... and My podcast co-host who I don't at all frustrate the hell out of. You're fine. There's two things
Advertising Challenges and Critiques
00:00:20
Speaker
I've noticed as of late. I think advertising departments are... I know they try their best, especially considering a lot of them are having their jobs threatened by AI.
00:00:29
Speaker
But there is a little bit of like research required in order to do ads. And so two things, number one, so they're advertising for Ronald McDonald house saying, you know, raising money to keep their charity afloat, you know, a charity that McDonald's could probably outright funded, no problem. But anyway, and it just shows that's what charity is there for. It's just handing out scraps.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't I don't like the concept of charity for the most part, just like fundamentally like they should. I'm happy they exist to a certain extent, but I also have problems with them. But anyway, that's aside from that. I was driving I keep driving by this bus stop and I noticed that it shows like you want to be close to your kids whenever they're in the hospital. and Yeah, that's reasonable. I my child, non-existent child was in hospital. I would hate to have to travel 600 some odd kilometers to go.
00:01:24
Speaker
and ah visit them on the regular. So that's the whole point of Ronald McDonald House is to give parents a place to stay, right? Why this isn't a feature of children's hospitals in general. Who knows? Yeah, exactly. So every child in a children's hospital probably has a family. So you can reasonably estimate that your number of beds equals the number of lodging you'll require. Exactly. And so they're like, but they show a map of Ontario instead of like a map relative to British Columbia. It's like,
00:01:56
Speaker
It's not to say that it doesn't drive the point home, but it just feels a little tone deaf advertising for this charity and then using one of their houses that is, you know, in Toronto. And like, I know there's a Ronald McDonald house somewhere in Vancouver. I'm sure I just don't know where it is. And I don't have children. So it's not like I would need to know this necessarily, but it just seems a little weird. But then, so that was the first thing I know is about weird stuff in Toronto. But the other thing is, have you ever had coffee from second cup?
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah. OK, so like, you know, for those of you who are not Canadian, Second Cup is like really kind of a thing. And what's that comic, ah Scott Pilgrim? And so, like, if you watch the movie, Scott Pilgrim Against the World, I think I can't remember the full title anymore. You know, a Second Cup does make an appearance in it, if I remember correctly. And so, you know, like that's Second Cup coffee. Like it's it's fine. It's it's OK. I don't mind their coffee. It's cetera depth above Starbucks, I would say, but a step below literally everything else. Yeah. Well, it used to be my go-to coffee in the morning when I would go into the office, but it's no longer a thing. You would take five out of the like coffee places you will find in a strip mall or just a regular mall is probably my preference of the two, but they're at that same level.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah. So anyway, they're advertising, which is weird because I cannot think of any second cup locations that are in Metro Vancouver. It's one in Burnaby. Nope. Is it gone? Yeah. it's So here's the thing. There used to be one in Park Royal in West Vancouver. You can go on the website and you'll see what I mean. There's the only ones I can think of is one inside a cerebral memorial hospital. And then there's one that is somewhere in the interior. I cannot remember. It's probably like Penticton or something. And that's it in Kelowna.
00:03:49
Speaker
Oh, does it have a phone number attached to it? Maybe? If it doesn't have a phone number, it doesn't exist anymore. I don't know why they don't update their website. No, I've, I've literally physically seen it as of like a couple of months ago. Then they're just terrible at updating their list. Like it doesn't make any sense. But anyway, people in Toronto, if you're going to advertise your stuff to people on the west coast. What the hell, it's not here. What's that? What the hell, it's not here. Oh no, they're, yeah, Ventles. Oh shit. Yeah, it's just Ventles. No phone number. No, no, it has no phone number. I know a hundred percent know that that location is not open.
00:04:26
Speaker
I get you not. Oh yeah, if you go there, it's, oh, this is so funny. Offering the hours. Sunday closed. Monday closed. Tuesday closed. yeah Wednesday closed. The hours do not. Thursday closed. Friday closed. Saturday closed. Yeah, and there's no phone numbers. That's why I'm saying they're not open. so anyway Um, I was driving on boundary and they're advertising for second cup. And I'm like, why is this the case? Why are you advertising for second cup coffee in Vancouver? If you have no locations within, you know, outside of a hospital in Surrey that supposedly is there, I don't know. know
00:04:59
Speaker
I hope I'm not in that hospital anytime soon. People in Toronto, for the love of God, just why are you advertising your stuff all the way out in Vancouver? It doesn't make any sense. I think this is one of those things that irritates me, especially like if you like watch like old YTV, always saw ads for things that are just out in Toronto. Yeah, it was very, ah it was very Ontario based. Occasionally you would get something that's like, ah like in Quebec, but that's like in Montreal specifically.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, but if it's on French television, I kind of just kind of go, okay, whatever y'all are going to have stuff that's in French only and that's fine. I'm okay with that. That's meh. But like English speaking Canada is fucking massive. Like, Hey, Hey, do you want some vindication? Sure. Second cup on the highway 97 is actually closed. The sign was just still up. Cool.
00:05:52
Speaker
One of these days, I want to talk about Scott Pilgrim on this show because I have a love-hate relationship with the whole universe. Like, Scott Pilgrim sucks as a character. God, the whole universe you hate? That's a lot of stuff. I thought we were talking about Scott Pilgrim. we are Yeah, but Scott Pilgrim, the universe that is Scott Pilgrim is what I'm talking about. I know. It sucks so hard. Like, Scott Pilgrim is a shitty character. And yeah, anyway, I just fucking can't stand Scott Pilgrim. The thing is, the game's fun.
00:06:25
Speaker
like i I kept my PlayStation 3 from dying only because I was afraid of like losing my copy like my only copy of the beat-em-up game. Yeah, they like have re-released it a couple times because all the licensed music obviously makes it an absolute nightmare to to actually get published and keep published.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, but they worked out because it was animated Gucci that did all the music. And, you know, I made it a point to buy the physical release when it was made available. So I have a physical copy for the switch, which means I will always be able to play this game provided I can get myself a switch. Do you not have a switch? I do have a switch just in case i like oh i'm go I will. Yeah, I just want I always like having physical copies of games. I need to get a glass of water. Okay. But after that, do you want to start the show? Yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
Okay, I'll be right back.
00:07:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Schwinnigan Moments. I'm one of your hosts today, Tamarack. My pronouns are they them or it's. What up, lovers of Second Cup Coffee. My name is Heather and they see they've grown up. I don't even have a second cup bit in. Oh, God. Maybe, we'll see. We'll see if anyone knows why I'm talking about Second Cup. We'll leave it a little secret for everybody.
00:07:43
Speaker
not leave the grey owl bit in. That's too much. that's Oh, I didn't record us talking about grey owl. The episode we all both dreading to do in the future. i I think it'll be kind of fun, actually. Yeah, but um it's your episode today. It is my episode today, and it's ah it's one that I actually promised to do a while ago, and then I just didn't. We talked about a fascist with ah with the radio instead.
00:08:14
Speaker
But we're back for realsies, and we're talking about the Haudenosaunee and the Great Law of Peace, ah sometimes also known as the Iroquois Confederation, though that's not ever a name they use for themselves. We should make it clear that we weren't talking about, we were talking about Marconi and not the person who was running Belcad, because I know Belcad sucks, but I don't know much about that guy's politics to say whether or not he was a fascist. Wait.
00:08:43
Speaker
ah Shit, are you looking up the weather to see the first president of Bell Canada was a fascist? ah Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were doing a nevermind. Yes, we do not know. We do not know if the founder of Bell Canada was or was not a fascist. We could either confirm nor deny that. ah We know Tommy Douglas is the greatest Canadian and and Marconi certainly was a fascist. Yeah, Marconi we can confirm as a fascist. We don't even have to. He said it himself. Yeah. He, we don't even have to like argue that point. He just says like, yeah, I'm proud of it too. He also hated like the Jews and probably other people as well. Yeah. Again, fascist stuff. Cause he was a fascist, a member of the fascist party, supporter of the fascist movement. Like this isn't even even like lefties calling everything. They don't like fascism. Like, no, he would not like to be described any
Unusual News and Counterfeit Coin Discussion
00:09:36
Speaker
other way. Exactly. But first ah we have to ah do the news.
00:09:49
Speaker
So Tamara, I'm going to talk about camel toes. What? You know, camel toes, you know, it's it's a huge problem in this country these days. And I always am a little uncomfortable coming across camel toes. It's something that can cause a lot of problems. It can be incredibly awkward if you're caught with a camel toe. I mean, I as an asexual don't particularly enjoy coming across them, but I mean, what is what is it why being an asexual have to do with money? Wait, what? So this came on Ray Radar this past week. This was I'm going to click the link now. You can click the link because now you understand why I link. This is called camel toes, loonies or toonies, I should say. This was came up to me in the news last week. And this isn't the first time it's happened, but there are counterfeit toonies floating around in Canada.
00:10:49
Speaker
And the pressing is so bad that it shows the polar bear on the $2 coin, that we call them toonies, as having camel toe as opposed to a proper, like, I don't know how many digits of bears foot has. Yeah, it's got like the full detail and like the fur, the fur details not there anymore.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah. And the other problem is um the font's wrong. The font's wrong. So instead of using is instead of using a serif font, they're using a serif font. it These are awful. Yeah. And the other problem I think is like the queen's nose is only correct. Like it's whatever. Deface the queen all you like. Well, defacing the currency can invalidate it. So be careful about suggesting that. But well, no, like that the counterfeiters can make her look fucked up all they want. Yes, fine.
00:11:38
Speaker
So this whole page, but which we'll link in the show notes, just shows like these counterfeit coins. And supposedly they're being made somewhere in China, and they're just cropping up inside of circulation. Now, what's ah really interesting is this is not the first time this has happened. Back in 1996, there was the Montreal Mint Tunis, or sorry, excuse me, a sorry, 2006. The Tuni came out in 96.
00:12:07
Speaker
And these ended up just kind of looking kind of poor in quality. They have like a like the just just just dollar is kind of the best way to describe it. Yeah. There was also like a really strange coin that was going around in January 2022 before the king or rather before the queen died. And they call them Z-dollared tunis.
00:12:30
Speaker
So for whatever reason, on the coin, it has Canada, and then it shows a walrus. And then it says the letter Z dollar. So dollar if it and then ending with just a D. And then the play the coins are then given like a 1990 year on it and it shows Elizabeth dot dot and then I swear to God, it looks like the fucking king is on it, or at least it's such a weird ass coin. And there's a bunch of other indications that, you know, you you find out that make it like not a legitimate tuning. It sounds like it was made for parody sake.
00:13:10
Speaker
But the origin of them is completely unknown. And then there's like some other weird pirated toonies out there. are Sorry, counterfeit toonies out there. One that shows two maple leaves on it. It doesn't even tell you the denomination of the coin. Like I never considered counterfeit coins to be that common because like counterfeit bills obviously are. But like, yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
What are you going to do with the counterfeit toonies? Like, I guess if you're like, if you like don't have like a lot of money and you end up with one of these, you're not going to think about it. So like, you're, you're more likely to be a suspect to this sort of thing. Like you could get scammed by being given these, I guess. Yeah, you would, you would need to produce these in like very high, similar to this is just a shitty or more expensive way of doing the like counterfeit American ones and fives.
00:13:59
Speaker
but where it's like, it's you have to produce these in huge volumes and pass them off gradually. like If you had $40,000 worth of these tunis, because a tunis weighs about 7 grams, it would end up weighing 140,000 grams. That's 140 kilograms. That's like two people's body weight. Yeah, they the reason why coins aren't usually counterfeited is because they're really heavy.
00:14:29
Speaker
there it's It's making me think of this. is um I recently started watching this Japanese TV series, and I'm forgetting the name of it at the moment. This woman ends up killing her sister in this show. And all she did is she put a bunch of her coins in a bag. It was something like It was like 40,000, no, sorry. It was 4 million yen that was inside of this jar. So like $40,000 in coins. I don't even know what it was. It was like a stupid amount of money that would if you whack somebody hard enough with it, you would kill them. No, it was not 40,000.
00:15:02
Speaker
dollars is probably more like it was a lot of coins. I'm actually forgetting how much it was. What's the show? I don't remember. okay I will. Unfortunately, I'm running. I did not make note of this show for the purposes of this podcast, a Japanese TV show that aired this episode in 2005. But OK, it's a fairly old um a Japanese show. OK, you were just watching it.
00:15:29
Speaker
no No, I was watching it on Sunday. oh yeah yeah I just don't remember the name of it because I was watching it as a group watch. okay yeah So in any event, there's an estimate of 5 million counterfeit coins in circulation. and like that i i find I find it hard to believe that there are that many counterfeit coins out there. i There's an astronomical amount of coins period in circulation. so yeah That's like probably representing like a fraction of a percent of actual counterfeit coins, or like actual coins or counterfeit. And a lot of coins I found out may actually get thrown away. Like and I don't think this is an isolated incident, but I know of a Twitch streamer in the States and I won't name this person in particular who admitted during his stream that when they get pennies, they just throw it in the trash. And that like really illegal in the States.
00:16:20
Speaker
I know Americans are incredibly like vicious about protecting their money, but that's that's what this person admitted to. They just throw their coins in the trash. And I find it funny, but it also kind of speaks to the sort of privilege that this person has if they're willing to throw their pennies in the trash.
00:16:41
Speaker
Like pennies are worthless. We don't have them in this country anymore. We haven't had them since what, 2013 or so? I think that's when we got rid of them entirely. But you shouldn't throw them away. Just take them to the fucking bank, throw them in a jar. And eventually when you're done, you know, like if you don't like them so much, but you're willing to pay the tax, find a coin star and then have 10% of them taken away from you, but at least you've turned them into something useful as opposed to collecting dust. Anyway, the point being is there are camel toe coins out there. I'd love to get my hand on one, but if you do find them, don't spend them. It means you gotta have a police interaction and we can't have that. Trying to see if it is actually illegal to dispose of. Oh yeah, I guess technically it would be destruction of the coin.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, but there's no way to prove it because like if all of a sudden like the police or I guess some of the states would be the Secret Service are in charge, but the Secret Service is not going to go through their garbage to figure this out.
00:17:36
Speaker
I don't know. i I have learned to never underestimate the breadth and depth of the American police state. That's fair. like what Imagine just going to jail for throwing your pennies in the trash. like You get situated in the same cell as another person who has a tear under their eye and he's like, what are you in for? Well, I threw pennies in the trash. I guess it would be technically worse if you put it in the recycle bin because then you're basically sending it to get melted down.
00:18:04
Speaker
Well, the problem is is there's not that much copper in a penny anyway. Like now like um we don't have them anymore, but like makeup of a copper, like what's the materials in an American. We don't, we don't mint them anymore. They are still legal tender.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah. Like, but but okay. So the copper plated zinc and like 97.5% of that coin is just zinc. And then two and a half percent is copper. Yeah. And they weigh like nothing. Nothing. They weigh like a gram, I guess. I don't think I pretty certainly weigh more than that. The zinc is hilarious. Two and a half grams is what they weigh. Yeah. So you're not going to get much copper out of a penny.
00:18:39
Speaker
Well, no, because it's just like a it's like a basically like one or two atom thick plating on the zinc itself. It's dealing copper from the pennies. You would need so many. Yeah. Well, anyway, so are my the official she went again moments opinion is or advice rather is don't fuck with coins, I guess. Just if you don't want them, give them to me.
00:19:05
Speaker
and be like everybody just like do what everybody else does with your pennies put them in a drawer and forget about them forever. Because the government prefers that. Until you have to move you're like why the fuck do I have like two bucks of pennies in this drawer.
00:19:23
Speaker
I do have some cool coins, I should admit. I have a lot of like cool currency kicking around. i do have Oh, it's a 1984 50 cent piece. I want to say it's with laura um Jacques Cartier. Oh no, is it Jacques Cartier? Yeah, it was Jacques Cartier. So that's one of the i have it that's one of my more interesting coins. i got like That was like a gift for being born.
00:19:44
Speaker
But I also have like a ton of currency from all over the world. Like my favorite currency that I have in my collection is ah my Cuban notes from my trip to Cuba. These millennials getting getting getting participation trophies just for being born. Jesus Christ. Could you imagine? OK, yeah, that's what I got born and I got given a trophy from my boomer parents.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know, people don't talk about it enough how, like like, they bitch about millennials being, like, given participation trophies or everything, but it's like, yeah, by their Gen X and Boomer parents, like... Like, I don't have... Like, I got trip participation trophies for playing soccer, and I fucking was... Like, I was fucking miserable playing soccer, and I won't get into why, but it always blows my mind whenever I hear about Boomers, or even Gen X people talking about us this way, and it's like, just shut up.
00:20:38
Speaker
None of us cared about those trophies. I had no idea they were a thing that actually existed because I guess I grew up in a anyway i grew up in a place where these were not things that happened. oh my godsh i win something I got two participation trophies. I don't understand why for playing soccer and I was just like, why is this the case? But again, this was a boomer invention. It wasn't anything that millennials wanted. Yeah. ah Gen X parents wanted their kids to be special. Everybody had to be special.
00:21:08
Speaker
Anyway, I guess that's the news. Yeah, it's
Haudenosaunee Confederation's Influence and History
00:21:10
Speaker
the news. Oh, there's no drop for exiting. The news is there. Maybe you should come up with one. Okay. So episode. Yes. Let's do episode somewhere between the 12th and 15th centuries, a string of five nations, first nations along the Great Lakes, ah specifically Lake Ontario, United into a confederation called the Great Law of Peace.
00:21:31
Speaker
This was recognizable as a democracy, like a modern democracy in ways that ah particularly a very like advanced federal system in a way that ah like Greek city-state oligarchy and kind of Rome's weird proto-democracy just were not. They're seen as the originators of western democracy, but if you look at their system, they just kind of weren't. Rome was a little closer. Greek was just rich people voting in oligarchy, kind of like the United States, but they weren't real democracies. One thing I want to make clear is a lot of people like to depict
00:22:12
Speaker
indigenous peoples of North America living in things like teepees and all this sort of thing. They did. But generally speaking, they had full on cities. Yeah, there they were a lot more spread out. So you didn't see like large metropolises like contemporary London ah for the for the 12th. Actually, you know what, some of these might have actually been fairly analogous to there's debate around when the Haudenosaunee settled on the Great Lakes. They came from elsewhere.
00:22:39
Speaker
And also when the events that we're going to talk about the with Hiawatha and the peacemaker and Chaganza say, ah forming this Confederacy, ah when it actually happened. If it happened all the way back in the 12th century, then yeah, they had basically analogues to European cities at the time. Later on, less so, there's just a lot more land, so they were a lot more spread out, because it makes sense.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Some cool features about this is that there was gender parity within the government structure of the Great Law of Peace. This, this actually gets a little bit hidden when you look at it, like structurally, because all the sacrams, the representatives of each nation that goes to the ground council were all men. But it's important to note that the Haudenosaunee were a deeply matriarchal society,
00:23:29
Speaker
which we'll get to in this episode. It'll really come up next episode. But it was a functional consensus based democracy. Decisions were made in ah it was a bicameral legislature. Basically, both chambers had to fully agree. They had concept of like universal veto for each of the each of the constituent nations. And the the most important difference between ah Greek and Roman democracy is they're still around.
00:23:57
Speaker
yeah And they survived some really ah like challenging circumstances for this confederation to continue to function, and it managed to endure through the invasion of European colonizers being one thing, but also They adopted an entire new nation. It was founded as the Five Nations. But they actually brought another one and settled it into their confederacy later on in the 1700s. And that sort of thing, usually, we would think would destabilize such a democracy, especially one that's so rooted in consensus building. But it continued to endure and continues to endure.
00:24:36
Speaker
Basically, this shit is important if you're a leftist, and actually serious, particularly if you're on the libertarian left, you're you're more of an anarchist thinker, and you want to think about how democratic systems can scale up to a national, like, state-like level. This is important to pay attention to because this is a functioning example.
00:24:56
Speaker
Like when we were talking about Five Nations, i if this wasn't about ah people that I genuinely do not want to riff on, I would have made like a reference to some pop culture. But there this is actually a pretty big fucking deal. And this is something ah white people ruined. White people ruined, but it still endures. There is even an argument to be made that a lot of the functional elements of the Great Law of Peace ended up being laundered, not adopted.
00:25:22
Speaker
but laundered, into the more progressive elements of the Declaration of Independence and later the American Constitution. There's a line you can draw that traces from the burgeoning left-wing ideologies of anarchism and communism that came up in Western Europe in kind of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, also had its roots partially in the ideas that were coming out of the Haudenosaunee.
00:25:50
Speaker
The other thing that's gonna be really frustrating for this particular two-parter, well, we're gonna be using was a lot. We are going to be using was quite a bit. I don't know. This one's actually going to be pretty upbeat because we're kind of we're kind of just going to gush on this very interesting government system. It's very interesting ways of coming about it and maybe being a little bit upset that because it's a mostly oral traditionally like as it's the story of this of their founding has been mostly carried through by oral tradition because that is how they share
00:26:25
Speaker
ideas and stories and even their laws, which meant for a large portion of kind of the the peak and sort of decline during during the more aggressive expansionist waves of ah of European colonialism, their first-hand accounts weren't really taken down. so the breadth of these tales has kind of like we don't get the we don't get the full gradient of all the different versions of this where we can see why things have changed in a certain way in this nation or the other nation. So we end up with wildly different tales and wildly different dates on when these events happened. We do know that
00:27:06
Speaker
The peacemaker, Hiawatha, and Jugantze were real people who really did have an outsized role in the founding of the Honoshone Confederacy. But the the specifics are heavily mythologized, and inconsistently so as each nation kind of has their own version of this. A preface that I'm going to borrow from later in the notes is that what we're going to tell is kind of one version of this, but it's not the version of ah events. And I don't think that matters, because humans like narratives, and good narratives endure, and this is one that super endured. Some stuff we need to get to before we can get to the the meat of this episode, which is going to be mostly just Haudenosaunee Civics 100. We will be offering course credits at the end of the episode. Wait, what?
00:28:04
Speaker
No, ah scar but this is this is this is doesnt listen up kids. You can use this for high school credits because I say so. You know what? Try it. Try it and let me know. Historiography on this is kind of annoying because the ah the date range is pretty broad. We don't know when exactly all of this happened when the Haudenosaunee Confederation was founded, and we know it was founded before Western settlers arrived, before North America was colonized. However, we don't really have great ah sources from those colonizers who tended to look down on the oral traditions of the Haudenosaunee
00:28:50
Speaker
in favor of their their unchanging like rigid text which was always reliable because nobody ever wrote anything with an agenda, see Pentamint the video game. Colonizer sources are really hard to trust for that reason and also because one of the groups that studied the Haudenosaunee, the early French Jesuit colonizers, called them a people lacking in a government law, letters, and religion which is wrong wrong wrong and also wrong.
00:29:20
Speaker
They just didn't understand it because they didn't want to. And also, they didn't try. One of the things that frustrated them learning anything, and colonizers later learning anything about the Honoshone, is the talking to the chief problem, ah which I gave a different title in the show notes. ah Some founded speculation. A lot of the confusion colonizers would have had in dealing with the Honoshone nations, is that they would want to speak to village chiefs. And I want you to put a pin in that because this is going to come up a lot in this episode and again in the next. If they would have the wherewithal to actually deal with the Grand Council, which was a separate building that met regularly, they would maybe try to talk to those chiefs
00:30:10
Speaker
But like this would be for purposes of like deciding treaties or ah opening trade and things like that. To them, this would have seemed this must have seemed insane. ah This would kind of be like a diplomat from China deciding that they want to conduct some trade in Washington state. So they go talk to Ken Sim, or maybe they realize that there's a national government So then they go and talk to Jenny Quang, my MP, Ken Simms, the mayor of Vancouver, about stuff that they want to do in Seattle. Like this would be preposterous. These people have no power to to decide anything. The only place where they could get away with this is if they went to New York City and you're Turkey and you want to speak to Mayor Eric Adams. You stole my fucking joke. God damn it.
00:31:01
Speaker
The other, the yes. It would also be completely insane if, say, the government of Turkey decided to go to New York to discuss things that they wanted to do on a national level in the United States. So they talked to Eric Adams. Yes, yes, yes. And then they pay him in like tickets that let him fly anywhere that Turkish Airlines goes. Yeah. Well, sort of. They kind of let him buy the economy ticket and then suddenly just get free upgrades every time he flew.
00:31:26
Speaker
So like the reason for this is that in, at least, Haudenosaunee society, chiefs were just the guy that got appointed to do a thing. So... Whatever the equivalent of overseeing all the new roads being built in, whatever they whatever place they live in, or things like that. Yeah, that would be like a civil chief. You could have a ah a war chief.
00:31:49
Speaker
who would be meeting in the Grand Council or a war chief for a nation. But there would be a bunch of those. There would be a bunch of peace chiefs for diplomacy and trade. If you would go to one of their villages or go to their Grand Council and ask for the chief, you're going to get a lot of confused stares. And maybe those confused stares that you get from the people who don't understand this insane request that you're like, what, why are you asking about this? That's that's nonsense. You might not see the very obvious government structure that's in front of you. The chiefs, by the way, were appointed by clan mothers. We'll get into the structure of them. So like they were just representatives that, which is why Jenny Quang was kind of my example is like, if if they went to the national level, like she is.
00:32:38
Speaker
part of parliament but she's not the whole of parliament and doesn't really have the power to just enact stuff on her own. ah Similarly, we live in a country called Canada and to spoil a bit of the Cartier episode, one of the origin stories for this is that a plucky young Jacques Cartier went to a Haudenosaunee village and asked as depicted in this, the village chief, because historic Canada also made the same mistake. What what do you call this place? And they depict it as ah this man giving a thoughtful response of the Iroquois ward for the village, Kenata.
00:33:19
Speaker
There is no way, there is absolutely no way that if this happened, what followed Kanata were the Iroquois words for, or there were the Haudenosaunee words for you and dumbass. Because like, ah you don't get that word as a response if somebody doesn't just like, not know what you're trying to go for. The Jacques Cartier episode is going to be so fucking dumb. Like, yeah I don't even know how we're gonna approach that one in particular because I think we're gonna characterize them as a no-thoughts-head-empty-himbo failing through life.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, the thing is, is he actually did fail upward. Like he didn't, yes he had to marry in order to like have any sort of nobility. Like he was otherwise just a like a low piece. Like not, he wasn't like bottom of the barrel or anything like that, but like nobody, like he was he wasn't nobody in the in the grand scheme of things until he got married to some woman.
00:34:18
Speaker
And the last little aside before we get started on it is a call to action from from our listeners. I would love if anyone has any resources on what to the contemporary, like what the opinion of contemporary Haudenosaunee people were to the colonizers that they started to have contact with.
00:34:42
Speaker
because it wasn't like the Algonquin where they basically or the mikba who immediately like fell into conflict with them because they were like on their land. The Honoshone actually had a bit of time before like colonists were on their doorstep. So I would love to know what they thought contemporarily of them. Because like, this was a functioning democracy where most people's rights were but wherere pretty well protected. They had their own like Bill of Rights, which we'll get into in the next episode. They must have thought these like capitalist enterprise colonies were just the most ah horrifically backwards things. But I don't know. And I would really love to find out. So Melbag at SchwinniganMoments.ca, please.
00:35:27
Speaker
i want I wonder I might need to be corrected on this. I think it was the Iroquois that had to teach settlers on how to be more effective at fishing in the St. Lawrence.
00:35:39
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if it was, I know for sure it was, it was a Haudenosaunee people who taught the, uh, the American pilgrims or whatever. They're part of the Thanksgiving story. It wasn't these Haudenosaunee though. Yeah. It's, uh, this one's a little bit muddied because it's been so long since I've heard this anecdote before. But, uh, yeah, I'd love to hear about this too. So do as what Tamarack says, if you can.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yes, this is the great thing about the Haudenosaunee, and the Haudenosaunee confederation still being around, is I'm sure these exist somewhere ah within like their own records or their own stories, and I just don't, I just wasn't able to find them, so let me know.
00:36:25
Speaker
Last thing, for reals this time. We're going to talk about wampum. These are beads that are arranged on strings or woven into belts. They become a central figure of the Haudenosaunee as patterns in them were meant to signify ideas such as a belt of white strips surrounding ah a row of dark.
00:36:44
Speaker
meaning peace overcoming war and one telling of Hiawatha's first meeting with the pe Peacemaker. But like whole histories and laws are encoded onto wampum belts and they act as mnemonic devices for ah recounting laws, tales, stuff like that.
00:37:01
Speaker
ah So when colonizers said they had no letters, they were like super wrong, hilariously wrong. ah Just not as they understood them, which also brings me to my final aside. They also have the best flag in the world, because the white string that connects the the blocks with the tree in the middle, the tree in the middle represents the seat of government, basically.
00:37:22
Speaker
the The other four are the other four nations that founded the Great Law of Peace, and the string connects outwards to the edge of it to signify that the idea is that they will expand to perhaps the whole world, which is a beautiful idea on a beautiful flag.
00:37:40
Speaker
I like the flag. I've seen the Iroquois flag a number of times. I'm just going to correct you, Honoshone. Again, it's not a name they ever use for themselves. I will. Yeah, sorry. I realized that Honoshone flag is quite so good.
00:37:58
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like it's very simple and you could easily like stitch this. you don't You can just pattern this out, no problem. In fact, it was meant to. That's how it was originally created. It's not a it's not a modern flag first. It was a banner made of wampum.
00:38:15
Speaker
first to tell the tale of what the Haudenosaunee what the Haudenosaunee confederation was. So we have an episode clip not a very good one but we have a rare miss by historic Canada I'm sad to say but let's roll the clip. This tree represents our people. What kind of tree is it? A tree of great peace. The peacemaker gave the great laws of peace to the Iroquois in a dark times many years ago.
00:38:43
Speaker
dark times indeed and we're going to start in those dark times but first we have to ask who are the Haudenosaunee or the people of the longhouse our story starts actually in the great plains along the great river known as the Mississippi today at this time The Haudenosaunee lived already in settlements comprised of permanent wooden structures. The longhouses were already invented at this point. They maybe might not have been as advanced as their as their later constructions, but they were already a people who were agrarian, as again, they were along the Mississippi next like in the Great Plains.
00:39:24
Speaker
excellent farmland. So agriculture was a natural thing for them to have started to do. They were not a strictly agrarian society, they still organize hunting parties, but also I don't know of any agrarian society that is rigidly agrarian. But at some point, a fragment of these people basically packed up and followed the Ohio River towards the Great Lakes.
00:39:50
Speaker
This probably happened over several generations rather than a single migration, but it could have been done all at once because other groups that are not Haudenosaunee were and continue to be very dominant and in the areas between the Great River and the Great Lakes. So, um notably the Algonquin peoples, so who knows?
00:40:09
Speaker
That land is is like very productive, I should make clear, for agricultural purposes. like The entire Midwest is the breadbasket of the United States for a very good reason, and these people definitely themselves would be able to recognize that. Yeah. They were people just like us, so they recognized geographic advantages when they found them. They cultivated grains. they Particularly corn was a thing that they were just known for.
00:40:38
Speaker
cultivation of, but they had other staple crops that they would use primarily for food and then supplement it with hunted meat and fish. Did you know that Native Americans call corn maize? I'm trying to make a like a Simpsons reference. I think it's just a name for the plant.
00:40:57
Speaker
I think so. This is like one of those, um this was a reference to the Simpsons where Bart doesn't do his homework and he has to do a homework assignment on Native Americans. So he just like started spouting off like the most typical white person ah statements about about indigenous peoples.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, I know. maize Maize is just domesticated corn. um i i I might drop the clip in the ah of this in the episode if I can find it. Maize is domesticated corn, also known as corn. I think nowadays it kind of refers to like heirloom varieties of corn but because like like modern corn is horrifically mutated.
00:41:38
Speaker
Let me find the clip here. I think you need to I think you need to hear this one because I think this is just worth putting in there. I vaguely remember it. Feel free to interject it. No. OK, Libya exports. Yes, sir. are You American pig. a Nice touch. Let's see. The exports of Libya are numerous in amount. One thing they export is corn.
00:42:04
Speaker
or as the Indians call it, maize. Another famous Indian was Crazy Horse. In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrast. Thank you.
00:42:17
Speaker
Isn't it such a stupid clip? Oh boy. All right. Anyway, maize is just domestic wild corn, which is also known in the West as corn. Corn.
00:42:31
Speaker
Although factory farmed corn is a horrific mutant beyond the normal amount of mutant all of our staple crops are. Well, it's the same with tomatoes and potatoes, which are also from this part, well, from South America, rather. They're also deadly nightshades, both of them. Yes. And that's also why you got to really cook potatoes. Don't eat raw potatoes, guys. Especially if they have specific colors on them.
00:43:00
Speaker
yeah. Anyway, they packed up their lives and began migrating up the higher river towards the Great Lakes. As they went along the higher river, the group splintered off as they migrated with folk settling kind of towards the western Great Lakes, some along the Huron, which will come up later, around Lake Erie, giving those lakes their modern names. And these people would go as far as the Susquehanna or all the way down to the current day Carolinas, and They would continue to share both the construction of the longhouses and some cultural practice, thus such that they're still recognized as Haudenosaunee, both by their own people and by Western settlers. um like their Their cultures and languages were still recognizable to each other, which I find quite interesting given the amount of time that we're talking here. like this This could be well before the 12th century.
00:43:57
Speaker
The group of but of these migrants that we're interested in today continued all the way to the banks of Lake Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River. When these migrants arrived, they found people already living there who were quite different from them.
00:44:12
Speaker
They called these people the bark eaters, Adriondacks, or porcupines, because how they seasoned their cooked meats with tree bark. They were probably Algonquin people, just geographically that seems to map out. That doesn't seem too absurd to season your meat with tree bark, because a lot of people like using cedar.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, no, like this this is not an unreaalable like an unreasonable practice. ah this is This is the age old tribalist sort of method of you are the great glorious people and the the enemy that you have come across is the ah people who suck nation for losers.
00:44:57
Speaker
I think that's what's going on here because when they came into contact with the bark eaters, they did not get along. They were mostly farmers who built permanent settlements of wooden houses, and the bark eaters were primarily hunter gatherers, or at least in the telling that I have access to.
00:45:16
Speaker
this ah did not go initially terribly well for the Haudenosaunee, who ended up in a protracted period of having to pay tribute to the bark-eaters ah to keep them off their asses. But they weren't content with this situation. they were They got sick of living under these conditions pretty quickly, and after a few years of preparations and scouting, they packed up all their provisions and all their people onto canoes,
00:45:44
Speaker
and set out seeking new lands up the Oswego River, the story goes that the bark-eaters followed them. ah They thought they were being stealthy, they'd left in the dead at night and canoed quietly with all their people and belongings, but the bark-eaters gave chase. They were they were aware of this.
00:46:02
Speaker
And near the mouth of ah the Ashwego onto Lake Ontario, if I remember correctly, they fought. And the bark eaters had just their warriors. They didn't have, like, women and children, the elderly, all their supplies and everything with them. ah So it was looking bleak for a bit until a great storm came and capsized a bunch of the bark eaters' canoes and swept the remainder of them out to the lake.
00:46:27
Speaker
and Haudenosaunee landed safely at the mouth of the Oshuego River and built their first village there. Yeah, really cool story. This has gotten out of a fairly old book called Roots of the Iroquois that was at VPL, which happened to be the book that I was able to get access to the quickest. We had to go to the Republic Library for those wondering what VPL is.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yes, use your local library. It's free knowledge. Anyway, so eventually pressure to find more fertile hunting grounds, ah more land for agriculture, drove this group to start to spread out deeper inland from the Ushwago River and settle on the little strip lakes that are kind of just to the south of Lake Ontario.
00:47:13
Speaker
and the And the rivers and tributaries to the Oswego that surrounded. The Mohawk, or the Flunt people, went to the Mohawk River, far to the east. The Oneida, the Standing Stone people, settled along Lake Oneida. The Onondaga, the people of the hills around Onondaga Creek,
00:47:31
Speaker
The Cayuga, the Great Pipe People, who sound like an overall good time, ah not just for this, but for stuff we'll get into later, around Lake Cayuga. And the Seneca, the people of the Great Mountain, along Canon Daigua Lake. God, I'm sorry.
00:47:46
Speaker
And a six-secret one that'll come up later, called the... a... a... Toss... uh, fuck. The Tuscarora people went way to the south, and we'll check up on them later. Here they found ample land for farms, excellent supply, efficient game, and built large settlements consisting of longhouses, and usually surrounded by wooden walls, palisade walls, ah likely a lesson learned from their experience with the bark-eaters.
00:48:14
Speaker
Oh, so they actually had like home flippers in that time period. They did not. They actually did not have real estate. I'm just, that joke does not land very well. Uh, we'll actually, that brings us to, so they, they spread out along this area and we'll check up on the Tuscarora later. I promise.
00:48:32
Speaker
But over time, this once united group of Haudenosaunee, remember we're talking about one of the groups of the Great River people who went on this migration, became five distinct nations as listed above ah in the region. So this brings us to the part of the tour where we talk Haudenosaunee Civics 100. This will be on the test. That's right. Remember this podcast qualifies for high school credits.
00:48:57
Speaker
I mean, if Jordan Peterson can make a university, we can too. Did he making it? I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I didn't realize he made a university. Is it a Pearson Academy or some shit? Because he was thinking of PragerU. That's why I went like, wait, what? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Could we be PragerU of the left?
00:49:14
Speaker
No, I didn't know. No, if you I'm going to introduce you to a podcast and ah it's called The Worst of All Possible Worlds. They are talking about PragerU in an episode. I'm going to give you the episode on that if you want to know the dreadfulness of PragerU. Oh, I'm well aware of their founding. OK, fair enough.
00:49:33
Speaker
The structure of the individual nations is actually super interesting, and it's also critically important to understanding how the Great Law of Peace came about, and why it was an incredibly natural extension of the existing structures within a longhouse, the smallest functional political unit of their society.
00:49:53
Speaker
And also, this is the part where this is a this is a lesson on how to scale up democratic processes that I think the left needs to learn and study, and I don't feel like it is. So since they were primarily an agrarian society, they lived year round in fixed settlements consisting of several longhouses. Anywhere between one to 50 of these structures ah would comprise a village. This was also a deeply matriarchal society while men were often the chiefs of various things, they were typically appointed to that role by their clan mother, who was sort of the matriarch of the clan, and the clan being a collection of longhouses that would be in one or more villages. The longhouses themselves are kind of the the central element of this, and they're it's best to less think of them as a house more as a linear apartment building. The way they were constructed basically is a kind of 20 foot by 20 foot kind of width and height, and basically a whole bunch of chunks of about 20 feet long just arrayed after each other with a door on either end.
00:51:03
Speaker
And each of these sections had a family with their own living space on either side that we would share a communal fire. And it would just be a long row of this pattern. So they're very simple. They're very like, you could look at a long house and kind of know how many people are in it because they were, they all fit this fairly uniform structure and these families go ahead.
00:51:26
Speaker
I was gonna say, as you're describing this, I'm just like thinking in the back of my mind is like how people live today and that are from this particular society or would originate from the society. They don't live in this way. And it's kind of a shame that, well, thanks, Europe.
00:51:44
Speaker
This is not, this is if you didn't have or didn't desire to ah employ the more like advanced vertical construction methods that were used by the by the by Europeans, particularly because you have so much land to work with that it's not strictly necessary.
00:52:06
Speaker
This is a fairly efficient way of doing things because each each of these pairs of families that are opposing each other on either side of the longhouse ah share a communal fire for heating and cooking that they can just cooperatively tend. You don't have a singular like centralized point of failure, nor do you have kind of like the the European village problem of everybody, every family like Every like small family is in their own little shacks all around. If one of them basically can't tend their fire, they just die in the winter. Whereas here, the entire extended family ah family was very loose in what they meant ah for this. An entire extended family would be in one longhouse.
00:52:51
Speaker
Right, though, there they they were usually they were all tied matrilineately to one woman and one, and possibly several of her sisters. So like, they would take care of each other if they had any issues. And yeah, so there'd be like two to 20 family living spaces in one long house.
00:53:12
Speaker
and sometimes families would be large enough that they would occupy multiple longhouses. I think 20 is just the number from the longest of the longhouses that have been found, but yeah, these things got pretty long. The governance in the longhouse was pretty flexile since everyone was blood relation, they worked and lived cooperatively, decision making was collective with deference to elders, which in this case would be the elders of the family.
00:53:37
Speaker
not unlike other early agrarian societies, and family decision making does tend to be fairly collective, particularly since everybody is working and living together. ah There's a common interest to hash things out and build consensus, the hauntology for this episode. A group of longhouses together would form a clan, ah usually taking a name of an animal like bear, wolf, sandpiper,
00:54:03
Speaker
etc. And while this was a useful political union unit, it also served as a mean to prevent intermarriage, as marriage within two members of between two members of the same clan was strictly forbidden. You know, to avoid creating your Haudenosaunee Habsburgs.
00:54:20
Speaker
The clans would have gender-segregated councils, a men's council, a women's council, a side number four. Other genders existed in these societies, and I'm not sure where that fits into these councils. If you know, send us stuff to mailbag at schwinniganmoments.ca. I'm genuinely interested.
00:54:36
Speaker
So the women's and men's councils would advise the clan mothers who are basically the moms at the top of the tree because the longhouses that this was a collection of are going to have somebody who's the oldest in the family who i who those longhouses are housing. So those would be the clan mothers. They would be advised by men's and women's councils. And these clan mothers would appoint chiefs to perform certain functions.
00:55:01
Speaker
war chiefs for managing warfare, peace chiefs for diplomacy and trade, et cetera, et cetera. The next unit up was, as far as I can tell, strictly a organizational unit, which was a number of clients would exist or would be grouped together in a moiety. This comes up. I had to look this up. That's like a chemistry term too. I just realized this. I was like, I didn't know this term. Ah, yes, that's what it is.
00:55:27
Speaker
So I couldn't find a good resource on what the government structure of the Moides is. It might have been a just an organizational or or categorical thing for basically partitioning the chiefs or the clan mothers.
00:55:45
Speaker
based upon geography or something like this. This is not something that I found a lot of information on. Mailbag at Schwinnigan Moments, if you know. But it's an organizational structure basically grouping together several clans into an organization ah into an organized unit. And several moieties would comprise a nation, the top level, at least until the founding of the Great Law of Peace, which would be, as far as I can tell, a council of chiefs who represented the clans and the clan mothers who appointed them specifically.
00:56:13
Speaker
This is the final layer layer of it is really insane to ask the mohawk as a whole to talk to their chief. Because do you mean the peace chief for one of the what for the for the bear clan? Or do you is it a war thing? or do you Do you need to talk to one of the war chiefs?
00:56:31
Speaker
What are you, what are you trying to, what are you trying to achieve? We can find a chief for it. They can't decide anything because they're a representative, but, or at least like, I think war chiefs had some authority over conflict, obviously, but, um, yeah, their structure was just different from the like rigid, governatorial structures of the colonies at the time. And it seemed like they wanted to project this onto every, every nation that they, every first nation that they came across.
00:57:00
Speaker
What a surprise. So it's a little hard to nail down exactly what the structure was at the nation level, ah whether or not it was ah councils of all the various chiefs heterogeneously, like all the chiefs for all the different things would basically meet in council. There's a specific type of chief called a sachem, which will come up next time around, which is kind of the strict representative for the purpose of governance under the great law of peace, whether or not that was what also was sent to govern at the nation level, I'm not sure. The telling that we're that we're going with for this episode of the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy seems to indicate that it was kind of all the chiefs with war chiefs having, due to the political times, a bit of an outsized influence, at least with the Onondaga.
00:57:48
Speaker
So civics lessened over. We have five nations that basically have split apart. They have their own territory, they start growing, their population increases, their desire for resources increases. Things start to change for this once unified group of Haudenosaunee. Oh, who who's going to change this?
00:58:08
Speaker
Well, in the East, the Mohawk were kind of the major power, and their neighbor, the Oneida, were considered kind of like a little sibling nation, as they were much smaller in number, much smaller in territory and resources, and the Mohawk kind of acted as a bit of a fence for the Oneida from the East,
00:58:27
Speaker
As the Mohawk had constant clashes with or frequent clashes with various neighbors, probably neighboring Algonquin people, but could have been other groups as well. Or they drew support in manpower and food and materials from the Oneida.
00:58:43
Speaker
I don't want to call it a vassalage relationship. It did seem a lot like a vassalage relationship. On the other end, in the West, ah the best largely the same story with the Seneca. They were a large power with ample resources, but found themselves in small wars with more organized Algonquin people.
00:59:01
Speaker
and other groups, presumably to their west and also to the south, which again was on the other other end of the Appalachia, or no, this was all on the other end of the Appalachians. But that was like, they found themselves clashing with the kinds of people that they would have crossed through their territory in the, um during their migration up the Ohio and people who had the Great Plains to draw upon for food, so they were facing territorial expansion on their end as well. And in the middle you had the Onondaga, which was a the third largest nation of the five, and
00:59:36
Speaker
The Kayuga, who at least at the time of the founding of the Great Peace, seemed to be in a somewhat involuntary vassalage arrangement for protection, as the Onondaga and Kayuga were sandwiched between the Mohawk and the Anida, who operated as a as had an alliance at least at this time.
00:59:57
Speaker
and the Seneca, which had just a vast amount of territory, and I believe they were the largest population-wise. So the Cayuga basically, to avoid assimilation by the Seneca, had to kind of align themselves with the Onondaga, which was not necessarily what they wanted, or at least in this ah and this telling of of events.
01:00:19
Speaker
So you had yet some you had some basically city states next to each other, ah with some being more of a full like national sort of scale as we would it was so we would think of it as Europeans.
01:00:33
Speaker
The thing that's kind of frustrating and I know this um kind of the product of colonialization is we don't really have a lot of good pictorial depictions like there's no really a good like pictorial depictions I should say of what these places looked like. We have ideas we know about longhouses and so forth but my burning career, like, I'm a very visual person when it comes to history. And I like knowing what places look like, like, it's very easy for me to think about what a Roman city looked like, because a lot of it survived, but a lot of it was also, you know, actually made into artistic pieces. And then some things, you know, anything that's European, and you know, from the Middle East, for that matter, has
01:01:22
Speaker
had a lot it has survived rather well. But then we see what we're discussing here. And it hasn't had the same, well, fate, which is really disappointing. And I understand why, but you know, as it still doesn't. There's that burning curiosity that won't ever be answered.
01:01:41
Speaker
Well, not exactly. Because, again, the Haudenosaunee are still around. They are. So they a lot of their history and, like, granted more modern artwork about this time exists i by their own people. If you're watching on YouTube, ah you'll be confused by Heather's statements because you've been seeing a bunch of it. But for a podcast listener, you you're you're in the same boat as as she is.
01:02:11
Speaker
but the thing no that the point i'm making is like There wasn't really like a proper capital city of this of this region, I'm going to say. but No, but that's going going back to their structure, that's also kind of an insane thing to expect.
01:02:31
Speaker
No, no, exactly. But like the the things that they did establish, they did survive, but they don't live in the same way as they did before. And I understand why, but I don't know. Though there would there would next episode, there will be kind of a capital that will get created, but you'll have to wait till the end for that one.
01:02:47
Speaker
yeah Unfortunately, I do know what it is. That's the problem. Yeah, we we do know actually quite a bit about it. Again, thanks to the fact that the Haudenosaunee are still around, and again, but their government is still functioning. Where we'll pick up next time is a chief, probably a war chief from the Onondaga, a steeped in loss from years of blood feuds between the nations.
01:03:09
Speaker
where Seneca would raid Onondaga and Kayuga territory to get food and provisions for to continue to support their wars that they're having on their borders, and clashes with with various mohawk groups and villages. Having lost his wife and most of his children to raids,
01:03:32
Speaker
ah loses his final his last daughter to illness and decides he's had enough with war, and travels at great risk because it is death for a strange man from another nation to walk upon the gates of another nation's village, travels to the lands of the Mohawk to meet a figure he's heard about who has coaxed them into giving up the the ways of raiding their neighbors, a man they call the peacemaker.
01:04:02
Speaker
Dun-dun-dun. Not dun-dun-dun. This dude seems great. No, no, no. I wish we had a drop for this because it's like, yeah, we need a drop for things like that.
01:04:13
Speaker
yeah we do need we do need like a good like sting but yeah we're going to talk about somebody uh again this is going to be one version of events uh one less mythologized but like peacemaker gets the full-on jesus treatment in some tellings of this uh which goes to show you how how much influence and how important of a figure he was even to the point where i have heard this before that it it is a generally speaking not uh like you don't say the peacemaker's personal name you call him the great peacemaker or the peacemaker is a as a tradition of the mohawk which like we'll get into i get it
01:04:56
Speaker
like this is This is a podcast where I rag against like great persons in history
Cultural Reflections and Future Plans
01:05:03
Speaker
and andutture idols and i' and I'm ah heavily skeptical of of leaders of all kinds as an anarchist, like ah as a as a like libertarian communist, or council communist specifically, or syndicalist. Now we don't until list ideologies, but anyway. This isn't going to be one of those. This is actually going to be a pretty much positive discussion about most of these people. um The man, by the way, is Hayawatha, who is the Onondaga chief. I brought him up earlier. Also seems like pretty good dude.
01:05:39
Speaker
I'm certainly looking forward to that. But we are going to be taking a little bit of a small break because by the time this episode comes out, be what the end of November, I think. Yes. Yeah. And so we will be taking some time off during the holidays, but we do have some stuff content queued up, don't we?
01:06:01
Speaker
Yes, ah we have a Christmas special planned. And also we're going to talk about guns and the Second Amendment in Canada, but mostly guns. Yeah, the Second Amendment, the most important amendment in terms of how Canada functions. Yes, it is actually really crucial, particularly to people on the prairies.
01:06:24
Speaker
the um Basically, Cam and I have a pretty busy December ahead of ourselves. I'm going to be away for half of it. I'm going to be back in the UK, so maybe but I should go to Tim Hortons again. ah Please do. know I'm going to be on the opposite end of London this time around, and so it's actually going to be a pain in the ass to get to that Tim Hortons. I'm not going to bother.
01:06:47
Speaker
All right, fair. I guess like I'll go to Tim Hortons ah for a comparison. i might I might see if I can come up with something stupid for the show while I'm over there. If i see so I can come up with something. Maybe I might go to a very specific museum since I don't have to pay to go into it.
01:07:07
Speaker
But we got each other some, we're going to do the bonus episode and we got each other some Christmas gifts that we're going to exchange as an episode. Yeah. And that should be coming out, I suspect on Christmas Eve. So stay tuned for that. On the night before Christmas went all through the house. i God, no.
01:07:27
Speaker
But we also have, so we're going to be coming a bunch of content and there will be a little bit of a bonus content um for next month as well. ah Since we aren't releasing a bonus episode this month, ah we decided that we would still release our episode as planned for next month, but we have a little bit of a treat.
01:07:46
Speaker
for what's in store a couple months from now. So you get to see something very interesting and stupid. So yeah, we will, if we will pick this up probably sometime in early January, which also means that this is episode 19 or episode 16. Part two could be like episode 19 or some shit. Apologies for that. we We promise you that this is one of those. I don't apologize for that. I don't apologize for the weird naming or the weird numbering ah because I fully intended the guns bonus episode to be in the middle of these two. And then we get to talk about Christmas.
01:08:23
Speaker
Yeah. Then we get to talk about Christmas. I have, I have got you so many wonderful gifts. Yeah, exactly. If you are interested in the gun episode or little presents that will drop for you all next month, just remember it is patreon dot.com slash to win again moments. And we don't charge more than a toonie at the moment. Maybe down the road when Tim horns ups the prices, we'll reconsider new subscribers having to pay a little bit extra, but for now it's less than $2.
01:08:51
Speaker
ah specifically our patron tiers are indexed to actual menu items on Tim Hortons as we notice them changing when we walk by a Tim Hortons. And if you want to like submit news items um just drop it on the discord as well because ah that's actually quite helpful to us. We didn't know about or rather I didn't know about the story that was going to be in the last episode until ah somebody dropped it in and Tam went wait.
01:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, I got, I got scooped or by one of the patrons, which you too can cause me distress by guessing the kinds of stories that I like to pick out. Also it's a mailbag at SchwinniganMoments.ca. We've said it numerous times, but do you send us an email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. We love to hear from you and, uh, yeah.
01:09:45
Speaker
And lastly, you can follow us on Blue Sky or Mastodon. ah Rest in peace, co-host. Or ShewiniganMoments at.social. Yeah. RIP, co-host. Let us know if you're on threads, I guess. um But like let us know on Blue Sky or Mastodon.
01:10:08
Speaker
that's ah I think that's a podcast. All right. Well, I guess ah goodbye, everybody. Bye, everyone.
01:10:26
Speaker
We didn't do a what did we learn. Well, we have finished it. That's true. That's true. Shewinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, Stolo, and Tsawatuth First Nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.