Who Are These People Anyway?

Preface

It has been my great honor, particularly as a non-Indigenous woman, to have earned the trust of Chief Powless, in order to work with him so closely on this book.

Award-winning Mohawk journalist, Douglas George (Kanentiio), had originally approached me about the book after reading And Grandma Said . . . Iroquois Teachings as Passed Down through the Oral Tradition by Tom Porter. Doug liked the oral history approach of that book, where I had transcribed Tom’s speeches and edited them into a written document. He felt it was important for other Haudenosaunee elders to get their own teachings into print in a similar way.

Unbeknownst to me until we met, Chief Powless was not at all convinced, at first, that a book was a good idea. And the book he thought he might like to write was very different from what I had expected. He decided to begin by dictating the sections that ask, Who are these people anyway? As he will explain, his people have been asking this question about the newcomers from their earliest contact.

Also since those early days, non-Indigenous writers, especially anthropologists, have been analyzing the Haudenosaunee in minute detail. This has mostly been done as dispassionately as one might study bugs in a dusty museum case. Such analysis has failed to portray accurately the living, spiritually-vital, and democratic people they are—a people with one of the most complex language systems in the world. It was finally time, in the chief’s opinion, to turn things around and subject the newcomers to some analysis. Sometimes gently tongue-in-cheek, sometimes scathing, this analysis is a natural response, in my view, to these centuries of stereotyping and misunderstanding.

When we began, in the fall of 2009, Chief Powless would dictate each section that asked the question, Who are these people anyway? When he had finished dictating for the day, he would make sure that all my recording equipment was turned off. Only then would he tell me the wonderful stories about his people and his life that I had expected to be the most important parts of this book.

I kept encouraging him to consider allowing me to transcribe these stories. I had two goals and two audiences in mind. My first goal was for the chief to tell us newcomers about his own culture as seen through his own eyes. How else could the Haudenosaunee be more accurately described than by one of their own people, especially one who has lived his traditions for over eight decades? The other goal was to document for future generations of Haudenosaunee, on paper, his vital knowledge of the old ways, and particularly his knowledge about the treaties.

As someone raised in the oral tradition, Chief Powless was not particularly attracted to the idea of writing all of this down in a book, at first. He had already passed on his knowledge and his stories in the traditional manner. However, as we got to know each other better, he gradually consented to having the equipment turned on as he dictated treaty details and the personal anecdotes that have brought the work alive for me. Over many months of dictation and discussion, both of us have often commented on how much we have enjoyed this process.

So the reader may find that at times Chief Powless is addressing the newcomers, and at other times he is addressing future generations of his own people who have not had the opportunity to learn about themselves through the oral tradition.

Perhaps a few words on punctuation and syntax might be helpful to readers. The tendency in English is for the speaker to report the comments of others—especially those comments that came to them indirectly—by means of a subordinate clause. For example, "He looked from the east shore of Lake Oneida, looked west, and said . . . that he thought he would build an empire. However, the oral tradition is much more about bringing as much of a sense of immediacy to a story or event as possible. In this way, the retelling reanimates—or we could even say re-inspirits"—the event, breathing life back into it as if it is happening now. Listeners can feel they are present while historical or sacred events are relived in the present moment.

Therefore, in order to maintain this sense of being present, I have opted to preserve Chief Powless’s literal dictation in these situations, rather than to use the conventions of mainstream culture. For example: "He looked from the east shore of Lake Oneida, looked west, and said, ‘I think I’ll build an empire.’ When he was quoting other people, I transcribed the words as direct quotes, regardless of whether the chief’s knowledge of the words was through personal contact (e.g., quoting his cousin Oren Lyons) or through oral history (e.g., quoting George Washington). For the author’s views on this process, the reader may want to look at the chapter, We were there."

To use the more formal description of one writer on the subject, [o]ral history is also good at restoring pivotal moments to life, at helping us imagine the drama of impending decisions and their unimaginable consequences, as distinct from the all-too-familiar monuments these decisions become in the landscape of the historical past tense.*

Michael Frisch, Oral History, Documentary, and the Mystification of Power, in A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1990), 163.

It is my humble hope that I have been able to transcribe and edit Chief Powless’s dictations into a book in a way that does his spoken words justice. It would have been impossible to complete the book without the invaluable help of three people.

The first is Dr. Robert W. Venables, the history professor whom Chief Powless mentions several times in the book. It has been a privilege to observe the deep and profound friendship these two have shared since 1971 and the tireless dedication of Dr. Venables to jointly uncovering the true history of the Haudenosaunee. His help with the manuscript has been invaluable.

The second is Jay Eugene Meacham (Ganeñ’do·doñ’), supervisor of Ne’ Eñhadiweñnayeñde·’nha’ (the Onondaga Language Center), who provided the correct spelling of the Onondaga words and phrases. He was able to fulfill Chief Powless’s request to use as much of the orthography of Audrey Shenandoah (Goñwaiani) as possible. Goñwaiani, a beloved Onondaga clan mother, passed on during the writing of the book, so there is a mix of the two orthographies used: that of a respected clan mother who was the chief’s dear friend, and that used by Meacham and more contemporary Onondaga linguists.

The third is Doug George (Kanentiio) whose idea it was to write the book in the first place. Without his enthusiasm and encouragement, the book would never have gotten off the ground.

I am also grateful that, as a non-Indigenous person, I was made so welcome by the people of Onondaga and by the chief’s family. I particularly enjoyed meeting his grandchildren.

If some of the chief’s descriptions of American politics and some of the fun he pokes at non-Native people begin to rub some readers the wrong way, they can only begin to imagine how much more difficult centuries of misunderstanding—and intentional mistreatment—have been for the Haudenosaunee, and indeed for the rest of the Indigenous world.

After almost twenty years of listening to and transcribing the words of Haudenosaunee elders, it is clear to me that their oral tradition is characterized by a considerable amount of repetition. Topics of importance that need to be emphasized and well-understood are repeated over and over, with almost infinite variations suited to the occasion or to the current audience. In contrast, a common non-Native expression is, I’ve already heard that before. In the fast-paced mainstream culture, the implication is that nothing is worth hearing twice.

But in Indian Country there is an awareness, only recently acknowledged by non-Native adult educators, that humans need to hear things again and again until we are able to grasp their impact not just with our heads, but also with our hearts. This kind of repetition could be compared to the way non-Native people expect musicians and singers to perform their favorite music repeatedly, allowing the song to affect them much more deeply than a single exposure might.

Repeated listening to Chief Powless’s incisive descriptions of historical events, treaties, and court decisions will etch details into memory. And listening to his repetition of environmental and spiritual matters will bring home his love of all parts of creation in ways that can strengthen our own.

I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I have enjoyed working on it.

October 2015

Lesley Forrester

Editor

Introduction

I, Irving Powless Jr., known as Tsa degaihwade , am telling the stories and events in this book to illustrate to readers that we, as Haudenosaunee people, have our own way of thinking that is very different from the white people. We don’t understand a lot of the things that they do. And that’s why we ask the question, Who are these people anyway?

Greetings

Nyaweñha sgeñ·noñ .

I have greeted you in the language of the Onondagas and I have thanked the Creator that we are all well and that we are able to gather together today.

Probably I should identify myself

Numerous people where I’ve lectured have told me that they think I should publish some of my stories. So this is an attempt to do that.

But in order to inform the reader who has not been at my lectures or who doesn’t know who I am, probably I should identify myself. I am Chief Dehatgahdoñs, chief of the Beaver Clan of the Onondaga Nation. I’ve been sitting in this position since 1964.

My English name is Irving Powless Jr. And I’ve resided here at Onondaga for more than eighty years. I was born September 4, 1929.

My grandfather, Welcome, lived across the road from here, from where I live now. He lived with my grandmother, Phoebe. Phoebe was Onondaga. Welcome was Oneida. He was a very industrious man. He had a team of horses and he plowed all over the place. He farmed and he raised my father and my father’s brothers and sister.

My father, born in 1905, started school in 1910. In 1915 he was all done with school. He went to the fourth grade. That was it. And because of Depression time, my father didn’t have a job, didn’t have a place to stay. So when he got married, he moved in with his father and mother.

And that’s where I was born. And so the first few years of my life, I spent gardening with my grandfather. Every morning we would go down and we would put the team of horses together. And we’d go out to the gardens and we would plow, weed, harvest, and so forth, depending on what was the time of the season.

But because my grandfather was still using the farm, my father and his brothers had no place to farm for their families. So, since my father had learned how to speak English, this enabled him to go down into the city of Syracuse and get a job and work down there.

Now that he had a job, he had some money to pay rent. So we moved out of my grandparents’ house. And because the jobs that were available were in the city of Syracuse, he decided to move off the territory into a neighboring town called Nedrow.

So he and my uncles worked in the coal yards down in the city. Bill and my father worked at Kelly’s. And then my Uncle Wilmer worked at Amos—Amos Coal Yard. They carried coal. And that’s what our people were: laborers. We were out digging ditches and so forth. We ended up building the buildings. We were ironworkers and construction workers. And we didn’t need an education to construct or dig a ditch. So our people survived.

And my dad got a house there in Nedrow. And there he could ride a trolley car from where we lived to his work. And he did that for about a year. Then he found a place that was just a few blocks away from where he worked. And we moved down there. We lived there for a couple of years. Then after a couple of years, we moved to another place. We lived there for a year and moved back onto the territory when I was in the fifth grade.

So basically, other than those few years, I’ve spent my life here at Onondaga.

The other day my son Neal and I were sitting there and we were talking about the things that we did when we were kids, growing up here on the rez. And where we played. And he said, Gee, what about the kids downtown? Where do they play?

So we got in the car and we drove into Nedrow and then down Salina Street and right into the city of Syracuse. And as we drove through the city, on various corners we would find kids standing around on the sidewalk, talking, but not playing or anything, you know.

And so I said, What a shame. I said, There’s not even a tree in sight. They’re standing on the corner, on the sidewalk: no grass, no trees, no animals. Just buildings and roads, cars. And what a difference between their place and the rez.

If you happen to be traveling down Route 81 South from Syracuse to Lafayette, you come to a big sign that says Onondaga Nation Territory. And you pass that sign, you go around a slight turn, and then you head down a straightaway. And during the straightaway, there’s a bridge across Route 81 that you go under. That’s Sentinel Heights Road. And from there, if you look straight ahead down Route 81, you will see a big hill. That was my backyard. And it was Neal’s front yard.

Right now, the house that I live in is across the road from the house where I spent my first years as a boy. My father’s parents’ house is right across the road from where I live today. There is a creek that runs right alongside of our yard—our yard where we used to mow the lawn. We’d mow right up to the creek.

And that creek empties into Onondaga Creek. And it’s called . . . it has two names: Hemlock Creek and Little Creek. Onondaga Creek was Big Creek. So Hemlock Creek was Little Creek.

But growing up on the rez, it would take you forty-five minutes to get from where I lived to the top of that big hill. And once you reached the top, I think it was a mile wide and two miles long on top of the hill. So my backyard was big. It consisted of about 3,000 acres of land, full of animals—deer, muskrats, chipmunks, squirrels, owls, bunny rabbits. This is where I hunted, and this is where I played.

And Neal tells about him and his buddy—Boots, Boy Boots—coming down that hill in the wintertime, sliding. And he tells about the times that he spent up in the woods on this same hill that I played on as a child.

But what a difference between my backyard and his front yard, and the yards of the children in the city! There’s no comparison between the two.

Now my cousin, Oren Lyons, says that he learned more about life on that hill than he did going to school in the city and having them teach him about how life is. He learned more in the woods from the animals than he did from the books and the academics of the school system.

And learning from the animals is a big part of our life. For instance, it seems to me that most of the white community have not learned to live like the animals. If you go into the woods, as I mentioned before, there are rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, deer, turkeys. . . . And each one of them has their own identity as to who they are. They have their own territory and they all live together in peace, in harmony with each other, respecting each other for their differences.

And the wolf is not trying to change the coyote to be a wolf. The wolf respects the coyote for being a coyote, for being what he is. He doesn’t say, My life is better, you should live like me and you should be like me. Whereas, what happened to us is we had Europeans come into our country saying that their way of life was better than ours. So they attempted to change us to be like them.

And some of our people did change, but there are many of them who did not change. And we still remain who we were, remain who we are. We’re Onondaga, citizens of the Haudenosaunee. And as such we have responsibilities and mandates as citizens of the Onondaga and the Haudenosaunee, to maintain and preserve our way of life.

Those that were changed by the white society don’t know these things. They weren’t taught that.

So that was my front yard. My side yard and my backyard were the same, woods and streams. Really my yard consisted of 7,300 acres of land. There were five streams of water, which had trout and whitefish and bass in them. And so I fished all of my years as a teenager, and growing up, so that we would have something to eat for supper, or for dinner. And Oren did the same thing. And we learned from our fathers to respect the animals in the forest. We learned that we were in their homes and that we should not disrupt or disturb their homes. If we went through, we were to make sure that we didn’t disturb them.

And because we grew up this way, today we teach our children the same things. And all of the stories that my father told me as I was growing up, I use in today’s lectures. I use them when I talk about the environment and the preservation of what’s here today for tomorrow and future generations. And I use them when I talk about the violations of our treaties, which have created a situation we now know as global warming.

My father would tell me what he used to see when he was young. And then when I grew up and I was in