PART 2 of AN ANALYSIS OF THE 1613 TAWAGONSHI TREATY
by Robert Venables
about fifty miles northwest of Paris. One of the signers of the 1613 treaty, Jacob Eelkens, was very much involved in the Dutch connection with Rouen. Jacob Eelkens was born in Amsterdam in 1593. About the year 1600, he accompanied his family when they moved to Rouen so that his father, also named Jacob, could participate in the French fur trade in Canada. The scholar Simon Norton notes how the son Jacob “was therefore brought up in Rouen. He knew the fur trade and entered as supercargo [an officer in charge of managing a ship’s cargo] into the service of Arnout Vogels and the Van Tweenhuysen Company, going with Hendrick Chrstiaensen [the other signer of the 1613 treaty] as supercargo on the ‘Fortuyn’ to the Hudson River in 1613/14” (Simon Hart, The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company: Amsterdam Notarial Records of the first Dutch voyages to the Hudson, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: City of Amsterdam Press, 1959, 54). Because Jacob Eelkens grew up in Rouen, France, it is interesting to speculate if he could have had the nickname “Jacques” as a boy and young man, and this nickname stayed with him an adult. If so, it might be another provocative clue as to why, in 1691, the Mohawks remembered a trader named “Jaques” (Peter Wraxall, An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs Contained in Four Folio Volumes, Transacted in the Colony of New York, from the year 1678 to the Year 1751, Charles Howard McIlwain, ed. (1754; reprint of the 1915 edition; New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1968), 16. cf. E.B. O’Callaghan, ed., The Documentary History of the State of New York (4 vols.; Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1849-1851), III, 775 and John Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States (1818; reprint of the 1876 edition) New York: Arno Press, 1971, 60-61.)
An additional factor that complicated trade along the Hudson in the early 1600s was that English traders as well as Dutch traders plied the Hudson River before the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609 (Charlotte Wilcoxen, Seventeenth Century Albany: A Dutch Profile, revised edition; Albany, New York: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1984, 3.) And by the time Hudson sailed up and down the river that bears his name in September and October, 1609, a traumatic break had just occurred in any trade between the Haudenosaunee and the French in Canada. In 1909, the American historian J. Franklin Jameson noted:
“It may help to keep in mind the chronological setting of the events if we remember that on July 30, 1609, Samuel de Chaplain was engaged in the great fight with the Iroquois, on Lake Champlain near Ticonderoga.”
(J. Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909, 14.)
The Mohawks and other Haudenosaunee would have been aware of the threat posed by Champlain’s attack in 1609, and they would have based their 1613 negotiations with the Dutch on this awareness, as well as on their past trading and negotiation experiences. Thus it would have been unusual for the Mohawks to enter into trade relations naively, simply because the Dutch government gave two men, Hendrick Christiaensen and Jacob Eelkens, a license to trade. Yet this is what Gehring, Starna, and Fenton maintain. In an attempt to provide a proof that the document is a forgery, they wrote that:
“Jacob Eelckens and Hendrick Christiaenssen were licensed, private traders without authority to make treaties. Since they were licensed, there was no reason for them to make any additional arrangements with the Indians.” (GSF 1987: 387.)
The authors, in their Euro-centric assessment, seem to ignore or discount the possibility that it was the Indian negotiators who wanted the treaty. The phrase “no reason for them [the Dutch traders] to make any additional arrangements with the Indians” assumes that the impetus for the treaty could only come from Europeans, and that Indian people would be quite willing to let foreigners come ashore and trade with them without any conditions whatsoever. Gehring, Starna, and Fenton seem to assume that the Indians were so unorganized, passive, or overwhelmed by the culture and material goods of the Dutch that they did not resist and assert their own identity by demanding a treaty of mutual benefit.
In addition to ignoring possible Haudenosaunee motives and stressing only Dutch motives, Gehring, Starna, and Fenton evidently disregard another major fact: a license is only an internal Dutch arrangement among fellow Dutch citizens, and the Haudenosaunee were under no obligation to either accept or reject the license.
On the other hand, the Haudenosaunee would, however, have been very interested to learn that these two Dutchmen had at least some kind of authority to speak. The two Dutch traders may have explained their “license” – the authority from their own nation – and then this was placed in the 1613 treaty. In fact, the treaty can be read as a very brief description of the negotiations as well as the text of a treaty. The Haudenosaunee, after all, had a strong tradition of protocol regarding who among them was authorized to speak and negotiate. A fine example of this protocol occurred in the late Spring of 1710, beginning with an invitation to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Albany. As will also be seen in the quote below, the protocol also involved a ceremony known in English as at the Edge of the Woods which was also the Edge of the Clearings. The Woods were the domain of the whole Confederacy as well as the individual nation adjacent to a particular locale of The Woods. The Woods were also primary the responsibility of the men, although the women had responsibilities there as well. In balance, The Clearings were into the fields and towns of a particular nation (in this case, the Onondaga Nation) were primarily the responsibility of the women, although women had responsibilities there as well. In the account below, notice the use of wampum. Also, the account records a situation during which the Ottawas were seeking peace with the Haudenosaunee and the English. To do so, they had to pass into the territory of the Senecas, the Keepers of the Western Door. The Senecas, acting as a nation, also acted on behalf of the Confederacy, escorting the Ottawas eastward. This local Seneca responsibility, combined with a Confederacy, responsibility is similar to how the Mohawks – the Keepers of the Eastern Door — might have forwarded the news of the 1613 treaty to the Grand Council at Onondaga.
“15 May [1710] the 5 Nations give Notice of a general Meeting to be held at Onondaga with the Deputies from Uttawawa’s [Ottawas] that we may send Agents thither. Accordingly the Commissrs [Commissioners] dispatched to Persons thither.
15 June Messrs [Peter] Schuyler and [Everet] Banker return[ed] from the Genel [General] Meeting at Onondaga & make the following Report….
4 June early in the Morning being near to Onondaga we sent Wm Printup the Smith [blacksmith] before us to Acquaint the Sachems that we, the Mohawks, Cayugas, & Oniedas were coming to their Castle, upon wch Message they came out to meet us & made us Welcome. When we came into the Castle we were sent for into the Genr Assembly [Grand Council], Where we found 3 Wagenhaes or Uttawawas singing the Song of Joy. They had long Stone Pipes in their hands & under the Pipes hung Feathers as big as Eagles Wings. Then they left off singing well we filled their Pimples & let them smoak, when They had done, They filled the Pipes for us to Smoak – this is the Token of Friendship. We then spoke & said we were glad to seem them at the Appointed Place, that we hear they had been without Bretheren the Sennecas but were all returned thither…. One of the 5 Nations then stood up & spoke, “Bretheren we being now to speak of Peace I desire we may lay aside all heart burning against each other & behave with that Meekness whh becomes Bretheren.
5 June. The Sennecas relate to the Assembly [Grand Council] what they said to the Wagenhaes when they were sent [by] in the name of this Govt & the 5 Nations to proposed a Peace to them. viz. ‘Go with us to your Brother Corlaer [the Haudenosaunee name/title for New York’s Royal governor], the Doors stand open for you, the Beds [of safety] are made for you from the Sennnecas Country the Habitation of Corlaer, the Path is secure & there s o Ill in our Country.’ Then the Wegenhaes spoke to the whole House & said, ‘Bretheren here I am, you have told me the Door stood open, the Beds made, yr Pots boiled & the Path was secure from the Sennecas Country to the Habitation of Corlaer. Let it be so” and gave a Belt of Wampum.”
(Peter Wraxall, An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs Contained in Four Folio Volumes, Transacted in the Colony of New York, from the year 1678 to the Year 1751, Charles Howard McIlwain, ed. (1754; reprint of the 1915 edition; New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1968), 70-71.)
Identifying Exactly Who You Are Trading with is Good Business, and Wise as Well
The insistence by the Mohawks in 1613 to determine exactly who these two Dutchmen were may also have been based on the long history of trade relations carried out by the Haudenosaunee with other cultures. Before European contact, the archaeological evidence – for example, at the Frontenac Island site off the northeastern shore of Cayuga Lake – demonstrates trade routes reaching at least as far as Lake Superior (William Ritchie, The Archaeology of New York State, revised edition; Harrison, New York: Harbor Hill Books, 1980, 101, 115 and 119). Regarding actual negotiations with other Native peoples before white contact, an oral tradition recorded by Henry R. Schoolcraft in the nineteenth century notes that some of the ancestors of the Haudenosaunee originally lived on the St. Lawrence, and that all of the Haudenosaunee had once been part of a great confederacy which predated the confederacy established by the Peacemaker and encountered by the Europeans. The failure of negotiations brought about a war that lasted a century. It is possible that the war described below was with one of the mound building peoples to the west (where the Sun would set in the imagery of “a lodge of gold”. The narrative also describes how a confederacy that had preceded the one established by the Peacemaker collapsed and led to a civil war:
among these northern tribes, situated north of and along the banks of the great lakes, … they had a ruling chief over all. This ruler repaired to the south to visit a ruler of great fame and authority, who resided at a great town in A LODGE OF GOLD. But it only proved to be an embassy of folly, for this great ruler, exercising an imperial sway, availing himself of the information thus derived, of a great country full of resources, built many forts throughout the country, and almost penetrated [from west to east] to the banks of Lake Erie. The people who had confederated on the North resisted. A long war of a hundred years standing ensued, but the northern people were better skilled in the use of the bow and arrow, and were more expert woodsmen and warriors. They at length prevailed, and taking all these towns and forts [to the south of the Great Lakes], left them a heap of ruins.
(Henry R. Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, New York: Barlett & Welford, l846, 39-40; cf. William Engelbrecht, Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World. (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 36-37. While Engelbrecht sees a connection between the Haudenosaunee and the Mound Builders, he believes that more archaeological evidence will be necessary in order to definitively confirm this trade.
In 1656, the Jesuit Jean de Quen recorded an Iroquois reference to a larger confederacy which had predated their own. The Iroquois reminded the Hurons of Ontario, another Iroquoian people but a people not within the existing Iroquois Confederacy:
Thou knowest, thou huron, that formerly we comprised but one Cabin and one country. I know not by what accident we became separated. It is time to unite again.
(Jean de Quen, Journal, 3 November 1656, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (73 vols.; Cleveland, Ohio: The Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901), XLII: 253)
“Upstreaming”
While the 1710 account quoted above is very interesting, how can this account help describe what might have occurred in 1613? The reasoning is based on “upstreaming” – using the facts of events that are well-known to move back in time to make speculations and judgments to fill in the circumstances of an event that has fewer details. “Upstreaming” is an analytical technique well-known to Gehring, Starna, and Fenton, and they have used this technique in their own research when it has suited them. All of the documentary examples presented in this essay were also available to Fenton, Gehring, and Starna to move back in time to 1613. In 1968, the late William N. Fenton defined upstreaming:
“For one who arrives at the end of a time span of three centuries to observe the contemporary Iroquois scene, the logical progression of research is to proceed from what is known best to what is most obscure…. This approach, sometimes called “upstreaming” or reading history backwards, is often beneficial before restoring time to its true direction.”
(William N. Fenton, “Northern Iroquois Culture Patterns” in Bruce Trigger, volume editor, Northeast, Volume 15 of the Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 296.)
An Analysis of the Text of the 1613 Treaty
Internally, the text of the treaty is consistent with the Haudenosaunee philosophy of balance. This balance is also the essential core of the Two Row Wampum. In both the 1613 treaty and the Two Row, it is a balance of equal but separate political entities entering into an economic relationship. The Haudenosaunee and the Dutch each have spiritual equality and thus must deal with each other as equals. Such a balance of equals is also found in the equal but different roles of men and women; and in the spatial division of Haudenosaunee geography: the “The Clearings” (towns and agricultural fields) and “The Woods” (all lands not currently occupied or cultivated). The politically equal but separate geopolitical roles of the Haudenosaunee and Euro American colonists is represented by the Two Row wampum, symbolizing how each community will follow parallel paths or waterways that never intersect, and never interfere with the other, even though both communities survive within the same broad landscape at the same time. At least since the Peacemaker, this balance is a recognition in Haudenosaunee philosophy that different political entities have the right to remain separate even when allied economically and politically. Initially, this was applied to the five founding nations (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas) who remained individual nations while also agreeing to an alliance, sharing responsibilities for The Woods. This was extended to adopted nations such as the Tuscaroras (by 1722) and the Tutelos (1753) so that these nations could continue their languages, customs, and government so long as they did not transfer or sell the lands they had been allocated in what is known as “The Woods.” The Woods were and are the responsibilities of the entire Confederacy as well as the responsibilities of whichever founding nation was nearest a particular section of The Woods (Robert W. Venables, “Some Observations on the Treaty of Canandaigua” in G. Peter Jemison and Anna M. Schein, eds., Treaty of Canandaigua 1794, Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Clear Light Publishers, 2000, 84-119; and Robert W. Venables, “The Clearings and the Woods: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Landscape – Gendered and Balanced” in Sherene Baugher and Suzanne Spencer-Wood, eds., The Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, New York: Springer, 2010, 21-55.)
Internally, the date of the treaty is also consistent with both Haudenosaunee oral history and non-Indian documentary history. The 1609 voyage of Hendrick [Henry] Hudson on behalf of the Dutch immediately led to an increase in proposals to carry out trade on the Hudson by the merchants of The Netherlands (see, for example, pages one through twenty-six in volume one of E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols.; Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, and Co., 1854-1883).
Evidence Supporting the Validity of the 1613 Treaty
One of the pieces of evidence that scholars have used either to defend and to deny the validity of the 1613 treaty is the role of the trader Jacob Eelckens, one of the two Dutch signatories to the 1613 treaty, the second being Hendrick Christiaenssen. As noted earlier in this report, both of these Dutchmen traded extensively in the Hudson Valley during the early 1600s (Simon Hart, The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company: Amsterdam Notarial Records of the first Dutch voyages to the Hudson, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: City of Amsterdam Press, 1959, 18-21, 25-32, 52-55.) And as also noted earlier in this report, in 1691, a Haudenosaunee speaker referred to the first treaty as being made with a Christian named “Jaques.” In addition to the possibility that Jacob Eelckens, one of the two Dutch signers of the treaty, had been raised in France and may have used “Jacques” as a nickname, it is very probable that this 1691 reference was to “Jacob Eelckens” because Jaques is at least “close” to Jacob, especially if spoken in a Haudenosaunee language and accent. And furthermore, since the only record of the 1691 treaty is in English, the translator may have heard “Jaques” instead of “Jacob.” To indicate how the arguments among scholars can continue forever, in 1987 Gehring, Starna, and Fenton describe how Daniel K. Richter came to the conclusion in 1982 that the 1691 reference to “Jaques” was indeed a reference to Jacob Eelckens. Richter had proposed this in his “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain: Previously Unpublished Transcripts of New York Indian Treaty Minutes, 1677-1691” (GSF 1987: 384.) But when Richter published a detailed Haudenosaunee history in 1992, he rejected the validity of the 1613 treaty with the following:
“I am grateful to William Fenton and Charles Gehring for showing me the errors of my ways.”
(Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press and the Institute of Early American Culture and History, 1992, footnote 19, page 323.)
But the matter remains unsettled: in 1999, Vernon Benjamin, who has studied the Hudson Valley’s history extensively, reported a personal communication with Richter. After noting that Richter still rejected the validity of the 1613 treaty because of his contact with Gehring and Fenton, Benjamin stated that Richter
“nevertheless concluded (personal communication) that an agreement probably involving Jacques Eelkens was made.”
(Vernon Benjamin, “The Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613: A Chain of Friendship in the Dutch Hudson Valley” in The Hudson Valley Regional Review, Volume XVI No. 2 (September 1999, page 20, footnote 40.)
While the debate is likely to continue, it is useful to review the context of a Haudenosaunee oral tradition of the first treaty recorded by the English in 1691. The following excerpt is from a speech by a Haudenosaunee diplomat who is unnamed in the documentary record. The speech was given in Albany to Governor Henry Slaughter, June 2, 1691 (note that, as described below, the first contact was sealed with a chain, not a rope):
We have been informed by our Forefathers, that in former times a Ship arrived here in this Country, wch was [a] matter of Great Admiration to us, especially our desire was to know what should be within her Belly. In that Ship were Christians & amongst the rest One Jaques [sic] with whom we made a Covenant of Friendship, which Covenant hath since been tyed together with a Chain, & always been kept inviolable both by the Brethren & us, in which Covenant it was agreed, that whosoever hurt or prejudice the One, should be guilty of injuring the Other, all us being comprehended in One Common League….
(Peter Wraxall, An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs Contained in Four Folio Volumes, Transacted in the Colony of New York, from the year 1678 to the Year 1751, Charles Howard McIlwain, ed. (1754; reprint of the 1915 edition; New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1968), 16. cf. E.B. O’Callaghan, ed., The Documentary History of the State of New York (4 vols.; Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1849-1851), III, 775 and John Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States (1818; reprint of the 1876 edition; New York: Arno Press, 1971), 60-61.)
The Name “Jaques” Was Recalled Through Oral Tradition. The Haudenosaunee speaker in 1691 who identified “Jaques” was reciting Haudenosaunee oral tradition, not a written record. In the years between 1613 and 1691, it is possible that “Jacob” became redacted to “Jaques” because by 1691 the Haudenosaunee had as much experience dealing with French speakers as with Dutch or English speakers. There may have also been new accents and pronunciations within Haudenosaunee languages. And there may have been an issue of translation by an interpreter into English. After all, documents reflect what people chose to record. Furthermore, written records that survive down to the present-day have survived fires and other destructive circumstances
Although the probability is remote, is it possible that the first treaty between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch was made in 1609?
A 1609 treaty would have been with Hendrick (Henry), an Englishman working for the Dutch who sailed into the river that now bears his name. Since the 1691 speech refers to “Jaques” and not to “Hendrick” or a “Henry,” the treaty mentioned in 1691 does not appear to have been negotiated during the 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson — although it is possible that in 1609 Henry Hudson was depending upon a “Jacques” as an intermediary. That said, a treaty made in 1609 is implied in the text of a report in 1755 by Edmond Atkin, a colonial South Carolina merchant living in London. Atkin was familiar with London’s highest officials and nobles, including those on the Board of Trade. Some of these powerful men supported his viewpoints while others did not. But in 1756 Atkin was appointed the superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern colonies. Atkin returned to the colonies in 1756, visiting New York City, Albany, Boston, and Philadelphia before assuming his duties in the South. While in the colony of New York, he met with Sir William Johnson, the superintendent for Indian affairs in the north. Both superintendents met with a delegation of Haudenosaunee. Atkin held his position of superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern colonies until his death in 1761. Atkin was succeeded by John Stuart in 1762. (Wilbur R. Jacobs, ed., The Appalachian Indian Frontier: The Edmond Akin Report and Plan of 1755, reprint of the 1954 edition; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, xvi, xx-xxiii; and John Richard Alden, John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier, reprint of the 1944 edition; New York: Gordian Press, 1966, 69-70; and 136).
In a lengthy report in 1755, Atkins implied that the earliest treaty with the Dutch was in 1609; this would have been a treaty with Hendrick Hudson, four years before the 1613 treaty:
Witness in particular the Treaties of the five Nations with the Government of New York; in which there hath been no Breach yet on their Part, since 1609 at first under the Dutch, and since 1664 under the English.
(Edmond Atkin to London’s Board of Trade, Report and Plan, May 30, 1755, in Wilbur R. Jacobs, ed., The Appalachian Indian Frontier: The Edmond Akin Report and Plan of 1755 (reprint of the 1954 edition; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), page 38.)
If Edmond Atkin was indeed referring to a specific treaty in 1609, that 1609 treaty is now “lost.” But the 1691 speech and the 1755 statement by Atkin, taken together, clearly indicate that a treaty was made very early in the contacts between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch.
Another issue is the 1613 treaty’s reference to a “silver chain.” Gehring, Starna, and Fenton maintain that this “is a metaphor for covenants between the Iroquois and the Europeans” but “does not appear in documents until 1677” (GSF 1987: 387). But that doesn’t prove that the symbol didn’t exist as a metaphor at an earlier time. Furthermore, why do Gehring, Starna, and