- Presentation by: Martha L. Sempowski
- Date: Wednesday June 29, 2022, 7:00 pm
- Location: Pittsford Recreation, 35 Lincoln Ave., Pittsford NY 14534
This talk by Martha Sempowski will provide a brief summary of the most important questions and conclusions reached by co-author Anthony Wonderley and her in their book on the League of the Iroquois published by Syracuse University Press in 2019. The Iroquois League, made up of the five historically-known tribal groups (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk) whose homelands stretched across NYS, was the most famous native political alliance in northeastern North America during the 17th and 18th centuries.
It dominated intertribal relations throughout the region, and was an important player in American colonial history as well. It will address the authors’ findings about what happened before history— before accounts of the League were written down. What does archaeology tell us about when and where the League began coming together? Do native oral traditions help in unravelling the process? And what potential archaeological evidence is there for cultural and symbolic factors that may have helped reinforce social ties among newly forming alliances, and then helped to hold this diverse, widely dispersed political alliance together?