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Onondaga people

Ethnic group

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Being centrally located, they are considered the "Keepers of the Fire" (Onondaga: honatjisdané·daʼ) in the figurative longhouse that shelters the Five Nations. The Cayuga and Seneca have territory to their west and the Oneida and Mohawk to their east. For this reason, the League historically met at the Haudenosaunee government's capital at Onondaga, as the traditional chiefs do today.

In the United States, the home of the federally recognized Onondaga Nation is the Onondaga Reservation. Onondaga people also live near Brantford, Ontario on Six Nations territory as part of the Bearfoot Onondaga First Nation and Onondaga Clear Sky First Nation.

History

According to oral tradition, the Great Peacemaker approached the Onondaga and four other nations to found the Haudenosaunee. The tradition tells that at the time the Seneca nation debated joining the Haudenosaunee based on the Great Peacemaker's teachings, a solar eclipse took place. The most likely eclipse visible in the area was in 1142 AD.

This oral tradition is supported by archeological studies. Carbon dating of particular sites of Onondaga habitation shows dates starting close to 1200AD ± 60 years with growth for hundreds of years.

In the American Revolutionary War, the Onondaga were at first officially neutral, although individual Onondaga warriors were involved in at least one raid on American settlements. After Americans attacked their main village on April 20, 1779, the Onondaga later sided with the majority of the League and fought against the American colonists in alliance with the British. In 1779, George Washington ordered the termination of the Onondaga people, in an operation known as the Sullivan Expedition, breaking the neutrality agreement and devastating the Onondaga people. When the United States won independence, many Onondaga followed Joseph Brant to Upper Canada, where they were given land by the British Crown at Six Nations. This territory used to be Haudenosaunee hunting grounds, but much of the Confederacy relocated there as a result of the American Revolution. Although the British promised the security of Haudenosaunee homelands, the 1783 Treaty of Paris ceded the territory over to the United States.

In the aftermath of the Sullivan Expedition, following the brutal winter of 1780, there was a massive swarm of periodical cicadas, which emerge from underground every seventeen years. The sudden arrival of such a large quantity of the insects provided a source of sustenance for the Onondaga people who were experiencing severe food insecurity following the Sullivan campaigns and the subsequent brutal winter. The seemingly miraculous arrival of the cicadas (specifically, Brood VII also known as the Onondaga brood) is commemorated by the Onondaga as an intervention by the Creator to ensure their survival after such a traumatizing, catastrophic event.

On November 11, 1794, the Onondaga Nation, along with the other Haudenosaunee nations, signed the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States, in which their right to their homeland was acknowledged by the United States in article II of the treaty.

In 1816, 450 Onondaga were living in New York, 210 of whom lived on Buffalo Creek Reservation.

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