Kondiaronk
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Grande_Paix_de_Montr%C3%A9al_07_LES_HURONS-WYANDOT-Marque-du-Rat.svg/220px-Grande_Paix_de_Montr%C3%A9al_07_LES_HURONS-WYANDOT-Marque-du-Rat.svg.png)
Kondiaronk (c. 1625–1701)
Noted as a brilliant orator and a formidable strategist, Kondiaronk led the pro-French
The Jesuit historian Father Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote that "it was the general opinion that no Indian had ever possessed greater merit, a finer mind, more valor, prudence or discernment in understanding those with whom he had to deal".[4] Louis-Hector de Callière, the Onontio (governor) that replaced Frontenac, was "exclusively indebted to him for ... this assemblage, till then unexampled of so many nations for a general peace".[4] Kondiaronk contracted a fever and died in Montreal during the negotiations for the Great Peace on August 2, 1701.[2] His body was buried at Montreal's Notre-Dame Church after a majestic funeral. Today, no trace of the grave remains. The Kondiaronk Belvedere in Montreal's Mount Royal Park is named in his honor. In 2001, he was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Canadian government.
Early diplomatic efforts
Kondiaronk's first major role came in 1682, representing the Mackinac Huron tribe in negotiations between the French governor Frontenac and the Ottawa tribe which shared Michilimackinac village. Kondiaronk looked towards the French for protection from the Iroquois tribes after an Iroquois chief, a Seneca, was murdered while being held prisoner in the Michilimackinac village.[5] Afterwards, the Huron sent wampum belts to the Iroquois to appease the murder; however, the diplomatic representative of the Ottawa told Frontenac that the Huron did not send any of the Ottawa's wampum belts.[6] Furthermore, the Ottawa insisted that the Huron placed all the blame for the murder on them.[6] Kondiaronk maintained his position that the actions of the Huron were only to placate the Iroquois, but the Ottawa were not convinced and French efforts to conciliate the two tribes had little effect.[5] Despite the tensions between the Huron and Ottawa, Kondiaronk's appeal to the French did secure an alliance to stave off Iroquois military advances.[7]
1688 coup
By 1687, the French Governor General,
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Indian_history_for_young_folks_%281919%29_%2814750150451%29.jpg/300px-Indian_history_for_young_folks_%281919%29_%2814750150451%29.jpg)
In 1688, Kondiaronk formed a war party and traveled to Fort Frontenac on the way to raid Iroquois villages. While at the fort, Kondiaronk learned that Denonville had begun discussing peace with the Iroquois, despite his prior agreement with the Hurons that war would continue.[5] The war party withdrew back across Lake Ontario and waited for the Iroquois Onondaga delegation to pass through on their way to Montreal.[9]
When the Iroquois diplomats arrived, Kondiaronk and his war party took them by surprise with a forest ambush.[5] One chief was killed and the remaining Iroquois taken captive.[6] When the prisoners explained to Kondiaronk that they were a peaceful delegation and not a war party, Kondiaronk pretended to be astonished, then angry, with Denonville's betrayal.[5] He told the Iroquois captives,
"Go, my brothers, I release you and send you back to your people, despite the fact we are at war with you. It is the governor of the French who has made me commit this act, which is so treacherous that I shall never forgive myself for it if your Five Nations do not take their righteous vengeance."[6]
Kondiaronk's war party returned to their village at Michilimackinac with an Iroquois captive given as a replacement for a Huron killed in the skirmish. When the prisoner was presented to the French commandant at Michilimackinac, the Frenchman ordered him killed.[5] The commandant was not aware that his government was trying to negotiate peace with the Five Nations—he was keeping in line with the current Huron declaration of war.[5]
An old Seneca slave was summoned to witness the execution of his countryman, and afterwards Kondiaronk ordered the man to travel to the Iroquois and report how badly the French had treated the captive.[6] Since the captive was intended for adoption into the Michilimackinac village, the way his death was portrayed to the Iroquois angered them because they felt the French disrespected their tradition.[6] Due to Kondiaronk's skillful manipulation of events, the peace negotiations between the French and Iroquois came to a halt—a satisfactory result for the Hurons.
Warfare and later diplomatic efforts 1689–1701
Starting in 1689 a decade of warfare ensued known as Frontenac's War (1689–1697) that involved a series of conflicts between the French and the English. As a result of Kondiaronk's skillful manipulation, Frontenac's War included conflicts between the French and the Iroquois.[10] However, the years 1697–1701 marked the beginning of a period of intense diplomatic activity that would lead to the Great Peace of Montreal four years later.[11]
Kondiaronk was held responsible for provoking the Iroquois to a point where it was impossible to appease them, as exemplified by the sacking of Lachine during the summer of 1689.[4] The Iroquois, in retaliation to the French, burned, killed, and sacked plantations which left the Island of Montreal in a state of utmost dismay.[12] However, Kondiaronk continued to prevent a separate French-Iroquois peace by any means possible despite the aggressiveness of the warrior nation, the Iroquois.
In 1689, Kondiaronk was caught plotting with the Iroquois for the destruction of their Ottawa neighbors.[2]
As the Hurons were split in a pro-French faction led by Kondiaronk and a pro-Iroquois faction, in 1697 Kondiaronk warned the
With conflict in Europe ending with the
Settlement of 1701 final Indian congress
The final Indian congress began 21 July 1701. The central goal was to negotiate a treaty of peace among the natives and with the French. One main conflict standing in the way of peace was the debates over the return of prisoners who had been captured during previous wars or other campaigns and enslaved or adopted. For Governor Hector de Callière, the conference was the result of 20 years of diplomacy.
The next morning the Iroquois "shot the rapids to the main fire at Montreal, where they were greeted by the crash of artillery". They had scarcely disappeared when several hundred canoes carrying French allies appeared. This included
Illness, death and legacy: 1701–1760
Amidst the deliberations that last day of July, Kondiaronk became ill, unable to stand at the conference on 1 August. He was seated in a comfortable armchair, and after having an herbal drink made of
When his death was announced, many Iroquois, who were well known for their death and burial ceremonies, participated in covering the body of Kondiaronk in a ritual called "covering the dead". Sixty men marched in a procession led by Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, with the Seneca chief Tonatakout, carrying the rear. The procession sat in a circle around the body, and a man appointed as the chanter paced and sang for a quarter of an hour. After him, a second speaker, Aouenano, wiped away the tears of the mourners, opening their throats, and pouring in a sweet re-quickening medicine. Then, after producing a belt, he restored the Sun and urged the warriors to emerge from darkness to the light of peace. Afterwards, he covered the body, which would be permanently covered later during a Christian burial ceremony at Notre-Dame Church in Montreal. The Jesuits claim to have converted him on his deathbed, despite Kandiaronk's lifelong rejection of Christianity. Contemporary scholars, however, generally reject this version of events as a political ploy by the Jesuit missionaries.[14]
His funeral was elaborate, and both natives and French took part. French representatives were paired with delegations of a segment of
The French idealized the deceased chief, using him to demonstrate what all chiefs should aspire to be like. They compared him to French leaders and institutions, which painted a picture of idealized chiefs who would direct consensual politics, and rule with non-coercive authority. The French envisioned these chiefs as the governors of small principalities, and emissaries of the French government.
Kondiaronk was preserved in literature, as Adario in the
Oratory
In
In many native American societies, hierarchies were eschewed and persuasion was employed to decide public policy. Rational oratory was a highly valued skill and Kondiaronk's were reputed to be second to none. His skills won him tours of the salons of Paris and regular engagements as a supper debater with the Governor of Montreal, Hector de Callière. One of these debates, in 1699, witnessed by Lahontan, is retold by Graeber and Wengrow:
Kondiaronk: I have spent 6 years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that is not inhuman and I generally think this can only be the case as long as you stick to your distinctions of “mine” and “thine.” I affirm that what you call “money” is the devil of devils, the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils, the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity—of all the world’s worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false—and all because of money. In light of all of this, tell me that we Wyandotte are not right in refusing to touch or so much as look at silver.
Do you seriously imagine that I would be happy to live like one of the inhabitants of Paris? To take two hours every morning just to put on my shirt and make up? To bow and scrape before every obnoxious galoot I meet on the street who happens to have been born with an inheritance? Do you actually imagine I could carry a purse full of coins and not immediately hand them over to people who are hungry? That I would carry a sword but not immediately draw it on the first band of thugs I see rounding up the destitute to press them into Naval service? If on the other hand, Europeans were to adopt an American way of life, it might take a while to adjust but in the end you will be far happier.
Callière: Try, for once in your life to actually listen. Can't you see, my dear friend, that the nations of Europe could not survive without gold and silver or some similar precious symbol? Without it, nobles, priests, merchants and any number of others who lack the strength to work the soil would simply die of hunger. Our kings would not be kings. What soldiers would we have? Who would work for Kings or anyone else?
Kondiaronk: You honestly think you're going to sway me by appealing to the needs of nobles, merchants, and priests? If you abandoned conceptions of mine and thine, yes, such distinctions between men would dissolve. A leveling equality would take place among you, as it now does among the Wyandotte and yes, for the first thirty years after the banishing of self-interest no doubt you would indeed see a certain desolation as those who are only qualified to eat, drink, sleep, and take pleasure would languish and die, but their progeny would be fit for our way of living. Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wyandotte believe ought to define humanity: wisdom, reason, equity, etc. and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interest knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason.[19]
Graeber and Wengrow observe of this conversation that what the Europeans seem to have sacrificed for the sake of their social structure was the ability to conceive that their culture could be different by design. Kondiaronk was willing to consider that Americans could be assimilated into European culture, as indeed they were, but Callière was unwilling to even imagine the possibility of such far-reaching and profound changes in the opposite direction.
Graeber and Wengrow make a lengthy case in their book that dismissing attestations of indigenous people's philosophical statements as fabrications created by Europeans is a form of anti-indigenous bigotry. However, the authenticity of this speech was contested by historian
References
- ^ "Kondiaronk National Historic Person".
- ^ a b c d e f Fenton, William N "KONDIARONK, Le Rat". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. ©2000 University of Toronto/Universite Laval. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.
- ^ "MICHILIMACKINAC – Mackinaw, Mackinac Straits, Mackinac Island Archived 2013-09-25 at the Wayback Machine." MICHILIMACKINAC. Web. 25 Feb. 2012.
- ^ a b c d Collard, Edgar Andrew. Montreal: The Days That Are No More. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1976. Print.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Fenton, William (1998). The Great Law and the Longhouse: a Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 287.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Fenton, William N. "Kondiaronk, Le Rat". Retrieved 25 February 2012.
- ^ )
- ^ Drake, Francis S. (Francis Samuel) (1885). Indian history for young folks;. Harvard University. New York, Harper & brothers.
- ISBN 9780773522190.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Dumain, Ralph. "Chief Adario on the White Man's Morals." Ralph Dumain: The Autodidact Project. 1999–2010 Ralph Dumain, 26 Sept. 2001. Web. 25 Feb. 2012.
- ^ a b c d Havard, Gilles, Phyllis Aronoff, Howard Scott, and Gilles Havard. Montreal, 1701: Planting the Tree of Peace. Montreal: Recherches Amérindiennes Au Québec, 2001. Print.
- ^ Drake, Samuel Gardner. Biography and History of the Indians of North America, from Its First Discovery. Boston: B.B. Mussey, 1851. Print.
- ^ Fenton, William (1998). The Great Law and the Longhouse: a Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 290.
- )
- ^ a b White, Richard (2011). The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge University Press. p. 144.
- ^ White, Richard (2011). The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge University Press. p. 145.
- ^ White, Richard (2011). The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge University Press. p. 183.
- ^ "The Dawn of Everything". Kirkus Reviews. 2021-08-24. Archived from the original on 2021-10-19. Retrieved 2021-10-18.
- ^ Graeber and Wengrow (2021) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-15735-7
- TheGuardian.com. 12 June 2022.
- ^ "A Flawed History of Humanity".