The Onondaga - Keepers of the Fire

Tribe: The Onondaga, who call themselves the "Ononda'gega'."

Meaning of Name: "Onondaga" is the shortened form of "Ononda'gega," which in turn comes from the word "Onundaga'ono," which means "People of the Hill." They are one of the Six Nations, the Iroquois League, and therefore part of the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouses."  This makes the Onondaga one of the few tribes that weren't called something else by their enemies.

Location: Historically, the Onondaga occupied a long swatch of land in the middle of what became New York State, with the Seneca and the Cayuga tribes on the west and the Oneida and the Mohawk tribes on the east. Many Onondaga still live on Onondaga Reservation south of Syracuse, New York in Onondaga County. Others live in Ontario in Canada.  According to archeologists, the tribes that comprise the Iroquois Nations have lived there in New York for at least 15,000 years.

Original Language: Onondagega, which was part of the Iroquoian language family.

Tribal Affiliations:  The Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Cayuga, and, since 1722, the Tuscarora. These Six Nations are called the "Haudenosaunee," the "People of the Longhouse," and they have pledged to live in peace as brothers since the formation of the Iroquois League in 1142 AD. Onondaga allies also included, at least historically, the Dutch, English and French.

Traditional Enemies:  The Montagnais, the Etchemin, the Hurons, the Algonquin, the Ottawa, the Erie, the Conestoga, the Wabanaki, the Ojibwe, the Mohican, and, at different times, the Mohawk, the French and the American Colonists.

Traditional Style of Housing: Longhouses, sometimes up to two hundred feet long, and large enough to contain several generations. They were frame-houses, covered in bark, with stone hearths for cooking, baking and heating. The longhouses were owned by the matriarch of each family. Each Onondaga hamlet or village was contained within a wooden palisade for protection against wild animals and other tribes. Inside the palisade walls were storehouses, menstrual lodges, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, and a town hall, and outside of the palisade walls were athletic fields, fields for crops, and orchards. At some point, probably after so many of their fellow tribes-people were lost to diseases like Smallpox, the Onondaga built and moved into  smaller log cabins, although some young Onondaga report having grown up in one.

Traditional Attire: For the men, deerskin breechcloths, leggings and rabbit-fur-lined moccasins, with "gustowehs" (caps covered with small feathers) boasting one upright eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather, and one downward-angled eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather. When the men went to war, they either shaved their heads (or plucked out all of their hair) except for a scalp-lock or a long ridge of stiff upright hair, or they wore roaches. The women wore shin-length loose, comfortable deerskin dresses with embroidered or beaded detachable yokes, worn over longer deerskin skirts and deerskin leggings, and sometimes beaded and quilled tiaras for special occasions. (Think Russian Empress crowns with intricate beaded designs.)

Traditional Foods: The Onondaga, like the other Iroquois tribes, were a settled agrarian people who grew their own corn, beans and squash from which they made soup, mush and bread, planted orchards, and otherwise foraged seasonally. In the Spring and Summer, the men fished and the women gathered wild onions, dandelions, leeks, ramps, milkweed, berries and strawberries. During the Fall and Winter, the men hunted for deer, turkey, rabbit and small game. When the hunters came home, they only took what was needed and shared the rest with the other members of the tribe. For a more complete list of foods, see the Seneca, Mohawk and Oneida entries.) 

Position of Women: Very high. There are fourteen Clan Mothers who lead the Wolf Clan, the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Sandpiper or Snipe Clan, the Deer Clan, the Beaver Clan, and the Eel Clan and their subdivisions. They choose fourteen of the fifteen Onondaga chiefs who represent the Executive branch of the tribes before the Grand Council of the Iroquois Nations. (See "Interesting Tidbits.")

Onondaga Courtship: Although I couldn't find anything distinctive to the Onondagas, I did find out that they had several annual dances, including the Smoke Dance, the Stick Dance and the Stomp Dance. So, presumably, a young couple could spy each other there, and then follow the usual Iroquois courtship patterns of flute playing, baskets of goodies, interrogation, and overly-inquisitive potential in-laws.

Interesting Tidbits:

The fourteen chiefs chosen by the Clan Mothers are the Keepers of the Fire, and are chosen because they have proven themselves to be kind, unselfish, helpful, honest and to put the needs of the tribe above their own needs. The Grand Council meetings are held, according to the schedule that the Clan Mothers set, on the Onondaga Reservation in Onondaga County, New York. There the fourteen Onondaga chiefs meet with the other thirty-four chiefs of the other five tribes of the Iroquois League, for a total of forty-nine chiefs. The fiftieth chief of the Onondaga is called the "Tadodaho." He is the Head Chief of all of the Six Nations.  This was a greatly-respected lifetime position, one that requires him to maintain the history of the Six Nations. The Tadodaho is always of the Onondaga People.  He does not have a Clan Mother, and when he dies, his replacement is decided upon by the other Onondago chiefs....

The Onondaga make up the Executive Branch of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois League.)  The Mohawk and the Seneca make up the Legislative Branch, and the Oneida, the Cayuga and the Tuscarora make up the Representative Branch of the Grand Council. These tribes and branches are further divided, and each must agree before a question of trade or war is sent from the Legislative and Representative Branches up to the Executive Branch. (The Clan Mothers, by the way, make up the Judicial Branch.) Each person who comes before the Grand Council is equal before the Creator and under the provisions of the Great Law of Peace, which is the Iroquois Constitution. It doesn't make any difference if the person is male or female, rich or poor, chief or non-chief, and each chief's vote, on behalf of his tribe, counts equally, whether the tribe is large or small. This system of participatory democracy should sound awfully familiar, and well it should, because it was used as the role model for the representative (House of Representatives) the legislative (the United States Senate), the executive (the President of the United States) and the judicial (the Supreme Court) branches of the United States Government as outlined in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Onondaga Lake, which was and is sacred to the Onondaga People because it was the place where the original Five Tribes met and agreed to live in peace, is now one of the most polluted lakes in the United States, and is a Superfund site. Sewage from Syracuse dumps into the lake, there are oxygen-choking algae blooms which kill off the fish and plants, and there are toxins, fine sediment and mercury. The Onondaga are trying hard to clean this up, even though they did not make the mess....

Traditional Religion: Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and other tribal religions.

Slavery and the Onondaga: The land owned by the Onondaga was on the Underground Railroad and near the Freedom Trail. Many escaping African slaves elected to hole up with the welcoming Onondaga tribe instead of continuing to Canada. There were also slave-owners in Onondaga County, but most of their slaves seemed to have been white indentured servants who were working off their passage to the United States.

Current Population:  There may be some 4200 Onondaga in New York State

Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Onondaga currently have smoke shops, a sports arena where lacrosse and hockey are played, a manufacturing plant that makes environmentally-safe cleaning products, a business that promotes sustainable gardening through greenhouses, a drinking water system, and a "Ganigonhiyoh," which may be a kind of holistic mind-healing spa and sweat lodge for cleansing the mind and chasing out bad spirits.

Famous Onondaga: None that I have heard of.