A survey of the competing scholarly efforts to date the founding of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and its Great Law of Peace, by Bruce E. Johansen, a professor of Communication and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, published in the tribal press periodical Akwesasne Notes New Series (Fall 1995, Vol. 1, Nos. 3 and 4, pages 62 to 63). It lays out the main proposed dates and methods side by side: Paula Underwood's estimate of about 1090 CE from counting family lineages, Barbara Mann and astronomer Jerry Fields' 1997 peer reviewed argument for 1142 CE from a solar eclipse cross checked against a genealogical count of 145 Tadadaho speakers, Paul Wallace's 1451 CE proposal from a different solar eclipse, and Elisabeth Tooker's more cautious range of 1400 to 1600 CE, against the older default that placed the founding a few years before or after European contact in the early 1500s or later. Used here to document the genuine width of scholarly disagreement rather than treating any one proposed date as settled.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier2
Reliability tier 2: a named author publishing in Akwesasne Notes, a long running Indigenous affairs periodical, one step below an academic press but a named and traceable byline rather than an unsigned piece. NotesReliability tier 2: this is a synthesis piece in a non-peer-reviewed tribal press periodical rather than an original peer reviewed study, but it is written by an academic specialist in the subject, summarizing named, checkable sources (a 1997 peer reviewed journal article among them) rather than advancing the author's own new claims. Used here for the breadth of the founding-date debate, not as the sole citation for any single proposed date. Mirrored at ratical.org, the copy checked for this citation; the original appeared in print in Akwesasne Notes New Series.
Citation
AuthorBruce E. Johansen
PublisherAkwesasne Notes New Series
Publication Year1995
URLhttp://ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/DatingIC.html
Source Typemagazine feature
Claims Backed By This Source (9 claims)
This source backs 9 claims across the atlas. As facts: 8 well-attested. Plus 1 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 8 claims: 8 well-attested.
- Articles, 1 claims: 1 general references.
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