Canasatego
| Canassatego | |
|---|---|
| Onondaga leader | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 1684 |
| Died | 1750 |
Canassatego (c. 1684–1750) was a leader of the Onondaga nation who became a prominent diplomat and spokesman of the Iroquois Confederacy in the 1740s. He was involved in several controversial land sales to British American officials. He is now best known for a speech he gave at the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, where he recommended that the British colonies emulate the Iroquois by forming a confederacy. He was reportedly assassinated, perhaps by sympathizers or agents of New France.
Canassatego only appears in historical documents for the final eight years of his life, and so little is known of his background. His earliest documented appearance is at a treaty conference in Philadelphia in 1742, where he was a spokesman for the Onondaga people, one of the six nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) League. According to most modern scholars, Canasatego was apparently not one of the fourteen Onondaga hereditary sachems who sat on the Iroquois Grand Council. One modern source disagrees, however, maintaining that Canasatego held the League title of Tadadaho.
In the 1730s, a faction of Iroquois leaders opened a diplomatic relationship with the British Province of Pennsylvania, facilitated by Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania's interpreter and agent. Pennsylvania agreed to recognize the Iroquois as the owner of all Indian lands in Pennsylvania; the Iroquois, in turn, agreed to sell lands only to Pennsylvania. Canasatego probably attended a 1736 treaty where some Iroquois chiefs sold land along the Susquehanna River to Pennsylvania, even though the Iroquois did not really have a claim to this land.
Canassatego served as the speaker for Onondagas at another conference in 1742, where the Iroquois chiefs collected the final payment for the 1736 land sale. At this meeting, Canassatego managed to convince Governor Thomas Penn to pay more than the original purchase price. Penn, for his part, urged Canassatego to remove the Delaware Indians from the land purchased in the controversial Walking Purchase of 1737. Canassatego complied, berating the Delawares as "women" who had no right to sell land, and ordering them to leave. "You are women; take the Advice of a Wise Man and remove immediately", he told the Delawares. The Iroquois designation of the Delawares as "women" has been the subject of much scholarly writing.
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