Hitchhiking Adventures – Part 8

This law is the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, which consisted of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. In the year 1722 they came together and decided not to fight against each other anymore. This law had 117 articles. It was not written down in a book, because they did not have a writing system. It was documented on a wampum belt, which was made from shells. The pattern of the shells was used to explain the articles and rules.

Jake Thomas was 72 years old and he knew his life would come to an end. He decided to invite a gathering and tell them the whole story of the Great Law of Peace. He estimated that he would need four days for this, form morning until evening.

They put up a big tent with seats for over 200 people. Guests were camping around this tent. I arrived after it all started. My last ride was a old and very noisy tuned sports car with a driver, who was probably 18 years old and wore a baseball cap. He was really helpful and liked to cruise around in his car anyway. That’s why it was no big deal for him to drive me to where I wanted to go. When we arrived, I asked him to stop in front of the entrance to the gathering place. But with quite a speed he drove straight into the square and braked sharply in front of the meeting tent, the engine of the car howling one more time. The tent was open to the side where we were. I was still sitting in the racing car that brought me to that gathering. Everybody in the tent turned their heads around to us. And now I had to get out of the car. How embarrassing. What a start, what an arrival.

Like I mentioned already, Jake Thomas spoke from morning until evening. Two elders were sitting beside him, a very beautiful energetic old woman and an even older skinny grandfather with long hair, who always fell asleep while Jake was speaking. The whole presentation took place in English. A few times during the days Jake Thomas mentioned that he was very sorry for this and he explained: “Some things I can´t explain properly in English. For some things we do not have a word in English that would describe perfectly what I would like to tell you. I can do this just in our own native language. But not many of us understand our own language anymore. If we lose our own language, we also lose parts of our culture.”

In those days, I did not understand the importance of language. A few weeks later I got it, when a Cree Indian teacher in Saskatchewan told me: “Achim, if you say ‘table’ in English or ‘Tisch’ in German, or if you say ‘eye’ in English or ‘Auge’ in German, it does not make a big difference. But do you know what word we use for ‘eye’ in our Cree language? It is not even just a word, it is a sentence. If we mean ‘eye’, we say ‘the gateway to the universe’. Now I understood how important a language can be to understand a culture and how the people of that culture see the world.

I stayed until the end of the fourth day. I listened to the old man and met a lot of very nice people, Indians and Non-Indians. I got invited to dinner by a family living nearby on the reservation. During all the four days a holy fire was burning. One night I was the fire-keeper. From 2.00 a.m. until 4.00 a.m., I was responsible for keeping it ablaze.

In 1988, the U.S. Senate paid tribute to the Six Nations with a resolution that said "The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself."

If you would like to know more, feel free to visit the Jake Thomas Learning Centre online.