Second, though I have incorporated directly into the story a number of the episodes in the Peacemaker’s quest, I wanted to personalize the story by seeing it through the eyes of a young person living in those times. Okwaho and the people closest to him are fictional, but the events that he hears about and experiences are deeply rooted in oral tradition.

As Tom Sakokwenionkwas Porter, another deeply respected Mohawk elder, told me on several occasions, there are so many stories about the Peacemaker that every story leads to another story. This novel came from the stories Tom and others have shared and continue to share with me and with the world—always hoping for peace.

acknowledgments

I’ve been fortunate enough, over the past fifty years, to hear the story of the Peacemaker directly from a great many Haudenosaunee elders. It began when I was a graduate student at Syracuse University and spending many hours on the Onondaga Reservation at the home of Alice Dewasentah Papineau, an important Onondaga Clan mother who was the first to speak with me about the Great Law of Peace. Over the following decades, aside from three years spent volunteer teaching in West Africa, I continued to meet and learn from such tradition bearers as the late Ray Tehanetorens Fadden, founder of the Six Nations Museum, Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, the late Seneca Scholar John Mohawk, the late Onondaga Clan mother Audrey Shenandoah, and of course my friends Jake Swamp and Tom Porter. But those are only a few of the more prominent Haudenosaunee people I’ve known as friends and from whom I have learned.

Further, I’ve been able to see and interact with several new generations of Haudenosaunee women and men deeply devoted to their traditions. The story of the Peacemaker is still being told . . . and not just in words. Haudenosaunee artists are continuing to bring the story to the world through their work. In fact, a version of the story of the Peacemaker has just been illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden, Ray’s grandson, and will be published in 2021 by Wisdom Tales Press.

I’ve also read all of the books written about the Great League, from Lewis Henry Morgan’s classic The League of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois (1851)—which was actually a collaboration with Ely Parker, who became a grand sachem of his Seneca people—on down to Mohawk scholar Brian Rice’s brilliant The Rotinonshonni: A Traditional Iroquoian History through the Eyes of Teharonhia:wako and Sawiskera (2016), which was written after walking the route of the Peacemaker’s journey, interviewing Haudenosaunee elders along the way. (I should mention that Brian spent that summer living at our Ndakinna Education Center in Greenfield Center, NY as our first Native American scholar in residence.)

Here’s a very brief reading list for those who wish to find out more about the history.

Creation and Confederation: The Living History of the Iroquois (2008) by Darren Bonaparte