Onondaga

Variant name of place

Onondage

Geographic position

42.9781° N, 76.1983° W

Sources

Jennings, Francis, ed. The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and their League. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985; Johansen, Bruce. The Native Peoples of North America: A History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006; Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+onondaga+ny.

General note

Onondaga village was the primary settlement of the Onondaga Nation in Onondaga territory, an area in upstate New York, southeast of Lake Ontario. The Onondagas are one of the original Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). Because their traditional homeland was centrally located, with the Cayuga and Seneca Nations to the west and the Oneida and Mohawk, and later the Tuscarora, Nations to the east, Onondaga village became the capital or place of the council fire in the figurative longhouse of the Confederacy. Thus, the Onondagas are known as "the keepers of the fire." The name "Onondaga" means hill place, but the location of the village changed several times, until in 1720, it was moved to Onondaga Creek. In 1764, Wheelock sent Samuel Ashpo, a Mohegan separatist minister who attended Moor's Indian School briefly as an adult, as missionary for a season to the Onondagas, where he met with moderate success. On the eve of the American Revolution, Occom reported in his journal for 1774 that the Six Nations were called to gather at Onondaga for a Grand Council. In his attempt to recruit young Native children from more remote tribes, Wheelock sent his son Rodolphus (aka Ralph), accompanied by Joseph Johnson as interpreter, to the Onondaga and Seneca Tribes in April 1768. A difficult ambassador (who probably suffered from epilepsy and was prickly even at his best), Ralph was unsuccessful. In ms. 768302 Johnson speculates that the "Back nations . . . are too much overcome by french principles or reather fast in the divils clutches" to accept a Congregational missionary. Although the Onondagas tried to remain neutral during the Revolutionary War, some fought with the British. In retaliation, in April 1779, Continental troops targeted the village of Onondaga and destroyed the fifty houses along Onondaga Creek that had been abandoned as their inhabitants fled. Many took refuge with Mohawk leader (and Moor's graduate) Joseph Brant in Six Nations, Ontario, and their homeland was ceded to the state of New York, but some land was kept for a Reservation. In 1798, the town of Onondaga was incorporated from parts of other towns settled by Anglo-Americans that were former sites of the Onondaga capital and named for the Tribe. The Haudenosaunee government continues to meet on the Onondaga Reservation, located south of the city of Syracuse.