Great Law of Peace

The Great Law of Peace, known in the Onondaga language as the Gayanashagowa, is the oral constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the political union of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca nations, later joined by the Tuscarora in 1722 to form the Six Nations. Tradition credits its formulation to the Great Peacemaker, Dekanawidah, working with his spokesman Hiawatha, who persuaded the warring nations of what is now upstate New York to set aside conflict and bind themselves under a shared code of law. Scholars place its founding anywhere from roughly 1100 CE to the late twelfth century, though the precise date remains disputed among historians. Comprising some 117 articles arranged as a narrative of laws, ceremonies and symbolic teachings, the Great Law established the confederacy's council structure, the roles and selection of chiefs, and procedures for deliberation and consensus, and it was preserved and transmitted through wampum belts encoded with mnemonic pictograms before being rendered into English and other languages during the nineteenth century. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy continues to govern itself under the framework the Great Law established.