Haudenosaunee mythology

Common card · No. 249373

Haudenosaunee mythology, or Iroquois mythology, includes the creation stories and other religious oral literature of the Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, and Tuscarora people, six nations of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands which together form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Some of these stories are recorded in wampum, which served as mnemonic devices, although now they can no longer be read. Haudenosaunee authors began writing down their oral histories and cosmologies in the 19th century. David Cusick (Tuscarora, c. 1780–1840) published Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations in 1826. In the written versions, the spellings of names differ due to diverse orthographies. In the late 1700s, elements of traditional Haudenosaunee religion were incorporated into the Code of Handsome Lake by Sganyodaiyoʼ, a Seneca Royaner and prophet.

Read on Wikipedia · Image David Cusick, Public domain