The Dish With One Size

The Dish with One Spoon wampum belt, with the round purple area in the center symbolizing the dish. It was kept at the Six Nations Grand River Territory by Skanawati (John Buck) until his death. In 1927, Evelyn H.C. Johnson delivered it to the Royal Ontario Museum, though she claimed no ownership in it. Photograph Courtesy of Dept. of Ethnology, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

In the Great Law of Peace it is stated:

It will turn out well for us to do this: we will say, “We promise to have only one dish among us; in it will be beaver tail and no knife will be there”…We will have one dish, which means that we will all have equal shares of the game roaming about in the hunting grounds and fields, and then everything will become peaceful among all of the people; and there will be no knife near our dish; which means that if there is a knife there, someone might presently get cut, causing bloodshed, and this is troublesome, should it happen thus, and for this reason there should be no knife near our dish.

(Concerning the League, p.458)

The Lords of the Confederacy shall eat together from one bowl, the feast of cooked beaver’s tail. While they are eating they are to use no sharp utensils for if they should, they might accidentally cut one another and bloodshed would follow. All measures must be taken to prevent the spilling of blood in any way.

(Parker, p. 45)

At first glance, this does not look like a land use law at all. To understand its impact, one must first understand the Haudenosaunee views of the land and ownership. To the people, the first kind of land was “my people’s village”. This included not only the palisaded, protected area around the longhouses, but also the cleared fields around it.

Within the cleared lands, each clan would have its own fields, which the men would clear and the women would cultivate. At the edge of the clearing was a real boundary…the woods’ edge were the hunting grounds.

Each nation had its own hunting grounds. There are references in early European records of dealings with the Haudenosaunee that the boundaries of the hunting grounds were the hunting grounds and lands of other nations.

Ownership of land, in the European sense, and “title” would have been alien to this traditional view of the world. Underlying the alienness would have been the different senses of time between indigenous and settler peoples. Indigenous peoples were taught that their presence on the land was transitory, part of a continuum from their ancestors to “the coming faces”, the unborn generations. European land ownership involved placing the name of the present owner in a registry book, do that he could then so with the land as he wished. Where the indigenous peoples held the land communally, the Europeans held it individually. In the relative freedom of the Americas, that individuality was being expressed even more strongly than it had ever been in Europe.

The “shared dish of beaver tail stew” meant that the hunting grounds—as distinct from the cultivated lands and clearings—were like one dish or bowl, intended to feed everyone equally. If you were hunting for food in the territory of another nation of the Confederacy, you were within your rights under the Great Law.

The Chiefs, as symbols of their people, were to share in the stew, using only one wooden spoon. This reinforced the sharing, but it also meant that there were to be no knives—“sharp edges” used, so that there would be no conflict or bloodshed over hunting for food.

Much of the Great Law brought ways to prevent or avoid bloodshed and conflict for the future. The sharing of the hunting grounds was an important way.

This part of the Great Law of Peace was preserved on a wampum belt, as were many other crucial elements of the law. The belt is short, narrow, plain and very old. It bears a round purple area – the dish with one spoon on a field of white.

This agreement, originating in the laws of the Haudenosaunee, was then extrapolated to other levels and nations as the Confederacy was explained in its influence and scope. From the point of view of the Haudenosaunee, the power of the Great Law of Peace, and the rationality of its structure and laws, made its acceptance by the other peoples a natural and expected occurrence.

The first European record of the Dish with One Spoon is recorded in the Jesuit Relation of 1644-45, at a council between the Haudenosaunee and the French:

“Things are going well” said all the guests: “We eat all together, and we have but one dish”.

(Jesuit Relations, Goldwaite, Ed. 1644-45, p. 303)

On April 7, 1757, Thomas Butler wrote to Sir William Johnson about a meeting between the Haudenosaunee and the French at Montreal. According to his report, the Haudenosaunee told the French:

…we can’t write but know all that has past between us having good memories. After wars & troubles we together met you at this place where every trouble was buried & a fire kindled here. Where was to meet and treat peaceably; you are daily now working disturbances and seem to forget the old agreement. The tree seems to be falling, let it now put up the roots spread and the leaves flourish as before. You formerly said take this bowl and this meat with this spoon let us eat always friendly together out of the one Dish but you now forget and have separated the Indians very much. So as they can’t well come together to eat out of this dish, which is very hard as we have children here & there. Scattered through your country by your means.

The English, your brothers & you are the common disturbance of this country. I say you white people together. We term the English your Brothers as you must have some. We Indians you call Children you both want to put us Indians a quarreling but we the Six Nations know better if we begin, we see nothing but an entire ruin of us as we would leave of till all was gone. So we are resolved to keep friends on both sides as long as possible & not meddle with the hatchet, but endeavor always to pacify the white people.

Our arms shall be between you endeavoring to keep you asunder.

Continued next week