The Dish With One Spoon

Continued from last week

4 Strings Wampum

(Simcoe Papers II, 131)

By the 1840’s, other indigenous nations were also using the Dish With One Spoon as a means of resolving their land issues. In November 1886, the Chippewa of the Thames and the Munceys of the Thames were involved in a dispute over lands the Munceys had occupied in Southwestern Ontario. Chief William Waddilove of the Muncey Delaware’s described how his people had come into the country in the late 1700’s, and said:

Our forefathers ever since they came to this country had always been on friendly terms with the Ojibway, and were made to understand that they have equal rights with the Chippewa to the land, and also eating out of the same bowl, which meant that the produce of the land was held in common.

(Indian Affairs File 471-3-11-1)

On January 23, 1864, the local Indian Superintendent on Manitoulin Island reported on a meeting of the Chiefs of the Island. Wakegijik, one of the Chiefs of the eastern community, Wikwemikong, had said:

My friends, we want to eat out of one dish as it were-we do not wish to break a part of it to give away. All of us, who met together at Grand Council there, agreed that we should eat out of one dish.

(NAC, RG10, D-124, p. 191, 343-45)

In 1887, Skanawati (John Buck) was the keeper of the wampum at the Grand River Territory. His reading of the Dish With One Spoon was recorded by Dr. David Boyle of Toronto:

The fire keeper told the first belt, all white except for a round purple patch in the center. This represents all the Indians on the continent. They have entered into one great league and contract that they will all be one and have one heart. The pot in the center is a dish of beaver, indicating that they will have one dish and what belongs to one will belong to all.

(Ontario Archaeological Report, 1928, p. 51)

The Dish With One Spoon is an example of a principle of the Great Law of Peace that has been accepted by other aboriginal nations, through treaties with the Haudenosaunee.

It is an example of the ways in which wampum is used to assist in preserving treaty commitments and principles of law. It is evidence of the way the people view the land and property rights in the land and its resources.

Though the Dish With One Spoon may have been among the first of the “treaties” between the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous nations, it was not the only one. It would be wrong to believe that there were “treaties” with the European nations, and nothing similar with the neighbors. Instead, from a Haudenosaunee pint of view, all the nations were being brought within the law, the union. The Dish With One Spoon does that for one aspect of the law. The Covenant Chain does it with another.

By the 1790’s there was a functioning “Indian Confederacy” with its Council Fire in the Ohio Valley, taking in most of the nations of the Great Lakes area, stretching far in all directions. The Council at which the Creeks mentioned the Dish With One Spoon was a meeting of that Confederacy. As the Euro-Americans increased in numbers, the indigenous nations saw the need to gather together “the people of our color”. The structure around which they focused their gathering was the Kayanerekowa.