Great Peacemaker

The Great Peacemaker, known in Mohawk tradition by names including Deganawida, is the culture hero credited in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) oral tradition with founding the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, uniting the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca nations under a shared law of peace. According to tradition he traveled among the warring nations of the region, often together with the orator Hiawatha, persuading their leaders to set aside conflict and adopt a common constitution, the Great Law of Peace, that established a council of representative chiefs. The date of the Confederacy's founding is disputed among scholars, with estimates ranging from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and Deganawida's life is known only through oral tradition rather than contemporary written record, but the Confederacy he is credited with founding endured as one of the most sophisticated indigenous political systems in North America.