Spirit Winds of Peace: The Epoch of the Peace Makers

By Marcine Quenzer

Let Marcine take you on a journey into the distant past through her paintings. An accomplished artist, she brings to life the ancient tales of the peoples who call themselves the Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse. We know them better as the Iroquois League of Nations.

Thank you for your efforts to honor and uplift the work of the Peacemaker to establish a Peace that will prevail on earth. It is time to raise that legacy to a higher standard of global public visibility. Your art is a majestic vehicle to bring this about.
David Yarrow, Dancing Turtle, Defender of Mother Earth, Healer, Author, Dowser

Marcine Quenzer is one of the best storytellers I have ever heard. Her knowledge of the Iroquoian people inspires, educates and entertains. She is a Master of her Art.
Curtis Harwell, CEO of Heaven on Earth Foundation

Marcine Quenzer has the gift of the true Sachem for tuning into ancient cultures and bringing forward the wisdom and lessons of their natural spirituality so needed in these days.
Frank Jordan, Past President of National Dowsers Association, Healer, Author

Marcine Quenzer has brought to her book, Spirit Winds of Peace: The Epoch of the Peacemakers, the same beauty, eloquence and truth that she brought to the Peacemakers journey through her inspirational artwork. Her book does much to reveal this journey - a revelation that is so needed at this time to remind us that love is indeed the answer. Thank you, Marcine, for this gift to all humanity.
Robert Roskind, author of The Beauty Path: A Native American Journey into One Love

The Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, through resolution of the Board of Directors, has named Marcine Quenzer as Wyandotte Nation Associate Artist of the Nation, for the longstanding work she has done in artistic portrayals of Wendot history, and stories, cultural presentations, and teaching of the youth of many First Nations.
Leaford Bearskin, Chief, and James Bland, second Chief 2003

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452560274

Marcine Quenzer

Adopted into a Seneca Cayuga family in 1993, Marcine had no idea how the exposure to the culture would affect her life. There she found an epic story of compelling visuals she could not resist painting. However with the paintings came a story of an epoch of peace that few had heard of, a story of three individuals who brought peace to a world at war.

Book preview

Copyright © 2000, 2012 by Marcine Niyawehnsie Quenzer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-6028-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-6027-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918755

Balboa Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/07/13

11404.png

Special Thanks, Acknowledgements, and Thank You

Special Thanks to all those who I have met along the way, whom have been encouraging and appreciative of my humble work to honor this story and the Peace Makers of the Haudenosaunee.

I am an artist with the brush and pencil not with words and so I have relied heavily on other’s manuscripts to provide the stories that my art illustrates. I would like to give credit due to those who contributed to the stories in this book.

The original project was funded by the AMB Foundation under the guidance of Seneca Cayuga Ceremonial Leader Richard White for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Special thanks to Jake Thomas Learning Center, to Yvonne Thomas and Faithkeepers at Six Nations for their original contribution of Jakes stories about the Peacemaker. http://www.tuscaroras.com/jtlc

Special Thanks to Ron Burnside, Chiefs Leaford Bearskin and Jim Bland of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma and to Wendake for their help in gathering the stories of the Huron.

Special Thanks to Barbara Mann, Seneca Historian and author.

Special Thanks Nyawehn to the Ahkwesashsne Math and Science Pilot Project which included Brenda LaFrance, Darrel Thompson, Margie Skidders, Chris George, Ruthie Seymour, and Mary Henderson for their translations regarding the Creation.

Special Thanks to Jamie Samms, Seneca, for her story of the Field of Plenty

Special Thanks to Ken Carey, author of Mohawk Village and The Tree of War.

Special Thanks to all Clan Mothers, and Elders, who have contributed stories, advice, and support.

Contents

Special Thanks, Acknowledgements, and Thank You

Foreword

The Epoch of the Peace Makers

The Field Of Plenty

Sky World

Turtle Island

Sky Woman

The Courting Of Lynx

Summer~Winter

The Four Directions: The Earth Is Finished

The First Peach Seed Game

The Contest

The Peacemaker Is Born

The Peacemaker’s Friends

The White Stone Canoe

Peace Will Come

Land of Abundance

Jikohnsaseh Listens

A Warrior’s Tale

Moment Of Moral Regeneration

Hayehwatha’s Condolence

Finding The Wampum

The Mohawk Village

The Tree Of War

Going To The Nations

Delivering The Yagowaneh

The Great Peace Woman

The Proposal

Stilling The Water

The Healing Of Adodarhonh

The Great Council

Mother Of Nations

The First Green Corn

Celebration

The Peacemaker’s Prophecy

Leon Shenandoah: Message For Today

The Iroquois Today

Earth Mother Crying

Mohawk Prophecies For The Last Days

How The Lakota People Received The Pipe

The White Buffalo

Bibliography

About The Artist/Author

Notes

Glossary

Foreword

HAVING LIVED WITH THE HAUDENOSAUNEE (Iroquois, the People of the Longhouse) for 15 years, I discovered a rich and proud heritage that ignited my imagination and led me to discover a principle of living based on moral codes. I fell in love with the rich fabric of tales from the distant past, that when woven together, embodied teachings that were timeless. I began to paint these stories; to merge the narrations with the images in my head. I am an artist, not a writer, yet the resonance of these stories captivated and inspired me to marry the text with the visuals that I saw so that I could bring to life and share the gifts these stories are.

In the beginning, my research yielded little, but gradually magical events of synchronicity took place. The first of these events was shortly after Painted Horse Native Museum and Cultural Center was opened in Wyandotte, Oklahoma where I was the facilitator. The Ceremonial Leader of the Seneca Cayuga, Richard White, brought to the museum a stick that had drawings on it. He said it was very old, but no one seemed to remember just what it was or how to use it. He gave it to the museum.

The next event happened six weeks later. Jake Thomas, last of the Condoled Hereditary Chiefs of the Cayuga at Six Nations, Canada was visiting. Seeking support for his Jake Thomas Learning Center at Six Nations, he hoped to pass to others the knowledge he had acquired in his lifetime. Jake took hold of the stick and gave us a two-hour taped reading of the meaning of The Condolence Cane. When he and his lovely wife Yvonne left, she gave me several booklets they had compiled of some of the stories. How and why they came to our museum is a strange circumstance, but now my desire was fueled to know even more.

I became intrigued by a woman who appeared in the story, who seemed important, but was barely acknowledged. The more I came across her mention, the more I became curious to know who she was. I learned her name was Jikohnsaseh and she was Huron as was the Peacemaker. I discovered that Jikohnsaseh was The Great Peace Woman and now my research had taken a great leap.

In 2001, I produced 15 paintings of the story I had at the time, and with help from Faithkeepers at Six Nations, put together a display which I took to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In 2003, I left Oklahoma, and did a summer tour of New York. The people in New York open-heartedly accepted the work I had done and offered even more information which made the book grow to twice its size. The story I bring here is the inter-weaving of what was shared with me and in no way should be considered the official version as there are many traditional stories all of which are considered valid. Using my original art and telling the stories in my own words, I have crafted a tapestry of my favorite stories. I intend to preserve the stories and bring their lessons to the peoples of today so we all may share the wisdoms of the people who inhabited this land centuries ago and utilize their truths to help pave our own new destinies based on love, peace, and harmony.

Bringing this obscure story to light has been my passion. This is an incredible journey over 1,000 years into the past to a civilization in which women and men governed together with benevolence, fairness, love and righteousness. The Peacemaker brings his words, To live in peace and to love one another. This Word has four white roots which go to the four corners of the earth: peace so that none live in fear; power of the good mind to reason without throwing ashes; righteousness, which is justice between men and nations; and love, that all may have compassion for one another. These are the precepts of the Peacemaker; to forgive and forget the past and look forward with the new mind; to give back to our community (restorative justice); to use reason (conflict resolution); women are the arbiters of the law; and to speak our truth, for in the course of it, one can do impossible tasks.

While reading the story, one becomes aware that it is a story of yesterday, yet meant for all time.

12415.png

The Epoch of the Peace Makers

AMONG THE INDIGENOUS NATIONS FROM the Great Lakes to the South Sea Islands, there are stories of a great Teacher. In some cultures he is described as pale skinned, a beard, pale grey eyes, who wore sandals upon his feet, and white robe with gold crosses across the hem. How much of this is missionary convolution, we do not know. Among the Hopi, he was known as Pahana, while the Apache called him Long Hair. Others knew him as Pale One or Cheezooz. The Cheyenne called him Sweet Medicine and say he lived 445 years among them. Many of the names equated with Master of All Things in the language of the people he was visiting and instructing at the time. Among the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois, they had a Great Founder known as the Peacemaker, whose name is Deganiwida , said to translate as Master of All Things. There is no proof that all were the same man nor any evidence to suggest a specific group or dogma, but it is uncanny how consistent the basic concepts are among all indigenous peoples, although ceremonial rites may vary greatly.

However for the Iroquois, it is more than a legend, for they have the gift this Peacemaker gave to the People, known as the Great Law, the Message for the Good Mind, encoded within The Hiawatha Wampum Belt which is a symbol of the Peace Confederacy founded by him according to the precepts he taught. It is these people whom the first Europeans met, and from whom they were inspired to take hold of the Haudenosaunee Constitution as a basis for their own. A little known secret of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and others, found the oldest participatory democracies on earth among Native Americans.

Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as saying: It would be a very strange thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies. (Payne 1996:609).

The Haudenosaunee known by the French and English as Iroquois League more commonly known today as Six Nations Confederacy means People of the Longhouse. The five original nations were Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. They lived in territories along the eastern Great Lakes in what is today Ontario, Canada and New York State in the United States. The five nations were later joined in the 1700s by a sixth, the Tuscarora, who applied to the Confederacy in order to escape the slave traders of the south.

The Haudenosaunee confederacy of five nations dates to nearly six centuries before the arrival of Columbus. Recent archeological evidence can now be carbon dated to prove a date which coincides with a total eclipse of the sun on August 18, 909 A.D. This time also coincides with archeological evidence of the rising interpersonal violence of a cannibal cult and the spreading adoption of corn as a dietary staple as the Snake Cults of the Mound People were drawing to a close.

The Confederacy was established through the efforts of three individuals. Most published accounts of the League’s founding, stress roles played by a Huron who is referred to only as The Peacemaker—and Hayehwatha, an Onondaga who joined the Peacemaker’s quest to quell the murder, violence and blood feuds to establish Peace. The third person whose role has been greatly understated was a woman known as Jikohnsaseh, the Great Peace Woman and Mother of Nations of the Antiwandarank lineage. Possibly because her story is a woman’s story, nineteenth century male ethnographers simply failed to ask women about women’s history in the League. Before the Peacemaker’s journey had begun, Jikohnsaseh was already widely accepted as a woman of peace. She acted in the capacity of a judge and councilor to at least fourteen nations. Upon accepting The Great Peace, she was acknowledged as a leader, representing women as birth givers, proprietors and caretakers of Mother Earth. She was a valuable ally, and the Peacemaker and