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-4 Change and Survival among the Onondaga Iroquois since 1500 JAMES W. BRADLEY In a discussion of "societies in eclipse," the Onondaga Iroquois are an anomaly. Unlike most native groups east of the Mississippi, the Onondaga survived the trauma of European contact and remain to this day a distinct cultural entity . Moreover, they still reside within the boundaries of their traditional homeland in what is now central New York state. Archaeologically, the Onondaga can be tracked over a period of at least 600 years. During that time, all primary and most secondary Onondaga sites were situated within a well-defined region. Indeed, from the first antecedent groups to the establishment of the reservation south of Syracuse in 1788, Onondaga core villages moved within an area less than 60 kilometers across. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in northeastern North America were characterizedby massive cultural displacement and demise. Against this backdrop, the Onondaga stand out as a rem~rk­ ably stable point of reference on an ever-changing map. Considerable archaeological and historical research has been done on the Onondaga since the late 1960s (Blau et al. 1978; Bradley 1979, 1987a; Tuck 1968, 1971). In addition, much important work on both prehistoric and historic period sites remains unpublished. The intent of this review is twofold. The first is to summarize recent work on the Onondaga without reiterating what is already in print. The second is to synthesize this body of work around a particular question: Why did the Onondaga survive? Rather than start with an answer, I would like to focus on three topics that provide a scale for both the continuities andthe changes that occurred in Onondaga between 1500 and 1700. These topics are geography, identity, and meaning. For me, these are the factors that help to explain how the Onondaga accommodated changing circumstances and were, in turn, accomodated by them. Geography The primary criterion for what was "Onondaga" was location . Onondaga itself means "on the mountain." The Onondaga referred to themselves as "people of the mountain or great hill" (Beauchamp 1907: 147). This place, now known as the Pompey Hills, located south of Syracuse, New York, remained a fixed point of reference for the Onondaga throughout the period under discussion (the late fifteenth through the end of the seventeenth century). What changed was the radius of interaction, the arc of influence that swung from this point. To illustrate this changing scale of Onondaga activities and concerns, let us briefly examine four points in time: the end of the fifteenth century, the middle of the sixteenth century, the middle of the seventeenth century, and the end of the seventeenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century (or the Chance phase), the Onondaga were one of several culturally distinct lroquoian groups that resided along the margins of the Lake Ontario plain. The seminal work on Onondaga origins was conducted byJames A. Tuck during the 1960s (1968,1971). 27 28 JAMES W . BRADLEY He argued that the Onondaga, as a tribal entity, formed late in the fifteenth century when antecedent groups from the Onondaga Hill cluster merged with those in the Pompey Hills (1971: 214-216) (Fig. 4.1). Although Tuck's work established the main outlines of Onondaga ancestry, three additional site clusters may represent other, less welldocumented proto-Onondaga groups. These are the Baldwinsville cluster, a series of 6 to 10 sites along the Seneca River, most of which were palisaded and have produced Onondaga-like pottery (Beauchamp 1900: 115-116, nos. 20-23; M. Pratt, personal communication 1986; Tuck 1971: 136-137); the DeWitt cluster, a group of at least three poorly documented sites in the Butternut Creek drainage (Bradley 1987a: 28, 212, no. 28; Tuck 1971: 137-138); and the Cazenovia cluster, a dozen or more sites in the Chittenango drainage and possibly the Canaseraga drainage, both located around the southern end of Cazenovia Lake (Beauchamp 1900: 87-88, nos. 7-10; P. Pratt 1976: 93-95,171; Weiskotten 1988: 14-17). It should be noted that all these sites fit within an area 60 Figure 4.1. Mid- to late fifteenth-century proto-Onondaga site clusters in central New York. kilometers across, one defined largely by drainages and lakes. These include Oneida Lake on the north, Cross and Skaneatales Lakes on the west, and Cazenovia Lake on the east (Fig. 4_ 1). Two additional things are important about this intratribal scale. The first is that most of the antecedant sites and all of the Onondaga sites are...

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