Kondiaronk

Kondiaronk's signature on the Great Peace of Montreal for the Huron-Wyandot.

Kondiaronk (–1701) (Gaspar Soiaga, Souojas, Sastaretsi), known as Le Rat (The Rat), was chief of the Native American Wendat (Huron) people at Michilimackinac in New France, where they settled after war with the Haudenosaunee in 1649, This is the area around the strait connecting Lakes Huron and Michigan and separating Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas in the present-day United States.

Noted as a brilliant orator and a formidable strategist, Kondiaronk led the pro-French Petun and Wendat of Michilimackinac against their traditional Haudenosaunee enemies. In the chaotic and violent strategic environment of the Beaver Wars, he aimed to prolong the fighting between the Wendat's main rivals, the Haudenosaunee and the French. Kondiaronk succeeded in this aim; however, once he had secured the position of the Wendat, he favored a general peace settlement and managed to persuade all sides.

This effort concluded in the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal between France, the Haudenosaunee, and the other Indian tribes of the Upper Great Lakes. This ended the Beaver Wars and helped open up the interior of North America to deeper French exploration and commerce.

The Jesuit historian Father Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote that "it was the general opinion that no Indian had ever possessed greater merit, a finer mind, more valor, prudence or discernment in understanding those with whom he had to deal". Afterwards, the Wendat sent wampum belts to the Haudenosaunee to appease the murder; however, the diplomatic representative of the Odawa told Frontenac that the Wendat did not send any of the Odawa's wampum belts.

1688 coup

By 1687, the French Governor General, Denonville, had taken over the land of the Senecas. Kondiaronk and the Wendat agreed to ally with the French as long as Denonville promised that war against the Haudenosaunee would not stop until the Haudenosaunee were fully defeated. In 1688, Kondiaronk formed a war party and traveled to Fort Frontenac on the way to raid Haudenosaunee villages. While at the fort, Kondiaronk learned that Denonville had begun discussing peace with the Haudenosaunee, despite his prior agreement with the Wendat that war would continue. When the Haudenosaunee diplomats arrived, Kondiaronk and his war party took them by surprise with a forest ambush. However, the years 1697–1701 marked the beginning of a period of intense diplomatic activity that would lead to the Great Peace of Montreal four years later.

Kondiaronk was held responsible for provoking the Haudenosaunee to a point where it was impossible to appease them, as exemplified by the sacking of Lachine during the summer of 1689. However, Kondiaronk continued to prevent a separate French-Haudenosaunee peace by any means possible despite the aggressiveness of the warrior nation, the Haudenosaunee.

In 1689, Kondiaronk was caught plotting with the Haudenosaunee for the destruction of their Odawa neighbors. It was because of Kondiaronk's inspirational speeches that the remaining parties were convinced to sign the peace treaty, the Great Peace.

When his death was announced, many Haudenosaunee, who were well known for their death and burial ceremonies, participated in covering the body of Kondiaronk in a ritual called "covering the dead". Sixty men marched in a procession led by Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, with the Seneca chief Tonatakout, carrying the rear. The procession sat in a circle around the body, and a man appointed as the chanter paced and sang for a quarter of an hour. After him, a second speaker, Aouenano, wiped away the tears of the mourners, opening their throats, and pouring in a sweet re-quickening medicine. Then, after producing a belt, he restored the Sun and urged the warriors to emerge from darkness to the light of peace. Afterwards, he covered the body, which would be permanently covered later during a Christian burial ceremony at Notre-Dame Church in Montreal. The Jesuits claim to have converted him on his deathbed, despite Kondiaronk's lifelong rejection of Christianity. Contemporary scholars, however, generally reject this version of events as a political ploy by the Jesuit missionaries.

His funeral was elaborate, and both natives and French took part. French representatives were paired with delegations of a segment of Wendat-Petun society. Marching in front of the coffin were a French officer, sixty soldiers, sixteen Wendat warriors, and French clergymen. The coffin was carried by six war leaders, and was covered with flowers. There rested upon the top of the coffin a gorget, a sword, and a plumed hat. Behind the coffin, Kondiaronk's relatives followed, along with the Odawa and Wendat-Petun chiefs. The wife of the intendant, Mme. De Champigny, the governor of Montreal, M. de Vaudreuil, and the entire officer corps were at the rear of the procession. The war leaders, at the grave, fired a salute. The inscription on his resting place read: Cy git le Rat, Chef des Hurons ("Here lies the Muskrat, Chief of the Hurons"). Today, there is no remaining trace of this burial place, though it is thought that he lies somewhere near the Place d'Armes. This vision would cause tension between the natives and France until French Canada's fall in the mid-eighteenth century. Pennahouel, an Odawa chief who consulted with General Montcalm in July 1757, was compared to Kondiaronk, and "celebrated for his spirit, his wisdom" and his easy conversation with Frenchmen.

Kondiaronk was likely the basis for the character Adario in the Baron de Lahontan's New Voyages to North America (1703). Due to the popularity of this book, he became the model of the "noble native", a stock figure in European literature. anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow analyze the work of French explorer and philosopher the Baron Louis-Armand Lahontan (1666–1716), whose journals were published as New Voyages to North America in Amsterdam in the early 18th century. Graeber and Wengrow describe Lahontan's interviews with Kondiaronk, who is given the fictitious name Adario.

Kondiaronk's rhetoric was reputed to be unmatched. He was a frequent guest and supper debater with the Governor of Montreal, Hector de Callière, and he traveled on a diplomatic mission to Paris, where he attracted great interest in the salons. A 1699 conversation with Calliere, as recorded by Lahontan, is retold by Graeber and Wengrow:

Graeber and Wengrow illustrate by this conversation that European values have sacrificed the ability to conceive that the fundamentals of culture and social structure could be designed differently. Kondiaronk was willing to consider that native Americans could be assimilated into European culture, as indeed they were, but Callière was unwilling to even imagine the possibility of changes in the opposite direction.

Graeber and Wengrow make a lengthy case that dismissing attestations of indigenous people's philosophical statements as European literary fabrications is a form of anti-indigenous bigotry. However, the authenticity of this speech was contested by historian David A. Bell on the grounds that "anyone familiar with European fiction knows, there was no conceit more common for European authors of this period than presenting a fictional work as a first-hand account of real events." Wengrow has acknowledged the existence of such European fiction but contends that the "Dialogue Between Lahontan and Adario" is not part of that genre: “I think by comparing Lahontan to Gulliver’s Travels, Professor Bell has taken a step off the precipice, from which he may now have to extract himself.”