Two Row Wampum Treaty

rdf:langString Two Row Wampum Treaty

rdf:langString The Two Row Wampum Treaty, also known as Guswenta or Kaswentha and as the Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613 or the Tawagonshi Treaty, is a mutual treaty agreement, made in 1613 between representatives of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) and representatives of the Dutch government in what is now upstate New York. The agreement is considered by the Haudenosaunee to be the basis of all of their subsequent treaties with European and North American governments, and the citizens of those nations, including the Covenant Chain treaty with the British in 1677 and the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States in 1794. The treaty is spiritually and culturally revered and widely accepted among the Indigenous peoples in the relevant territories, and documented by the wampum belts and oral tradition. However, in more recent years the authenticity of the later, written versions of the agreement have been a source of debate, with some scholarly sources maintaining that a treaty between the Dutch and the Mohawk nations did not take place or took place at a later date. In August 2013, the Journal of Early American History published a special issue dedicated to exploring the Two Row Tradition.