Sagoyewatha and Metonymic Being

Framed by the Haudenosaunee legal traditions of the Great Law of Peace and the Two Row-Covenant Chain Wampum, this article performs a close reading of Sagoyewatha’s (Redjacket’s) early diplomatic speeches at the Council of Tioga Point (1790) to Timothy Pickering over the murder of two Seneca citizens. I argue that American misinterpretation of the Two Row-Covenant Chain and Great Law of Peace as metaphors led them to miss opportunities for condolence, conciliation, and peaceful coexistence with their Haudenosaunee brethren. Sagoyewatha’s oratory, deeply grounded in Haudenosaunee cultural empiricism and discourses of good mindedness, respect, and strength in unity, offers an example of metonymic diplomacy and being that remains pertinent to present-day conflicts over Haudenosaunee—and more broadly, Indigenous—treaty rights, land title, self-determination, and sovereignty. I query whether the development of metonymic literacy in eighteenth-century poetics might have provided—and might still provide—settlers with a deeper understanding of their Two Row-Covenant Chain responsibilities based on a relationship of separateness, autonomy, difference, and solidarity.