Handsome Lake - Early Life

Early Life

Handsome Lake was born around 1735 in the Seneca village of Conewaugus, located on the Genesee River near present-day Avon, New York. Very little is known of his parents. He was born into the Wolf clan of his mother, as the Iroquois have a matrilineal kinship system, and was named Hadawa'ko . He was eventually adopted and raised by the Turtle clan people. He was a half-brother to Cornplanter and an uncle of Red Jacket. Born during a time when the Seneca nation was at its peak of prosperity through fur trading, Handsome Lake witnessed the gradual deterioration of his society.

In 1794 he signed the U.S. treaty with the Six Nations (known as the Pickering Treaty). He visited Washington, D.C. with Cornplanter in 1802.

Several factors contributed to the erosion of morale and spiritual welfare of the Haudenosaunee. In the period after the American Revolution, the Haudenosaunee lost most of their land in New York and Pennsylvania, and were forced to live on reservations, including in Canada. The reservations provided poor living conditions and little or no opportunity for formal education or cultural autonomy. This dislocation followed years of social disruption due to epidemics of infectious disease and major wars, in addition to encroaching settlement by colonists. As a result of so much change over a relatively short period of time, many Haudenosaunee began to turn toward alcohol, which exacerbated the erosion of the traditional family unit. This situation was a result of the cultural clash between the fledgling United States and the once equally powerful Six Nations people. The traditional religious rituals were no longer applicable to the environment in which the Haudenosaunee people found themselves.