Introduction

This chapter traces how Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people bought clothing in ways that reflected and created their national identity over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It emphasizes that Haudenosaunee people used cross-cultural trade to reinforce their nations' sovereignty and maintain a distinctly Haudenosaunee identity. The chapter first discusses a long view of Haudenosaunee gendered labor from contact with settlers in the seventeenth century through the creation of academic anthropology in the nineteenth century. Focusing on this long view as well as the major changes and continuities in Haudenosaunee communities, the chapter then investigates how Haudenosaunee people used change in some areas of life to preserve their nations in the face of growing colonial pressures. The chapter highlights that Haudenosaunee women have always been essential to their nations, especially when their communities faced the crises that have characterized the settler scholarship of their nations' histories. Addressing Haudenosaunee women's political and domestic work, the chapter analyzes how both Haudenosaunee and European people understood the continuance of Haudenosaunee sovereignty and identity.