Non-story accompanied by old photograph and map.

1914 - Buffalo New York, Panoramic View of Iroquois

This week, for reasons too bizarre to elaborate, I found myself in the same room as the Grand Chief of the Haudenosaunee. A handsome old guy with long grey hair in a skinny braid. Prominent cheekbones.

Subsequent research reveals he's head of the council of chiefs of the "Six Nations," an Iroquois confederation formed in 1570 (though the sixth Nation joined as late as 1700). Their traditional lands, as far as I can tell from an old map I found, runs across parts of central and northeastern United States that includes present-day New York state.

But the land on which New York City now stands, and I guess Hoboken too, belonged to the enemy (loosely speaking) of the Iroquois, an Algonquian-speaking Lenape tribe called the Wappani. In 1626, this land was famously sold to the Dutch for 60 guilders worth of goods, in what was one of history's biggest instances of miscommunication ever. See, nobody meant to sell the land; they thought they were collecting an admission fee. And it wasn't even the Wappani that made the transaction, it was made by the Canarsee people from Long Island who happened to be passing through!

Anyway, the Haudenosaunee Grand Chief had an entourage of younger guys with him -- ruggedly good-looking types. Their partners (wives? lovers?) were tall and beautiful, and one couple brought their very cute boy with them.

And now I've forgotten what I was supposed to write about. More later.