Sainte Marie among the Iroquois
Near Syracuse, New York
On the eastern shore of Onondaga Lake, just outside present-day Liverpool, French Jesuit missionaries established the mission of Sainte Marie de Gannentaha in sixteen fifty-six. Led by Father Simon Le Moyne, they came to build diplomatic ties with the Onondaga nation of the Iroquois Confederacy and spread Christianity into the heart of the continent.
The mission lasted less than two years. In the winter of sixteen fifty-seven, the French learned they were about to be attacked. The story goes that they hatched a daring escape: invite the Onondaga leaders to a lavish feast, feed them until they fell asleep, then slip away by canoe in the night. The plan worked. By March of sixteen fifty-eight, every French colonist had vanished from the lake.
A replica of the mission stands on the site. In twenty fifteen, it was reopened as the Ska-nonh Center for the Great Law of Peace, foregrounding the Haudenosaunee perspective rather than the French missionary story.
