title: Iroquois

text: European infectious diseases such as smallpox devastated the Five Nations in the 17th century, causing thousands of deaths, as they had no acquired immunity to the new diseases, which had been endemic among Europeans for centuries. The League began a period of "mourning wars" without precedent; compounding deaths from disease, they nearly annihilated the Huron, Petun and Neutral peoples. By the 1640s, it is estimated that smallpox had reduced the population of the Haudenosaunee by least 50%. Massive "mourning wars" were undertaken to make up these losses. The American historian Daniel Richter wrote it was at this point that war changed from being sporadic, small-scale raids launched in response to individual deaths, and became "the constant and increasing undifferentiated symptom of societies in demographic crisis". The introduction of guns, which could pierce the wooden armor, made First Nations warfare bloodier and more deadly than it had been in the pre-contact era. This ended the age when armed conflicts were more brawls than battles as Europeans would have understood the term. At the same time, guns could only be obtained by trading furs with the Europeans. Once the Haudenosaunee exhausted their supplies of beaver by about 1640, they were forced to buy beaver pelts from Indians living further north, which led them to attempt to eliminate other middlemen in order to monopolize the fur trade in a series of "beaver wars". Richter wrote


title: Iroquois

text: "the mourning war tradition, deaths from disease, dependence on firearms, and the trade in furs combined to produce a dangerous spiral: epidemics led to deadlier mourning wars fought with firearms; the need for guns increased the need for pelts to trade for them; the quest for furs provoked wars with other nations; and deaths in those wars began the mourning war cycle anew".From 1640 to 1701, the Five Nations was almost continuously at war, battling at various times the French, Huron, Erie, Neutral, Lenape, Susquenhannock, Petun, Abenaki, Ojibwa, and Algonquin peoples, fighting campaigns from Virginia to the Mississippi and all the way to what is now northern Ontario.


title: Iroquois

text: Despite taking thousands of captives, the Five Nations populations continued to fall, as diseases continued to take their toll. French Jesuits, whom the Haudenosaunee were forced to accept after making peace with the French in 1667, encouraged Catholic converts to move to mission villages in the St. Lawrence river valley near Montreal and Quebec. In the 1640s, the Mohawk could field about 800 warriors. By the 1670s, they could field only 300 warriors, indicating population decline.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois League traditions allowed for the dead to be symbolically replaced through captives taken in "mourning wars", the blood feuds and vendettas that were an essential aspect of Iroquois culture. As a way of expediting the mourning process, raids were conducted to take vengeance and seize captives. Captives were generally adopted directly by the grieving family to replace the member(s) who had been lost.


title: Iroquois

text: This process not only allowed the Iroquois to maintain their own numbers, but also to disperse and assimilate their enemies. The adoption of conquered peoples, especially during the period of the Beaver Wars (1609–1701), meant that the Iroquois League was composed largely of naturalized members of other tribes. Cadwallader Colden wrote,


title: Iroquois

text: "It has been a constant maxim with the Five Nations, to save children and young men of the people they conquer, to adopt them into their own Nation, and to educate them as their own children, without distinction; These young people soon forget their own country and nation and by this policy the Five Nations make up the losses which their nation suffers by the people they lose in war."


title: Iroquois

text: Those who attempted to return to their families were harshly punished; for instance, the French fur trader Pierre-Esprit Radisson was captured by an Iroquois raiding party as a teenager, was adopted by a Mohawk family, and ran away to return to his family in Trois-Rivières. When he was recaptured, he was punished by having his fingernails pulled out and having one of his fingers cut to the bone. But Radisson was not executed, as his adoptive parents provided gifts to the families of the men whom Radisson had killed when he escaped, given as compensation for their loss. Several Huron who escaped with Radisson and were recaptured were quickly executed.


title: Iroquois

text: By 1668, two-thirds of the Oneida village were assimilated Algonquian and Huron. At Onondaga there were Native Americans of seven different nations, and among the Seneca eleven. They also adopted European captives, as did the Catholic Mohawk in settlements outside Montreal. This tradition of adoption and assimilation was common to native people of the Northeast.


title: Iroquois

text: At the time of first European contact the Iroquois lived in a small number of large villages scattered throughout their territory. Each nation had between one and four villages at any one time, and villages were moved approximately every five to twenty years as soil and firewood were depleted. These settlements were surrounded by a palisade and usually located in a defensible area such as a hill, with access to water. Because of their appearance with the palisade, Europeans termed them castles. Villages were usually built on level or raised ground, surrounded by log palisades and sometimes ditches.


title: Iroquois

text: Within the villages the inhabitants lived in longhouses. Longhouses varied in size from 15 to 150 feet long and 15 to 25 feet in breadth. Longhouses were usually built of layers of elm bark on a frame of rafters and standing logs raised upright. In 1653, Dutch official and landowner Adriaen van der Donck described a Mohawk longhouse in his "Description of New Netherland".


title: Iroquois

text: Usually, between 2 and 20 families lived in a single longhouse with sleeping platforms being 2 feet above the ground and food left to dry on the rafters. A castle might contain twenty or thirty longhouses. In addition to the castles the Iroquois also had smaller settlements which might be occupied seasonally by smaller groups, for example for fishing or hunting. Living in the smoke-filled longhouses often caused conjunctivitis.


title: Iroquois

text: Total population for the five nations has been estimated at 20,000 before 1634. After 1635 the population dropped to around 6,800, chiefly due to the epidemic of smallpox introduced by contact with European settlers. The Iroquois lived in extended families divided clans headed by clan mothers that grouped into "moieities" ("halves"). The typical clan consisted of about 50 to 200 people. The division of the Iroquois went as follows:


title: Iroquois

text: "Moiety" (B) clan: Turtle. Government was by the 50 "sachems" representing the various clans who were chosen by the clan mothers. Assisting the "sachems" were the "Pinetree Chiefs" who served as diplomats and the "War Chiefs" who led the war parties; neither the "Pinetree Chiefs" or the "War Chiefs" were allowed to vote at council meetings.


title: Iroquois

text: By the late 1700s The Iroquois were building smaller log cabins resembling those of the colonists, but retaining some native features, such as bark roofs with smoke holes and a central fireplace. The main woods used by the Iroquois to make their utensils were oak, birch, hickory and elm. Bones and antlers were used to make hunting and fishing equipment.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois are a mix of horticulturalists, farmers, fishers, gatherers and hunters, though traditionally their main diet has come from farming. For the Iroquois, farming was traditionally women's work and the entire process of planting, maintaining, harvesting and cooking was done by women. Gathering has also traditionally been the job of women and children. Wild roots, greens, berries and nuts were gathered in the summer. During spring, sap is tapped from the maple trees and boiled into maple syrup, and herbs are gathered for medicine. After the coming of Europeans, the Iroquois started to grow apples, pears, cherries, and peaches.


title: Iroquois

text: Historically, the main crops cultivated by the Iroquois were corn, beans and squash, which were called the three sisters () and in Iroquois tradition were considered special gifts from the Creator. These three crops could be ground up into hominy and soups in clay pots (later replaced by metal pots after the contact was with Europeans). Besides the "Three Sisters", the Iroquois diet also included artichokes, leeks, cucumbers, turnips, pumpkins, a number of different berries such blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, etc. and wild nuts. Allium tricoccum, a species of wild onion, is also a part of traditional Iroquois cuisine, as well as Ribes triste (redcurrant), Apios americana (groundnut), and Cardamine diphylla (broadleaf toothwort).


title: Iroquois

text: Using these ingredients they prepared meals of boiled corn bread and cornmeal sweetened with maple syrup, known today as Indian pudding. Cornmeal was also used to make samp, a type of porridge with beans and dried meat. Reports from early American settlers mention Iroquois extracting corn syrup that was used as a sweetener for cornmeal dumplings.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois hunted mostly deer but also other game such as wild turkey and migratory birds. Muskrat and beaver were hunted during the winter. Archaeologists have found the bones of bison, elk, deer, bear, raccoon, and porcupines at Iroquois villages. Fishing was also a significant source of food because the Iroquois had villages mostly in the St.Lawrence and Great Lakes areas. The Iroquois used nets made from vegetable fiber with weights of pebbles for fishing. They fished salmon, trout, bass, perch and whitefish until the St. Lawrence became too polluted by industry. In the spring the Iroquois netted, and in the winter fishing holes were made in the ice. Starting about 1620, the Iroquois started to raise pigs, geese and chickens, which they had acquired from the Dutch.


title: Iroquois

text: On their feet the Iroquois wore moccasins, "true to nature in its adjustment to the foot, beautiful in its materials and finish, and durable as an article of apparel."


title: Iroquois

text: During the 17th century, Iroquois clothing changed rapidly as a result of the introduction of scissors and needles obtained from the Europeans, and the British scholar Michael Johnson has cautioned that European accounts of Iroquois clothing from the latter 17th century may not have entirely reflected traditional pre-contact Iroquois clothing. In the 17th century women normally went topless in the warm months while wearing a buckskin skirt overlapping on the left while in the winter women covered their upper bodies with a cape-like upper garment with an opening for the head. By the 18th century, cloth colored red and blue obtained from Europeans became the standard material for clothing with the men and women wearing blouses and shirts that usually decorated with beadwork and ribbons and were often worn alongside silver brooches.


title: Iroquois

text: By the late 18th century, women were wearing muslin or calico long, loose-fitting overdresses. The tendency of Iroquois women to abandon their traditional topless style of dressing in the warm months reflected European influence. Married women wore their hair in a single braid held in place by a comb made of bone, antler or silver while unmarried wore their hair in several braids. Warriors wore moccasins, leggings and short kilts and on occasion wore robes that were highly decorated with painted designs. Initially, men's clothing was made of buckskin and were decorated with porcupine quill-work and later on was made of broadcloth obtained from Europeans. The bodies and faces of Iroquois men were heavily tattooed with geometric designs and their noses and ears were pieced with rings made up of wampun or silver. On the warpath, the faces and bodies of the warriors were painted half red, half black. The men usually shaved most of their hair with leaving only a tuft of hair in the center, giving the name Mohawk to their hair style. A cap made of either buckskin or cloth tied to wood splints called the "Gus-to-weh" that was decorated with feathers was often worn by men. Buckskin ammunition pouches with straps over the shoulder together with belts or slashes that carried powder horn and tomahawks were usually worn by warriors. Quilled knife cases were worn around the neck. Chiefs wore headdresses made of deer antler. By the 18th century, Iroquois men normally wore shirts and leggings made of broadcloth and buckskin coats. In the 17th and 18th centuries silver armbands and gorgets were popular accessories.


title: Iroquois

text: By the 1900s most Iroquois were wearing the same clothing as their non-Iroquois neighbors. Today most nations only wear their traditional clothing to ceremonies or special events.


title: Iroquois

text: Men wore a cap with a single long feather rotating in a socket called a "gustoweh". Later, feathers in the gustoweh denote the wearer's tribe by their number and positioning. The Mohawk wear three upright feathers, the Oneida two upright and one down. The Onondaga wear one feather pointing upward and another pointing down. The Cayuga have a single feather at a forty-five degree angle. The Seneca wear a single feather pointing up, and the Tuscarora have no distinguishing feathers.


title: Iroquois

text: Writing in 1851 Morgan wrote that women's outfits consisted of a skirt () "usually of blue broadcloth, and elaborately embroidered with bead-work. It requires two yards of cloth, which is worn with the selvedge at the top and bottom; the skirt being secured about the waist and descending nearly to the top of the moccasin." Under the skirt, between the knees and the moccasins, women wore leggings (), called "pantalettes" by Morgan, "of red broadcloth, and ornamented with a border of beadwork around the lower edge ... In ancient times the gise'-hǎ was made of deer-skin and embroidered with porcupine-quill work." An over-dress () of muslin or calico was worn over the skirt, it is "gathered slightly at the waist, and falls part way down the skirt ... In front it is generally buttoned with silver broaches." The blanket () is two or three yards of blue or green broadcloth "it falls from the head or neck in natural folds the width of the cloth, as the selvedges are at the top and bottom, and it is gathered round the person like a shawl."


title: Iroquois

text: The women wore their hair very long and tied together at the back, or "tied at the back of the head and folded into a tress of about a hand's length, like a beaver tail ... they wear around the forehead a strap of wampum shaped like the headband that some was worn in olden times." "The men have a long lock hanging down, some on one side of the head, and some on both sides. On the top of their heads they have a streak of hair from the forehead to the neck, about the breadth of three fingers, and this they shorten until it is about two or three fingers long, and it stands right on end like a cock's comb or hog's bristles; on both sides of this cock's comb they cut all the hair short, except for the aforesaid locks, and they also leave on the bare places here and there small locks, such as aree in sweeping brushes and then they are in fine array." This is the forerunner to what is today called a "Mohawk hairstyle."


title: Iroquois

text: Societies, often called "medicine societies", "medicine lodges", or "curing societies" played an important role in Iroquois social organization. Morgan says that each society "was a brotherhood into which new members were admitted by formal initiation." Originally the membership seems to have been on the basis of moiety, but by 1909 all societies seems to have been open to all men regardless of kinship.


title: Iroquois

text: It is believed that "most of the societies are of ancient origin and that their rituals have been transmitted with little change for many years." "Each society has a legend by which its origin and peculiar rites are explained." As part of his religious revolution, Handsome Lake "sought to destroy the societies and orders that conserved the older religious rites" A council of chiefs proclaimed that all animal and mystery societies should immediately dissolve, but through a defect in the form of the order the societies decided it was not legally binding and "went underground" becoming secret societies. Reviled by the "New Religion" of Handsome Lake, they were also rejected by the Christian Iroquois as holding pagan beliefs. Gradually, however, the societies came more into the open as hostility lessened.


title: Iroquois

text: A number of societies are known, of which the False Face Society is the most familiar. Others were the Little Water Society, the Pygmy Society, the Society of Otters, the Society of Mystic Animals, the Eagle Society, the Bear Society, the Buffalo Society, the Husk Faces, and the Woman's Society—which despite its name had male membership. The Sisters of the Deo-ha-ko was an organization of women.


title: Iroquois

text: During healing ceremonies, a carved "False Face Mask" is worn to represent spirits in a tobacco-burning and prayer ritual. False Face Masks are carved in living trees, then cut free to be painted and decorated. False Faces represent grandfathers of the Iroquois, and are thought to reconnect humans and nature and to frighten illness-causing spirits.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois today have three different medicine societies. The False Face Company conducts rituals to cure sick people by driving away spirits; the Husk Face Society is made up of those who had dreams seen as messages from the spirits and the Secret Medicine Society likewise conducts rituals to cure the sick. There are 12 different types of masks worn by the societies. The types of masks are:


title: Iroquois

text: The "crooked face" masks with the twisted mouths, the masks with the spoon lips and the whistling masks are the "Doctor" masks. The other masks are "Common Face" or "Beggar" masks that are worn by those who help the Doctors.


title: Iroquois

text: The Husk Face Society performs rituals to communicate with the spirits in nature to ensure a good crop, the False Face Society performs rituals to chase away evil spirits, and the Secret Medicine Society performs rituals to cure diseases. The grotesque masks represent the faces of the spirits that the dancers are attempting to please. Those wearing Doctor masks blow hot ashes into the faces of the sick to chase away the evil spirits that are believed to be causing the illness. The masked dancers often carried turtle shell rattles and long staffs.


title: Iroquois

text: Both male and female healers were knowledgeable in the use of herbs to treat illness, and could dress wounds, set broken bones, and perform surgery. Illness was believed to have a spiritual as well as a natural component, so spells, dances, ceremonies were used in addition to more practical treatments. There are three types of practitioners of traditional medicine: The "Indian doctor" or healer, who emphasizes the physical aspect of curing illness, the fortune-teller, who uses spiritual means to determine the cause of the patient's ailments and the appropriate cure, and the witch.


title: Iroquois

text: It was believed that knowledge of healing was given by supernatural creatures in the guise of animals.


title: Iroquois

text: In recent times, traditional medicine has co-existed with western medicine, with traditional practices more prevalent among followers of the (Longhouse Religion). People may resort to traditional practices for certain types of ailments, and to western medicine for other types, or they may use both traditional and western medicine to treat the same ailment as a form of double security.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois have historically followed a matriarchal system. Men and women have traditionally had separate roles but both hold real power in the Nations. No person is entitled to 'own' land, but it is believed that the Creator appointed women as stewards of the land. Traditionally, the Clan Mothers appoint leaders, as they have raised children and are therefore held to a higher regard. By the same token, if a leader does not prove sound, becomes corrupt or does not listen to the people, the Clan Mothers have the power to strip him of his leadership. The chief of a clan can be removed at any time by a council of the women elders of that clan. The chief's sister has historically been responsible for nominating his successor. The clan mothers, the elder women of each clan, are highly respected.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois have traditionally followed a matrilineal system, and hereditary leadership passes through the female line of descent, that is, from a mother to her children. The children of a traditional marriage belong to their mother's clan and gain their social status through hers. Her brothers are important teachers and mentors to the children, especially introducing boys to men's roles and societies. If a couple separates, the woman traditionally keeps the children. It is regarded as incest by the Iroquois to marry within one's matrilineal clan, but considered acceptable to marry someone from the same patrilineal clan.


title: Iroquois

text: Historically women have held the dwellings, horses and farmed land, and a woman's property before marriage has stayed in her possession without being mixed with that of her husband. The work of a woman's hands is hers to do with as she sees fit.


title: Iroquois

text: Historically, at marriage, a young couple lived in the longhouse of the wife's family (matrilocality). A woman choosing to divorce a shiftless or otherwise unsatisfactory husband is able to ask him to leave the dwelling and take his possessions with him.


title: Iroquois

text: Like many cultures, the Iroquois' spiritual beliefs changed over time and varied across tribes. Generally, the Iroquois believed in numerous deities, including the Great Spirit, the Thunderer, and the Three Sisters (the spirits of beans, maize, and squash). The Great Spirit was thought to have created plants, animals, and humans to control "the forces of good in nature", and to guide ordinary people. Orenda was the Iroquoian name for the magical potence found in people and their environment. The Iroquois believed in the "orenda", the spiritual force that flowed through all things, and believed if people were respectful of nature, then the "orenda" would be harnessed to bring about positive results. There were three types of spirits for the Iroquois: 1) Those living on the earth 2) Those living above the earth and 3) the highest level of spirits controlling the universe from high above with the highest of those beings known variously as the Great Spirit, the Great Creator or the Master of Life.


title: Iroquois

text: Sources provide different stories about Iroquois creation beliefs. Brascoupé and Etmanskie focus on the first person to walk the earth, called the Skywoman or Aientsik. Aientsik's daughter Tekawerahkwa gave birth to twins, Tawiskaron, who created vicious animals and river rapids, while Okwiraseh created "all that is pure and beautiful". After a battle where Okwiraseh defeated Tawiskaron, Tawiskaron was confined to "the dark areas of the world", where he governed the night and destructive creatures. Other scholars present the "twins" as the Creator and his brother, Flint. The Creator was responsible for game animals, while Flint created predators and disease. Saraydar (1990) suggests the Iroquois do not see the twins as polar opposites but understood their relationship to be more complex, noting "Perfection is not to be found in gods or humans or the worlds they inhabit."


title: Iroquois

text: Descriptions of Iroquois spiritual history consistently refer to dark times of terror and misery prior to the Iroquois Confederacy, ended by the arrival of the Great Peacemaker. Tradition asserts that the Peacemaker demonstrated his authority as the Creator's messenger by climbing a tall tree above a waterfall, having the people cut down the tree, and reappearing the next morning unharmed. The Peacemaker restored mental health to a few of the most "violent and dangerous men", Ayonhwatha and Thadodaho, who then helped him bear the message of peace to others.


title: Iroquois

text: After the arrival of the Europeans, some Iroquois became Christians, among them the first Native American Saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, a young woman of Mohawk-Algonquin parents. The Seneca sachem Handsome Lake, also known as Ganeodiyo, introduced a new religious system to the Iroquois in the late 18th century, which incorporated Quaker beliefs along with traditional Iroquoian culture. Handsome Lake's teachings include a focus on parenting, appreciation of life, and peace. A key aspect of Handsome Lake's teachings is the principle of equilibrium, wherein each person's talents combined into a functional community. By the 1960s, at least 50% of Iroquois followed this religion.


title: Iroquois

text: Dreams play a significant role in Iroquois spirituality, providing information about a person's desires and prompting individuals to fulfill dreams. To communicate upward, humans can send prayers to spirits by burning tobacco.


title: Iroquois

text: Condolence ceremonies are conducted by the Iroquois for both ordinary and important people, but most notably when a hoyane (sachem) died. Such ceremonies were still held on Iroquois reservations as late as the 1970s. After death, the soul is thought to embark on a journey, undergo a series of ordeals, and arrive in the sky world. This journey is thought to take one year, during which the Iroquois mourn for the dead. After the mourning period, a feast is held to celebrate the soul's arrival in the skyworld.


title: Iroquois

text: "Keepers of the faith" are part-time specialists who conduct religious ceremonies. Both men and women can be appointed as keepers of the faith by tribe elders.


title: Iroquois

text: The Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address is a central prayer in Haudenosaunee tradition recited daily in the beginning of school days as well as social, cultural, and political events. The address gives thanks to the parts of nature necessary to ecosystem sustainability and emphasizes the ideology that all animals within an ecosystem are connected and each plays a vital role in it.


title: Iroquois

text: The phrasing of the address may vary depending on the speaker but is usually composed of 17 main sections and ends with a closing prayer. The 17 main sections are: 1) The people, 2) The Earth Mother, 3) The waters, 4) The fish, 5) plants, 6) food plants,7) medicine herbs, 8) animals, 9) trees, 10) birds, 11) four winds, 12) The Thunderers, 13) The Sun, 14) Grandmother Moon, 15) The stars, 16) The Enlightened Teachers, and 17) The Creator. Within each section, gratitude is given for the gifts that section provides to humanity.


title: Iroquois

text: The address serves as a pledge of gratitude as well as a “scientific inventory of the natural world.” By describing living and non-living elements of the ecosystem and their functions, uses and benefits, the pledge instills early concepts of traditional ecological knowledge within grade school children and onward.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois traditionally celebrate several major festivals throughout the year. These usually combine a spiritual component and ceremony, a feast, a chance to celebrate together, sports, entertainment and dancing. These celebrations have historically been oriented to the seasons and celebrated based on the cycle of nature rather than fixed calendar dates.


title: Iroquois

text: For instance, the Mid-winter festival, ("The supreme belief") ushers in the new year. This festival is traditionally held for one week around the end of January to early February, depending on when the new moon occurs that year.


title: Iroquois

text: Iroquois ceremonies are primarily concerned with farming, healing, and thanksgiving. Key festivals correspond to the agricultural calendar, and include Maple, Planting, Strawberry, Green Maize, Harvest, and Mid-Winter (or New Year's), which is held in early February. The ceremonies were given by the Creator to the Iroquois to balance good with evil. In the 17th century, Europeans described the Iroquois as having 17 festivals, but only 8 are observed today. The most important of the ceremonies were the New Year Festival, the Maple Festival held in late March to celebrate spring, the Sun Shooting Festival which also celebrates spring, the Seed Dance in May to celebrate the planting of the crops, the Strawberry Festival in June to celebrate the ripening of the strawberries, the Thunder Ceremony to bring rain in July, the Green Bean Festival in early August, the Green Corn Festival in late August and the Harvest Festival in October. Of all the festivals, the most important were the Green Corn Festival to celebrate the maturing of the corn and the New Year Festival. During all of the festivals, men and women from the False Face Society, the Medicine Society and the Husk Face Society dance wearing their masks in attempt to humor the spirits that controlled nature. The most important of the occasions for the masked dancers to appear were the New Year Festival, which was felt to be an auspicious occasion to chase the malevolent spirits that were believed to cause disease.


title: Iroquois

text: Iroquois art from the 16th and 17th centuries as found on bowls, pottery and clay pipes show a mixture of animal, geometrical and human imagery. Moose hair was sometimes attached to tumplines or burden straps for decorative effect. Porcupine quillwork was sewn onto bags, clothing and moccasins, usually in geometrical designs. Other designs included the "great turtle" upon North America was said to rest; the circular "skydome" and wavy designs. Beads and clothes often featured semi-circles and waves which meant to represent the "skydome" which consisted of the entire universe together with the supernatural world above it, parallel lines for the earth and curved lines for the "celestial tree". Floral designs were first introduced in the 17th century, reflecting French influence, but did not become truly popular until the 19th century. Starting about 1850 the Iroquois art began to frequently feature floral designs on moccasins, caps, pouches and pincushions, which were purchased by Euro-Americans. The British historian Michael Johnson described the Iroquois artwork meant to be sold to whites in the 19th century as having a strong feel of "Victoriana" to them. Silver was much valued by the Iroquois from the 17th century onward, and starting in the 18th century, the Iroquois became "excellent silversmiths", making silver earrings, gorgets and rings.


title: Iroquois

text: The favorite sport of the Iroquois was "lacrosse" ( in Seneca). This version was played between two teams of six or eight players, made up of members of two sets of clans (Wolf, Bear, Beaver, and Turtle on one side vs. Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk on the other among the Senecas). The goals were two sets of poles roughly apart. The poles were about high and placed about apart. A goal was scored by carrying or throwing a deer-skin ball between the goal posts using netted sticks—touching the ball with hands was prohibited. The game was played to a score of five or seven. The modern version of lacrosse remains popular as of 2015.


title: Iroquois

text: A popular winter game was the "snow-snake game". The "snake" was a hickory pole about long and about in diameter, turned up slightly at the front and weighted with lead. The game was played between two sides of up to six players each, often boys, but occasionally between the men of two clans. The snake, or , was held by placing the index finger against the back end and balancing it on the thumb and other fingers. It was not thrown but slid across the surface of the snow. The side whose snake went the farthest scored one point. Other snakes from the same side which went farther than any other snake of the opposing side also scored a point; the other side scored nothing. This was repeated until one side scored the number of points which had been agreed to for the game, usually seven or ten.


title: Iroquois

text: The "Peach-stone game" () was a gambling game in which the clans bet against each other. Traditionally it was played on the final day of the Green Corn, Harvest, and Mid-winter festivals. The game was played using a wooden bowl about one foot in diameter and six peach-stones (pits) ground to oval shape and burned black on one side. A "bank" of beans, usually 100, was used to keep score and the winner was the side who won them all. Two players sat on a blanket-covered platform raised a few feet off the floor. To play the peach stones were put into the bowl and shaken. Winning combinations were five of either color or six of either color showing.


title: Iroquois

text: Players started with five beans each from the bank. The starting player shook the bowl; if he shook a five the other player paid him one bean, if a six five beans. If he shook either he got to shake again. If he shook anything else the turn passed to his opponent. All his winnings were handed over to a "manager" or "managers" for his side. If a player lost all of his beans another player from his side took his place and took five beans from the bank. Once all beans had been taken from the bank the game continued, but with the draw of beans now coming from the winnings of the player's side, which were kept out of sight so that no one but the managers knew how the game was going. The game was finished when one side had won all the beans.


title: Iroquois

text: The game sometimes took quite a while to play, depending on the starting number of beans, and games lasting more than a day were common.


title: Iroquois

text: The First Nations Lacrosse Association is recognized by World Lacrosse as a sovereign state for international lacrosse competitions. It is the only sport in which the Iroquois field national teams and the only indigenous people's organization sanctioned for international competition by any world sporting governing body.


title: Iroquois

text: Each clan has a group of personal names which may be used to name members. The clan mother is responsible for keeping track of those names not in use, which may then be reused to name infants. When a child becomes an adult he takes a new "adult" name in place of his "baby" name. Some names are reserved for chiefs or faith keepers, and when a person assumes that office he takes the name in a ceremony in which he is considered to "resuscitate" the previous holder. If a chief resigns or is removed he gives up the name and resumes his previous one.


title: Iroquois

text: Although the Iroquois are sometimes mentioned as examples of groups who practiced cannibalism, the evidence is mixed as to whether such a practice could be said to be widespread among the Six Nations, and to whether it was a notable cultural feature. Some anthropologists have found evidence of ritual torture and cannibalism at Iroquois sites, for example, among the Onondaga in the sixteenth century. However, other scholars, most notably anthropologist William Arens in his controversial book, "The Man-Eating Myth", have challenged the evidence, suggesting the human bones found at sites point to funerary practices, asserting that if cannibalism was practiced among the Iroquois, it was not widespread. Modern anthropologists seem to accept the probability that cannibalism did exist among the Iroquois, with Thomas Abler describing the evidence from the Jesuit Relations and archaeology as making a "case for cannibalism in early historic times ... so strong that it cannot be doubted." Scholars are also urged to remember the context for a practice that now shocks the modern Western society. Sanday reminds us that the ferocity of the Iroquois' rituals "cannot be separated from the severity of conditions ... where death from hunger, disease, and warfare became a way of life".


title: Iroquois

text: The missionaries Johannes Megapolensis, François-Joseph Bressani, and the fur trader Pierre-Esprit Radisson present first-hand accounts of cannibalism among the Mohawk. A common theme is ritualistic roasting and eating the heart of a captive who has been tortured and killed. "To eat your enemy is to perform an extreme form of physical dominance."


title: Iroquois

text: Haudenosaunee peoples participated in "mourning wars" to obtain captives. Leland Donald suggests in "Slavery in Indigenous North America" that captives and slaves were interchangeable roles. There have been archaeological studies to support that Haudenosaunee peoples did in fact have a hierarchal system that included slaves. Note that the term slave in Haudenosaunee culture is identified by spiritual and revengeful purposes, not to be mistaken for the term slave in the African Slave Trade. However, once African slavery was introduced into North America by European settlers, some Iroquois, such as Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, did own African slaves.


title: Iroquois

text: To obtain captives, Haudenosaunee peoples fought "mourning wars". After the wars were over, Haudenosaunee warriors journeyed back to their villages with the enemies taken captive. During these journeys, captives were routinely tortured or even killed by their captors. Leland Donald writes that captives "were killed if they could not keep up, tried to escape, or members of the attacking party could not restrain their emotions". Daniel Richter suggests that keeping the pace may not have been an easy task, writing that "warriors might slowly lead prisoners by a rope between the lines of men, women and children [captives]". If a prisoner survived all the obstacles on the march back to a Haudenosaunee village, the torture did not end. Captives were mutilated and beaten for several days upon arrival by Haudenosaunee warriors. After the initiation process, they were either killed, or welcomed into the nation where they would be replacing a deceased member of that community.


title: Iroquois

text: The Iroquois have absorbed many other individuals from various peoples into their tribes as a result of adopting war captives and giving refuge to displaced peoples. When such adoptees become fully assimilated, they are considered full members of their adoptive families, clans, and tribes. Historically, such adoptees have married into the tribes, and some have become chiefs or respected elders.


title: Iroquois

text: Slaves brought onto Haudenosaunee territory were mainly adopted into families or kin groups that had lost a person. Although if that person had been vital for the community they “were usually replaced by other kin-group members” and “captives were...adopted to fill lesser places”. During adoption rituals, slaves were to reject their former life and be renamed as part of their “genuine assimilation”. The key goal of Haudenosaunee slavery practices was to have slaves assimilate to Haudenosaunee culture to rebuild population after one or many deaths. Children and Indigenous peoples of neighbouring villages to the Haudenosaunee are said to have been good slaves because of their better ability to assimilate. That being said, the role of a slave was not a limited position and whenever slaves were available for capture they were taken, no matter their age, race, gender etc.


title: Iroquois

text: Once adopted, slaves in Haudenosaunee communities had potential to move up in society. Since slaves were replacing dead nation members, they took on the role of that former member if they could prove that they could live up to it. Their rights within the aforementioned framework were still limited though, meaning slaves performed chores or labor for their adoptive families. Also, there are a few cases where slaves were never adopted into families and their only role was to perform tasks in the village. These types of slaves may have been used solely for exchange. Slave trade was common in Haudenosaunee culture and it aimed to increase Haudenosaunee population.


title: Iroquois

text: Slaves were often tortured once captured by the Haudenosaunee. Torture methods consisted of, most notably, finger mutilation, among other things. Slaves endured torture not only on their journey back to Haudenosaunee nations, but also during initiation rituals and sometimes throughout their enslavement. Finger mutilation was common as a sort of marking of a slave. In "Northern Iroquoian Slavery", Starna and Watkins suggest that sometimes torture was so brutal that captives died before being adopted. Initial torture upon entry into the Haudenosaunee culture also involved binding, bodily mutilation with weapons, and starvation, and for female slaves: sexual assault. Starvation may have lasted longer depending on the circumstance. Louis Hennepin was captured by Haudenosaunee peoples in the 17th century and recalled being starved during his adoption as one of "Aquipaguetin"’s replacement sons. Indigenous slaves were also starved by their captors, such as Hennepin was. The brutality of Haudenosaunee slavery was not without its purposes; torture was used to demonstrate a power dynamic between the slave and the "master" to constantly remind the slave that they were inferior.


title: Iroquois

text: Language played another role in Haudenosaunee slavery practices. Slaves were often referred to as "domestic animals" or "dogs" which were equivalent to the word to "slave". This use of language suggests that slaves were dehumanized, that slaves were "domesticated" and another that slaves were to be eaten as Haudenosaunee peoples ate dogs. Jaques Bruyas wrote a dictionary of the Mohawk language where the word “” is defined as "Animal domestique, serviteur, esclave" the English translation being "domestic animal, butler, slave". There are also more language accounts of slaves being compared to animals (mostly dogs) in Oneida and Onondaga language. This language serves as a proof not only that slavery did exist, but also that slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy.


title: Iroquois

text: Inevitably, Haudenosaunee slavery practices changed after European contact. With the arrival of European-introduced infectious diseases came the increase in Haudenosaunee peoples taking captives as their population kept decreasing. During the 17th century, Haudenosaunee peoples banded together to stand against settlers. By the end of the century, Haudenosaunee populations were made up mostly of captives from other nations. Among the Indigenous groups targeted by the Haudenosaunee were the Wyandot who were captured in such large numbers that they lost their independence for a large period of time. “Mourning wars” became essential to rebuilding their numbers, while at the same time Haudenosaunee warriors began launching raids on European colonial settlements. Similarly to Indigenous slaves, European slaves were tortured by the Haudenosaunee using finger mutilation and sometimes cannibalism. European captives did not make good slaves because they resisted even more than Indigenous captives and did not understand rituals such as renaming and forgetting their past. For this reason most European captives were either used as ransom or murdered upon arrival to Haudenosaunee territory. Many Europeans who were not captured became trading partners with the Haudenosaunee. Indigenous slaves were now being traded amongst European settlers and some slaves even ended up in Quebec households. Eventually, European contact led to adoptees outnumbering the Haudenosaunee in their own communities. The difficulty of controlling these slaves in large numbers ended Haudenosaunee slavery practices.


title: Iroquois

text: The "Grand Council of the Six Nations" is an assembly of 56 "Hoyenah" (chiefs) or sachems. Sachemships are hereditary within a clan. When a position becomes vacant a candidate is selected from among the members of the clan and "raised up" by a council of all sachems. The new sachem gives up his old name and is thereafter addressed by the title.


title: Iroquois

text: When anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan studied the Grand Council in the 19th century, he interpreted it as a central government. This interpretation became influential, but Richter argues that while the Grand Council served an important ceremonial role, it was not a government in the sense that Morgan thought. According to this view, Iroquois political and diplomatic decisions are made on the local level and are based on assessments of community consensus. A central government that develops policy and implements it for the people at large is not the Iroquois model of government.


title: Iroquois

text: Unanimity in public acts was essential to the Council. In 1855, Minnie Myrtle observed that no Iroquois treaty was binding unless it was ratified by 75% of the male voters and 75% of the mothers of the nation. In revising Council laws and customs, a consent of two-thirds of the mothers was required. The need for a double supermajority to make major changes made the Confederacy a "de facto" consensus government.


title: Iroquois

text: The women traditionally held real power, particularly the power to veto treaties or declarations of war. The members of the Grand Council of Sachems were chosen by the mothers of each clan. If any leader failed to comply with the wishes of the women of his tribe and the Great Law of Peace, the mother of his clan could demote him, a process called "knocking off the horns". The deer antlers, an emblem of leadership, were removed from his headgear, thus returning him to private life.


title: Iroquois

text: Councils of the mothers of each tribe were held separately from the men's councils. The women used men as runners to send word of their decisions to concerned parties, or a woman could appear at the men's council as an orator, presenting the view of the women. Women often took the initiative in suggesting legislation.


title: Iroquois

text: The term "wampum" refers to beads made from purple and white mollusk shells on threads of elm bark. Species used to make wampum include the highly prized quahog clam ("Mercenaria mercenaria") which produces the famous purple colored beads. For white colored beads the shells from the channeled whelk ("Busycotypus canaliculatus"), knobbed whelk ("Busycon carica"), lightning whelk ("Sinistrofulgur perversum"), and snow whelk ("Sinistrofulgur laeostomum") are used.


title: Iroquois

text: Wampum was primarily used to make wampum belts by the Iroquois, which Iroquois tradition claims was invented by Hiawatha to console chiefs and clan mothers who lost family members to war. Wampum belts played a major role in the Condolence Ceremony and in the raising of new chiefs. Wampum belts are used to signify the importance of a specific message being presented. Treaty making often involved wampum belts to signify the importance of the treaty. A famous example is "The Two Row Wampum" or "Guesuenta", meaning "it brightens our minds", which was originally presented to the Dutch settlers, and then French, representing a canoe and a sailboat moving side-by-side along the river of life, not interfering with the other's course. All non-Native settlers are, by associations, members of this treaty. Both chiefs and clan mothers wear wampum belts as symbol of their offices.


title: Iroquois

text: "The Covenant Belt" was presented to the Iroquois at the signing of the Canandaigua Treaty. The belt has a design of thirteen human figures representing symbolically the Thirteen Colonies of the United States. The house and the two figures directly next to the house represent the Iroquois people and the symbolic longhouse. The figure on the left of the house represent the Seneca Nation who are the symbolic guardians of the western door (western edge of Iroquois territory) and the figure to the right of the house represents the Mohawk who are the keepers of the eastern door (eastern edge of Iroquois territory).


title: Iroquois

text: The Hiawatha belt is the national belt of the Iroquois and is represented in the Iroquois Confederacy flag. The belt has four squares and a tree in the middle which represents the original Five Nations of the Iroquois. Going from left to right the squares represent the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida and Mohawk. The Onondaga are represented by an eastern white pine which represents the Tree of Peace. Traditionally the Onondaga are the peace keepers of the confederacy. The placement of the nations on the belt represents the actually geographical distribution of the six nations over their shared territory, with the Seneca in the far west and the Mohawk in the far east of Iroquois territory.


title: Iroquois

text: The Haudenosaunee flag created in the 1980s is based on the Hiawatha Belt ... created from purple and white wampum beads centuries ago to symbolize the union forged when the former enemies buried their weapons under the Great Tree of Peace." It represents the original five nations that were united by the Peacemaker and Hiawatha. The tree symbol in the center represents an Eastern White Pine, the needles of which are clustered in groups of five.


title: Iroquois

text: Historians in the 20th century have suggested the Iroquois system of government influenced the development of the United States's government, although the extent and nature of this influence has been disputed. Bruce Johansen proposes that the Iroquois had a representative form of government.


title: Iroquois

text: Consensus has not been reached on how influential the Iroquois model was to the development of United States' documents such as the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. The influence thesis has been discussed by historians such as Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen. In 1988, the United States Congress passed a resolution to recognize the influence of the Iroquois League upon the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In 1987, Cornell University held a conference on the link between the Iroquois' government and the U.S. Constitution.


title: Iroquois

text: Scholars such as Jack N. Rakove challenge this thesis. Stanford University historian Rakove writes, "The voluminous records we have for the constitutional debates of the late 1780s contain no significant references to the Iroquois" and notes that there are ample European precedents to the democratic institutions of the United States. In reply, journalist Charles C. Mann wrote that while he agreed that the specific form of government created for the United States was "not at all like" that of the Iroquois, available evidence does support "a cultural argument – that the well-known democratic spirit had much to do with colonial contact with the Indians of the eastern seaboard, including and especially the Iroquois," and (quoting Rakove) "that prolonged contact between the aboriginal and colonizing populations were important elements [sic] in the shaping of colonial society and culture." Historian Francis Jennings noted that supporters of the thesis frequently cite the following statement by Benjamin Franklin, made in a letter from Benjamin Franklin to James Parker in 1751: "It would be a very strange thing, if six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union ... and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies," but he disagrees that it establishes influence. Rather, he thinks Franklin was promoting union against the "ignorant savages" and called the idea "absurd".


title: Iroquois

text: The anthropologist Dean Snow has stated that although Franklin's Albany Plan may have drawn inspiration from the Iroquois League, there is little evidence that either the Plan or the Constitution drew substantially from that source. He argues that "... such claims muddle and denigrate the subtle and remarkable features of Iroquois government. The two forms of government are distinctive and individually remarkable in conception."


title: Iroquois

text: Similarly, the anthropologist Elizabeth Tooker has concluded that "there is virtually no evidence that the framers borrowed from the Iroquois." She argues that the idea is a myth resulting from a claim made by linguist and ethnographer J.N.B. Hewitt that was exaggerated and misunderstood after his death in 1937. According to Tooker, the original Iroquois constitution did not involve representative democracy and elections; deceased chiefs' successors were selected by the most senior woman within the hereditary lineage in consultation with other women in the tribe.


title: Iroquois

text: The Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy declared war on Germany in 1917 during World War I and again in 1942 in World War II.


title: Iroquois

text: The Haudenosaunee government has issued passports since 1923, when Haudenosaunee authorities issued a passport to Cayuga statesman Deskaheh (Levi General) to travel to the League of Nations headquarters.


title: Iroquois

text: More recently, passports have been issued since 1997. Before 2001 these were accepted by various nations for international travel, but with increased security concerns across the world since the September 11 attacks, this is no longer the case.


title: Iroquois

text: In 2010, the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team was allowed by the U.S. to travel on their own passports to the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship in England only after the personal intervention of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, the British government refused to recognize the Iroquois passports and denied the team members entry into the United Kingdom.


title: Iroquois

text: The Onondaga Nation spent $1.5 million on a subsequent upgrade to the passports designed to meet 21st-century international security requirements.


title: Iroquois

text: The first five nations listed below formed the original Five Nations (listed from east to west, as they were oriented to the sunrise); the Tuscarora became the sixth nation in 1722.


title: Iroquois

text: Within each of the six nations, people belonged to a number of matrilineal clans. The number of clans varies by nation, currently from three to eight, with a total of nine different clan names.


title: Iroquois

text: According to the "Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life", the Iroquois Confederacy had 10,000 people at its peak, but by the 18th century, their population had decreased to 4,000, recovering only to 7,000 by 1910.


title: Iroquois

text: According to data compiled in 1995 by Doug George-Kanentiio, a total of 51,255 Six Nations people lived in Canada. These included 15,631 Mohawk in Quebec; 14,051 Mohawk in Ontario; 3,970 Oneida in Ontario; and a total of 17,603 of the Six Nations at the Grand River Reserve in Ontario. More recently according to the Six Nations Elected Council, some 12,436 on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada, as of December 2014 and 26,034 total in Canada.


title: Iroquois

text: In 1995, tribal registrations among the Six Nations in the United States numbered about 30,000 in total, with the majority of 17,566 in New York. The remainder were more than 10,000 Oneida in Wisconsin, and about 2200 Seneca-Cayuga in Oklahoma. As the nations individually determine their rules for membership or citizenship, they report the official numbers. (Some traditional members of the nations refuse to be counted.) There is no federally recognized Iroquois nation or tribe, nor are any Native Americans enrolled as Iroquois.


title: Iroquois

text: In the 2000 United States census, 80,822 people identified as having Iroquois ethnicity (which is similar to identifying as European), with 45,217 claiming only Iroquois ancestry. There are the several reservations in New York: Cayuga Nation of New York(~450,) St. Regis Mohawk Reservation (3248 in 2014), Onondaga Reservation (473 in 2014), Oneida Indian Nation (~ 1000), Seneca Nation of New York (~8000) and the Tuscarora Reservation (1100 in 2010). Some lived at the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin on the reservation there counting some 21,000 according to the 2000 census. Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma has more than 5,000 people in 2011. In the 2010 Census, 81,002 persons identified as Iroquois, and 40,570 as Iroquois only across the United States. Including the Iroquois in Canada, the total population numbered over 125,000 as of 2009.


title: Iroquois

text: Several communities exist to this day of people descended from the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy.


title: Joan Baez

text: Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer, but her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music. She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, "Joan Baez", "Joan Baez, Vol. 2" and "Joan Baez in Concert", all achieved gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, and many others. She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. On her later albums she has found success interpreting the work of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant, and Joe Henry.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez's acclaimed songs include "Diamonds & Rust" and covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". She is also known for "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Forever Young", "Here's to You", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". Baez performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights, and the environment. Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Her grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla, Mexico, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to—and advocated for—a Spanish-speaking congregation. Albert first considered becoming a minister but instead turned to the study of mathematics and physics and received his PhD degree at Stanford University in 1950. Albert was later credited as a co-inventor of the x-ray microscope. Joan's cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist.


title: Joan Baez

text: Her mother, Joan Chandos Baez ( Bridge), referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan", was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an English Anglican priest who claimed to be descended from the Dukes of Chandos. Born on April 11, 1913, she died on April 20, 2013.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez had two sisters, Pauline Thalia Baez Bryan (1938–2016), also known as Pauline Marden, and Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña (1945–2001), who was better known as Mimi Fariña. They both were political activists and musicians.


title: Joan Baez

text: The Baez family converted to Quakerism during Joan's early childhood, and she has continued to identify with the tradition, particularly in her commitment to pacifism and social issues. While growing up, Baez was subjected to racial slurs and discrimination because of her Mexican heritage. Consequently, she became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career. She declined to play in any white student venues that were segregated, which meant that when she toured the Southern states, she would play only at black colleges.


title: Joan Baez

text: Owing to her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S. as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq. Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and nonviolence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series "American Masters", is the true core of her life, "looming larger than music".


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez spent much of her formative youth living in the San Francisco Bay area, where she graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958. Here, Baez dated Michael New, a fellow student described as "Trinidad English" whom she met at her college in the late 1950s, and occasionally introduced as her husband. Baez committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California for an air raid drill.


title: Joan Baez

text: Presently, Baez is a resident of Woodside, California, where she lived with her mother until the latter's death in 2013. She has said that her house has a backyard tree house in which she spends time meditating, writing, and "being close to nature". She remained close to her younger sister Mimi up until Mimi's death in 2001, and mentioned in the 2009 "American Masters" documentary that she had grown closer to her older sister Pauline in later years.


title: Joan Baez

text: The opening line of Baez's memoir "And a Voice to Sing With" is "I was born gifted" (referring to her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit). A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction. When Baez was 13, her aunt took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California, for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California, Jewish congregation. A few years later, in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1958, after Baez graduated from high school, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT and moved his family from the San Francisco area to Boston, Massachusetts. At that time, it was in the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began performing near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs and attended Boston University for about six weeks. In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl, the surname of her longtime mentor Ira Sandperl, or Maria from the song "They Call the Wind Maria". She later opted against doing so, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, her boyfriend, and a few friends, resulting in a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show.


title: Joan Baez

text: A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets and a family friend designed the album cover, which was released on Veritas Records that same year as "Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square". Baez later met Bob Gibson and Odetta, who were at the time two of the most prominent vocalists singing folk and gospel music. Baez cites Odetta as a primary influence along with Marian Anderson and Pete Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform with him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year, although Columbia Records tried to sign her first. Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label. Baez's nickname at the time, "Madonna", has been attributed to her clear voice, long hair, and natural beauty, and to her role as "Earth Mother".


title: Joan Baez

text: Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, "Joan Baez" (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues, and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. It featured many popular Child Ballads of the day and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York City's Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve", a song sung entirely in Spanish, which she would re-record in 1974 for inclusion on her Spanish-language album "Gracias a la Vida".


title: Joan Baez

text: She made her New York concert debut on November 5, 1960, at the 92nd Street Y and on November 11, 1961, Baez played her first major New York concert at a sold-out performance at Town Hall. Robert Shelton, folk critic of the "New York Times", praised the concert, saying, "That superb soprano voice, as lustrous and rich as old gold, flowed purely all evening with a wondrous ease. Her singing (unwound) like a spool of satin." Years later when Baez thought back to that concert, she laughed, saying: "I remember in 1961 my manager sending me this newspaper (clipping) in the mail (which) read, 'Joan Baez Town Hall Concert, SRO.' I thought SRO meant 'sold right out.' I was so innocent of it all."


title: Joan Baez

text: Her second release, "Joan Baez, Vol. 2" (1961), went "gold", as did "Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1" (1962) and "Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2" (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, "Joan Baez, Vol. 2" contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, "Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1" and its second counterpart were unique in that unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs rather than established favorites. It was "Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2" that featured Baez's first-ever Dylan cover.


title: Joan Baez

text: From the early to mid 1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt. On November 23, 1962, Baez appeared on the cover of "Time Magazine"—a rare honor then for a musician.


title: Joan Baez

text: Though primarily an album artist, several of Baez's singles have charted, the first being her 1965 cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune", which became a mid-level chart hit in the U.S. and a top-ten single in the United Kingdom.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez added other instruments to her recordings on "Farewell, Angelina" (1965), which features several Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare.


title: Joan Baez

text: Deciding to experiment with different styles, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical music composer, who provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: "Noël" (1966), "Joan" (1967), and "" (1968). "Noël" was a Christmas album of traditional material, while "Baptism" was akin to a concept album, featuring Baez reading and singing poems written by celebrated poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca, and Walt Whitman. "Joan" featured interpretations of work by then-contemporary composers, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Tim Hardin, Paul Simon, and Donovan.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where a marathon recording session resulted in two albums. The first, "Any Day Now" (1968), consists exclusively of Dylan covers. The other, the country-music-infused "David's Album" (1969), was recorded for then-husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. Harris, a country music fan, turned Baez toward more complex country-rock influences beginning with "David's Album".


title: Joan Baez

text: Later in 1968, Baez published her first memoir, "Daybreak" (by Dial Press). In August 1969, her appearance at Woodstock in upstate New York raised her international musical and political profile, particularly after the successful release of the documentary film "Woodstock" (1970).


title: Joan Baez

text: Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David", both songs appearing on her 1970 "(I Live) One Day at a Time" album; "Sweet Sir Galahad" was written about her sister Mimi's second marriage, while "A Song For David" was a tribute to Harris. "One Day at a Time", like "David's Album", featured a decidedly country sound.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on American popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace. Pete Seeger, Odetta, and decades-long friend Harry Belafonte were her early social justice advocate influences. Baez came to be considered the "most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s". Her appeal extended far beyond the folk music audience. Of her fourteen Vanguard albums, thirteen made the top 100 of Billboard's mainstream pop chart, eleven made the top forty, eight made the top twenty, and four made the top ten.


title: Joan Baez

text: After eleven years with Vanguard, Baez decided in 1971 to cut ties with the label that had released her albums since 1960. She delivered Vanguard one last success with the gold-selling album "Blessed Are..." (1971), which included a top-ten hit in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", her cover of The Band's signature song. With "Come from the Shadows" (1972), Baez switched to A&M Records, where she remained for four years and six albums.


title: Joan Baez

text: Joan Baez wrote "The Story of Bangladesh" in 1971. This song was based on the Pakistani army crackdown on unarmed sleeping Bengali students at Dhaka University on March 25, 1971, which ignited the prolonged nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War. The song was later entitled "The Song of Bangladesh" and released in a 1972 album from Chandos Music.


title: Joan Baez

text: During this period in late 1971, she reunited with composer Peter Schickele to record two tracks, "Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running" for the science-fiction film "Silent Running". The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition to this, another LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188) and was later reissued by Varèse Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998, a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" was released.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez's first album for A&M, "Come from the Shadows", was recorded in Nashville, and included a number of more personal compositions, including "Love Song to a Stranger" and "Myths", as well as work by Mimi Farina, John Lennon, and Anna Marly.


title: Joan Baez

text: "Where Are You Now, My Son?" (1973) featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of the B-side of the album. Half spoken word poem and half tape-recorded sounds, the song documented Baez's visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in December 1972 during which she and her traveling companions survived the 11-day-long Christmas Bombings campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong. "(See Vietnam War in Civil rights section below.)"


title: Joan Baez

text: "Gracias a la Vida" (1974) (the title song written and first performed by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra) followed and was a success in both the U.S. and Latin America. It included the song "Cucurrucucú paloma". Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for "Diamonds & Rust" (1975), the album became the highest selling of Baez's career and included a second top-ten single in the form of the title track.


title: Joan Baez

text: After "Gulf Winds" (1976), an album of entirely self-composed songs and "From Every Stage" (1976), a live album that had Baez performing songs "from every stage" of her career, Baez again parted ways with a record label when she moved to CBS Records for "Blowin' Away" (1977) and "Honest Lullaby" (1979).


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music". In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind", a song she first performed twenty years earlier.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 "A Conspiracy of Hope" tour and a guest spot on their subsequent "Human Rights Now!" tour.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez found herself without an American label for the release of "Live Europe 83" (1984), which was released in Europe and Canada but not released commercially in the U.S. She did not have an American release until the album "Recently" (1987) on Gold Castle Records.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1987, Baez's second autobiography, called "And a Voice to Sing With", was published and became a "New York Times" bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle East to visit with and sing songs of peace for Israel and the Palestinians.


title: Joan Baez

text: In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future Czechoslovak president Václav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing "a cappella" for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited her as a great inspiration and influence in that country's Velvet Revolution, the revolution in which the Soviet-dominated Communist government there was overthrown.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez recorded two more albums with Gold Castle: "Speaking of Dreams", (1989) and "Brothers in Arms" (1991). She then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording "Play Me Backwards" (1992) for Virgin shortly before the company was purchased by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live album, "Ring Them Bells" (1995), and a studio album, "Gone from Danger" (1997).


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of former-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.


title: Joan Baez

text: In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (a former U.S. federal prison) in San Francisco, California, in a benefit for her sister Mimi's Bread and Roses organization. She later returned for another concert in 1996.


title: Joan Baez

text: Beginning in 2001, Baez has had several successful long-term engagements as a lead character at San Francisco's Teatro ZinZanni. In August 2001, Vanguard began re-releasing Baez's first 13 albums, which she recorded for the label between 1960 and 1971. The reissues, being released through Vanguard's Original Master Series, feature digitally restored sound, unreleased bonus songs, new and original artwork, and new liner-note essays written by Arthur Levy. Likewise, her six A&M albums were reissued in 2003.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 2003, Baez was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers. Her album, "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar" (2003), features songs by composers half her age, while a November 2004 performance at New York City's Bowery Ballroom was recorded for a live release, "Bowery Songs" (2005).


title: Joan Baez

text: On October 1, 2005, she performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Then, on January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson Sr., Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace". On June 6, 2006, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at his San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down". In September 2006, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to a Starbucks's exclusive XM Artist Confidential album. In the new version, she changed the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of "her" days", as a tribute to her late sister Mimi, about whom Baez wrote the song in 1969. Later on, October 8, 2006, she appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Her performance was kept secret from former Czech Republic President Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel was a great admirer of both Baez and her work. During Baez's next visit to Prague, in April 2007, the two met again when she performed in front of a sold-out house at Prague's Lucerna Hall, a building erected by Havel's grandfather. On December 2, 2006, she made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. Her participation included versions of "Let Us Break Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace". She also joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night".In February 2007, Proper Records reissued her live album "Ring Them Bells" (1995), which featured duets with artists ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Fariña to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The reissue features a 16-page booklet and six unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions, including "Love Song to a Stranger", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Geordie", "Gracias a la Vida", "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones in the Road", bringing the total track listing to 21 songs (on two discs). In addition, Baez recorded a duet of "Jim Crow" with John Mellencamp which appears on his album "Freedom's Road" (2007). Also in February 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The day after receiving the honor, she appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony and introduced a performance by the Dixie Chicks.


title: Joan Baez

text: September 9, 2008, saw the release of the studio album "Day After Tomorrow", produced by Steve Earle and featuring three of his songs. The album was Baez's first charting record in nearly three decades. On June 29, 2008, Baez performed on the acoustic stage at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, UK, playing out the final set to a packed audience. On July 6, 2008, she played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. During the concert's finale, she spontaneously danced on stage with a band of African percussionists.


title: Joan Baez

text: On August 2, 2009, Baez played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, which also marked the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough performance at the first festival. On October 14, 2009, PBS aired an episode of its documentary series "American Masters", entitled "Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound". It was produced and directed by Mary Wharton. A DVD and CD of the soundtrack were released at the same time.


title: Joan Baez

text: On April 4, 2017, Baez released on her Facebook page her first new song in 27 years, "Nasty Man", a protest song against US President Donald Trump, which became a viral hit. On April 7, 2017, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On March 2, 2018, she released a new studio album entitled "Whistle Down the Wind", which charted in many countries and was nominated for a Grammy, and undertook her "Fare Thee Well Tour" to support the album. On April 30, 2019, Baez told "Rolling Stone" that she had been approached to perform at the Woodstock 50 festival, but had turned the offer down for "it was too complicated to even get involved in" and her "instincts" were telling her "no".


title: Joan Baez

text: On July 28, 2019, following dates across Europe, Joan Baez performed her final concert at Madrid's Teatro Real.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 2021, it was announced that she would receive a 2020 Kennedy Center Honor in a ceremony that has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change in a speech that brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two became friends, with Baez participating in many of the Civil Rights Movement demonstrations that King helped organize.


title: Joan Baez

text: The early years of Baez's career saw the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of "We Shall Overcome", the civil rights anthem written by Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song. Baez again sang "We Shall Overcome" in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.


title: Joan Baez

text: Her recording of the song "Birmingham Sunday" (1964), written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of "4 Little Girls" (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1965, Baez announced that she would be opening a school to teach nonviolent protest. She also participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights.


title: Joan Baez

text: In November 2017 as part of a release of documents from the National Archives that were supposed to relate to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a 1968 FBI report alleged that Baez was involved in the 1960s in an intimate affair with Dr. Martin Luther King, an accusation described by history professor Clayborne Carson, the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute and a Stanford University, as "part of a smear campaign" against King.


title: Joan Baez

text: Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War. In 1964, she publicly endorsed resisting taxes by withholding sixty percent of her 1963 income taxes. In 1964, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence (along with her mentor Sandperl) and encouraged draft resistance at her concerts. The Institute for the Study of Nonviolence would later branch into the Resource Center for Nonviolence.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 1966, Baez's autobiography, "Daybreak", was released. It is the most detailed report of her life through 1966 and outlined her anti-war position, dedicating the book to men facing imprisonment for resisting the draft.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California, and spent over a month in jail. "(See also David Harris section below.)"


title: Joan Baez

text: There were many others, culminating in Phil Ochs's The War Is Over celebration in New York City in May 1975.


title: Joan Baez

text: During the Christmas season 1972, Baez joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, and to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days.


title: Joan Baez

text: She was critical of Vietnam's government and organized the May 30, 1979, publication of a full-page advertisement (published in four major U.S. newspapers) in which the government was described as having created a nightmare. Her one-time anti-war ally, Jane Fonda, refused to join in Baez's criticism of the Vietnamese government. leading to what was publicly described as a feud between the two.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 2016, Baez advocated for the Innocence Project and Innocence Network. At each concert, Baez informs the audience about the organizations' efforts to exhonerate the wrongfully convicted and reform the system to prevent such incidents.


title: Joan Baez

text: In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated. She subsequently lent her prestige to the campaign opposing the execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning openly gay people from teaching in public schools in California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was openly gay.


title: Joan Baez

text: In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March.


title: Joan Baez

text: Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from "Blowin' Away" (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.


title: Joan Baez

text: On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of "We Shall Overcome" with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on YouTube and on her personal website. She dedicated the song "Joe Hill" to the people of Iran during her concert at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine on July 31, 2009.


title: Joan Baez

text: On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's "Arthur M. Sohcot Award" in person on her -high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.


title: Joan Baez

text: In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


title: Joan Baez

text: In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle to join them in London, England, at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.


title: Joan Baez

text: In the summer of 2004, Baez joined Michael Moore's "Slacker uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming presidential election.


title: Joan Baez

text: In August 2005, Baez appeared at an anti-war protest in Crawford, Texas, which had been started by Cindy Sheehan.


title: Joan Baez

text: On May 23, 2006, Baez once again joined Julia Butterfly Hill, this time in a "tree sit" in a giant tree on the site of the South Central Farm in a poor neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California. Baez and Hill were hoisted into the tree, where they remained overnight. The women, in addition to many other activists and celebrities, were protesting the imminent eviction of the community farmers and demolition of the site, which is the largest urban farm in the state. Because many of the South Central Farmers are immigrants from Central America, Baez sang several songs from her 1974 Spanish-language album, "Gracias a la Vida", including the title track and "No Nos Moverán" ("We Shall Not Be Moved").


title: Joan Baez

text: Throughout most of her career, Baez remained apprehensive about involving herself in party politics. However, on February 3, 2008, Baez wrote a letter to the editor at the "San Francisco Chronicle" endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She noted: "Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics. ... At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama." Playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King Jr.


title: Joan Baez

text: Although a highly political figure throughout most of her career, Baez had never publicly endorsed a major political party candidate prior to Obama. However, after Obama was elected, she expressed that she would likely never do so again, saying in a 2013 interview in "The Huffington Post" that "In some ways I'm disappointed, but in some ways it was silly to expect more. If he had taken his brilliance, his eloquence, his toughness and not run for office he could have led a movement. Once he got in the Oval Office he couldn't do anything.".


title: Joan Baez

text: She performed at the White House on February 10, 2010, as part of an evening celebrating the music associated with the civil rights movement, performing "We Shall Overcome".


title: Joan Baez

text: On November 11, 2011, Baez played as part of a musical concert for the protestors at Occupy Wall Street. Her three-song set included "Joe Hill", a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Salt of the Earth" and her own composition "Where's My Apple Pie?".


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez has been a strong defender of the Catalan independence movement. On July 21, 2019, she described jailed Catalan independence leaders as political prisoners. Five days later, she visited former President of the Parliament of Catalonia Carme Forcadell in prison.


title: Joan Baez

text: On March 18, 2011, Baez was honored by Amnesty International at its 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. Baez was presented with the first award in recognition of her human rights work with Amnesty International and beyond, and the inspiration she has given activists around the world. The award is to be presented to an artist – music, film, sculpture, paint or other medium – who has helped advance human rights.


title: Joan Baez

text: To reward her decades of dedicated activism, Baez was honoured with the Spirit of Americana/Free Speech award at the 2008 Americana Music Honors & Awards.


title: Joan Baez

text: In 2015 Amnesty International jointly awarded Baez and Ai Wei Wei the Ambassador of Conscience award.


title: Joan Baez

text: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected her to fellowship in 2020, praising her contributions both to music and to activism.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez first met Dylan in April 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly", but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody" and remarked that she would like to record it.


title: Joan Baez

text: By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified gold, and she invited Dylan on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God on Our Side", a performance that set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing on stage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of her fans.


title: Joan Baez

text: Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were very few: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", "We Shall Overcome", and an assortment of Negro spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.


title: Joan Baez

text: By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK, their relationship had slowly begun to fizzle out. The couple are captured in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film "Dont Look Back" (1967).


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975–76. She sang four songs with Dylan on the live album of the tour, "", released in 2002. Baez appeared with Dylan in the one-hour TV special "Hard Rain", filmed at Fort Collins, Colorado, in May 1976. Baez also starred as 'The Woman in White' in the film "Renaldo and Clara" (1978), directed by Bob Dylan and filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue. They performed together at the Peace Sunday anti-nuke concert in 1982. Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 along with Carlos Santana.


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez discussed her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese's documentary film "No Direction Home" (2005), and in the PBS "American Masters" biography of Baez, "How Sweet the Sound" (2009).


title: Joan Baez

text: Baez wrote and composed at least three songs that were specifically about Dylan. In "To Bobby", written in 1972, she urged Dylan to return to political activism, while in "Diamonds & Rust", the title track from her 1975 album, she revisited her feelings for him in warm, yet direct terms. "Winds of the Old Days", also on the "Diamonds & Rust" album, is a bittersweet reminiscence about her time with "Bobby".


title: Joan Baez

text: The references to Baez in Dylan's songs are far less clear. Baez herself has suggested that she was the subject of both "Visions of Johanna" and "Mama, You Been on My Mind", although the latter was more likely about his relationship with Suze Rotolo. Baez implied when speaking about the connection to "Diamonds and Rust" that "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" is, at least in part, a metaphor for Dylan's view of his relationship with her. As for "Like A Rolling Stone", "Visions of Johanna", "She Belongs to Me", and other songs alleged to have been written about Baez, neither Dylan nor biographers such as Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray have had anything definitive to say either way regarding the subject of these songs.


title: Joan Baez

text: In October 1967, Baez, her mother and nearly 70 other women were arrested at the Oakland, California, Armed Forces Induction Center for blocking its doorways to prevent entrance by young inductees, and in support of young men who refused military induction. They were incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail, and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly.


title: Joan Baez

text: The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his draft-resistance commune in the hills above Stanford, California. The pair had known each other for three months when they decided to wed. After confirming the news to Associated Press, media outlets began dedicating ample press to the impending nuptials (at one point, "Time" magazine referred to the event as the "Wedding of the Century").


title: Joan Baez

text: After finding a pacifist preacher and a church outfitted with peace signs and writing a blend of Episcopalian and Quaker wedding vows, Baez and Harris married in New York City on March 26, 1968. Her friend Judy Collins sang at the ceremony. After the wedding, Baez and Harris moved into a home in the Los Altos Hills on of land called Struggle Mountain, part of a commune, where they tended gardens and were strict vegetarians.


title: Joan Baez

text: A short time later, Harris refused induction into the armed forces and was indicted. On July 16, 1969, Harris was taken by federal marshals to prison. Baez was visibly pregnant in public in the months that followed, most notably at the Woodstock Festival, where she performed a handful of songs in the early morning. The documentary film "Carry It On" was produced during this period and was released in 1970. The film's behind-the-scenes looks at Harris's views and arrest and Baez on her subsequent performance tour was positively reviewed in "Time" magazine and "The New York Times".


title: Joan Baez

text: Among the songs Baez wrote about this period of her life are "A Song for David", "Myths", "Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)" and "Fifteen Months" (the amount of time Harris was imprisoned).


title: Joan Baez

text: Their son Gabriel was born on December 2, 1969. Harris was released from Texas prison after 15 months, but they separated three months after his release and the couple divorced amicably in 1973. They shared custody of Gabriel, who lived primarily with Baez. Explaining the split, Baez wrote in her autobiography: "I am made to live alone." Baez and Harris remained on friendly terms throughout the years; they reunited on-camera for the 2009 "American Masters" documentary for the USA's PBS. Their son Gabriel is a drummer and occasionally tours with his mother. He has a daughter Jasmine who also sang with Joan Baez at Kidztock in 2010.