Canassatego appears in British historical documents only during the last eight years of his life, and so little is known of his early life.His earliest documented appearance is at a treaty conference in Philadelphia in 1742,[2] where he was a spokesman for the Onondaga people, one of the six nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) League. According to most modern scholars, Canassatego did not appear to be one of the fourteen Onondaga hereditary sachems who sat on the Iroquois Grand Council. But Johansen disagrees, saying that Canassatego held the League title of Tadadaho.
This map shows Pennsylvania's land purchases from Native Americans. Canassatego had a role in the 1736 and 1749 sales, although the Iroquois League nations had a questionable claim to those lands.
In the 1730s, a faction of Iroquois leaders opened a diplomatic relationship with the British Province of Pennsylvania, facilitated by Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania's interpreter and agent. Pennsylvania agreed to recognize the Iroquois as the owner of all Indian lands in Pennsylvania; the Iroquois, in turn, agreed to sell lands only to Pennsylvania representatives.Canassatego probably attended a 1736 treaty where some Iroquois chiefs sold land along the Susquehanna River to Pennsylvania, although the territory had traditionally been occupied by the Lenape people.
Canassatego served as the speaker for the Onondaga at another conference in 1742, where the Iroquois chiefs collected the final payment for the 1736 land sale. At this meeting, Canassatego managed to convince Governor Thomas Penn to pay more than the original purchase price. Penn, for his part, urged Canassatego to remove the Delaware Indians from what was known as the Walking Purchase of 1737, which was quite controversial. Canassatego complied, berating the Delawares as "women" who had no right to sell land, and ordering them to leave. "You are women; take the Advice of a Wise Man and remove immediately", he told the Delaware. The Iroquois denigration of the Delaware as "women" has been the subject of much scholarly writing.
