OHONSIOWANNE (La Grande Terre, “Great World,” Tohonsiowanne, Ouhensiouan, Ohoengewaene), Onondaga sachem, chief of the Onondaga old men and warriors, fl. 1699–1704.

In January 1699, Ohonsiowanne and the Oneida Odatsighta went to Montreal to try to persuade Governor Callière to end the war of the French-allied, western Indians against the Iroquois. They returned in March 1699 with belts from Callière stating that only a direct exchange of prisoners would end the hostilities. That summer the Onondagas heard of an intended attack on the Senecas, and Ohonsiowanne was part of a war party that went to assist them. A Seneca pro-French faction then persuaded him to go again to Callière, but the governor demanded that a group more representative of the Five Nations be sent. In July 1700, Ohonsiowanne and Aradgi with four Senecas, including Aouenano and Tonatakout, appeared in Montreal again to ask for peace and to request that a general exchange of prisoners be made.

Ohonsiowanne was sent to Quebec in October 1703 by Teganissorens to receive Governor Rigaud do Vaudreuil’s messages on the possibility of continuing the peace between New York and Canada despite the war in Europe. Ohonsiowanne was described by Vaudreuil as being “as zealous a partizan of the French as Teganissorence is of the English.” In September 1704 Ohonsiowanne (having been in Albany in May) relayed a message from Peter Schuyler to Vaudreuil in Montreal. The governor used this opportunity to enlist Ohonsiowanne as Father François Vaillant do Gueslis’ escort to the Seneca country. After 1704 nothing more is heard of Ohonsiowanne.

D. H. Corkran

[Claude-Charles Le Roy de Bacqueville do La Potherie], Voyage de l’Amérique (4v., Amsterdam, 1723), IV, 117–30. Livingston Indian records (Leder) 194, 198. NYCD (O’Callaghan and Fernow), IV, 491, 558, 564, 572, 658, 694; IX, 742–45.