Kanatahséton

"I know you wonder why it is we do not wander from these woods. Why it is we do not join the other Kanien'kehá:ka in war. Tonight, you will have your answers. Our village sits on sacred ground. And it is our duty—above all other things—to keep it hidden from the world."

―Oiá:ner to Ratonhnhaké:ton, 1769.

Kanatahséton

Kanatahséton was a Kanien'kehá:ka village located in the Mohawk Valley during the 18th century. It was built near the area of the Grand Temple's entrance in order to keep it safe from interlopers; as a result, the village's inhabitants generally kept away from Iroquois affairs, prioritizing their duty of protecting the Temple above all else. The village was also notable for being the birthplace of the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton, otherwise known as Connor.

Kanatahséton consisted of six separate longhouses within its walls, as well as a spacious open area with log-seats and a fire. This clearing was used for skinning animals and pottery. The walls themselves had three different openings, two on the right (from the inside) and another at the front. The walls surrounded the entire village up to the water at the end. Near this lake were several canoes, presumably used for fishing, and three small farm-like areas.

History

Early history

Kanen'tó:kon: "It is beautiful."

Ratonhnhaké:ton: "But for how long? Come spring two dozen men will have moved here. By fall there will be two dozen more. They will hunt in these forests. They will settle on this land. In less than a year there will be a hundred of them. In time they will swallow us whole."

—Kanen'tó:kon and Ratonhnhaké:ton, 1769.

An aerial view of Kanatahséton

Founded by the beginning of the 18th century, the village was occupied by the Kanien'kehá:ka people, who were a part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Built near the ruins of the Grand Temple's entrance, the people of Kanatahséton viewed it as their foremost duty to protect its secrets from outsiders and were therefore less inclined to join other Kanien'kehá:ka in external affairs, lest their activities draw undue attention onto themselves. The village also held a Piece of Eden known as the Crystal Ball, which the people used to speak to Juno in the Nexus.

Destruction and resistance

Oiá:ner: "There is talk amongst the other nations of moving west... Away from the war... Perhaps it is time we considered such a thing."

Ratonhnhaké:ton: "No. We stay. This is our home."

Oiá:ner: "But for how much longer? And at what cost?"

—Ratonhnhaké:ton to Oiá:ner during one of his visits to the village.

On 2 November 1760, Kanatahséton was razed to the ground, just as the Seven Years' War was coming to a close. The attack was preceded by a group of Colonial Templars assaulting a four-year-old Kanien'kehá:ka boy named Ratonhnhaké:ton as he was playing hide-and-seek with his friends. They spewed racial slurs at him and his people, and their leader, Charles Lee, threatened him for directions to his village, where they intended to deliver an ultimatum for information on the Grand Temple's location. Shortly after, Kanatahséton was set ablaze, and many Kanien'kehá:ka perished in the conflagration, among them Ratonhnhaké:ton's mother Kaniehtí:io. Ratonhnhaké:ton, however, survived and would grow up viewing Charles Lee as an arch-nemesis.

Kanien'kehá:ka villagers gathered in front of a longhouse

Although the village was rebuilt after this attack, encroachment on Kanien'kehá:ka territory by British colonialists continued steadily throughout the 18th century. Determined to resist the eventual expulsion of his people, Ratonhnhaké:ton met with the clan's Oiá:ner for counsel in 1769 and was duplicitously advised by Juno through a Crystal Ball that seeking out the Assassins was the path to saving his people. Ratonhnhaké:ton placed all his resolve into this journey and, at the age of 13, set out alone from his village to offer himself as a pupil to Achilles Davenport.

Under Achilles' tutelage, Ratonhnhaké:ton aligned himself with the Patriots in the American Revolution, mistakenly hoping that their cause of liberty would extend to indigenous peoples as well. During this time, he would return on occasion to the village to consult with Oiá:ner, but a communication barrier in terms of political alliances nonetheless developed between him and his people.

American Revolutionary War

Juno: "Ah, long have we waited for you to return. You have done as we asked. You have succeeded."

Ratonhnhaké:ton: "No. I have failed! My people are gone! Chased out by those who I thought would protect them!"

—Juno and Ratonhnhaké:ton, 1783.

Because Ratonhnhaké:ton's father, Haytham Kenway, was the Grand Master of the Colonial Templars, a confrontation between the two was inevitable. During a brief partnership with his son, he managed to implicate Commander-in-Chief George Washington of the Continental Army in the attack just as Washington had issued the orders for a genocidal campaign against the Kanien'kehá:ka for their alliance with the British. Among the targets was Kanatahséton, and Washington admitted to having conducted a similar operation during the Seven Years' War. With no time to argue the details, Ratonhnhaké:ton cut ties with both Washington and Haytham and rushed to defend Kanatahséton.

Kanatahséton after its abandonment

Unknown to him, Charles Lee had falsely presented himself as a Loyalist to the people of Kanatahséton to mislead them that Ratonhnhaké:ton had sided with the Patriots' attack. When Ratonhnhaké:ton found his childhood best friend Kanen'tó:kon outside the village, Kanen'tó:kon furiously accused him of betraying his people. His pleas of a misunderstanding falling on deaf ears, Ratonhnhaké:ton was forced to kill Kanen'tó:kon in self-defense.

Although Ratonhnhaké:ton did succeed in saving his village from the ravages of war, the newly established United States of America did not respect native sovereignty, notwithstanding Ratonhnhaké:ton's significant contributions to their cause. Within a year of the war's end, the U.S. government granted the land on which Kanatahséton sat to an American citizen as though it were their property to sell. With white settler colonialism continuing unabated, the people of Kanatahséton were forced to abandon their home and migrate westward for safety.

Alternate timeline

Ratonhnhaké:ton: "The village!"

Oiá:ner: "King George burned it. He was after your mother – your stubborn mother."

—Ratonhnhaké:ton and Oiá:ner following Kanatahséton's destruction.

Oiá:ner blaming Kaniehtí:io for bringing destruction to Kanatahséton

Towards the end of the American Revolutionary War, George Washington came into the possession of an Apple of Eden at the Siege of Yorktown. One night, while meeting with Ratonhnhaké:ton, their simultaneous contact with the Apple projected a vision into their minds of an alternate timeline where Kaniehtí:io was still alive, Ratonhnhaké:ton had never joined the Assassins, and Washington had become an absolute monarch using the Apple.

In this vision, Kaniehtí:io attempted to steal the Apple from King Washington, bringing his wrath to bear on the Frontier. After defending Concord and Lexington, Kaniehtí:io and her son returned to the village, having learned that Oiá:ner intended to brew the Tea of the Red Willow tree, which granted superhuman abilities to whoever drank it at the cost of their sanity. Although Kaniehtí:io argued they did not need it, Oiá:ner insisted that Washington's forces would destroy them with overwhelming numbers.

Kaniehtí:io remained obstinate in denying Ratonhnhaké:ton the tea, believing that as "the son of a man of violence", its side-effects would be even more pronounced for him. Instead, she gave him Haytham's Hidden Blade just before Washington and his troops arrived with his generals Israel Putnam and Benedict Arnold. Before Ratonhnhaké:ton was able to engage them, Washington effortlessly killed Kaniehtí:io with the power of the Apple. Ratonhnhaké:ton fought fiercely, but he too eventually fell to the Apple.

Ratonhnhaké:ton defending Kanatahséton

Intending to execute him, Washington shot Ratonhnhaké:ton twice, thrust a bayonet into his chest, and destroyed Kanatahséton. The surviving Kanien'kehá:ka fled south to a cave, taking Ratonhnhaké:ton with them to nurse him back to health. With his mother dead and their village gone, Ratonhnhaké:ton acquiesced to Oiá:ner's desire for him to drink the Red Willow tea to undergo the Sky World journey and acquire superhuman abilities.

By the end of the vision, Ratonhnhaké:ton had drunk the tea three times, gaining the ability to turn invisible while commanding a pack of spirit wolves, augment his strength to that of a bear, and transform into an eagle to fly. With these powers, he overthrew King Washington in a final battle, an accomplishment that finally ended the vision, whereupon a terrified Washington gave Ratonhnhaké:ton his Apple in order to dispose of it.

Behind the scenes

Kanatahséton is the home village of Ratonhnhaké:ton, better known as Connor, the main protagonist of Assassin's Creed III (2012), set during the American Revolution (1775–1783).

The village destruction in the memory "Hide and Seek", dated 1760 near the end of the Seven Years' War (1754–1763), is a major plot point in Connor's character arc, as it results in the death of his mother Kaniehtí:io and is preceded by his first hostile encounter with the story's antagonists, the Templars. The player, like Connor, are led to believe that the Templars are the culprits until the memory "Broken Trust" near the climax of the story, when Haytham Kenway, as both leader of the Templars and Connor's father, forces George Washington to reveal that he was not only ordering genocide against the Iroquois but was also the one responsible for razing Kanien'kehá:ka villages in the earlier conflict.

While later published material, such as Assassin's Creed: Initiates and Assassin's Creed: Rebellion, state that Washington burned the village, the game as the primary source leaves the perpetrators ambiguous because Washington's guilt is only established by Haytham as an unreliable narrator while Connor's eyewitness evidence heavily supports the Templars being responsible. In addition, there are several contradictions in the chronology. Of note are the following points:

• Haytham discounts that Templars were responsible because he had commanded his subordinates to relinquish their pursuit of the Grand Temple. His own testimony does not disprove the possibility that these subordinates defied his order or even destroyed a village without him knowing. "Hide and Seek" can be taken as an eyewitness account by Connor that Charles Lee, William Johnson, Thomas Hickey, and Benjamin Church had threatened his life for the village's whereabouts and had intended to threaten the village in turn for information about the Grand Temple—moments before it is set on fire.
• The confession that Haytham extracts from Washington is indirect. He leads Washington into admitting to having burned indigenous villages in the Seven Years' War, resulting in the assumption by players and the characters alike that Kanatahséton must have been one of them—but this is never confirmed. Washington could only have been referring to the Forbes Expedition of 1758, when Connor would have only been two-years-old and two years before the setting of "Hide and Seek".
• Historically, George Washington resigned from military service in the Seven Years' War at the end of 1758, a fact that is acknowledged in Assassin's Creed III itself in his database entry. Moreover, while the Seven Years' War officially ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris, virtually all hostilities in the Americas had ceased by 1760, with the exception of the conquest of New France.

Assassin's Creed: Initiates appears to have attempted to address these chronological conflicts with the database entry "Smoke Leads To...". There, Washington is stated to have ordered the razing of Kanatahséton on 2 November 1760, apparently from his own estate at Mount Vernon and apart from the Forbes Expedition. It describes his motive as "eradicating the native threat. . .as he was concerned that local tribes would attack his men" despite the Iroquois historically being allied with the British during the war.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed III (first appearance)
  • The Tyranny of King Washington: The Infamy
• Assassin's Creed: Initiates (mentioned in Database entry only)
• Assassin's Creed: Forsaken (indirect mention only)
• Assassin's Creed: Rebellion (mentioned in Database entry only)
• Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR (mentioned only)