Kanatahséton

"We are caught between the need to act—and the knowledge that doing so endangers us."

―Oiá:ner to Ratonhnhaké:ton, 1769.

Kanatahséton

Kanatahséton was a Kanien'kehá:ka village that was 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, meaning the inhabitants generally kept away from Iroquois affairs. The village was the birthplace of the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton.

It 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. These gates surrounded the entire village up to the water at the end. Near this lake were several canoes, presumably used for fishing purposes, and three small farm-like areas.

History

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.

Conflicts with colonialists

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 intelligence on the Precursor civilization. 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, 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 Oiá:ner (i.e. his clan mother) for counsel in 1769 and was duplicitously advised by the Isu 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.

Because Ratonhnhaké:ton's father, Haytham Kenway, was the Grand Master Templar of the Colonial Rite, a confrontation between the two was inevitable. Yet as late as 1778, Haytham had not known about the torching of Kanatahséton in 1760 nor the fate of his former lover, Kaniehtí:io, having instructed his subordinates to cease the search for the Grand Temple. In 1779, 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.

Unbeknownst 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-defence. 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 his 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 give and that the Kanien'kehá:ka nation did not already inhabit it. With white settler colonialism continuing unabated, the people of Kanatahséton were forced to abandon their home and migrate westward for safety.

Alternate timeline

Oiá:ner blaming Kaniehtí:io

At one point during the American Revolutionary War, George Washington came into the possession of an Apple of Eden. 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 is still alive by the end of the revolution, Ratonhnhaké:ton never joins the Assassins, and Washington becomes an absolute monarch known as the Mad King after recovering an Apple of Eden from Yorktown.

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, she and her son returned to the village having learned Oiá:ner intended to brew the Tea of the Red Willow tree, which grants superhuman abilities to whoever drink it at the cost of their sanity. Although Kaniehtí:io argued they do not need it, Oiá:ner insisted that Washington's forces would destroy them with overwhelming numbers.

Ratonhnhaké:ton defending Kanatahséton

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. Intending to execute him, Mad King fired two pistols at him, 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 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 drank 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 an epic fight, an accomplishment that finally ended the vision, a vision that so unnerved Washington that he handed it over to Ratonhnhaké:ton to dispose of in the ocean.

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).

Its destruction in the memory "Hide and Seek", dated 1760 near the close 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 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 was set ablaze.
• 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 would 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. 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 Kanen'tó:kon on 2 November 1760, apparently from his own estate at Mount Vernon and apart from the Forbes Expedition.

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)