Did you read about the recent dispute about Britain refusing to admit athletes from the Nationals into the UK to play in the world lacrosse championship? (NY Times)

The Nationals represent Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederation, and travel on Haudenosaunee passports, which Britain refused to recognize, saying it didn’t recognize them as a country, that land being divided between the US and Canada, while the nationalistic Nationals refuse to travel under those passports, especially with the historical mistreatment of Native Americans by those governments.

Well, this seems like a normal enough snafu, you can’t expect other countries to go along with the US and Canada’s fiction that these tribes are separate nations. We have treaties with them, after all, and other countries don’t. But then it occured to me, Canada has treaties with the Iroquois, but Canada hasn’t been independent from the UK for all that long, surely the treaties must predate Canadian independence and so it was Britain treating with Haudenosaunee as if it was indeed a state — and lo, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was between Britain and Haudenosaunee, a few years before even the American Revolution, and I doubt it’s the only treaty between them.

Interesting wrinkle, or just a bit of trivia?