The Two Row Wampum Treaty, also known as Guswenta or Kaswentha and as the Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613 or the Tawagonshi Treaty, is a mutual treaty agreement, made in 1613 between representatives of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) and representatives of the Dutch government in what is now upstate New York. The agreement is considered by the Haudenosaunee to be the basis of all of their subsequent treaties with European and North American governments, and the citizens of those nations, including the Covenant Chain treaty with the British in 1677 and the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States in 1794. The treaty is spiritually and culturally revered and widely accepted among the Indigenous peoples in the relevant territories, and documented by the wampum belts and oral tradition. However, in more recent years the authenticity of the later, written versions of the agreement have been a source of debate, with some scholarly sources maintaining that a treaty between the Dutch and the Mohawk nations did not take place or took place at a later date. In August 2013, the Journal of Early American History published a special issue dedicated to exploring the Two Row Tradition. Background At the start of the 17th century, the Iroquois Mohawk and the Mahican territory abutted in what is now known as the mid-Hudson Valley. Soon after Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of what is now known as the Hudson River and its estuary, traders from the United Provinces of the Netherlands set up factorijs (trading posts) to engage in the fur trade, exploiting for extractive purposes the trade networks that had existed for millennia. The Dutch traded with the indigenous populations to supply fur pelts particularly from beaver, which were abundant in the region. By 1614, the New Netherland Company was established and Fort Nassau was built, setting the stage for the development of the colony of New Netherland. Kaswentha According to Jon Parmenter: Kaswentha may best be understood as a Haudenosaunee term embodying the ongoing negotiation of their relationship to European colonizers and their descendants; the underlying concept of kaswentha emphasizes the distinct identity of the two peoples and a mutual engagement to coexist in peace without interference in the affairs of the other. The Two Row Belt, as it is commonly known, depicts the kaswentha relationship in visual form via a long beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel