Copyright © 2000 by David G. Swatzler
In the winter of 1798-99 Henry Simmons, a young Quaker missionary, moved into chief Cornplanter's village in northwestern Pennsylvania and started a school for the children of the Allegany Seneca Indians. He was part of a three-man mission sponsored by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) to introduce plow agriculture and animal husbandry among the Allegany Senecas and to begin the process of "civilizing" them by teaching their children to read and write. The other missionaries lived on a model or demonstration farm ten miles from the village. But Simmons moved into the village and actually lived there for upwards of a year, teaching school and keeping a journal.
During that year, Simmons threaded his way through a number of delicate situations, cultural and religious in nature, some of which were of his own making and all of which had the potential to undermine and even derail the whole Quaker mission to the Allegany Senecas. Additionally, he was present when an orgy of drunkenness and brawling brought the Allegany Senecas to the collective decision that the entire community must swear off alcohol altogether and establish the avoidance of liquor as a community standard. Simmons served as a catalyst for taking this decision, which had already been in the making among the Indians themselves for some time. Also, he witnessed the birth of what has since become known as the Longhouse Religion, which is based on the religious and social preaching of the Seneca prophet, Handsome Lake. Simmons interviewed Handsome Lake shortly after the prophet's second vision. And Simmons recorded all of these events in his 1799 journal.
But there is another story that emerges from between the lines of the Simmons Journal—a backstage drama of rising resentment against Simmons's intrusive presence, of increasing factionalism over the extent to which the Indians should live like "white" people, of nagging uncertainty about where and how the Allegany Senecas will live in the future, of disquieting and malignant fears of witchcraft, and of the unremitting cultural imperialism of the government and the Friends. The origin of this shadowy and elusive story can be traced to conflicting cultural values. Two differing agendas take shape. One is based on European-American culture, which the Friends and the government are trying to thrust on the Allegany Senecas. The other agenda, Indian-directed, is tentative and fragile at first. But, Handsome Lake's visions infuse it with moral strength and transform it into a robust prescription for cultural revitalization, which the Allegany Senecas embrace with enthusiasm.
A Friend brings this behind-the-scenes story to center stage, offering a microcosm of the Seneca struggle for cultural survival—within a scope and time scale that lay readers can readily take in. Additionally, A Friend plays off of the eight-month Simmons Journal to paint a picture of the Allegany Senecas as they were in 1799. This picture reveals the real lives of real people: their family lives and livelihoods, their faith and dreams, their hopes and fears. It includes descriptions of their religious festivals, of their dances and games, of their social structure and the role of women, and of their hunting, fishing, and farming techniques. It also shows their struggle with alcohol. This picture is drawn from long-standing authoritative sources and from the most recent scholarly research. Color and texture, however, are provided by quotes and excerpts from contemporaneous journals and letters that supplement the Simmons Journal. The 30-year-old Simmons is strongest when it comes to chronicling his negotiations with chief Cornplanter and the other headmen. He is weakest when it comes to noting the manners, customs and mores of the Seneca people. Fortunately, there are other journals written by keen observers of Seneca culture, including some written by other Quakers, that have been tapped to remedy this deficiency.
A few chapters contain little or no material from the Simmons Journal. One deals exclusively with the Quakers, to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the Quaker milieu and motivation. Others cover major aspects of Seneca life, such as the seasonal round of subsistence activities and religious observances or a sampling of Iroquois games. Or they deal with some of the larger issues raised by the journal, such as the process by which the Senecas lost the bulk of their lands, the Indians' struggle to cope with the impact of alcohol on their society and culture, the differences between Quaker and Indian agendas as regards the mission, and the gestating conflict over cultural values. These chapters go beyond the journal in scope and time, but, without them, readers would be left with no sense of how themes brought to light in the journal finally played out, and they would not be able to appreciate the diverse and complex ramifications of the issues and events encapsulated by the journal. For similar reasons, A Friend concludes with an epilogue that summarizes the subsequent history of the protagonists.
Though quoted at length in previously published historical works, the Simmons 1799 Journal has never been published in its entirety. Given Simmons's writing style, which is simultaneously terse and convoluted, this is understandable. The unedited version of the journal requires more effort to unscramble than most people are willing to expend. But the journal has been carefully edited to make it a straightforward read for modern readers. It isn't so much that Simmons has been re-written as it is that transitions and connectives have been added to bridge the gaps and smooth the bumps in his chaotic and lurching style.
Within the text of A Friend, all quotations of the Simmons 1799 Journal are taken from the edited version. Because the edited version is just that--an edited version--it is not cluttered with the insertion of corrections and clarifications in [brackets] nor peppered with [sic]s. The unedited version, presented in an appendix, is as close to a faithful original as could be managed in transcribing hand-written manuscript to printed text. It retains all of Simmons's errant grammar, erratic capitalization, and eccentric spelling. He was a most idiosyncratic writer! In the appendix, both versions are presented side-by-side, in two-column format. Readers can see for themselves the differences between the two.
It would be a mistake to think of and promote A Friend as nothing more than a book of regional historical interest. Its wider—and more timely—appeal lies in its case study of the Indian self-direction and cultural autonomy that asserted itself in 1799, even in the immediate wake of seemingly irretrievable disaster and in the face of government policy and missionary activity aimed at destroying Seneca culture.
During the preceding twenty years, the Senecas had been neutralized militarily, reduced to the status of a "dependent nation," dispossessed of all but a fraction of their ancestral lands, and confined to a reservation. They were among the very first American Indians to endure the process of being forced—ultimately at the barrel of a gun—to recognize the political sovereignty of the United States and to accept the reservation system. For more than two hundred years, using both war and diplomacy, they had resisted European-American encroachments on their right to self-determination. That resistance continued, taking on new forms, after armed resistance was no longer possible. By 1799 Seneca resistance had become a struggle for cultural autonomy. The shooting war had stopped, but the culture war was heating up to unprecedented intensity.
Today, many Americans see this nation's Indian wars for what they were—the suppression of armed resistance put up by native peoples who were gradually but inexorably being pushed off their own lands and out of their own homes. But fewer Americans realize that the Indian political and economic assertiveness seen today is a direct descendant of the native cultural resistance that continued after armed resistance had ceased. And fewer still are aware of the juggernaut unleashed against Seneca culture at the close of the 18th century—by both government and missionaries. That cultural juggernaut presaged the whole course of US government policy toward, and missionary activity among, militarily subjugated Indian tribes for the next century and a half. And very few Americans know how successful Seneca cultural resistance has been—especially considering the odds stacked against the Senecas in 1799.
A Friend shows how government policy—even the ostensibly enlightened policy of Henry Knox, Timothy Pickering, and George Washington—was deliberately calculated to replace traditional Seneca cultural values with European-American ones. A Friend also shows how missionaries conspired in the government's policy by acting as agents of cultural imperialism. Additionally, in fairness to the Quakers, A Friend points out that when the Indians balked, Friends backed off rather rather than jeopardize the relationship. In fact, capable Indian leaders such as Cornplanter and Handsome Lake were able to use the Quaker presence to advance Indian interests—as determined by Indians.
In many respects, the Senecas and their leaders—Cornplanter, Handsome Lake, and Red Jacket—showed the way in the American Indian struggle for cultural self-determination. As early as 1799, the Senecas were forced to confront the question of what it really means to be an Indian in a society dominated by European-American culture. Their struggle to answer this question anticipated the struggle of today's American Indians to reclaim their cultural heritage. The Seneca answer was to balance economic and technical innovation with the revitalization of traditional cultural values. In striking this balance, the Senecas of the late 18th and early 19th centuries blazed the trail followed by other American Indians to this day. A Friend recounts one of the earliest stories of successful American Indian cultural resistance following loss of political sovereignty and consignment to the reservation system.
Copyright © 2000 by David G. Swatzler
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