Copyright © 2000 by David G. Swatzler
Seneca religious prophet and social reformer, whose 16-year ministry began with a series of visions in 1799, when he was 64 years old. He lived on the Allegany Reservation but traveled periodically to other Seneca reservations to preach. He died on one of these missions in 1815, at Onondaga. He and chief Cornplanter were maternal half-brothers.
Handsome Lake preached a mix of moral and social teachings that equipped the Senecas for coping with the difficult transition to life on the reservation and for resisting the relentless onslaught of European-American culture. He so inspired his followers that a new religion grew up, based on his preaching and teaching. And unlike many other native religious revitalization movements, the Longhouse Religion survives to this day as a non-Christian alternative for Iroquois believers.
The story of Handsome Lake is both an integral part of the Seneca struggle for cultural survival and a metaphor for that struggle. By reclaiming his own life and by reaffirming Indian values, the formerly dissolute Handsome Lake became a symbol of Indian-directed response to the need for economic and social change. In particular, his reaffirmation of Indian values validated the Senecas' determination to maintain their cultural autonomy.
At the core of the new covenant proclaimed by Handsome Lake was the revelation that the Creator still loved his Indian children and wanted them to remain Indians. Despite the tragic history of the Indians following the European advent, God still loved the Indians and wanted them to flourish. He did not want them to abandon their native religion and adopt Christianity, which was the religion he had created for his "white" children. He did not want them to throw out their native cultural values and replace them with European-American ones. He would show the Indians how to modify some ways of their own and how to adapt some ways of the "whites," so they could prosper and still live as Indians.
Chief Cornplanter did something for his people that very few other American Indian leaders were able to do. He secured for them a land base within their ancestral tribal territory—east of the Mississippi, no less—that was recognized in a formal treaty with the United States in 1794. The Seneca Nation of Indians still owns some of that land in southwestern New York State, where many generations of Seneca people have lived ever since.
During the American revolution he had become chief warrior of the Seneca nation, though he was but 25 years old and had opposed Iroquois entry into the war. Together with Joseph Brant, he gave the Americans much grief. But in the end, he was forced to accept the punitive terms dictated by the victorious Americans at the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784. Thereafter, he pursued a policy of peace and cooperation with the United States, while trying to right the wrongs of the 1784 treaty through diplomacy and negotiation. He was a pragmatist and favored the adoption of European-American technology, including plow agriculture and animal husbandry. He also promoted Indian participation in the surrounding economy through traditional activities, such as hunting and the fur trade, and through non-traditional activities, such as the lumber business and river transportation. He sought out the Quakers for technical assistance and welcomed their presence among his people as a buffer against scheming land speculators.
Quaker missionary who moved into Cornplanter's village in November 1798 to teach school. Early in 1799, the 30-year old Simmons began to keep a journal of his interactions with the Allegany Senecas, which he kept up until his departure in the autumn of 1799. He was part of a three-man mission sponsored by the Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to "civilize" the Indians. The other missionaries, Halliday Jackson and Joel Swayne, operated a model or demonstration farm some 10 miles up the Allegheny River from Cornplanter's village. Simmons had helped them establish the farm during the summer and autumn of 1798.
During the year that he lived in the village, 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.
After returning from the mission to the Philadelphia region, Simmons married Rachel Preston, who later became a recognized Quaker minister. Simmons died in 1807, at age 39, six months before his fourth child was born.
As Britain's Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department, Johnson played a key role in negotiating the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, which adjusted the boundary line between Indians and colonists, and by which the Oneida and Tuscarora homelands were restored to the Indian side of the line. The line drawn in 1768 ran along the Ohio River far to the southwest, all the way to the mouth of the Cherokee (present-day Tennessee) River. This opened the lands in present-day West Virginia and Kentucky to settlement and had the effect, for a while, of channeling the tide of European-American westward migration to the south, bypassing the Iroquois homelands and the Ohio country.
Pro-British Mohawk chief who played a crucial role in persuading the Iroquois to abandon their initially neutral stance during the American revolution. Brilliant tacticians at guerrilla warfare, he and Cornplanter, chief warrior of the Seneca nation, led war parties on a series of raids that broke up the frontiers and devastated agricultural hinterlands throughout central New York state and northeastern Pennsylvania. After the war, he led his Mohawks and other Indian followers to Canada, where the British crown awarded them a reservation along the Grand River in Ontario.
Speaker of the Seneca nation. A gifted orator and skilled diplomatic negotiator, Red Jacket was also a prominent nativist leader at the Buffalo Creek Reservation (near present-day Buffalo, NY). An occasional political adversary of Cornplanter, Red Jacket also denounced Handsome Lake as a fraud.
Son of Cornplanter. During his late teens and early twenties, Henry had received some schooling in Philadelphia and in Woodbury, New Jersey. His academic career, however, proved less than stellar. Nevertheless, when the Quaker missionaries first arrived at Cornplanter's village in 1798, Henry was the only person on hand who could speak both Seneca and English. He served as an interpreter for years, first for the Quakers and later for Red Jacket, for whom he also served as an amanuensis. Henry became one of the most acculturated Allegany Senecas. He served as a major in the Indian auxiliaries, fighting on the American side during the War of 1812.
As Secretary of War from 1785-1794, he was responsible for prosecuting the war against the western Indian confederates for control of the Old Northwest Territory. As early as 1787, he had come to prefer a negotiated settlement to continued warfare with the Indians. He was prepared to drop the "conquest theory" and pay the Indians for their lands. Indian successes on the battlefield, however, encouraged the western confederates to continue fighting until they were defeated at Fallen Timbers in 1794.
Served as Postmaster General from 1791-1795, during which time he doubled as commissioner of Indian affairs under Knox. Pickering learned Iroquois diplomatic protocol from Red Jacket, and served as sole plenipotentiary for the United States during the treaty negotiations at Canandaigua in 1794. By that treaty, the United States recognized the Senecas' rights to the soil over the lands they still possessed, and returned to the Seneca nation over a million acres that had been annexed at the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784. Pickering succeeded Knox as Secretary of War in 1795, which post he held briefly, until becoming Secretary of State (1795-1800).
In 1779, during the American revolution, he commanded a 5000-man army that defeated a much smaller force of Iroquois warriors and Tory rangers, near present-day Elmira, NY. His troops went on to lay waste to the homelands of the Cayugas and Senecas. Sullivan had taken so long to get into action that the Iroquois warriors had ceased waiting for him and had scattered in dozens of war parties over a front of hundreds of miles. When Sullivan's blow finally fell, the Iroquois country was virtually defenseless. His army systematically burned some 40 towns and villages, including the crops surrounding them and the provisions stored within. Over 160,000 bushels of corn were destroyed. The Senecas felt the economic consequences of this blow for decades.
In 1779, with a force of 1600 men, he descended the Susquehanna River from Otsego Lake to Tioga Point, burning Indian villages along the way. He linked up with General Sullivan's army and helped defeat a force of 750 Indians and Tories at the battle of Newtown, on the Chemung River, near present-day Elmira, NY. The Sullivan-Clinton expedition then marched through the western Finger Lake districts to the Genesee River, destroying towns and crops.
Commanded a 1500-man force, which consisted mostly of militia, sent to subdue the western confederates during the war for the Old Northwest Territory. In October 1790, his force was soundly beaten and thoroughly routed by a combination of warriors from several Indian nations, including the Shawnees and Miamis. The battle was fought near the Indian village of Kekionga, which was located near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana.
As Governor of the Northwest Territory and major general in command of the United States army, he led a 3000-man force, two-thirds of which consisted of militia, against the western confederates. In November 1791, on the upper Wabash River near present-day Fort Recovery, Ohio, his army suffered the greatest military catastrophe ever inflicted by the Indians on US forces.
Replaced St. Clair and rebuilt the United States army after its crushing defeat at the hands of the western confederates in 1791. In 1794, he led an expeditionary force of 1000 US army regulars into the heart of the western confederates' territory, and won a decisive victory at the battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, Ohio. Wayne presided over the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, by which the confederates ceded most of present-day Ohio and parts of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.
Copyright © 2000 by David G. Swatzler
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