It Happened Here -- "Good Indians" 

NYS Capitol, Albany

Phillip Sheridan is arguably New York's most famous Civil War general.  William Tecumseh Sherman's right hand man, he led the slashing cavalry arm of Sherman's march to the sea. His massive bronze statue graces the east lawn of New York's capital. After the war he was tasked with the job of rounding up western Indian tribes and forcing them onto reservations. It was during this period he uttered the infamous quote that sullied his reputation for all time: "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead"(popularly reported as "The only good Indian is a dead Indian")

Bitter European/Native American conflicts have dominated American history from the 16th through the end of the 19th centuries. A number of years ago historian Jill Lepore   analysized of one of the earlier conflicts between Native Americans and European settlers, the King Phillip's War, of 1675. Viewing it from a symbolic interactionist perspective she declared,"War is a contest of words, as much as it is a contest of wounds."(Lepore, 47.) Because Indian peoples' traditions were predominately oral and they had no written languages of their own, they left few of their  perspectives, insights, and recollections of historical events, other than pictograms on rocks, elk skins and buffalo robes, that  have come down to us. This is not to say that there were no literate and eloquent native-Americans,  fully capable of recording their thoughts and observations in English, or their native languages. (In New York's experience think of Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) and Sagoyewatha (Red Jacket.)  Rather, this reflects the fact that instead of expressing themselves through diaries, memoirs or political monographs, etc. they  preferred the oratory of the powwow, the council fire, not only to interpret contemporary events but to inform younger generations who came to listen and learn their histories. Sadly, such communication is by its very nature evanescent and limited to speakers and listeners, subject to distortion and loss over time, tending to leave the field of battle (and the victory) in the war of words to to the writers of the written word.

 One result is that some of the most egregious acts of white settlers became recorded in a positive light, and the people who committed them celebrated as bold frontiersmen and patriots.  Consider the stories about Nick Stoner in his post-revolutionary years recorded by  Jephra Root Simms .  In The Trappers of New York, Simms relates that Stoner became feared by Iroquois hunters and trappers for the ferocity with which he defended his trap lines and his tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.  While never confessing to killing an Indian he made no secret of his frequent homicidal impulses and actions. (See this blog  12/01/2014.)

Another frontiersman, with genocidal impulses, living along the New York-Pennsylvania border,  was Tom Quick Jr.  Subject of several NYSHMs, Quick became something of a local 19th century folk hero. The Quicks were early settlers of the upper Delaware Valley. In 1756 Quick had watched helplessly as his father was scalped by a band of marauding Delaware Indians, who were rebelling against the appropriation of their ancestral lands. From that day forward, the unhinged Quick Jr. appears to have made a career of hunting down and murdering Indians wherever he found them along the frontier. Not surprisingly, verifiable facts about his deeds are almost non-existent but it is alleged he may have killed anywhere between six and (his count) ninety-nine Native Americans.

NYS 209, North of Accord

DECKER'S TAVERN
HERE MODELINE, THE INDIAN
WHO SCALPED TOM QUICK, SR.
REENACTED THE OLD MAN'S
DEATH AGONY. HE W AS SHOT'
FOR IT BY TOM QUICK, JR.
ON US 209 ABOUT 3/4 MI. NORTHEAST OF PORT JERVIS

 Tom Quick, Sr. moved from his family farm near Accord, New York about 1733, and settled in Milford, PA.  In 1889, a wealthy descendant of the Quicks erected a monument in Milford and brought Tom Jr's. remains from Metamoras, a town across the border from Port Jervis, N.Y.  to Milford. For years the monument stood there neglected and undisturbed on a side street of sleepy Milford, until in 1997 when it was vandalized.  The town repaired the monument but the national attention the vandalism received ignited a firestorm of controversy and the repaired monument was never reinstalled. In its place a small bronze plaque was set marking Quick's grave, commenting that the original monument was from a different time and reflected a different "mindset," and noting that the historical facts of Quick's life are in dispute.

The rapid removal of Indians from New York and the absence of a written record presenting their side of the Indian /European conflicts allowed 19th and early 20th century antiquarians and historians to give their biases and prejudices full reign and to give uncritical credence to stories and myths passed down from European settlers and their descendants.

"Mohican" Cemetery on  Co.Rte.56, Turkey Hill Rd., Milan

Last year I wrote a post about the Mohican Indians of Dutchess County (6/9/15).  In it I published this picture.  Following my post I received an e-mail from Bill Jeffway the Town of Milan Historian.  Mr. Jeffway has done  research that led him to conclude that this cemetery was, in fact, a  cemetery for blacks and not an Indian burial ground. He speculates that local residents and historians from the turn of the century through the 1930's wished to distance themselves from New York's Black and slave holding past and were eager to embrace any romantic half-remembered stories of Christian Mohican Indians, conveniently dead or historically removed to far-off Wisconsin.

NY444, cor. NY96, Victor, NY

An even clearer-cut case of romanticizing long dead Indians,  and attributing their actions to the furtherance of "manifest destiny" and the taming/christianizing of the frontier is found in a small monument in Victor, New York.  In 1687 the Marquis de Denonville led a punitive raid deep into Seneca Indian territory. The raid's purpose was to punish the western Iroquois for their attacks on French towns outside of Montreal. Accompanying Denonville was a large party of Caughnawaga Mohawks who had been converted to Catholicism a few decades before by Jesuit missionaries and had emigrated to French Canada.
 Upon seeing this monument, the first detail that grabs your attention is the Plains Indian headdress and cigar store Indian pose of the bust on the monument. Secondly, you observe the large cross around the figure's neck that looks as if it were removed from a Jesuit's robe. The third is the inscription. There is little doubt that  Athasata and his Mohawks were allies to the French and their interests, but can "the Great Christian Chief" (in fact a chief whose position depended upon his status as a warrior) be credited as a "promoter of peace, respecter of treaties, defender of righteousness" in light his attacks on the Seneca, in violation of "The Great Law of Peace" that had united the Iroquois for centuries? Athasata (Kryn) also appears to be the Indian leader leading the "massacre" two years later (1689/90)  of the Dutch/English (ie. Christian) town of Schenectady. (see my blog of 9/12/15).                                                                                                                                                                                                   
(Marker text:  In perpetuation of the Name of /Athasata (Kryn)/ The Great Christian Mohawk Chief/
Promoter of Peace, Respecter of Treaties, Defender of Righteousness--Valiant Warrior Leader of the Indian forces forming one third of the army of the DeNonville expedition which passed (1687) along this Indian Trail,/ "I cannot speak too highly of the assistance we receive from this great Mohawk chief and his warriors. Our Christian Indians surpassed all and performed deeds of valor, especially the Iroquois upon whom we had not dared to rely to fight against their relatives."--Denonville/ The Name of Athasata merits a place in history beside the names of the Greatest Iroquois Leaders.)

Finally, there is the monument and NYSHM honoring Gu-ya-no-ga.  Gu-ya-no-ga was a statuesque Seneca chief of noble bearing, reputed to stand six foot or six foot four inches tall.  In the early stages of the Revolutionary War Gu-ya-no-ga had fought for Colonel Butler and his Loyalists during the Wyoming Valley Raids, and his son, Panther had died at the Battle of Chemung, but he came to sympathize with the American cause and regretted having supported the British. 'A veritable Roman of the New World,' and 'one of the Noblest men of the Woods,' he became a friend and adviser to General George Washington.  Following the War he lived in peace and dignity in his wigwam on the farm of Frank Botsford in Jerusalem township near Penn Yan, N.Y. He died and was  buried in an unmarked grave on his small piece of ground, early in the century; his remains were discovered by accident about 1850.

Co. Rt 29 (Guyanoga Rd.), Penn Yan

--And there is one more fact about Gu-ya-no-ga: None of the above is true!  There is not a shred of documentary evidence that Gu-ya-no-ga ever existed, not in the oral traditions of the Senecas, not in the early records of Yates County, or of the followers of Jemimina Wilkinson--among the earliest settlers of Jerusalem township, or in any of the extensively studied papers of George Washington.

 Gu-ya-no-ga seems to have first appeared in an undated local newspaper clipping  written some time between 1873 and 1888. based on information supplied by Samuel Botsford (Frank's son) and a neighbor James A. Cole. A biographer of the Universal Friend, Jemima Wilkinson, Arnold Potter,       relates a story of how Gu-ya-no-ga came about. According to Potter, a group of strangers gathered together for a lumbering project sat around after work. Relaxing around a barrel of (hard?) cider they began swopping stories about Indians. One of their number revealed he wrote a column for a local paper and was pressed for a story. They prevailed on him to create a composite character from the stories they were telling. (Perhaps because stories of "bad"Indians and their deeds were so commonplace, they focused on a "good" Indian--one who repented his "misdeeds" early in the revolution, settled down, and became a friend to the local farmers, and faced his reduced circumstances and his own extinction with quiet dignity.) As the cider got lower in the barrel, the "good' Indian grew both in physical and moral stature, becoming at last, a confidant of George Washington, himself!

For a while the family and friends of the creators of Gu-ya-no-ga were secretly amused by this "in joke" but gradually the reputation of Gu-ya-no-ga grew. The valley in which the Botsford farm was located became the vale of Gu-ya-no-ga, and the local road, Guyanoga road. The truth became an embarrassment. The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution embraced  the story and named themselves the Guyanoga Chapter. In 1910 a monument was created.  A concrete obelisk was cast. It was topped with a sheet iron Indian that had once been an ornament on a Hudson river steamer, and more recently graced a barn in Branchport. Four hundred people attended the day's festivities, that included a 'farmers' picnic,' a band concert, a baseball game, an 'Indian princess' and of course, several speeches. Notable among them was one by the local historian who gave many interesting details of Guyanoga's life, citing as his sources 'accounts that have drifted down through various ways'.  Two decades later local community leaders applied for, and received a NYSHM honoring their local Native American hero. 

In the long war that Native Americans (in general) and New York's native peoples (specifically) fought to preserve their homelands for themselves they lost twice. They lost the battle for  their homelands to European settlers, politicians and land speculators, and they mostly lost the historical narrative of that battle to white historians, myth creators and story tellers.  Their claims on the land are mostly gone forever; their claims on the historical narrative may be only partially recovered.