Lafayette and Oneida at Valley Forge: Peter Agwrongdougwas, “Good Peter,” (1717–1793), Chief of the Oneida Indians by John Trumbull. (Yale University Art Gallery)
The third of Lafayette’s trips into New York differed from his first two trips. In those, New York City had served as his base: first along the Boston Post Road to New England and second up the Hudson River to Albany/Troy. The third occurred after he undertook a long junket across the United States. He headed south to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.
From October 12, 1824, to February 22, 1825, Lafayette used the nation’s capital as his base. He interspersed his stay there with forays into Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Yes, he did visit the Yorktown Battlefield. From November 6 to 19, 1824, his stayed at Monticello and then Montpelier. He saw Thomas Jefferson approximately 20 months before he died and then stayed with James Monroe, the current President who had extended an invitation to visit the United States in the first place. He was an eyewitness to the tumultuous presidential election of 1824, another pending bicentennial which we might not only commemorate but relive in 2024-2025. Lafayette ended his capital visit with a ball on February 22, 1825, in honor of George Washington.
Next he took the grand tour or great circle route in the United States as it existed then. He traveled through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina (a lot of time in Charleston), Georgia (Savannah), Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, steamboat to Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky (multiple times), Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia (still part of Virginia), and Pennsylvania. That brought him to the borders of New York. He then crossed the state to Massachusetts following the Erie Canal and Routes 5 and 20 (I guess).
This portion of his travels connected him with a great deal of history. He was in the area to be painted by the Hudson River School. He saw much of the nearly completed Erie Canal which would open November 4, 1825, with the Wedding of the Waters He reconnected with the Oneida who like France had been an ally of the United States in the American Revolution. He was traveling through what became the Burned-over District that was becoming the hotspot for social, cultural, and religious activities.
And he was like Johnny Appleseed. Instead of planting seeds he planted communities named after him and which continue to exist to this very day.
This leg of Lafayette’s journey intersects with a wide range of topics in New York State history. There is more to remembering his trip than simply placing a plaque. Consider some of the other anniversaries also occurring at this time:
2024 Centennial of the New York State Office of Parks and Historic Preservation
2024 Centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act
2025 Bicentennial of the Erie Canal with construction already underway
2026 Semiquincentennial of the American Revolution.
So the Lafayette Bicentennial to places like West Point and Oriskany will be prior to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution events there. Devin Lander, the New York State historian has agreed that Lafayette-related events can be included the Semiquincentennial website hosted by the New York State Museum.
His trip also demonstrates the need for some coordination in the planning of events. We do not want history organizations tripping over themselves in trying to cope with commemorating all the events 100, 200, and 250 years ago. Circumstances are difficult now due to COVID. On the other hand we are all familiar with virtual conferences. Here is where New York State suffers from the absence of a state historical association that could take a leadership position in coordinating the state commemoration of these anniversaries.
PS From time to time I check on the status of the legislation authorizing the commission for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The clock is ticking and the end of the year was fast approaching with still no signing. Then on December 26, 2021, I checked the State Senate website. Lo and behold! On December 22, 2021, Governor Hochul had signed into law “New York State 250th Commemoration act”. So at some point soon, one hopes the members of the Commission will be named and we can start advocating for funding for it.
1825 June 4 Portland NY No specific info
1825 June 4 Fredonia NY Abell’s Hotel
1825 June 4 Dunkirk NY Riverfront
1825 June 4 Buffalo NY Eagle Tavern
1825 June 5 Niagara Falls NY Goat Island
1825 June 6 Youngstown NY Old Fort Niagara
1825 June 6 Lockport NY Locks
1825 June 6 Albion NY Erie Canal
1825 June 7 Rochester NY Colonel Hoard’s & Christopher’s Mansion House
1825 June 7 Mendon NY The Hotel
1825 June 7-8 NY Canandaigua John Grieg’s Mansion
1825 June 8 Geneva NY Franklin Hotel
1825 June 8 Auburn NY Hudson’s Hotel / Brown’s Assemblyroom
1825 June 9 Skaneateles NY Hall’s Hotel
1825 June 9 Marcellus NY
1825 June 9 Onondaga NY Onondaga Courthouse
1825 June 9 Syracuse NY Williston’s Mansion House
1825 June 9 Rome NY The Arsenal, Simonson’s House & Starr’s Hotel
1825 June 10 Oriskany NY Colonel Gerrit Lansing’s House & Judge Platt’s House
1825 June 10 Utica NY Shepard’s Hotel
1825 June 11 Little Falls NY By the Canal
1825 June 11 Schenectady NY Union Street landing / Givens’ Hotel
1825 June 12 Albany NY Cruttenden’s Hotel
1825 June 13 New Lebanon NY Kerr and Hull’s Columbia Hall
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (This logo was used without permission and does not signify an approval or endorsement of this blog by ECHS)
In some ways, Columbus Day is Ground Zero for the culture wars. Here is where the two white sides square off in the battle for power in America. Each white side claims right is on its side and as always the American Indians are caught in the middle. This blog is a continuation of a series on the white people conflict between Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day. For those who are keeping track, the previous related blogs are listed at the conclusion of this one.
In this post, I want to focus on the words of James Axtell who in 1992 was a history professor at the College of William and Mary and the chair of the American Historical Association’s Columbus Quincentenary Committee. In that capacity, he authored an article “Columbian Encounters: Beyond 1992,” published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1992.
Axtell began the article optimistically. He expressed his hope that the Columbus Quincentenary would be more successful than the Bicentennial had been in realizing its educational potential. He identified various reasons why it would make a deeper public and pedagogical impact than the 1776 anniversary celebration had. Since then, of course, the intensity of the culture wars has grown.
In his analysis, Axtell introduces a critical term that unfortunately has never caught on. He recommends the word “Encounter” as the theme of the Quincentenary. He does so “although natives. Critics, and activists may not approve the idea, encounters are morally neutral: the term does not prejudge the nature of the contact or its outcome.” Naturally I was quite pleased to read about his use of this term since without being aware of this article and more familiar with the term from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” I had used that very word in my own blog in 2017 appropriately entitled Columbus Day: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The bulk of the Axtell’s article recounts his impressive familiarity with all articles, books, conferences, exhibits, and manner of scholarship related to the Quincentenary. He is pleasantly surprised that the quality of Quincentenary scholarship is so high. Now what, he asks at the end? What should be done to keep the momentum going beyond 1992? He wrote:
My survey of the Columbian Encounter field suggests the following prescriptions:
(1) We should focus on Columbus as a man of extraordinary perseverance, skill, and luck but a man nonetheless – flawed like all men. Rather than caricaturing him as an oversized hero or villain we should see him in full perspective, pre- and post-1492, and measure him primarily against the men, ideas, and mores of his own time.
(2) We should pay more attention to Europe on the eve of colonization as the locus of experience, goals, and methods for the American incursions.
(3) We should pay much more attention to precontact America: its complexity, variety, demography, and deep reservoirs of human experience. We should make greater efforts to really hear native voices from the past and in the present, not only for Clio’s sake but to advance our own necessary and liberating education in otherness.
(4) In our writing and teaching of colonial history, we should rescue the sixteenth century from undeserved neglect. Without it, we have no hope of making sense of its more familiar sequel.
(5) We must learn to do justice to Hispanic America, first by ridding ourselves of the Black Legend and then by pursuing its history beyond the short conquest phase into the less sanguinary settlement period of city building, imperial bureaucracy, sugar plantations, cattle ranches, and widespread acculturation. We should also do a better job of integrating the Spanish borderlands with the histories of North America and the United States.
(6) By the same token, we should incorporate the history of the Caribbean, where Europe often fought its intercolonial wars before landing on North American soil, because the sugar islands were so valuable to the mother countries.
(7) We should continue to pay attention to the role of disease and biological imperialism in the conquest and depopulation of the Americas. But we should refine our estimates of mortality to accord with the best available evidence and with common sense.
(8) While well-publicized historical anniversaries occasions for them, we should curb the temptation worse, predetermined moral judgments on the enough after we have done our homework thoroughly.
(9) Whenever possible, we should resort to the insights and viewpoints of other disciplines, such as anthropology, archaeology, ethnohistory, cartography, historical geography, and colonial discourse. Even the historical fiction of Latin American novelists such Abel Posse, Alejo Carpentier, and Antonio Benitez-Rojo stretches the imaginative limits of our understanding of the Spanish and Indian heritages of that first, vast, other America.
(10) On a similar tack, we should employ whenever possible a comparative perspective on the American Encounter-comparing French, Spanish, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, and Russian efforts with each other and American efforts with colonial efforts in other parts of the world-in order to separate the unique from the typical.
(11) The well-modulated public and scholarly success of the Quincentenary should inspire us to design future historical anniversaries as opportunities less for celebration than for cerebration. We must also be very careful about who is included in, and who feels excluded from, “We the
People.” Ethnic, gender, and racial sensitivities are likely to grow; parity of treatment and attention-and, perhaps as important, the appearance of parity-must be extended to all citizens, past and present. We can start by rethinking our historical vocabulary: Old and New World, discoverer, discovery, Indian, Amerindian, America, American, Latin American, and the West are factually, morally, or culturally problematic.
(12) Finally, we should all study to become better citizens of the “global village” we now inhabit, the foundations of which Columbus laid in I492. If we do not learn to protect, respect, and sustain its people and to conserve and renew its resources, it will be much poorer when the Columbian sexcentenary occurs. Perhaps some of the lessons we draw from our study of the first Encounter will prevent such a fate.
I make no judgement as to what has happened in the academic arena. I leave that to the scholars in the field. In the public arena, the story is more telling. With the passage of time, Columbus has become even more of a villain to politically-corrected white people. We are quicker to pass judgement now and more vehement and vicious in so doing. The interest now in pre-contact American Indians has more to do with the superiority their way of life to that of white people with all white peoples of all nations being lumped together. Instead of the Encounters leading to a better understanding of all the people and peoples involved, two-dimensional clichés trump all other concerns.
Can we do better? Consider this example from Lewiston, New York, on what one community is doing better and that there is more to be done. From the Historical Association of Lewiston newsletter which is sent to me:
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY
Please support scholarship fund
Indigenous Peoples Day is a day to celebrate and honor Native Americans and to commemorate their shared history and culture. The Village and Town of Lewiston celebrate both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day simultaneously.
At the Historical Association of Lewiston, we decided to honor our Tuscarora neighbors, by awarding a scholarship to a deserving Tuscarora student. It is our hope to make this an annual award given out every year on Indigenous Peoples day in front of the Tuscarora Heroes Monument on Center Street in the Village of Lewiston.
As a non-profit organization, the Historical Association is soliciting public donations to help sponsor the scholarship. We hope you will find it worthy of your generosity and urge you to support this cause. Your donations can be made to the Historical Association of Lewiston, P.O. Box 43, Lewiston, NY 14092. Make a note that you want your donation to go to the Tuscarora Scholarship fund. We can provide you with a receipt for tax purposes if requested. Thank you!
The good news is that the community is recognizing the Tuscarora. The shortcoming is that the Tuscarora are not included in the title of the holiday. With Columbus, there is a proper noun and no confusion as to who is being celebrated. With Indigenous, the people honored could be anywhere in the world: indigenous Canadians, indigenous Australians, indigenous Latin Americans (see Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Part II – Columbus and America). If Lewiston has a Tuscarora Heroes Monument then it should have Tuscarora Day as well and it should be on a day most relevant to the Tuscarora.
Here is another example, this time from the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY).
Native American Heritage Day
Sunday, October 13, 11am–12pm
Celebrate the vast history and contemporary voices of Native American New Yorkers who come from Tribal Nations across the country. Enjoy storytelling, songs, and dances performed by the renowned Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, the oldest resident Native American dance company in New York. See Lenape objects in New York at Its Core and contemporary art by Native American New Yorkers in Urban Indian: Native New York Now, and create art to take home.
Notice the dichotomy. The Thunderbird American Indian Dancers call themselves American Indians while the MCNY quickly switches to its preferred politically correct term. But it does call the Lenape by their name and does use the term “Indian” in the exhibit name.
At the recent James Fenimore Cooper & Susan Cooper Conference: “E Pluribus Unum: Cooper, Cosmopolis, and American Identity” (SUNY Oneonta, September 25-25, 2019), there was a Commanche presenter. She always referred to herself as a Commanche or to American Indians in general. It was the white people who used the term “Native Americans.”
In the New York Times on October 13, 2019, just after October 12 and before the Monday holiday, in an article entitled “Sharp Cuts in Immigration Threaten U.S. Economy, Austan Goolsbee wrote about the positive impact immigrants have:
…the evidence increasingly says having immigrants here makes workers born in the United States more successful.
That’s partly because immigrants start companies at twice the rate of native Americans.
How the New York Times let this reporter get away with such politically incorrect language is a mystery. And if you read the sentence aloud, how could you distinguish between “native Americans” and “Native Americans” anyway?
To make matters worse, the Sunday Review section of the New York Times on the very same October 13 day, had a big front page picture and article by Brent Staples entitled “How Italians Became White,” another part of the Columbus Day story that deserves to be remembered (for the Italians see Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Part II – Columbus and America).
The Encounter theme proposed by Axtell back in 1992 is the way out of this morass if we want a “win-win” resolution rather than a “zero-sum” war. It applies not only to Columbus Day but to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution which is now gearing up (we have a meeting tonight on this event).
In New York, where I live I can consider three excellent places where to have encounters, perhaps annual rotating conferences).
National Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian – this location in lower Manhattan is the area where Hudson and the Lenape made contact leading to the creation of New Amsterdam and then New York.
The William Johnson state and private historic sites in the Mohawk Valley – Irish Johnson was the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs whose career involved him with numerous Indian tribes and nations and European nationalities.
Battle of Oriskany in the Mohawk Valley – This prelude to the Battle of Saratoga revealed that not only was the American Revolution a civil war among European peoples, it was a civil war among Indian peoples where two members of the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee confederation, the Seneca and the Oneida fought on opposite sides against each other.
One could add Cooperstown of Leatherstocking fame, Thanksgiving, Lewis and Clark, Little Big Horn, and a slew of western sites as places of encounters. As things stand now, slice and dice trumps We the People but I prefer to believe that there will come a time when American Indians are recognized as being part of the American experience and Columbus is an individual human being.
“We have literate people, we have educated people.
But very few of them are really equipped with a democratic mind-set.
Civic education was the missing link.”
Azizullah Royesh, school champion in Afghanistan (NYT 1/23/16)
It’s not often that a small community in upstate New York becomes fodder for the national media but it happened in January for Whitesboro. For those who have been in hibernation or who have been following other goings-on at the national level, the issue has to do with a municipal seal, something most residents of every community in America don’t even know about or wouldn’t recognize if they saw it for their own community.
Issue #1: Where is the teaching of local history in the school curriculum in New York and elsewhere so residents do learn about the history of where they live?
The seal depicts an encounter between two male individuals of different races in contact with each other. At first glance it appears as if the white male is choking the other male. One observation from the reporting was the reference to the male being choked is the designation used to refer to him: Indian, American Indian, Native American, red man, and at the very end when a solution was at end, Oneida.
Issue #2: What colors can be used to refer to people: white? black? red? brown? yellow?
It would be helpful if the Thought Police promulgated the official guidelines on the acceptable and unacceptable colors of the rainbow to be used when referring to human beings so everyone could be educated in the proper terminology. Actually, using the colors of rainbow would omit certain colors but let’s not introduce science into the discussion.
Issue #3: At what point are the Oneida entitled to be referred to themselves by their own name instead of being lumped together into an amorphous people? What’s next? Saying they lived in wigwams and hunted buffalo because that is what real Indians, American Indians, Native Americans, and red people do?
According to village history, Hugh White, the founder of the village named after him, engaged in a friendly wrestling match with the Oneida chief in 1784, shortly after the American Revolution. Oneida Nation Council Turtle Clan representative Clint Hill said the description of the seal’s portrayal did not seem patently offensive, although he had not seen it in person. The Oneidas typically had good relationships with area settlers, he said, and “Indian wrestling,” in which opponents place their feet together and use only one arm to try to throw the other person, is a common game among friends.”With the so-called Indian wrestling, you just knocked the person off balance,” he said. “We used to do it all the time as kids.”
The story of the friendship between the Oneida Nation and the United States has been obscured by the focus on an image that may actually depict what really happened, that is one wrestler defeated another. In so doing one may miss the story of the purpose of the match. Mano-a-mano contests are a time-honored to express relationships both positive and negative but it may take some investigative effort or education to determine which it is.
Issue #4: Should the historian credo of seeking to determine what really happened be abandoned for the easy task of taking events out of context?
During the American Revolution, the Oneida and the United States were allies most famously in the Battle of Oriskany in 1777. That battle helped prevent General Burgoyne’s plan to divide the former British colonies and end the war with a British victory from succeeding. Instead Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga, the French joined our side, and the rest, as they say is history.
Issue #5: We have again forgotten the Oneida role in American history.
When Lafayette returned to the United States in 1824-1825, he visited various sites in the Mohawk Valley that were connected to his participation in the American Revolution. This included Rome, Oriskany, and Utica. Lafayette noticed that missing among the throngs that welcomed his return were the Oneida even though he was smack in the middle of Oneida land and precisely where their military contribution had been so important. He asked to see them and an audience subsequently was arranged. Some of the very Oneida who had served under him then met privately with Lafayette. They had much to talk about including how the Oneida had become America’s forgotten allies and lost much of their land (see Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution by Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin).
Issue #6: Are the Oneida part of America or an ally of America?
As it turns out, just as this incident was about to unfold, I was the invited guest of the Oneida Nation to participate in workshop at Turning Stone Resort. The purpose of the meeting was to help prepare a grant application to the NEH to produce a documentary on the very Battle of Oriskany. By further coincidence. I previously had been contacted by the Oneida County Historical Society in partnership with the National Park Service which manages the site of Oriskany and Fort Stanwix (in Rome) about being involved in planning for the 240th anniversary in 2017. I suggested that they along with the New York State site in Little Falls for General Nicholas Herkimer be invited to the Oneida program which they were. Herkimer had bled to death from injuries sustained in the battle. The American general was part of the Palatine settlement in the Mohawk Valley. These Germans too are a forgotten part of American history. By coincidence, the Oneida are popular performers in Germany but the connection with the Palatines in the Mohawk Valley has not been developed.
At the end of the workshop we were asked about the next steps. I raised the question of how did the Oneida people see themselves today: as allies of America like the French under Lafayette had been or as part of America like the Palatines, Dutch, Africans, English, and Scotch-Irish who created this country had been? Do they celebrate July 4 as the birth of their country? Do they consider George Washington as the father of their country? Are they part of We the People? I said there was no right or wrong answer to these questions and I was not asking in a legal sense. I also deliberately referred to the Oneida people not to the Oneida Nation. I don’t know what the Oneida answer to these questions will be but it will influence the story they wish to tell about the a pivotal battle that helped establish the United States as an independent country. What happened in the Mohawk Valley prior to the Oneida decision to ally with America against Britain and what happened afterwards are part of the story of the battle as well…and it is a story which is still unfolding as the recent event in Whitesboro demonstrates.
Issue #7: What are the national implications for Whitesboro Wrestlers?
Also in January as this event was unfolding, Joe Klein wrote a column for Time entitled “Why Race and Tribe Trump Economics in the Current Presidential Campaign.” He recalled a book by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics, where Moynihan predicted following the end of the Cold War that ethnicity would become a major point of contention in global politics.
Klein then wrote of the divisive approaches of the political parties in this country. While Trump and the Republicans receive most of the attention, Klein noted that the Democrats were second to none in its divisiveness despite its use of the word “inclusive.” He wrote that “the Democrats have slipped into backdoor tribalism as well.” The Democrats list “18 different affinity groups you can affiliate with—according to race, ethnicity, disability, gender and gender choice” at the upcoming national convention. Klein observed that the Democrats proposed policies to many of these groups in the 2014 elections but few that appealed to Americans as a whole.
So the questions I posed to the Oneida at the workshop are ones that have already been answered by the two political parties. For the Democrats one’s primary loyalty is to one’s hyphen and not one’s country (Robert E. Lee would have said state but the principal is the same).
Note: Hyphen refers to a group a people defined by race, ethnicity, disability, gender and gender choice who tend the vote the same way or an individual within that group is considered a traitor. “White” is not a hyphen group since knowing that the race of a voter is white is not a good indicator of how that person may vote. The Democrats aim smaller.
By contrast to the Democrats, the Republicans stress individuals and the people as long as they do not include, you know, “those” people.
At times like this, I recall America’s greatest wrestler, Honest Abe. He sought to wrestle the people north and south, native-born and immigrant, into a single country with malice towards none, with charity for all. He sacrificed his life in a quest that has remained unsuccessful to this very day. It is truly tragic that the Republicans have abandoned him, that the Democrats reject him, and that no presidential candidate aspires to be him. Only Hamilton the musical embraces that spirit in the national arena. Perhaps if the documentary is made and the story is told, the Oneida and the Battle of Oriskany can once again save the nation from being divided.
“Iowa Republicans [and Democrats] have a lot of choices
on Monday, none of whom bear any resemblance to the
second coming of Lincoln.”
Gail Collins, “An Iowa To-Do List,” NYT 1/30/16
