Seneca Saga of "Red Jacket"

For two hours last night some 75 men, women and children of the Six Nations Indians stepped back a century and a half in time to re-enact in colorful pageant the moving story of Sagoyewatha the Seneca, wise and eloquent leader of his people, who formed and stiffened their resolve to stay on in their homeland when the other tribes of the confederacy moved north to the new hunting grounds granted them along the Grand River.

The setting for the pageant is the natural theatre in the Great Pine forest near Ohsweken. It is perfect for the purpose. Spectators sitting under the stars on tiers of benches look over the horseshoe bend of a creek to a grove of trees. Here around a campfire the story unfolds.

Smoke signals rise to summon the elders of the tribe to a council. The braves appear from among the trees and soon after a canoe glides up to the camp bringing a representative of the Ogden Land Company. This man's mission is to persuade the Senecas to leave their hunting grounds and go west of the Mississippi, where new lands are offered them.

Tall, grave Sagoyewatha, know widely as "Red Jacket" from his service in the British Army, listens to the white man's proposition, then confers with his council. They decide against moving and "Red Jacket" delivers their answer couched in the cold hard logic and stinging phrases of which he was a master. He asks how the U.S. government can authorize dealings with territory not its own. The wampum belt is produced as proof of the red man's title. Calling the white men "cheats and liars," "Red Jacket" frustrates their plot to dispossess his people, and the land company agent departs.

A missionary who comes to convert the Senecas to Christianity fares no better. "The Boston Missionary Society sent me," he says. "I do not come for your land but to enlighten your minds. You have been in great error and darkness all your days."

In firm but temperate words, "Red Jacket" declined to allow missionaries to" live among his people. His experience with the white land sharks prompts him to suggest that among such as these, and not among the harmless red men, the missionaries should concentrate their efforts. He sees no advantage in embracing Christianity when those who profess it include men who treat the Indians as inferiors and try to rob them of their homeland. As a clincher he adds, "If the red man and the white man cannot get along on earth, how can they get along in Heaven?"

The drama lies not in the action, of which there is virtually none, but in the clash of minds and the welding of the tribal will to resist by the sheer force of one man's courage and personality. Running through it all like a thread is the realization that Red Jacket's brave stand cannot prevail beyond his death, and that his people are marked for doom.

"Red Jacket," played by Howard Skye, speaks impressively in his own language, using in many places his actual words preserved in tribal records. An interpretation and excellently-done linking commentary make it easy to follow the story. Other speakers, well rehearsed through many months of preparation, are Gordon Martin, Andrew Jamieson, Bill Smith and James Schuler.

This is the fifth year that the people of the Reserve have told some aspect of their tribal history in pageant form. It is hoped that they will give a further chapter each year. Besides being unusual, these performances provide a most satisfying evening of entertainment in a delightful setting probably unmatched anywhere for appropriateness.