[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 71 (Thursday, June 9, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  THE STORIES OF THE NORTHERN FRONTIER

                                 ______


                       HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 9, 1994

  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, last fall, Mr. Robert Moss, of Troy, NY, 
addressed a town meeting I held in Herkimer, NY, sponsored by the 
Northern Frontier Project and Herkimer College for citizens and 
students interested in the history and culture of central New York.
  Mr. Moss tells of the remarkable struggle for survival on America's 
first frontier, from the time of first contact between the Iroquois and 
Europeans through the Revolution. Those times hold precious stories of 
cooperation between cultures, but also of intense privation and 
suffering. These stories, of the building of America and its multi-
ethnic society, are not well known. That makes their retelling urgent.

       Robert Moss: I was born on a different frontier as you can 
     probably hear. I'm an Australian, and I grew up in the bush 
     cheek by jowl with a different native culture, that of 
     Australian Aboriginals. But in the seven years I lived in 
     Upstate New York I have become passionately interested in the 
     story that this part of the world has to tell. It is a rich 
     exciting story and I think that your past is actually going 
     to be a dynamic part of your future. In the senses that the 
     Congressman Boehlert has talked about and in other senses.
       ``History may be servitude, history may be freedom'' words 
     from a British poet, American born, T.S. Eliot. The history 
     of this part of the world is poorly understood, and often 
     poorly recounted. We have a problem with history; school kids 
     often think it's boring, that it's merely a chronicle of 
     facts and figures.
       I was told a story by a history teacher in my present neck 
     of the woods, Troy, New York, which reveals the dimension of 
     this problem. She is in the classroom, and she is throwing 
     out questions to the class, and she says at one point, 
     ``Give me liberty or give me death * * * who said that?'' 
     Resounding silence. She looks lynx-eyed around the class, 
     ``Can nobody answer this question?'' One hand finally goes 
     up. It's the Japanese exchange student, who says, ``Paul 
     Revere.'' Somebody else from the back of the class yells, 
     ``Screw the Japanese'' or words to that effect. The 
     teacher, really on the case now, and she says, anger 
     boiling in her, ``Who said that?'' Up goes the Japanese 
     exchange student's hand, ``Please ma'am, Harry Truman, 
     1945.''
       I am a storyteller. I've been working with the vehicle of 
     historical fiction; the book that Wanda Burch held up is the 
     first of a cycle that I'm doing involving the history of the 
     Iroquois frontier, from first contact to the War of 1812, 
     probably right up through the heyday of the Erie Canal. Let 
     me give you a sense from my varied wanderings, about the 
     themes that I feel are emerging from all of this. It might be 
     relevant to the work of the Northern Frontier committee and 
     to the preoccupations of all of you.
       One can say, as a historically accurate statement, that it 
     was here in this part of North America that the United States 
     was born. Not just in one sense, but in several senses. First 
     of all, it was here that the decisive encounter between 
     Native Americans and newcomers from of the old world took 
     place. By the time the confrontation, the encounter between 
     whites and the American Indians gets out into the west of 
     Hollywood, out into the Great Plains, it's over for Native 
     Americans in terms of demographics and the balance of 
     firepower and so on.
       But on this frontier, the Iroquois were never actually 
     defeated. They suffered some bad losses and some heavy 
     casualties, and those who sided with the British suffered as 
     a result of the American Revolution. That those who sided 
     with the Americans suffered even more quickly is one of the 
     ironies of the history of this people.
       But, the Iroquois were never decisively defeated by the 
     white man. And for a while, what was played out on this 
     frontier, was a success story in terms of the mutual 
     understanding between different cultures and communities. 
     A success story made possible by extraordinary 
     individuals, because giants walked on this earth. And to 
     recognize them, to honor item, to re-quicken the living 
     memory of what they did, not just the dry chronicle of 
     facts and statistics, is not only a worthwhile exercise, 
     it will not only draw tourists and intelligent travelers 
     from all over the country and all over the world, it will 
     rebuild pride, and a deeper sense of the importance of 
     where we are.
       One of those characters, one with whom I spent a lot of 
     time in my imagination for many years now, was one that Wanda 
     Burch mentioned: Sir William Johnson, the King's 
     Superintendent of Indians. This is no stuffy servant of the 
     crown, although he bore the title of baronet after he beat 
     the French at the Battle of Lake George in 1755. William 
     Johnson was an Irishman who never set foot in England; he 
     never saw the king who was the source of his honors and 
     authority. He was a joiner, he was a man who lived close to 
     his neighbors, to the Germans, to the Dutch, to the Irish, 
     the Scots of the valley, and above all, to the Mohawks and 
     Iroquois Indians. He was the only white man who was ever 
     permitted to wear the ceremonial deer antlers of office, the 
     living bones of a traditional chief of the Six Nations of the 
     Longhouse, the Iroquois Confederacy.
       In Johnson's time, under this aegis, an extraordinary 
     collaboration came about between Native Americans and whites 
     that has never been equaled in the history of this continent. 
     It's a local story. It's a story about a hometown boy so to 
     speak, or the boy who gave us several home towns in this 
     area. He did it because of his rich gift of humanity beyond 
     anything else. As Mohawks like to say, he was ``a man who 
     spread himself.'' He was willing to dance with Indians, sing 
     with them, run with them, fight with them--love their women--
     good Lord he left about 100 Indian or half-Indian children 
     behind him. He was a joiner of perhaps in too many senses for 
     the Victorian historians who prudishly tried to clean up the 
     Johnson story, and couldn't quite succeed, because the 
     man outlives them, he is bigger than his biographers.
       I'm not going to give a lecture on Johnson tonight, but I 
     have to recall his name, because it is such an extraordinary 
     one.
       On the Indian side of this encounter, you have characters 
     like Hendrick Tehayanokenn. Hendrick, ``he whose paths 
     fork,'' who died at the ripe old age of 80, still a warrior 
     on the warpath in the Battle of Lake George when he and 
     Johnson, played amateur general, defeated Baron Dieskau, the 
     commander-in-chief of all French forces in Northern America, 
     and saved the province of New York from being turned into a 
     French Colony.
       Let me spend a word on Hendrick, and give you the feel for 
     some of the players from the Native American side. Hendrick, 
     in his relative youth, went to London to see the Queen back 
     in 1710. It was a storied visit, they wrote ballads about 
     it--they being British and their agents in these colonies, 
     Peter Schuyler at Albany--invited four Indian chiefs to go to 
     London. The idea was to entertain the British with the sight 
     of ``savages'' from North America, and to impress the 
     savages, so-called, with the power and might and the 
     invincibility of the British Empire.
       So you see, here is Hendrick, already a warrior with many 
     notches on his war club. This, by the way, in case you are 
     wondering what I am carrying with me, is an Oneida war club. 
     We're in Oneida territory tonight, so I thought it was 
     appropriate to bring an Oneida war club, it was carved by one 
     of the Chrisjohn family. It is a ceremonial war club, if it 
     were the real thing it would be twice as big and several 
     times as heavy; there is no better instrument for killing at 
     close quarters in the woods. Those of you who have seen the 
     ``Last of the Mohicans'' have seen a fairly realistic 
     depiction of how the clubs are used in action, although the 
     clubs aren't always historically accurate. This honors the 
     deer. The deer is in the name of Skenandon, the famous Oneida 
     chief, who was on the American side of the revolution, it has 
     the cloven hoof of the deer. It has antler prongs set above 
     the head--a very useful device is you were at very close 
     quarters and you were within reach of the enemy's eyes. That 
     just to explain what I am waving at you.
       Back to the four chiefs to give you a feel for the Indian 
     players. Here is Hendrick, a young man, relatively speaking, 
     for as many victories--about thirty--going to London, invited 
     by the Brits who want to show off the power and might of the 
     imperial throne. He and his companions are tasked by the clan 
     mothers of the Mohawk nation to take counting sticks with 
     them, and when they are at London, to count all the white 
     people they see so the Mohawks will be able to gauge how many 
     newcomers may be coming to America, and whether it is 
     possible to drive them back to the sea.
       Well, you can picture the scene, they arrive in London, the 
     whites are as many as the stars in the sky, or leaves in the 
     forest, so they throw away their counting sticks, and they 
     realize, what clever Iroquois statesman had long realized in 
     fact, that they have to deal with this new presence, with 
     this pressure of population coming from the old world, by 
     diplomacy, by politics, by cunning. There are too many to 
     deal with by sheer force of arms.
       While the so-called ``Four Indian Kings'' are in London, 
     one of the entertainments staged for them is a production of 
     Macbeth in a theater in the Haymarket. The crowd was so 
     excited by the Indians--with their gunpowder tattoos and 
     their war clubs and their costumes--that they weren't looking 
     at the actors. So they took the Indians up on stage behind 
     the spikes. They had metal spikes on the London stage, to 
     stop an irate audience from grabbing the actors they didn't 
     like and doing them some bloody injury.
       So here are the Indians, sitting here like this 
     distinguished panel tonight, up on stage behind the spikes, 
     and everybody is gaping at them. At the end of the play, 
     MacDuff carries the plaster head of MacBeth across the stage. 
     And in one of the novels I have in the pipeline, I picture 
     Hendrick the Mohawk jostling one of the (Indian) neighbors in 
     the ribs and saying, ``They call us savages, but we just take 
     a little bit of skin and hair, these white people take the 
     whole head!''
       I am just giving you some vignettes, because the nature of 
     the exercise of the Northern Frontier group, and for Moss the 
     teller of tales, are similar in this respect: It is to make 
     the bones live. It is to bring out the human stories of 
     surviving and thriving and flourishing that are rich on this 
     frontier.

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