Cut the sign of some interesting doin’s around the all-purpose frontier tool/weapon, the tomahawk. Today, the Cornplanter tomahawk is being formally repatriated to the Seneca Nation. The tomahawk was a gift from George Washington to the Seneca war leader. The son of a Dutch trader and a Seneca woman, Cornplanter was a highly effective partisan in the savage fighting in the Mohawk Valley of New York during the American Revolution. After the war, he resigned himself — and led his people — to accommodation with the dominant American power.
The tomahawk has had a complicated history.
It was in the state historical museum for years, before being stolen in the 1940s, then returned by an anonymous collector last year. Officials at the museum decided to send it to the Seneca nation, and there it will be ceremoniously acknowledged to have come home.
Cornplanter’s tomahawk in the New York State Museum.
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Scavengeology has a great ’hawk story:
This spike tomahawk head was found, in the ground, by metal detector by Robert Bennett, in the vicinity of Harbor Springs, Michigan at the site of an Ottawa village called at “L’ Arbre Croche,” a series of Ottawa Villages existing in the mid 18th century, and was otherwise a highly traveled spot near Fort Michilimackinac at the Straits of Mackinac…
…We commissioned master blacksmith Jeff Cline, of Augusta, Kentucky, to craft a bench copy of the original, with the only differences being less metal loss from corrosion, and fewer tally marks, since it wasn’t quite retired yet.
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The estimable Nadia Dean, author of The Demand of Blood on the Cherokee War of 1776, posted a photograph of the only tomahawk authenticated to have been carried by one of the men who fought in that campaign — a militiaman named Daniel Smith. It’s current owner reportedly paid $250,000 for it.
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And just because I love it, here’s a shot of the Ranger tomahawk given to me by my friend Greg Walker:
Black Tyrone says
A deserving return to all the” People of the Long House”.
Matthew says
Day of the Tomahawk would be a great title for a paperback western.
Padre says
This good news made me a little homesick. My home county in PA contained the Cornplanter Tract, a piece of land granted to the Senecas by the Washington administration. Until the government decided to dam the Allegheny River, flooding the Cornplanter Tract and breaking a treaty that had been signed by GW himself and forcing the Senecas to move up to NY state. When my dad was in high school in the 50’s he had Seneca friends in Kinzua whose families had been living there since before the Revolution. There’s lots of fascinating history in that corner of the world.
JimC says
Sure nuff.
Tracy Petro says
Still looking for the tomahawk used by Adam Poe in the Wyandotte fight with Bigfoot.
Chris Sobik says
Very cool post! I stumbled onto your blog looking for the picture of John Perry Barlow and Bob Weir where Barlow is behind Weir with the pistol. Started poking around and really dig what you’re doing! I’m actually an Archaeologist at the New York State Museum so I got to check out the Cornplanter Tomahawk while it was here! Figure you might get a kick out of the random connection. Weir everywhere!
JimC says
Welcome to the campfire Chris. I love this kind of synchronicity.
Claudia Daw says
I have been doing genealogy for more than 40 years. Parsing out our national history has been interesting. I now know that our Native American, Canadian and American history has become complicated. The Native Americans were very sophisticated and competitive in many was as were the Europeans. Sometimes the cultures clashed and sometimes everyone lived in peace. However, the nuts and bolts of how these cultures survived one another would have a more uniting effect if folks actually knew their own history rather than the ideology fed to us in school.
JimC says
Agree.