"The Amazing Iroquois" and the Invention of the Empire State

In America's collective unconscious, the Haudenosaunee, known to many as the Iroquois, are viewed as an indelible part of New York's modern and democratic culture. From the Iroquois confederacy serving as a model for the US Constitution, to the connections between the matrilineal Iroquois and the woman suffrage movement, to the living legacy of the famous "Sky Walkers," the steelworkers who built the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge, theIroquois are viewed as an exceptional people who helped make the state's history unique and forward-looking. John C. Winters contends that this vision was not manufactured by Anglo-Americans but was created and spread by an influential, multi-generational Seneca-Iroquois family. From the American Revolution to the Cold War, Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse (adopted), and Arthur C. Parker used the tools of a colonial culture to shape aspects of contemporary New York culture in their own peoples' image. The result was the creation of "The Amazing Iroquois," an historical memory thatentangled indigenous self-definition, colonial expectations about racial stereotypes and Native American politics, and the personalities of the people who cultivated and popularized that memory. Through the imperial politics of the eighteenth century to pioneering museum exhibitions of the twentieth,these four Seneca celebrities packaged and delivered Iroquoian stories to the broader public in defiance of the contemporary racial stereotypes and settler colonial politics that sought to bury them. Owing to their skill, fame, and the timely intervention of Iroquois leadership, this remarkable family showcases the lasting effects of indigenous agents who fashioned a popular and long-lasting historical memory that made the Iroquois an obvious and foundational part of New Yorkers' conception of their own exceptional state history and self-identity.

In this fascinating and provocative study, Winters demonstrates the crucial role of Iroquois people in shaping the popular perception of their own history through a carefully curated array of interpretive techniques related to the broader American public. From approximately 1800 to 1950, four different Seneca individuals assumed leading roles in promoting an image of the Iroquois as an 'exceptional' Indigenous nation by aligning key aspects of their culture with mainstream American values such as democracy, patriotism, and the women's rights movement., Via extensive biographical sketches of prominent Senecas across the centuries, from Red Jacket to Arthur C. Parker, Winters examines the myth of the Iroquois, composed by white chroniclers in an elegiac fashion that would ultimately glorify the Empire State and an imperial United States. But in a revealing twist, Winters perceptively recovers the role of those 'Amazing Iroquois' themselves in affecting the composition and content of that saga, which Seneca actors partially ventriloquized to suggest they were as exceptional as the country itself and fundamental to its history., In this lively and engaging new book, historian John C. Winters tells the story of the 'Amazing Iroquois' across three centuries by focusing on four individuals born (or adopted) into Seneca communities at the League's 'Western Door.' Winters tells his story with economy and style. Experienced scholars and non-experts will find much of value in this well-written volume., A timely publication for Haudenosaunee Studies, John Winters's book is a thorough study of the history and memory of 'Iroquois exceptionalism' throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. Winters shows how the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) contributed to history, social sciences, museum studies, politics, art, and the American story. He brings honor and respect to the personalities he spends time with in this book. As a result, I feel like I know my intellectual ancestors much better than I did before.

John C. Winters is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi and ITPS Research Associate in New York History at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College. A public historian, he has also worked in historic homes, museums, and other institutions.