Ki-On-Twog-Ky or Corn Plant, a Seneca Chief

Book Description

Philadelphia: E.C. Biddle, 1837. Hand-coloured lithograph. 15 x 10 7/8 inches. A fine image from McKenney and Hall's 'Indian Tribes of North America': `One of the most important [works] ever published on the American Indians' (Field),` a landmark in American culture' (Horan) and an invaluable contemporary record of a vanished way of life. The son of a Seneca mother and the Dutch trader John O'Bail, Ki-On-Twog-Ky or Cornplanter was one of three principal leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy of Six Nations and a renowned Seneca war chief who fought in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). In opposition to Joseph Brant's insistence on the Confederacy allying itself with the British in the American Revolution, Cornplanter, like Red Jacket, favored neutrality, claiming that the war was a white man's affair in which they shouldn't intervene. Despite his initial protestations and the uncustomary dissension among the members of the Grand Council regarding the issue of participating in the war, the Seneca eventually yielded to majority opinion and agreed to fight for the British. In the aftermath of the war, Cornplanter intended to act as a diplomatic mediator between the Seneca and the colonists, negotiating auspicious terms for his nation. However, he became increasingly unpopular among his people after signing treaties at Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort Harmar (1789), and Genesee (1797), which ceded tracts of their ancestral homelands to the federal government. Although his conciliatory actions earned him the contempt of his nation and political rivals such as Red Jacket, he obtained the respect of the U.S. government, which, in return for his cooperation in the Genesee treaty, awarded him an annual pension and a plot of land in Ohio. In 1786, he traveled to Philadelphia to attend a ceremony given by the Tammany Society, an organization devoted to synthesizing European and Native American culture, and then went to New York to meet with Congress regarding the distribution of Iroquois lands. Cornplanter later journeyed to Washington to visit President Jefferson in 1801-2, and, despite his depleted authority, rallied the Seneca to the American cause in the War of 1812. One of the most revered and feared tribes, the Seneca inhabited the Northeastern region of the United States. McKenney and Hall's 'Indian Tribes of North America' has long been renowned for its faithful portraits of Native Americans. The portraits are largely based on paintings by the artist Charles Bird King, who was employed by the War Department to paint the Indian delegates visiting Washington D.C., forming the basis of the War Department's Indian Gallery. Most of King's original paintings were subsequently destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian, and their appearance in McKenney and Hall's magnificent work is thus our only record of the likenesses of many of the most prominent Indian leaders of the nineteenth century. Numbered among King's sitters were Sequoyah, Red Jacket, Major Ridge, Cornplanter, and Osceola. After six years as Superintendent of Indian Trade, Thomas McKenney had become concerned for the survival of the Western tribes. He had observed unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of the Native Americans for profit, and his vocal warnings about their future prompted his appointment by President Monroe to the Office of Indian Affairs. As first director, McKenney was to improve the administration of Indian programs in various government offices. His first trip was during the summer of 1826 to the Lake Superior area for a treaty with the Chippewa, opening mineral rights on their land. In 1827, he journeyed west again for a treaty with the Chippewa, Menominee , and Winebago in the present state of Michigan. His journeys provided an unparalleled opportunity to become acquainted with Native American tribes. When President Jackson dismissed him from his government post in 1830, McKenney was able to turn more of his attention to his publishing project. Within a few years, he was joined by James Hall, a lawyer who had written extensively about the west. McKenney and Hall saw their work as a way of preserving an accurate visual record of a rapidly disappearing culture. (Gilreath). Cf. BAL 6934; cf. Bennett p.79; cf. Field 992; cf. Howes M129; cf. Lipperhiede Mc4; cf. Reese, Stamped With A National Character p. 24; Sabin 43410a

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