Few items in American history symbolize the troubled relationship between Native Americans and the United States more than Seneca Chief Cornplanter’s peace pipe-tomahawk.
Today, the New York State Museum will officially return this important artifact to the Seneca Nation of Indians, where it will be displayed in the new Seneca-Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca, New York, on the Allegany Indian Reservation.
WAMC's Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas spoke with Seneca-Iroquois Museum Director David George Shongo:
"My real name is Ha:waey?ndih meaning 'they know him, they are familiar with him'. Cornplanter, Gaiänt'wakê, he was a war chief. He is instrumental in a couple of things. During the Revolutionary War, the Pontiac War he kept a lot of the natives from coming over this way and stuff. So much influence he had, that's why Pennsylvania gave him the Cornplanter Grant Land Area. Philadelphia is the Capital, and so he would meet with George Washington, during the American Revolution, George Washington was known as the 'town destroyer,' 'cause he sent Sullivan the general to try to wipe us off the face of the earth. We still survived. One of the things that happened was when they burnt all the corn and fields and all that we ended up making roasted corn seeds that we eat nowadays to remind us that no matter what happens to us as a people, we always survive. So they'd known each other back and forth after the war. George Washington became known to us as 'the famer' and tried to help us in the best ways he could help us, you know, so that to me is why. That to me is one of the reasons why the pipe is so iconic, I guess, it shows the relationship between the two of us. Not only does it show negotiations, you know, it's the peace pipe on one side and then the tomahawk on the other side. And it was just one of the ways that they went into negotiations, you know. Either they were gonna come out friends or enemies or somewhere in between."
Luckily, Shongo says they came out friends, a friendship that has stood the test of time. "Even to this day, like when World War II happened, the Great Council For The Confederacy declared was on Germany and Japan and all that. We still consider ourselves a nation within a nation. The land that we have, we were placed here, we've given up other parts of our territory, so we've always owned this land that we have now."
Washington had the peace pipe-tomahawk made just for Cornplanter. Shongo says no one knows the identity of the craftsman Washington employed. And yes, the versatile tool was a combination of the two, peace pipe and tomahawk. "We have tobacco, Indian tobacco, not the same as American cigarette tobacco. The leaf is much different. We use it as medicine to give you good thoughts and stuff. So when they would smoke the pipe, their words would go in the smoke up to the Creator. When Ely Parker was around he found it in a store in Albany and bought it, and then he restored the pipe."
The peace pipe tomahawk eventually found its way to the New York State Museum, where it remained until it disappeared from a locked display case in 1947. It wasn’t officially reported missing until 1950. More than seven different owners are believed to have bought and sold the artifact during that time on the black market for up to tens of thousands of dollars.
In 2018, an anonymous collector in Portland, Oregon contacted the New York State Museum about the item. Shongo says the Seneca Nation immediately engaged in a process to bring the object home, and the New York State Museum arranged for the return of the peace pipe-tomahawk. "We finally reached an agreement and it's on loan for six months here, of course to be negotiated a few months down the road."
Last year, the Seneca Nation opened its $20-million, 33,000-square-foot museum and cultural centerwhere the artifact will be displayed.
As a footnote, Cornplanter was the great-grandson of the city of Albany's 2nd and 13th mayor, John Abeel. Cornplanter's grave is at the Riverview-Corydon Cemetery, located in Elk Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania, a stone's throw from the New York border.
