Red Jacket - John N. Hubbard

Sagoyewatha, aka Red Jacket (1758-1830), was a native American diplomat and orator who became involved in the American Revolution as both sides were vying for the alliance of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. For his services, the British awarded him a highly embroidered red coat, from which he derived his distinctive look and English moniker. After the war, he continued to play a prominent role in negotiations with the new U.S. government, for which George Washington awarded him a peace medal (with which he is also proudly pictured).

As an orator, he spoke of pacifism and tolerance, against the sale of Indian lands and the encroachment of European religion and culture, and in defense of native American sovereignty. He refused to speak English, but his rousing words were translated and widely read in early 19th-century America, proving the aptness of his Seneca name (lit. "He Keeps Them Awake").

In one famous speech, he told a Christian missionary, "We do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you, we only want to enjoy our own." Author Ronald Wright describes this speech as "one of the best ever given to Christianity's claims," asking: "Which mentality... is the more primitive: that which believes itself to have a patent on truth or that which pleads for cultural diversity, for tolerance, for mutual respect?"

Nevertheless, his reputation suffered harm through a bitter political rivalry with the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. John Hubbard wrote an early biography, Red Jacket (1886), that attempts to rebalance the historical record with "a more charitable construction" of its subject.

Red Jacket:

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Audio

Supplemental:

• Red Jacket poem by Fitz-Greene Halleck
• Red Jacket (from Aloft) poem by Walt Whitman

Trivia:

• In an 1850 "notice of new books" in The Dollar Magazine, a reviewer mistakenly used the title Red Jacket to announce the publication of Melville's novel White-Jacket. The reviewer goes on to describe the work as "Rather garmentary in its tendency, but on the whole creditable. We would prefer a little more Orphic utterance, poetical insight, and universal sympathy, but are not disposed to be hypercritical." (And apparently neither was the copy editor.)

Extracts:

• "When I think of Pocahontas, I am ready to love Indians. Then there’s Massasoit, and Philip of Mount Hope, and Tecumseh, and Red-Jacket, and Logan—all heroes; and there’s the Five Nations, and Araucanians—federations and communities of heroes." (Confidence-Man, 25)
• "... in the Revolutionary War his grandfather had for several months defended a rude but all-important stockaded fort, against the repeated combined assaults of Indians, Tories, and Regulars. From before that fort, the gentlemanly, but murderous half-breed, Brandt, had fled, but had survived to dine with General Glendinning, in the amicable times which followed that vindictive war." (Pierre, 1.1)
• "But yet more astray, he will, upon provocation—say, at some story of perfidy or brutal behaviour—incontinently rap out an expletive, startling to the ladies as Brandt's flourished tomahawk at the London masked ball long ago." ("Portrait of a Gentleman")

This meetup is part of the series Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.