Cornplanter with the pipe tomahawk, portrait by Frederick Bartoli, 1796
The New York State Museum has recently announced the repatriation of the Cornplanter pipe tomahawk to the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum. The repatriation is a significant cultural event returning the pipe tomahawk once owned the Seneca chief Cornplanter to a home in the Seneca Nation along the Allegany River in Salamanca, New York. The symbolic value cannot be overstated as the pipe tomahawk has a storied history and has survived quite remarkably to this moment of return. It was given to Cornplanter by President George Washington in the 1790s during a period of diplomacy and negotiation between the Seneca Nation and the fledgling United States government. Its importance is related to its status as a symbol of diplomacy, cultural exchange, resilience, and Cornplanter’s importance in these processes.
A pipe tomahawk has a moderately long handle, a tomahawk blade, and a pipe built into the metal above the handle, opposite the tomahawk’s biting edge. The Cornplanter pipe tomahawk entered the New York State Museum collections through a storied chain of custody. It was acquired by Ely Parker, one of the most famous of the Senecas, who collaborated with early anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in documenting Seneca Iroquois culture and obtaining artifacts for the State Cabinet of Natural History, the forerunner of the New York State Museum. Ely Parker, trained initially as a lawyer, became an engineer, military officer, and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the administration of his friend, President Ulysses S. Grant. Morgan, author of League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, acquired a large collection of Indian artifacts for the State of New York, including historical and archaeological artifacts as well as items that he requested to be created, such as representatives of historical clothing. Ely Parker and members of his family were partners in this work.
It was fortunate that Ely Parker was able to obtain Cornplanter’s pipe tomahawk. In 1850 Parker conveyed a history of this pipe tomahawk to the New York State Board of Regents (this history is Appendix 2 of Elisabeth Tooker’s book Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois Material Culture). According to Parker, about 1810 Cornplanter, acting upon a dream he had, decided to destroy “all vestiges or relics of the workmanship and invention of white men” in his possession. As a result, Cornplanter burned his gifts from Presidents Washington and Adams. The survival of the pipe tomahawk is unexplained but survive it did. Years later, when Cornplanter stepped down from his chiefly role he gave it to his designated successor, a man whose English name was Canada (his Seneca name was O-ya-wah-teh). Succeeding Cornplanter, Canada also was called Cornplanter from that time on. After the second Cornplanter passed away, Ely Parker acquired the Cornplanter pipe tomahawk from his widow.
In 1911 Ely Parker’s grand-nephew Arthur Parker was the archaeologist at the New York State Museum and in charge of everything archaeological and ethnological. He was proud of his legacy and enjoyed his opportunity to follow in the anthropological footsteps of Morgan and his own uncle Ely, people he admired moreover as part of the respected “grandfather generation”. Some writers on Arthur Parker speak of his goal to “out-Morgan Morgan” in making collections and presenting Iroquois culture to the larger public (for example Porter 2001). The Cornplanter pipe tomahawk was ensconced in the archaeology-ethnology exhibits on the fourth floor of the State Capitol, where the State Library also was housed.
On March 29, a fire broke out that essentially destroyed the interior of the building and did massive damage to the State Library and the State Museum exhibits. It was unfortunately fueled into an inferno by the paper library holdings. Arthur Parker and his assistant rushed to the conflagration and entering the building, fought to save whatever they could of the Morgan collection, the archaeological collection Arthur Parker had amassed, and other priceless treasures that were on exhibit (Parker 1911). Arthur not only saved Cornplanter’s pipe tomahawk, but function following form, the tomahawk reportedly played quite a role in his effort. According to Joy Porter’s (2001:76) biography of Arthur Parker, Parker told his friend Joseph Keppler that he used the Cornplanter pipe tomahawk as his “fire axe” while “Stones fell to the right, fire bellowed to the left etc….but nothing touched me.” Parker saved much including the pipe tomahawk but he wrote his father later that he broke down afterward and spent several days sick in bed (Porter 2001:76).
Saved from fire twice, it is interesting to reflect that decades later Cornplanter’s pipe tomahawk went missing from the State Museum collections only to be returned by an anonymous donor in 2018, after it had been God-only-knows-where for 70 years. Talk about survival. Now it is no longer among the lost. It has returned to a fitting cultural home.
References Cited
Morgan, Lewis H.
1851 League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. Sage and Brother, Rochester.
Parker, Arthur C.
1911 Fate of the New York State Collections in Archaeology and Ethnology in the Capitol Fire. American Anthropologist 13:169-171.
Parker, Ely S.
1850 The Cornplanter Tomahawk, in the State Collection. Letter to the New York State Board of Regents, June 29, 1850. Appendix 2 in Tooker (1994).
Porter, Joy
2001 To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Tooker, Elisabeth
1994 Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois Material Culture. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.