BY L AURENCE M. HAU P TMAN
THEY ALSO SERVED
AMERICAN INDIAN WOMEN IN THE WAR OF 1812
another disastrous civil war for Six Nations people. What is not known about the war was the presence of Six Nations women in Ameri- can military service. In 1985, while undertaking research for
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several publications on American Indian military history, I found references to Native women who participated in the War of 1812. These women were classified as “cooks” in the pension records of the War of 1812. Yet, it should be noted that Haudenosaunee women had fought in combat and did participate in supply capacities in the American Revolution. According to historian Barbara Graymont,
42 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2015
ome of the most famous members of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy fought on opposing sides during the War of 1812, a conflict that proved, much like the American Revolution, to be
Dolly, the wife of Oneida war hero Captain Honyere (Han Yerry Tewahgaraahken, also known as Doxtater) fought alongside Oneida warriors at the Battle of Oriskany, “using her gun to good advantage. When her husband be- came wounded in the right wrist, she loaded his gun for him and continued to fire her own gun when not busy assisting her husband.” With the heavy combat on the Niagara Frontier during the War of 1812, it is not far-fetched to suggest that Iroquois women were more than “cooks” during the war. The presence of one extraor- dinary woman in particular, Dinah John, also suggests something else. Arthur C. Parker, the noted museologist
of Seneca ancestry, claimed that 15 Native women, from New York served in the War of 1812. According to records in the New York State Archives, five of these women or their families received military pensions for offi-
cially serving as “cooks”: Polly Cooper, Susan Jacob(s), Dinah John, Julia John and Dolly Schenandoah (there are at least five other spellings of the latter’s surname: Skanando- ah, Scanandoa, Scananadoah, Schanandoah and Skenandoah). Polly Cooper, perhaps a relative of the
legendary Oneida heroine of the American Revolution who had the same name, enlisted as a 31-year-old for three-months’ service in September 1813, in a regiment of “Indian vol- unteers” headed by Captain Peter Elm under the overall command of Seneca Chief Farm- er’s Brother. Later, in 1857, she sought $53 compensation for a hat, one pair of leggings,
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