from Allegany to the Niagara Frontier, a much lower reimbursement rate than either Cooper or Schenandoah. At least two Onondaga women also served,


Susan Jacob(s) and Dinah John. Jacob(s), a 20-year-old Onondaga from the Buffalo Creek Reservation, enlisted for three-months’ service in a regiment headed by Ut-ha-wah, Captain Cold (Cole), the most eminent On- ondaga chief at Buffalo Creek, under the over- all command of Farmer’s Brother. The most famous of these five women


pensioners, Dinah John, was one of the most prominent Iroquois women of the 19th century. A leading Onondaga basketmaker and potter, she was one of the first Iroquois women depicted in portraiture. In 1876, Phil- ip S. Ryder photographed her, and a painted copy of the print now hangs in the Onondaga Historical Association in Syracuse. Ryder’s popular photograph of this Onondaga cen- tenarian was widely distributed throughout central New York. The image showed Dinah as a shriveled old woman, seated in her rocking chair with a cane in her left hand. Widely known in the non-Indian world


Captain Cold, or Ut-ha-wah (died 1845). Principal Onondaga chief on the Buffalo Creek Reservation during the War of 1812. Artist: William John Wilgus, American, (1819 - 1853). 1838. Oil on canvas. 40" x 30". Gift of de Lancey Kountze, B.A. 1899 1939.39.


one dress, two blankets, one pair of mocca- sins and one neckerchief. In her request, she sought $22 in compensation for 400 miles of transportation, back and forth from the Onei- da Reservation to the Niagara Frontier. Dolly Schenandoah, an Oneida aged 29, enlisted for three-months’ service in June 1813, in the same regiment of Indian volunteers. Later, after her death in 1837, Schenandoah’s rela- tives sought $38 compensation. They asked $10 for round-trip travel expenses for the 400 miles from Oneida to Buffalo, less than half the travel expenses filed by Cooper. Julia John, a 25-year-old Seneca from Indian Reservation,


the Allegany enlisted


in December 1813, in a regiment of Indian volunteers headed by Governor Blacksnake, the noted Allegany Seneca Chief, under the overall command of Farmer’s Brother. Unlike the previous two women, Julia John enlisted for one-year service. She later sought $46 in compensation, but only $4 in round-trip transportation expenses for the 140 miles


44 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2015


as “Aunt Dinah,” she was frequently men- tioned in accounts of the period. Although she had no official birth certificate, Thomas Donaldson in his Six Nations of New York, a federal census publication of 1892, estimated the age of the Onondaga elder and described her extraordinary vitality: “Old Aunt Dinah, who died at the age of 107, on the Onondaga reservation, is kindly remembered by the citizens of Syracuse, as well as by her own people. After the age of 90, she walked seven miles to the city and back.” When she died on May 26, 1883, Iroquois and non-Indians both honored her, and, in July of the same year, they dedicated a five-foot limestone statue to her memory. Dinah was born Ta-wah-ta-whejah-quan,


“the earth that upholds itself,” at Onondaga in the late 1770s or early 1780s, and possibly as early as 1774. Some sources claim that she was old enough to remember Colonel Goose Van Schaick’s military expedition during the American Revolution that destroyed the On- ondaga villages in 1779. Some also claim that as a child she met George Washington on the General’s trip to Rome, N.Y., in 1788. Either in the 1790s or in the early years of the 19th century, she married Thomas John. In the summer of 1812, the Onondagas in


central New York, allied with the United States since the federal Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, joined in with the Americans against the British. Sadly, Haudenosaunee from New York


COURTESY YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY


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