Red Jacket

Red Jacket (known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha [Keeper Awake] Sa-go-ye-wa-tha because of his oratorical skills) (c. 1750–January 20, 1830) was a Native American Seneca orator and chief of the Wolf clan. He negotiated on behalf of his nation with the new United States after the American Revolutionary War, when the Seneca as British allies were forced to cede much land, and signed the Treaty of Canandaigua (1794). He helped secure some Seneca territory in New York state, although most of the people had migrated to Canada for resettlement after the Paris Treaty.

His talk on "Religion for the White Man and the Red" (1805) has been preserved as an example of his great oratorical style.

Red Jacket's birthplace has long been a matter of debate. Some historians claim he was born at the Old Seneca Castle near present-day Geneva, New York, near the foot of Seneca Lake. Others believe he was born near Cayuga Lake and present-day Canoga, while others place his birth south of Branchport, on Keuka Lake near the mouth of Basswood Creek. It is known that he spent much of his youth at Basswood Creek, and his mother was buried there after her death. He was born into his mother's Wolf Clan, as the Iroquois had a matrilineal system of kinship and descent. He took his social status from her clan.

Red Jacket lived much of his adult life in Seneca territory in the Genesee River Valley. In the later years of his life Red Jacket returned to Canada for a short period of time. He and the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant were bitter enemies and rivals, although they often met together at the Iroquois Confederacy's Longhouse. During the American Revolutionary War, when both Iroquois nations were allies of the British, Brant contemptuously referred to Red Jacket as "cow killer", alleging that at the Battle of Newtown in 1779, Red Jacket killed a cow and used the blood to claim he had killed an American rebel.

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