1796 Portrait of Chief Cornplanter by F. Bartoli.

Every year, Americans gather with family members at Thanksgiving to share a meal in honor of family, harvest, and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock who shared a meal with the Native Americans who helped them to plant and survive harsh conditions during their first year.

But here in northwestern Pennsylvania, few but his own direct ancestors routinely learn about, pay tribute to a prominent leader of the Seneca, Chief Cornplanter, 1750-1836, (also alias John Abeel, and O’Bail), who greatly helped Northwest Pennsylvania, the U.S. Government, and the early European settlers. Cornplanter’s efforts as a negotiator/peacemaker impacted Indian-White race relations during the years from 1784 to the turn of the century, and would determine whether the country west of the Allegheny Mountains would become French, English, or Indian.

An exception to the rule is the first weekend of August, when varying numbers of Cornplanter’s 600 direct-descendents gather for a big picnic and family reunion on Allegheny (Seneca Nation) Territory in N.Y. And they’re not all members of the Seneca Nation either. They include Cayuga, Onandaga, and others.

“It’s a sense of coming together. It’s a lot of fun, a reminder that they’re all a big family,” said Jare Cardinal, director of the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca. “It brings elders together, and youngsters, and it gives them a voice,” Cardinal said. The gatherings have become especially important since the community Cornplanter started, and where their elders and ancestors lived (known as Cornplanter Grant) was destroyed, submerged when the Allegheny Reservoir was flooded, Cardinal said. “It’s still a very emotional issue today. What happened back 40 years ago impacts everyone.”

As a result of Cornplanter’s efforts to check the development of a threatening alliance between eastern and Ohio Indians, and in keeping the Iroquois from joining the rebels, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth awarded him 1,500 acres of land in western Pennsylvania in 1796, including tracts at Oil City and Richland. The third tract “Cornplanter Grant” was about 750 acres along the Allegany River. Cornplanter settled on the grant with his people, and then invited Quakers into the community to educate, and teach them their farming methods because hunting was no longer possible. The community thrived, raised horses and cattle, and basically lived a peaceful coexistence with their non-native neighbors until the early 1960s. Cornplanter, and half-brother Handsome Lake, who also lived on the grant, preached against drinking, and promoted other forms of morality.

Rebecca Bowen, a Cornplanter descendent, who works at the Seneca Nation Tribal Archives Department, describes what her ancestor means to her.

“He’s very real to me because I’m a descendent of him. I’ve had the gift of being able to trace back my lineage. In our family when we talk about him we say ‘old grandpa.’ We don’t put him on a pedestal. We’re part of him. We look around at our homelands here, and they’re the homelands he looked at.” Bowen has often studied the only portrait known of Cornplanter, painted by F. Bartoli in 1796, and wondered how realistic it is, and how much was the European artist’s own interpretation. “I take it with a grain of salt,” Bowen said.

The legacy Cornplanter passed along to Bowen, through seven generations, is a loyalty to the Seneca Nation and many of the same things that Cornplanter fought for, especially assuring the survival of “The Nation” through the next generation, Bowen said. She feels it is particularly important for Americans of all backgrounds to learn and understand the Indian-U.S. treaties, so that their tenets can be upheld. Treaty disputes, such as New York State’s taxation on reservation land, are still going on, Bowen added. During his own lifetime, Cornplanter refused to pay taxes on the Grant land because it was a gift, and it belonged to him.

Pamela Bowen, Rebecca’s first cousin, is a spokesperson for the Cornplanter Descendents Association, and the daughter of Duwayne “Duce” Bowen, a former Chairman of the Seneca Nation of Indians.

 “There’s not a lot of accurate native history taught,” Bowen said. Mostly it’s the elders who are familiar with the history. She hopes that someday, however, it will be taught correctly in history classes. Efforts are being made locally to get such history into the curricula, but Bowen realizes it will be a slow process, she said.

Several of Chief Cornplanter decisions are controversial, as they were at the time among the Iroquois and Cornplanter’s rivals; especially those that ceded Native land through negotiated deals with the U.S. Government or private speculators. Nevertheless, Bowen said; “His intentions were never for his own advantage—but always for the best interest of his people.” Later in life, remorseful over his part in assimilating his people to the culture of the white man, Cornplanter broke his sword, burned his military uniform, destroyed his medals, closed the school and expelled the missionaries from the grant.

It’s easy for people to latch onto Cornplanter, as his history is so interesting, spanning before the Revolutionary War and well beyond, including dealings with President George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and important treaties, said Seneca-Iroquois Museum Director Jare Cardinal. But many other significant leaders, including Handsome Lake, Red Jacket, and other things such as the important role of Iroquois women in that matrilineal society, are just waiting to be discovered, she said. The museum is currently featuring an exhibit on the communities buried beneath the Allegheny Reservoir.

Meanwhile a monument to Cornplanter stands at the Riverview Cemetery near Willow Bay, where his remains are also believed to have been reburied. On, and around the monument visitors have placed rocks, amulets, coins, feathers, berries, Buddhist prayer-flags, and small American flags. It’s not how Native Americans honor their dead, according to these local experts, but it shows that Cornplanter’s legacy is apparently still acknowledged.