Red Jacket

Red Jacket (known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha(Keeper Awake) Sa-go-ye-wa-tha after 1780 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 defeat of the British.

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

Read more about Red Jacket:  Life, Speech To The U.S. Senate, Honors and Legacy

Famous quotes containing the words red and/or jacket:

    The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Old age begins in the nursery, and before the young American is put into jacket and trowsers, he says, “I want something which I never saw before” and “I wish I was not I.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)