The society showed its Indian ceremonies to advantage and gained much prestige by aiding in the conciliation of the Creek Indians. After useless attempts to make a treaty with them, the Government undertook, as a last resort, in February, 1790, to influence Alexander McGillivray, their half-breed chief, to visit New York, where he might be induced to sign a treaty. To Col. Marinus Willett, a brave soldier of the Revolution, and later Mayor of New York City, the mission was intrusted. In July, 1790, Willett started North accompanied by McGillivray and twenty-eight Creek chiefs and warriors. Upon their arrival in New York, then the seat of the National Government, the members of the Tammany Society, in full Indian costume, welcomed them. One phase of the tale has it that the Creeks set up a wild whoop, at whose terrifying sound the Tammany make-believe red-faces fled in dismay. Another version tells that the Tammany Society and the military escorted the Indians to Secretary Knox’s house, introduced them to Washington and then led them to the Wigwam at Barden’s Tavern, where seductive drink was served. On August 2 the Creeks were entertained at a Tammany banquet. A treaty was signed on August 13.
In June of the same year Tammany had established, in the old City Hall, a museum “for the preservation of Indian relics.” For a brief while the society devoted itself with assiduity to this department, but the practical men grew tired of it. On June 25, 1795, the museum was given over to Gardiner Baker, its curator, on condition that it was to be known for all time as the Tammany Museum and that each member of the society and his family were to have entrance free. Baker dying, the museum eventually passed into the hands of a professional museum-owner.
Tammany’s chief functions at first seem to have been the celebration of its anniversary day, May 12; the Fourth of July and Evacuation Day. The society’s parades were events in old New York. On May 12, 1789, the day of organization, two marquees were built two miles above the city, whither the Tammany brethren went to hold their banquet. Thirteen discharges of cannon followed each toast. The first one read: “May Honor, Virtue and Patriotism ever be the distinguishing characteristics of the sons of St. Tammany.” John Pintard,[4] Tammany’s first Sagamore, wrote an account[5] of the society’s celebration of May 12, 1791. “The day,” he says,
“was ushered in by a Federal salute from the battery and welcomed by a discharge of 13 guns from the brig Grand Sachem, lying in the stream. The society assembled at the great Wigwam, in Broad street, five hours after the rising of the sun, and was conducted from there in an elegant procession to the brick meeting house in Beekman street. Before them was borne the cap of liberty; after following seven hunters in Tammanial dress, then the great standard of the society, in the rear of which was the Grand Sachem and other officers. On either side of these were formed the members in tribes, each headed by its standard bearers and Sachem in full dress. At the brick meeting house an oration was delivered by their brother, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, to the society and to a most respectable and crowded audience. In the most brilliant and pathetic language he traced the origin of the Columbian Order and the Society of the Cincinnati. From the meeting house the procession proceeded (as before) to Campbell’s grounds, where upwards of two hundred people partook of a handsome and plentiful repast. The dinner was honored by his Excellency [George Clinton] and many of the most respectable citizens.”
The toasts, that now seem so quaint, mirror the spirit of the diners. “The Grand Sachem of the Thirteen United Fires,” ran the first, “may his declining sun be precious in the sight of the Great Spirit that the mild luster of his departing beams may prove no less glorious than the effulgence of the rising or transcendent splendor of his meridian greatness.” The second: “The head men and chiefs of the Grand Council of the Thirteen United Fires—may they convince our foes not only of their courage to lift, prudence to direct and clemency to withhold the hatchet, but of their power to inflict it in their country’s cause.”
Up to 1835, at least, toasts were an important feature in public dinners, as they were supposed to disclose the sentiments, political or otherwise, of the person or body from whom they came. In this fashion the Tammany Society announced its instant sympathy with the French Revolution in all its stages. On May 12, 1793, the sixth toast read: “Success to the Armies of France, and Wisdom, Concord and Firmness to the Convention.” “The first sentence was hardly articulated,” a newspaper[6] records, “when as one the whole company arose and gave three cheers, continued by roars of applause for several minutes; the toast was then given in whole and the applauses reiterated.”
At ten o’clock that morning, the same account relates, “the society had assembled at Tammanial Hall, in Broad street, and marched to St. Paul’s Church, where Brother Cadwallader D. Colden delivered to a crowded and brilliant audience an animated talk on the excellence of the Government and situation of the United States when contrasted with those of despotic countries.” In the procession were about 400 members in civilian dress. From each hat flowed a bucktail—the symbol of Liberty—and the standard and cap of Liberty were carried in front of the line. From the church “the Tammanials went to their Hall, where some 150 of them partook of an elegant dinner.”
Public feeling ran high in discussing the French Revolution, and there were many personal collisions. The Tammany Society was in the vanguard of the American sympathizers and bore the brunt of abuse. The pamphlets and newspapers were filled with anonymous threats from both sides. “An Oneida Chief” writes in the New York Journal and Patriotic Register, June 8, 1793:
“A Hint to the Whigs of New York: To hear our Brethren of France vilified (with all that low Scurrility of which their enemies the English are so well stocked) in our streets and on the wharves; nay, in our new and elegant Coffee House; but more particularly in that den of ingrates, called Belvidere Club House, where at this very moment those enemies to liberty are swallowing potent draughts to the destruction and annihilation of Liberty, Equality and the Rights of Man, is not to be borne by freemen and I am fully of opinion that if some method is not adopted to suppress such daring and presumptuous insults, a band of determined Mohawks, Oneidas and Senekas will take upon themselves that necessary duty.”
There is no record of the carrying out of this threat.