"The memorial to the great Seneca chief, Red Jacket, or Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha. 'The Keeper Awake,' stands in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York, and was erected in June, 1892. Red Jacket was born at Seneca Lake, New York, in 1752, and died on the Seneca reservation, near Buffalo, in 1830. His fame is that of a statesman and orator rather than as a warrior, and he was regarded as the most noted chief among the Six Nations of the Iroquois. He has been described as the perfect Indian in dress, character and instinct. He refused to acquire the English language, and never dressed other than in his native costume. He had an unalterable dislike for the missionary and contempt for the clothes of the white man.
"When Red Jacket died, in 1830, his remains were given over to Ruth Stevenson, a stepdaughter, who retained them in her cabin for some years, and finally secreted them in a place unknown to any person but herself. After she had become advanced in age, she became anxious to have the remains of her step father receive a final and known resting-place, and with that view, in October, 1879, she delivered them to the Buffalo Historical Society, which assumed their care and custody and deposited them in the vaults of the Western Savings Bank of Buffalo, where they remained until October, 1884, when their final interment was made in Forest Lawn Cemetery at Buffalo. The splendid monument which now marks the spot was not completed until some years after the interment.
"The monument to Chief Cornstalk, warrior and sachem of the Shawnees, was erected at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1896. It stands in the courthouse yard and was made possible by the thoughtfulness and generosity of the leading citizens of Point Pleasant. Here in October, 1774, was fought that great battle where Cornstalk won fame for his prowess and general-ship. He was, too, a man endowed with superior intellectual faculties and was an orator of transcendent eloquence. His murder in 1777 by a party of infuriated soldiers was the result of the killing of a white settler by some roving Indians. The death of Cornstalk destroyed the only hope of reconciliation and peace between the white settlers south of the Ohio River and the Indian tribes north of it. It was followed by a succession of wars, forays and murders, down to the battle of 'Fallen Timbers' in 1794, during which time many thousands of white men, women and children, and many thousands of the red race of all ages and conditions perished.
"There never has been and never can be any excuse or palliation for the murder of Cornstalk, and no one event in the history of those bloody times so much enraged the vindictive spirit of the Indian tribes, particularly of the Shawnees. It can never be known how many deaths of white men, women and children during the next twenty years were owing to this murder. One hundred and twenty years later an enduring monument was raised to his memory by a few generous-minded white men on the spot where he fought one of the greatest battles in all Indian warfare, and where three years afterward he gave up his life.
"In the heart of Savannah, Georgia, reposes a huge granite boulder, erected in honor of the Indian chief, Tomo-Chi-Chi. This noble red man was the special friend of Gen. James Oglethorpe, the English knight who, in early colonial days, endured much hardship in the new country of America to befriend both the Georgia colony and the Indians thereabout. Chief Tomo-Chi-Chi, also mighty in the camp-fire councils of the braves, easily ranked as one of the foremost of his race in those times. And so when the stately descendants of Colonial sires, known as Colonial Dames of America, sought to commemorate the spirit of the Georgia colony, four years ago, they placed this monument in the State capital. The bronze tablet on the side reads: 'In memory of Tomo-Chi-Chi, the Mico of the Yamacrans, the companion of Oglethorpe, and the friend and ally of the colony of Georgia, this stone has been here placed by the Georgia Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1739-1899.'
"The monument erected by the citizens of Chicago to Leopold and Simon Pokagon, chiefs of the Pottawatomie Indians, in Jackson Park, Chicago, completes the known list of memorials erected by white men to their red brethren in this country. The Pokagons, father and son, were successive chiefs and sachems of the once powerful Pottawatomie tribe, which long occupied the region around the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Leopold Pokagon is described as a man of excellent character and habits, a good warrior and hunter, and as being possessed of considerable business capacity. He was well known to the early white settlers in the region about Lake Michigan, and his people were noted as being the most advanced in civilization of any of the neighboring tribes. He ruled over his people for forty-three years.
"In 1833 he sold to the United States one million acres of land at 3 cents an acre, and on the land so conveyed has since been built the city of Chicago. He died in 1840 in Cass County, Michigan.
"His son, Simon, then ten years of age, became the rightful hereditary chief of the tribe. At the age of fourteen he began the study of English, which he successfully mastered, as well as Latin and Greek. No full-blooded Indian ever acquired a more thorough knowledge of the English language. In 1897 he wrote an article for a New York magazine on the 'Future of the Red Man,' in which he said: 'Often in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems asleep about me, there comes a gentle rapping at the door of my heart. I open it and a voice inquires: "Pokagon, what of your people? What will be their future?" My answer is: "Mortal man has not the power to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the future of his race. That gift belongs to the Divine alone. But it is given to him to closely judge the future by the present and the past."' Pokagon died January 28, 1899, at his old home in Allegan County, Michigan, at the age of seventy years; and thus passed away the last and most noted chief of the once powerful Pottawatomie tribe. His remains were buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago."
We are somewhat surprised that Mr. Clemens should think that the nine chiefs he mentions form a complete list of those to whom monuments have been built.
There are several others, including Joseph Brant, the great Mohawk sachem and head of the Iroquois Confederation, who was buried beside the church he had erected at Grand River, Canada. There is a monument over his grave, said to have cost $30,000, with the following inscription: