Mountaineers and Indians in West Virginia

In a conversation with my PhD adviser, I came upon a interesting and probably somewhat controversial line of questioning concerning the WVU Peace Tree and the Mountaineer. I have been hard at work studying Kanawha-New River Indian peoples for a little over a decade. The traditional story of the region is that the people living there were Shawnee, though the more conventional histories suggested the region was little more than a "common hunting ground" devoid of occupants other than a handful of young men hunting. This last myth is easily refuted but leaves one wondering from whence the misconception arose. This is what leads me to the picture.

While attending the Fall 2012 WVU and ONAI Peace Tree ceremony, I was able to quickly snap this picture of the Mountaineer statue towering over the distant and obscured Peace Tree. Both homages to the past are problematic in the story of the Monongahela Valley and West Virginia Indian history as a whole.

I'll knock the lonely Mountaineer off his towering pedestal first. European men, such as our strong mountaineer, were controversial and complicated individuals in so many ways. Somewhat ostracized and ridiculed by refined British society and even the coastal colonials, the interior traders had gone too "native" but that very trait provided them the access to fur and hide trades with far-flung Indians. These men often married into local Indian villages, but could prove troublesome for their cross-cultural kin. The long-knives often did not live up to their Indian relatives expectations of reciprocity. For the British, these cultural emissaries were a means to influence Indian politics, though sadly they often proved ineffective. For the Indians of the Ohio region, these interlopers were at best a necessary evil of trade and at worst unsettling reminders of political instability threatening village life and cultural traditions.

In modern society, the mountaineer remains the model of American rugged individualism, the banner-man of modernity's taming of the wilderness. In his historical reality and his modern avatar the mountaineer is the idealized version of colonialism and the dispossession of the land from the original inhabitants. Albeit, that is too easy and simplistic, but it is a common perception of the statue's gaze across the Monongahela valley.

The Mountaineer, as a European, is easily seen as an intruder along the Monongahela, but the tradition of the Peace Tree may in fact be even more intrusive. The tradition of the Peace Tree comes from the formation story of the Confederation of the Iroquois nations. When Deganawidah taught Hiawatha the condolence ceremonies which Hiawatha in turn taught to the Five nations of Iroquois, he proclaimed that the Five Nations should stop fighting each other and "bury the hatchet" under the white roots of peace under the White Pine. The four roots spread in the cardinal directions. This beautiful story of finding peace amongst ancestral enmity continues to inspire wiser actions today among Indians and non-Indians alike. But, again, this is only part of the story. Deganawidah suggests that far the white roots of peace should spread into other lands. if those peoples accept that peace then they should welcomed as props of the longhouse. If they do not accept peace then they would be considered a threat to that peace.

The Monongahela living along their namesake river during the early Seventeenth century were attacked by Iroquoian raiding parties. The aggressive attacks by Mohawk, Seneca and Cayuga war parties is a major reason for the collapse and removal of Monongahela peoples around 1630. The white roots, and Iroquois land claims spread through homelands. The raids of Seneca war parties through the entirety of what would become West Virginia would add pressure to leave for numerous Iroquoian and Siouan speaking peoples during the Seventeenth Century.

Iroquoian concepts of military conquest justified further land claims during the Eighteenth century as well. Their supposed conquest of the Shawnee and Delaware, and British diplomatic acquiescence, perpetuated the political claim of the two smaller groups as props of the Longhouse. Seneca leaders tried to control Delaware and Shawnee village politics by sending half-kings to observe their satellite peoples in the Ohio. Needless to say, the Delaware and Shawnee both worked to undermine or ignore the hegemony of the Iroquois during the 1730s through 1760s. The use of the Peace tree for these two people certainly represented yet another attempt to control and restrict. The Iroquois empire was certainly ambiguous as Francis Jennings suggested but the cultural power of metaphor is hard to ignore.

So where are we as observers and commentators on Indian History in West Virginia and at WVU?  The beauty and power of the ceremony as ONAI and WVU's Native American Studies has practiced for nearly two decades focuses on the best intentions of the Peace Tree ceremony. It truly speaks to the needs for commonality and peacemaking in the Twenty-First Century. But can we ignore or hide the negative historical context? Is this accidentally perpetuating an imperialist iconography against the Monongahela and all victims of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Iroquois aggression? Lest we forget the complication of the onlooking Mountaineer, larger than life, cast immobile and inscrutable as the mascot. As the US reevaluates the role of mascots, can we ignore the negative historical context of such a character? 

We may be loathe to so cynically critique such potentially powerful and positive iconic images. In fact, I have deliberated many years in posting this for fear of upsetting many of my dearest friends. But the thoughts above have also plagued me. Can we come to terms with the injustices of one past by using imagery and icons with equally as complicated pasts?

Isaac