Little Beard | |
|---|---|
Si-gwa-ah-doh-gwih | |
| Died | June 1806 (1806-07) Leicester, New York |
| Known for | Seneca chief active during the American Revolution |
Little Beard or Si-gwa-ah-doh-gwih ("Spear Hanging Down") (died June 1806),[1] was a Seneca chief who participated in the American Revolutionary War on the side of Great Britain.[2] After the war, he continued to reside in New York.
In Notes on the Iroquois (1846), Henry Rowe Schoolcraft recorded a Seneca tradition, attributed to Oliver Silverheels, that “Little Beard the elder” was among eight Senecas sent on a peace embassy during the earlier wars between the Six Nations and the Cherokees.[3]
During the war in 1778, Little Beard commanded a group of Seneca in Loyalist officer Walter Butler's raid that became known as the Cherry Valley massacre.[4]
His village, Little Beard's Town was located near two other Seneca villages in modern Leicester in Livingston County, New York, and consisted of about 128 houses.[2][5] Little Beard participated in the Cherry Valley massacre of 1778, and presided over the torture and death of Boyd and Parker, captured scouts of the Sullivan Expedition of 1779.[6] Subsequently, Little Beard's Town was destroyed by the American forces. Mary Jemison, then a resident of the village, fled with the natives to more secure villages.[7] The modern town of Cuylerville was built at the spot.
Little Beard was one of the Seneca chiefs signing the Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794 that established some reservations for the Iroquois.[8] He was also a signatory to the Treaty of Big Tree in 1797 that opened up Western New York for settlement. In 1802, the Seneca ceded Little Beard's Town, with many of its inhabitants moving to the Tonawanda Reservation.[9]
According to historian Lockwood L. Doty, Little Beard died as the result of injuries received during a brawl at a tavern in Leicester, New York in June 1806.[10]
His son, also known as Little Beard, led a group of approximately ninety Seneca into the War of 1812 on the side of the Americans.[9] The hope was that service to the American cause would help them maintain their shrinking land base.[9] The younger Little Beard later signed an 1826 treaty reducing the size of their existing reservations.[9]
References
[edit]- ^ Minard, John Stearns; Merrill, Georgia Drew (1896). Allegany County and it People: A Centennial Memorial History of Allegany County, New York ... W.A. Fergusson & Company.
- ^ a b Norton, A. Tiffany (1879). History of Sullivan's Campaign Against the Iroquois: Being a Full Account of that Epoch of the Revolution. A. T. Norton.
- ^ Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1847). Notes on the Iroquois: Or, Contributions to American History, Antiquities, and General Ethnology. E. H. Pease & Company. ISBN 978-0-608-40254-3.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Blacksnake, Governor; Williams, Benjamin; Abler, Thomas S. (2005). Chainbreaker: the Revolutionary War memoirs of Governor Blacksnake as told to Benjamin Williams. American Indian lives (1. Nebraska paperback printing ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6450-2.
- ^ Davis, Andrew McFarland (1888). The Indians and the Border Warfare of the Revolution.
- ^ Reisem, Richard O. (December 12, 1994). Mount Hope: Rochester, New York: America's First Municipal Victorian Cemetery. Landmark Soc. of Western New York. ISBN 978-0-9641706-3-6.
- ^ Kelly, Jack (January 26, 2026). "Mary Jemison: 'The White Woman of the Genesee' - New York Almanack". Retrieved March 29, 2026.
- ^ Society (N.Y.), Livingston County Historical (1894). Annual Meeting of the Livingston County Historical Society.
- ^ a b c d Hauptman, Laurence M. (2011). The Tonawanda Senecas' heroic battle against removal: conservative activist Indians. Albany, N.Y: Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-3577-0.
- ^ Doty, Lockwood Lyon (1876). A History of Livingston County, New York: From Its Earliest Traditions, to Its Part in the War for Our Union : with an Account of the Seneca Nation of Indians, and Biographical Sketches of Earliest Settlers and Prominent Public Men. Edward L. Doty.
"A History of the Treaty of Big Tree: and an Account of the Celebration...", by Livingston County Historical Society, O. Burnell Print, 1897