"I once saw the aged and venerable Chief, and had an interesting
interview with him about a year and a half before his death. I thought
of many things, when seated near him beneath the wide spreading shade
of an old sycamore, on the banks of the Allegheny; many things to ask
him; the scenes of the revolution; the generals that fought its battles
and conquered the Indians; his tribe; the Six Nations, and himself. He
was constitutionally sedate; was never observed to smile, much less to
indulge in the luxury of a laugh. When I saw him he estimated his age
to be over one hundred years. I think one hundred and three was about
his reckoning of it. This would make him near one hundred and five years
old at the time of his decease. His person was much stooped, and his
stature was far short of what it once had been--not being over five feet
six inches at the time I speak of Mr. JOHN STRUTHERS, of Ohio, told me,
some years since, that he had seen him near fifty years ago, and at
that period he was about his height, viz: six feet, one inch. Time and
hardship had made dreadful impressions upon that ancient form. The chest
was sunken and his shoulders were drawn forward, making the upper part
of his body resemble a trough. His limbs had lost their symmetry, and
become crooked. His feet, too, (for he had taken off his moccasins,) were
deformed and haggard by injury. I would say that most of his fingers
on one hand were useless; the sinews had been severed by a blow of the
tomahawk or scalping-knife. How I longed to ask him what scene of blood
and strife had thus stamped the enduring evidence of its existence upon
his person. But to have done so, would, in all probability, have put an
end to all further conversation on any subject. The information desired,
would certainly not have been received, and I had to forego my curiosity.
He had but one eye, and even the socket of the lost organ was hid by the
overhanging brow resting upon the high cheek bone. His remaining eye was
of the brightest and blackest hue. Never have I seen one, in young or
old, that equalled it in brilliancy. Perhaps it had borrowed lustre from
the eternal darkness that rested on its neighboring orbit. His ears had
been dressed in the Indian mode, all but the outside had been cut away;
on the one ear the ring had been torn asunder near the top, and hung
down his neck like a useless rag. He had a full head of hair, white as
the driven snow, which covered a head of ample dimensions and admirable
shape. His face was not swarthy, but this may be accounted for from
the fact, that he was but half Indian. He told me that he had been at
Franklin, more than eighty years before the period of our conversation,
on his passage down the Ohio and Mississippi, with the warriors of his
tribe, on some expedition against the Creeks or Osages. He had long been
a man of peace, and I believe his great characteristics were humanity and
truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The Cornplanter Memorial: An Historical Sketch of Gy-ant-wa-chia—The Cornplanter, and of the Six Nations of Indians. — John Shaqi
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