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Red Jacket or Sagoyewatha (ca. 1758-1830)
Red Jacket or Sagoyewatha (ca. 1758-1830)
Artist (American)
Related Person

Red Jacket or Sagoyewatha (ca. 1758-1830)

Datec. 1828
DimensionsSight: 10 × 7 1/2 in. (25.4 × 19.1 cm)
Object numberN0385.1955
Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Gift of Stephen C. Clark
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextSagoyewatha (c. 1758-1830) was a member of the Seneca tribe and a chief of the Wolf clan in western New York. Known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha as an adult, he allied with the British during the American Revolution and spent much of the aftermath of the war negotiating with the United States government. Sagoyewatha’s direct negotiations with George Washington resulted in a peace medal depicting Washington shaking hands with a Native man’s hand which Sagoyewatha is wearing in this portrait. He also signed the controversial Treaty of Canandaigua (1794), which resulted in a significant loss of tribal land for the Seneca and other Haudenosaunee peoples. Sagoyewatha spent much of his life defending the Seneca’s beliefs, practices, and fighting against outsiders’ claims to their land.
Exhibition History“Rediscovered Painters of Upstate New York,” New York Historical Society, NY, February 1, 1959 – February 28, 1959; Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Syracuse, NY, January 4, 1959 – January 25, 1959; Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, November 30, 1958 – December 21, 1958; Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY, October 30, 1958 – November 20, 1958; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, September 26, 1958 – October 21, 1958; New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY, June 14, 1958 – September 15, 1958.

“Native Americans, Five Centuries of Changing Views,” Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Los Angeles, CA, November 13, 1989 - March 9, 1990.
Bibliography"An Iroquois Sampling at Fenimore House Museum" "Heritage", The Magazine of the New York State Historical Association, (Cooperstown, NY), Summer 1994, Vol. 10, No. 4, pg. 12.
On View
Not on view
Joseph Thomas Husbands
Julius Gollmann
c. 1855
Native American Basket Seller
Cornelius David Krieghoff
1815-1872
Untitled
Felix Octavius Carr Darley
n.d.
Martha Barnes, Aged 96
Lucius Barnes
c. 1834
Caricature of J. H. I. Browere
William Dunlap
after 1827
La Communiante
Will Hicok Low
1901
Elkanah Watson (1758-1842)
Samuel Finley Breese Morse
c. 1825
The Last of the Mohicans
Felix Octavius Carr Darley
n.d.
Indian Maiden In Landscape
Unidentified Artist
n.d.
Self-Portrait at Easel
Raymond Han
ca. 1995
Catherine Russell
George Freeman
c. 1816

5798 STATE HIGHWAY 80
COOPERSTOWN NY, 13326
607-547-1400

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