Returning to the Valley: Mohawk Chief Tom Porter Comes Home
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Article #: |
15484 |
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Section: |
LIFE
- PROFILE
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File Size: |
2,497 words |
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Issue Date: |
9 / 1996 |
Start Page: |
128 |
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Author: |
Marie Dawson; photographed by Pamela Guernsey
Marie Dawson is a British journalist who lived in New York for
sixteen years. Pamela Guernsey owns a photography studio in
Richmondville, New York. |
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Mohawk Chief Tom Porter and his family come back to the valley
from which their forefathers were exiled almost two hundred
years ago.
If you approach the Mohawk Community Farm from the east, driving along the curling loops of New York State's Route 5, you are flanked on the right by dizzyingly vertical mountains. On the left is the Mohawk River, which runs in companionable proximity to the road. About four miles beyond the small town of Palatine Bridge, the landscape opens suddenly, like the palm of a hand, to reveal the lush, green lowlands that are home to the farm known as Kanatsiohareke.
My photographer and I go into the main building and follow the tantalizing smell of pancakes and coffee. In the cozy kitchen, painted bright pink, we find a group of people at breakfast. Tom Porter, the leader of the community, has just come in from three hours of heavy work in the barn. He welcomes us warmly, and room is made at the table. We meet Alice, Tom's wife of twenty-five years; Ida Mae Polless, Alice's sister; and Macella David, Tom's aunt.
A young man and woman enter the kitchen. Each carries a child. Tom introduces his eldest daughter, Katsitsiahawi; her husband, Kenny Perkins; and their sons, Rahonte, four, and Ronatiio, aged one year. His daughter's family lives at Akwesasne, also known as the St. Regis Indian Reservation, which lies two hundred miles north, straddling the U.S.-Canadian border. It is Porter's original home. Another grown daughter, Katsitsiakwas, is also here this weekend with her boyfriend, Warren Lazore, and their son Roweren, aged two and a half.
I ask why they are not all living at Kanatsiohareke. "I think they are watching to see how I make out before they take the plunge," laughs Porter. The two youngest of his six children, Kanastatsi, nineteen, and Tewasontahawitha, six, live at the farm.
Porter is well built, of medium height. His light brown hair, which is tinged with gray, is tied in a ponytail. He has a sober, rather sad expression, but when he laughs, his face lights up. In his eyes, you glimpse traces of a wicked sense of mischief. He launches into a joke and says he hasn't enjoyed the peace of mind he has now since he was a boy. "I've never worked as hard in my life, either, but it's a pleasure," he says with simple glee.
When Porter and his family arrived in the Mohawk Valley almost three years ago, his reasons for leaving Akwesasne Reservation were widely publicized. Home to at least thirteen thousand Mohawks, Akwesasne encompasses twenty-eight thousand acres between Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York. Like others on the reservation, Porter had become increasingly disillusioned with the struggle to maintain a traditional Mohawk way of life in the face of the mounting number of casinos, bars, and bingo halls, which were built in the 1980s.
The casinos ushered in bitter family conflict, gang warfare, prostitution, and drugs. Throughout the 1980s, Akwesasne was caught up in terror, culminating in the death of two Mohawks during antigambling protests. The situation resembled America's tough inner cities more than an Indian reservation where people raised livestock, netted fish, and grew fruit and vegetables. Eventually, in 1990, the eleven casinos on the reservation were closed, but the competitiveness and intertribal conflicts they had engendered remained. Finally, Porter decided the only solution was to plant a new root of the Mohawk Nation elsewhere. He led a tiny remnant of his tribe from Akwesasne to the Mohawk Valley, an hour's drive west of Albany in New York State.
I ask Porter to tell us the story of the Mohawk Community Farm from the beginning. He starts by saying he doesn't know where the beginning is, as the past, present, and future are all interconnected, as in a circle. It is impossible with a circle to see the beginning or the end, and that is the way of time. And so the story unfolds, with no beginning at all, as though returning to the valley started on the very day the Mohawks were forced to leave.
When those who were infants on the day the Mohawks left the valley became the elders of their people, they said to their grandchildren, who said, in turn, to theirs: "Someday, our grandchildren will come back to the valley we left. They will rebuild the fire, and the sacred smoke will rise again." Such was the prophecy that was nurtured at Akwesasne and breathed into the hearts and minds of all those born there.
A dwindling peace
According to Porter, the story begins even earlier, in the 1600s, when the Mohawks were at the zenith of their strength. The Mohawk Nation, along with the Oneida, Tuscarora, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cayuga, made up the Iroquois Confederacy. This unique system of intertribal government was founded to establish peace and democracy among all the nations of the Iroquois (or, as they called themselves, the Haudenosaunee People of the Longhouse), while preserving the integrity of each. The principles of democracy laid down by the Iroquois Confederacy would be admired by the Founding Fathers of the United States and woven into the fabric of the Constitution.
At the time of the confederacy, the Haudenosaunee controlled vast tracts of land from Maine to Michigan. The tribes essentially lived in the world in their own way. When the first Europeans arrived in the 1600s, the Mohawks coexisted peaceably with the new settlers, especially the Dutch, for over a hundred years.
Later, Jesuits from France and Protestants from Moravia came to the New World, burning with the desire to preach the gospel. Many Mohawks accepted Christianity, but the historical animosity between Catholics and Protestants was imparted to them as well. The new Catholics found themselves in conflict with their Protestant brothers. Both were deemed enemies by most of the Haudenosaunee, who refused to accept Christianity and perceived this new religion as a threat to their traditions. Conflicts broke out in the tribe, and the Jesuits persuaded many Mohawks to go to the Catholic "station" on the St. Lawrence in Canada. These cagawaitha, or "praying Indians," as they were known, were effectively estranged from both the Protestant Mohawks and the Haudenosaunee who remained in the Mohawk Valley.
Close on the heels of the French came the British. They were not remotely interested in saving anyone's souls, but, in common with their European cousins, they gazed greedily upon the fertile lands of the New World. According to Porter, in the 1700s, the new colonists inveigled some ten million acres from the Mohawks, frequently swindling them in the process.
All vestiges of peace between the Mohawks and Europeans were shattered during the French and Indian Wars in the 1750s. The Catholic Mohawks sided with the French in Canada, and those in the Mohawk Valley sided with the British. Hostilities heightened during the American Revolution. When the war was over, the Mohawks who had allied with the British were forced to flee to Canada, where they joined their estranged brothers along the St. Lawrence. In 1840, the U.S. government introduced the reservation system. Two regions were set aside for the Mohawk Nation, one at Akwesasne ("Land Where the Partridge Drums") and the other in Brantford, Ontario.
Porter grew up at Akwesasne. He says he can remember his grandmother, Hattie Chubb, telling him repeatedly of her vision of the Mohawks returning to the valley and of the leadership role she felt he was destined to play. As a twelve-year-old in the 1950s, he watched his uncle, Standing Arrow, attempt to fulfill the prophecy. The Mohawk visionary and several followers pitched tents on land along Schoharie Creek, near the valley, but they were chased off the property by the owner and returned sheepishly to the reservation.
As a young man in the 1960s, searching for his own identity, Porter felt drawn to the ideals of the Haudenosaunee longhouse: democracy, cohesion, and identity. A wooden building about 350 feet in length, it was home to seven or eight families but could easily house up to twenty families, all belonging to the same clan. The longhouse was considered the clan's social, cultural, and spiritual center; it was here that the council was held. Porter decided he would return to the Mohawk Valley and establish a center where the values of the longhouse were honored.
When he married Alice, a Choctaw, in the early 1970s and started a family, Porter began to see aspects of reservation life that disturbed him deeply. Pollution was a major issue for the Mohawks. With the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s, the sewage and toxic compounds from industries that found their way into the Niagara River and Lake Ontario were eventually carried into the St. Lawrence. Alice was pregnant with Katsitsiahawi when Porter heard a warning on the radio that pregnant women should not eat fish from the polluted river. He pulled out his nets and never fished again.
In the mid 1970s, Porter became a member of the White Roots of Peace, a group of performers and speakers that toured Canada and the United States on behalf of the Mohawk Nation. "We found a way to make a little money, and the idea of buying land in the Mohawk Valley began to come up again," he says.
Porter has served as an interpreter for the Mohawk Nation, a chief of the Bear Clan, and a cultural consultant for the North American Indian Traveling College in Ontario. He spoke about his vision to many people. His supporters began to hold fund-raising events at Akwesasne. The process was slow, but the Mohawks managed to save $25,000.
In 1993, Porter made an impulsive trip to the Mohawk Valley and bought a few acres of land. A local woman, aged ninety-two, found Tom and scolded him: "You bought land here?" she said, shaking her finger at him. "You're not supposed to buy your own land. This is your land." Porter says he returned home with a renewed vision.
Not long after that, the news spread around Akwesasne that one thousand acres was available on the south side of the Mohawk River, but the asking price was steep: $1.5 million. Porter and his friends renewed their fund-raising efforts with gusto until reality hit: "We suddenly realized we would never ever be able to get such a sum together," he says.
Help from a friend
An article about the plight of the Mohawks looking for a home in the Mohawk Valley ran in the Schenectady Gazette. A local resident, Vincent Schaffer, read the story and wrote to Porter telling him that three hundred acres in Montgomery County would be auctioned in July 1993. Porter immediately met with county officials and made an offer, but he was told the Mohawks would have to go through the process of a public auction like everybody else. The bidding might go into the millions, but anywhere from $200,000 to $250,000 would be considered a fair bid. "All we had was $25,000. We didn't think we had a hope," recalls Porter.
But unexpectedly, as the date of the auction neared, Porter got a phone call from a "dear friend who is very wealthy." The friend, who wished to remain anonymous, and her husband offered $250,000 outright. "I've known this person for a long time, but I didn't feel I could ask her for such a great sum of money," says Porter.
At first, Porter assumed the money would be a loan, but the friend told him it was a gift. "She said that we had had enough trouble in our history, and if we created a place where the traditions of our people would be observed, that would be repayment enough." In addition to the $250,000, the friend also promised monies to "get the place up and running" and a temporary paid salary for Porter as its director.
Porter steadfastly refuses to disclose the identity of his benefactor, but local residents believe that it might be actress Jane Fonda, who is married to media magnate Ted Turner. (One of Jane's ancestors, Maj. Jelles Fonda, fought in the Revolutionary War; he was also a prominent trader in the Mohawk Valley and a key figure in settling the town of Fonda, which is named after him.)
The auction took place on a perfect summer's day. Crowds turned up to bid for the property, known as Montgomery Manor. In recent years, the manor had served as a residence for senior citizens, but lack of funds had forced its closure in 1992. The land was set amid lush fields and flanked by forested mountains, including the landmark crags called Big Nose and Little Nose. The property had a spring, a creek, and a waterfall and would prove attractive to a number of buyers.
"When I drove up, the whole place was full of big Continentals, Mercedes, and television cameras," says Porter. "My heart sank when the bidding started in the millions." Eventually, the figure dropped. When it hit $210,000, Porter's hand shot up. Down crashed the auctioneer's hammer, and Montgomery Manor was his.
Later, Porter discovered that the owners of the Continentals and Mercedes had not come to bid but merely to support the Mohawks. Some months later, on September 12, 1993, Porter and his family moved to Kanatsiohareke, the Place of the Clean Pot, so called because a collection of round, smooth stones are scoured by the brook, like overturned pots being cleaned in a sink.
"Come, let me show you around," says Porter. We leave the rambling main house, known as the longhouse, which contains the kitchen, a meeting room, and living quarters. On the enormous yellow barn is a large welcome sign, a gift from the local chambers of commerce.
His immediate goal, explains Porter, is to raise beef cattle and grow the same crops of corn, raspberries, and strawberries that his ancestors did. In time, he would like a "pick your own" berry farm, and he also hopes to have a fish farm and grow medicinal plants and herbs like watercress, thyme, sage, and oregano. Eventually, he hopes the community will be able to buy more land, perhaps up to a thousand acres, and grow enough crops to make Kanatsiohareke completely self-sufficient.
As we leave the barn and head toward the gift shop where native arts and crafts are sold, Porter outlines his five-year masterplan, which includes creating a spiritual center and a boarding school for children between five and ten years old. The curriculum will emphasize the Mohawk language and traditions. "By the time the children leave us, they would not only be fluent in Mohawk," says Porter. "They would go home to their parents without so much as a thread of shame in owning up to who they are."
We return to the barn and say good-bye to Porter, who has to finish chores, then walk across the field behind the farm. As we climb to higher ground to take more pictures, the wind whistles through the ancient pines and a huge hawk swoops low above our heads. I look at the farm nestled below us and think about Porter's grandmother, Hattie Chubb. She died before her vision came to pass, but I have a feeling she is well pleased.
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