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Jake Thomas’s Memoir January 6, 1922—August 18, 1998 Cayuga—Sandpiper
On Iroquois Traditions: Native Awareness, Clans. by Alberta Austin From The Library Of Yvonne & Jake Thomas, Compiled January 6, 1990, For educational purposes only. #9402 © Sandpiper Press, Website: www.tuscaroras.com/jtlc
Jake Thomas Cayuga–Sandpiper
"Some clans have become extinct since the time of the Confederation. And then some clans have been lost by some of our people because they have lost interest in their traditional ways. They didn’t bother to carry it on. You ask someone what clan they belong to and they will say ‘bear clan’ or ‘wolf clan’. They can’t say this is the kind of wolf that I belong to. There are different kinds of wolf. The same thing applies with the turtles. They also have three kinds. Hadinyahde:h (in Seneca) is the principle clan. Ha`no:wa:h is the painted turtle and then there’s a smaller, faster turtle. I forget the name of that turtle. The reason I remember this, is because the old people used to kid one another as to the clan they belong to. Some people, even when they’re young, are hump back. They call them ha`no:wa:h. Or sometimes they’d call them hadi`nowae:tge:sho`on, meaning poor shelled turtles." "There’s the same clan in every tribe. So if someone is of the Bear Clan from the Seneca tribe, one can’t marry a Mohawk of the Bear Clan. You can’t marry someone of the same clan. It’s like marrying one from your own family. This helps to keep the clans straight and it doesn’t interfere with the sachemship. The women are supposed to build up the nation. In Canada, the traditional people follow the mother’s side but the Christians follow the father’s side. My mother was a Sandpiper and I’m a Sandpiper. So we follow our matrilineal family. A Seneca can marry a Seneca but they have to be of different clans." "There is a lot of things that people don’t know. That’s why I say, years ago when we were younger, people told different things. It seems like it goes on from the time your life begins. The old people were always talking to you. I call it awareness. Native awareness. It’s for your future. You can’t blame the old people and say ‘Hey, you didn’t tell me.’ I see that today. That’s why when I speak to a lot of younger people. They say, ‘I never heard about that. My mother or father never told me about that. And they’re traditional.’ They never told me these things. They should have told me so I would know. A person from somewhere else has to tell me. Even when my grandfather was alive, he never mentioned that.’ The reason may be that many years ago the old people got discouraged and didn’t want to communicate. People were losing their language and a lot of old people didn’t want to be bothered if you didn’t understand their language. And the old people are not going to use English. No way! A lot of them didn’t really understand English so they’d rather always go back to their native language to make their point. At our house, that was a strict rule. Even if we had a visitor we had to talk our language. Right from the time I was a child, I can hear all those old people say, ‘Be stingy of your language. If you don’t, the Longhouse will be full of English.’ And by gosh, it’s true what they said. Before the ceremonies, it’s nothing but English." "We’re really caught between two cultures. It’s like when you’re caught in a fence—you don’t know how to get out of it. It’s the language that’s doing it. I guess the old people’s prediction is true. They knew. They had the wisdom as to what will happen in the future. It even mentions is in the Gai:wi:yo:h* about losing the language. It’s coming true now." "Young people from each of the Six Nations will go away to get a higher education. When those young people come back from learning all about the white man, you may think they will help you some day because they are educated. But when they come back, they are going to be just like white men. They’ll know nothing about the language. They won’t know anything! Their culture will be a mystery to them. If you try to depend on those people to help you, there’s no way they’re going to help you. They would rather stand on the white side because that’s the way that they think—like white man." "And another thing. Because he’s been educated, he’ll always go to the white side. This has already been proven. An example is Joseph Brant. He fought on the other side and also got educated. It happened the same way with Red Jacket. He fought on the other side, too. Money had a lot to do with it. Us Indians don’t have any money and that’s why they’ll always go to the other side. The white man has many ways to assimilate native people. That’s their aim. And we’re going right along with it! The white man figures they put enough money into the reservation, now they’re going to get it back."
"I’ve also heard that if Indians lose their language and culture he is no longer recognized as an Indian. He has no more land claims. The language and culture ties in with everything. It scared a lot of people. The assimilation process has been successful because how many fluent speaking people are there today? Not many! Those of us that are left, I guess we’re the ones who are hanging on to the reservations. I guess once we’re gone, the younger ones will have to pay taxes. That’s what it’s leading up to." "One time in Ottawa, they asked me how we liked our self government. I said, ‘Why do you ask that! We already had our self-government before you ever were here! We went by the Great Law, our own Constitution. You didn’t have any constitution when you came here. There was no North America, no United States and no Canada. According to your law, you cannot put a constitution on top of another constitution, unless you have won a war.’ Actually, the native people were never defeated. They were taken by force." "To be whatever you want your children to be, it’s part of the mother’s responsibility. It all starts from the time of pregnancy. Whatever the mother thinks all the time during pregnancy, she is communicating with the child. If she drinks, that alcohol is already in that baby. That baby is drunk inside of her tummy. If she smokes, that affects the baby. And if they think and talk in Indian, that child brings it with him when he is born. And if the mother is cross during pregnancy, then the baby will be cranky. Also if you breast-feed your child, he will be close to you. If you feed them cows milk, then they become wild. That’s the way traditional people are. They’re close to their mothers. Now today, they are nursed by the bottle and we’re wondering why they are going wild." "My mother died when I was only a year and half old, so my grandmother brought me up. I had two grandmothers. Sometimes I’d go to the other one. My father’s mother is the one who mostly looked after my older sister and I. She’s the one who told my aunt (Daisy Thomas) and my sister that whatever they did, that’s how their child was going to be." "I think the grandmother is always the strict one. Actually when you think about it, the mother doesn’t really have that much to say. She’s just learning too. From the time the baby is born, the grandmother teachers the mother how to diaper the baby. I use that example in my lectures today. We’re supposed to be educated people and yet most girls come along, they don’t even know how to put diapers on or how to look after a baby. We didn’t need those things years ago. They didn’t even need to go to the hospital to deliver a baby. Midwives are the ones that looked after that. They were the ones responsible. Then the grandmother took over after that. They’re the ones who gave the instructions and know how. Like if it cries, you’re not supposed to pick that baby up unless it really needs to be. If you do, you’re already spoiling that child. They’re not disciplined right because you give them everything they want. When they grow up, all they want is handouts. And when you want them to work, they disappear somewhere else. They don’t even want to get up in the morning." "When I was a child, I had to get up five o’clock in the morning. I had to build fire. I had to learn to build fire because they said some day you’re going to get married and you have to know how to make fire for your woman. They used to say, if you didn’t know how to make fire, like it’s just sizzling, you’re going to have a lazy woman and she won’t know how to cook. I ready used to work hard to have a good fire so I could have a good woman. So all these things they told us. Like, if you get up early on New Years Day, you’ll get up early all year long. Or if you lose someone in your family, you reform yourself and start all over again. You do away with your bad habits because you’re going to start a new leaf again. You want to correct yourself because you don’t know how far off death is. They also said that when a woman is pregnant, she’s not suppose to stand in a doorway because when the baby is coming, it will stop at the entrance. Or if a woman lays cross ways on the bed; the baby will come cross ways, too. They’re not supposed to go backwards out the door either because the baby will come out backwards. I don’t hear of these things any more from anybody. These are not superstitions, these are things that one has to do." "Deyenowa:doh (in Seneca) means she’s hidden under the husk. This is before a girl starts menstruating. She is isolated and forbidden a lot of things. The boy is forbidden relations with a girl when he’s changing his voice. They’re not even supposed to speak to each other. A girl cannot marry until she reaches womanhood and a boy can’t marry either until he reaches manhood. Things that I had to do when I was changing my voice were: I was not supposed to holler (warhoop) at night. Years ago, it was a tradition to holler at night. But not the young men. They used to say that evil things or bad spirits came out at night and if you hollered, they might take your voice. They even gave you medicine when you’re changing your voice. I thought I had a bad cold but my grandmother told me I was becoming a man. I took medicine for a whole year because it takes a whole year to change your voice. There’s a lot of things you cannot do but it’s a must when you are changing your voice." "In the spring of the year, as soon as the buds come out, I was given a medicine that they called spring tonic. This flushed out all the bad things in your body. This went on for a month. This medicine made you vomit for three days. You bring up everything so it doesn’t settle inside of you to develop into some kind of disease. They also gave you a physic too. It gives you the runs for several days. This made you cleanse yourself. I used to hate that. After you change your voice, you try to keep up that tradition of cleansing yourself." "My father had to get up early too because he was farmer. He used to plant wheat, oats and barley. He had a team of horses, chickens and pigs. My job, when I was old enough that I had to go feed the pigs and chickens. My father would go feed the cows and horses. So I had my jobs what I had to do and that was before breakfast. My grandmother would start cooking. And another thing—when I was changing my voice, they wouldn’t let me eat hot meals. Just warm meals. When I washed my face in the morning, they wouldn’t let me warm my water. In the fall we used to catch rainwater in barrels. It was soft water and I’d have to break the ice to get water to wash my face with. My grandmother used to say that if you washed your face with warm water, you’ll be like a roasted apple when you get old. That’s why they say Indians never show their age. Also because they used that cleansing medicine when they were young. So this is what I went through when I was a child. My grandmother would also say, ‘You’re not going to be sorry for this. You’re going to thank me one of these days when you grow up.’ And I’ve been realizing all these years now, after been married and raising fourteen children. I feel as good as I did twenty years ago." "In the spring when the grass was growing, my grandmother used to go get medicine. I used go and help her. She’d tell me different things. What they were good for and what part of the plants to use. That’s the time you learn. They don’t say you have to learn, they just tell you. You may have a gift for being a medicine person." "I’m trying to teach my children but it’s changed so much. It just goes in one ear and out the other. My age group often talked about that. We go to longhouse but they don’t even want to go even though they’re traditional. Then another thing I’ve noticed a lot of little children are walking around with cavities. I don’t have cavities. I give my grandmother the credit for giving me that medicine. I go to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned and the dentist asks me what I do to keep my teeth in such good shape." "Nowadays we have so many diseases because we don’t look after ourselves. We totally depend on doctors now. People are addicted to drugs. Even what we eat or don’t eat isn’t traditional Indian food anymore. Native food had a lot of nutrition and it was good for our bodies. We got away from nature. Now we use white man’s food and use his drugs. So we’re getting to be like white people now. All kinds of problems: heart problems, strokes and diabetes. I had whooping cough when I was young and I was only sixteen years old, I had typhoid fever, but I got over that. I’m very fortunate. I don’t have any health problems right now. I give my grandmother a lot of credit. The only problem I had was with my heart. I started using Indian medicine and it seemed to go away. I don’t have diabetes. I can eat anything and I don’t have to watch my weigh. I guess I got good guidance." "When I was young and able to take notice of things, I’d ask my grandmother different things that I wanted to know. I was always closest to my father’s mother. There were some things she wouldn’t tell me. She’d say she’d tell me some other rime. So one day I asked her, ‘Where did I some from?’ ‘Well’, she says, ‘One day we were in the swamp getting water for washing. There you were, laying in the swamp. We picked you up and took you home. You were muddy and dirty. So we washed you and put clothing on you. And that’s how we found you.’ I carried that in my mind because I believed what she said. When I got older and I was changing my voice, she said it was time to tell me about life. Then she told me that they didn’t actually find me in the swamp. She said, ‘You were not supposed to know about those things when you were that age. Now is the time to tell you.’" "My grandmother also told me that I would be looking for a women too. And how people originate--when a man and a woman get together. That’s when she told me I got to respect women. And when I get a woman pregnant, never to run away from it. I should be responsible. She said, ‘If you fall in love with a women it’s not just a responsibility, it’s caring and loving. You’ve got a woman, you’re supposed to look after her and care or her. " "So sure enough, I got married. I got married when I was pretty young because I was lonely. There were seven in my family and I was the youngest and the only one that survived. I got married when I was seventeen years old. I did my duty with my wife and even after she died. My daughter was a year and a half old when her mother died. It was a big responsibility as a mother and a father for me. People asked to adopt her but I said ‘no’ because I don’t believe in that. I brought her into this world and I’m going to look after her regardless if we’re going to starve. If we’re going to starve we’re going to starve together. Or if we’re in poverty, we’ll live in poverty together. I have seven boys and four girls left. They gradually left home and went on their own. So I finished my duty. It was really a tough struggle for a man to look after a family." "I compare a lot of things—what’s happening today. We’ve lost discipline. It’s pretty hard to go back to that. But I guess we could if we put our mind to it. But we’re so carried away with the white society now. And we’re trying to pretend like we’re Indians but we’re not we’re still white. Years ago people used to say, ‘You’re to old-fashioned Indian.’ Which is good? To be modern Indian or old fashioned Indian? What counts is what’s inside of you. What you believe in. I give credit to the educators—all those old people. Now we go to school. We have to use the white man’s technique and we don’t fit in. We’re wondering why it don’t work and it’s because it belongs to another culture. We wonder what’s the matter with our children today. It’s partly our fault because we accepted too much of the white culture. We brought it into our culture. It’s just like kerosene and water. That’s the difference between our culture and the European culture. It doesn’t mix." "When I was a boy, there were a lot of things that I was disciplined for. One thing was to speak the language. When I came home from school I had to speak my own language. No English! That was a strict rule. We don’t have that kind of restriction anymore and that’s our fault. A little child goes to school and speaks English and forgets his own language. Once he starts to speak English, it’s going to keep on, and after a while he forgets his own language." "I went to school at a time when it was mandatory for native children to speak English language in school. You were punished if you spoke your native language in the schoolyard or in school. It was hard for me because I was told not to forget my language. I was very fortunate to keep that in mind all these years. Other people who went to school or institutions were punished too, so I guess I wasn’t the only one. It was a struggle to keep our language. I’m also fortunate to be able to speak all the languages and understand all the Iroquois languages. "I went as far as grade six. I can’t blame anybody because I dropped out of school. I had to work because now I was married man. I worked all over. I worked on a fruit farm, did construction work and I worked in the gypsum mine near Caledonia. During the war, I worked in the ammunition plant during the 1940’s. Then I went back to construction and then back to the fruit farm. After that I started to work on my own farm. I raised grain, cattle, horses, cows, chickens and pigs. I got sick of that too because it was hard. My children were not big enough to help and then it was such an expense as well. It wasn’t bringing in that much money. So I kind of got discouraged with that and then I went into craftwork. I started giving lectures too on native culture and native crafts at schools at different places. Then I came into New York State to Cooperstown. That was my first seminar and that’s where I broke the ice. I started traveling all over New York State and into Long Island and New York City. So that’s how I brought up my family. There was no assistance at that time. It was really a struggle. Sometimes I didn’t know how we were going to eat our next meal. Today I look back, I don’t know how I did it." "In 1973, I got a job at the Woodland Centre for two years. I quit in ’75 and then in ’76 I got a phone call from Trent University. They wanted me to give a lecture, it was a three day conference. I gave lectures and workshops explaining different things about Iroquois and oral traditions. After that was over, about a couple weeks after, I got a letter from Trent University from the Department of Native Studies. They asked me, ‘Would I be interested in teaching Native Culture in the fall of ’76.’ It kind of shocked me. I don’t have any degree, nothing! I wondered if I could handle it. I didn’t know what to think. So I thought maybe I should try it. If I fail, I fail. A guy came to interview me that spring of ’76. I didn’t know they had already nominated me for the Ashley Fellowship Award at the university. After the interview, I got this letter telling me I was nominated to appear at Trent on the first day of fall. In September, I went down and asked instructions on what I am going to do. I was to be under another professor to teach language and culture. I worked with him for two years and finally his job got terminated and I thought I would get terminated too. But they asked me, ‘Can you go on with the course!’ The reason was that the students were not satisfied because a white man was teaching them culture. They said it should be you teaching language and culture because you’re a native person. So they gave me a contract for that fall to work for the university from September to May. After that I got a contract for another year. After my fifth year, I got my tenure which regularized my position. Seventh year—I got my sabbatical. When I look back, that’s quite an accomplishment, from sixth grade to university instructor." "When I was bringing my children up, I used to be down because of all the labouring in construction. I always got the dirty work. But I was willing to work and that’s why I stayed with it. I also had a family to keep. I had a responsibility and I didn’t care how dirty the job was. A lot of times, I thought I should have got an education maybe I would be better off. Then when I ended up at the university, I thought—I didn’t need that after all. I guess what old people said was true. ‘If you struggle, you get better luck afterwards.’ It was worth it." "I’m on part time now because in Canada the law says you retire at age sixty-five. So last year I reached sixty-five. They asked me to come back next fall again. I don’t have any plans for my retirement years because my plans never seem to work out. It always goes haywire! Better when it comes natural." *Gai:wi:yo:h—The Code of Handsome Lake Ne`Ho Niyo`De:No`, That’s What It Was Like, Volume II, Alberta Austin, 1989-1990, Rebo Enterprises, Inc., Lackawanna, NY. "We ought to record what the older people have to say before they pass on. Someone should write the information down or tape record it." We often do not realize the worth of the statement until our elders have passed on and nothing can be done. There is always talk of recording memoirs, yet these memories usually fade and wither through time. "Ne`Ho Niyo`De:No`" Volume I provided an unique first person account of life among the Seneca/Iroquois people residing on the Allegany and Cattaraugus reservations. It was a collection of remembrances of the elders of the communities, and since it’s publishing in 1986, has seen the loss of many of those elders. The account, therefore stands as a memorial to their lives and their rich heritage, and imparts information, which might otherwise have been lost. Author Alberta Austin was able to interview these elders and relate to them in their native language, thus putting them at ease to speak freely about their lives and recollections about their community’s years ago. What had begun as a project for a Curriculum Development program to be utilized in the Iroquois Studies classroom soon became a much more valuable testament and historical record of days gone by. Volume II emerged as a testament to the war years and life at "Salem," the nickname given to the Thomas Indian School (previously Thomas Indian Asylum). The stories in this volume complement those oral testimonies of Volume I, providing a much more detailed look at life in the Boarding School. To our knowledge, no other published work reflects the breadth of first-person testaments about the Thomas Indian School. I recommend Volume II because of these people’s stories mentioned herein: Hubert Buck, Richard Johnny John, Alice Papineau and Jake Thomas. I found these life experiences very touching and something we cannot ignore. We must take a ‘stand.’ Our History must be told so that we can draw from our experiences in order for us to change our future with a focus on our languages and traditions according to the Sonkwaia`tis:on’s instructions. Yvonne Thomas, 4702 |