My Ancestor Cornplanter

Story About Chief Cornplanter

Related by Emily Tallchief

His great, great granddaughter

“Now these stories are true and came to Solomon Obail from Cornplanter, and Solomon, my father, told me.”

“The Cornplanter reservation Senecas often traveled by canoes down the Allegany river to Pittsburgh. On a certain occasion Cornplanter went with a party of canoeists down the Allegany to Pittsburgh. While on his journey one of the paddlers sang Woine’owi as he paddled. Now as he sang the party was startled by a voice that called from the cliff above, ‘Halt ye!’ The paddlers grounded the canoe and Cornplanter went ashore, where, ascending the cliff, he found a number of Indians gathered about a tree to which a white man was bound. ’So now, Cornplanter,’ said the chief of the band, ’I have called you to kill this man. You may now do as you please with him and we will be satisfied.’ Cornplanter drew forth his long hunting knife and feeling of its sharp edge said, ’So I may do as I wish. Truly then I shall do so.’ So saying he rushed toward the man with upraised knife and brought it down with a flourish. The man was not injured but instead stepped out from the tree free, for Cornplanter’s knife had severed the thongs. ’now,’ said Cornplanter, after some conversation with the man, ’I will hire a guide to take this man back to his home in Philadelphia.’ A warrior accepted the commission and guided the prisoner safely back to his home where he found him to be a man of prominence, a chief among his people.”

“So I say this,” added Mrs. Tallchief, “to show that my grandfather was a good man, just and kind. Because of these qualities he became influential.”
Exerpt from 'The Code of Handsome Lake, The Seneca Prophet.' by A.C. Parker