Red Jacket & the Witchcraft Trials: Niagara’s Battle Over Belief, Law, and Power
Red Jacket (1758–1830) was a renowned Seneca leader of the Iroquois Nation. In his ambitious painting The Trial of Red Jacket, artist John Mix Stanley depicted the chief defending himself against a charge of witchcraft. Beneath his white robe is the symbolic red jacket, originally given to him by a British officer for his service as a messenger during the American Revolution. The trial took place at a Seneca council, remembered either at Buffalo Creek or along the Niagara River. The exact spot is debated, but the outcome — Red Jacket’s acquittal and survival — is what matters.
When people visit Niagara today, they come for the thunder of the Falls. But two centuries ago, this same ground shook with debates over witchcraft, justice, and sovereignty. At the center of it all was Sagoyewatha—Red Jacket—the Seneca orator whose name means “He Who Causes Them to Awake.”
Red Jacket: Defender and Target
Red Jacket was famous for defending his people’s traditions against missionaries and settlers. His voice carried further than any musket. But rivals also accused him of sorcery, especially as the Seneca world was shaken by the new teachings of the prophet Handsome Lake. These charges weren’t really about magic; they were about politics and power.
Handsome Lake had first experienced his visions in 1799, condemning alcohol, witchcraft, and certain ancient ceremonies. His message spread quickly, dividing the nation between reformers and those who held fast to older ways. Red Jacket resisted, seeing the revival as a threat to Seneca traditions. That resistance gave his rivals an opening.
The most prominent was Cornplanter, Red Jacket’s longtime adversary. The two men had clashed since the Revolution: Cornplanter had backed alliance with the United States, while Red Jacket distrusted American promises. Their rivalry carried into treaty negotiations and questions of leadership. Now, with Handsome Lake’s revival surging, Cornplanter and others accused Red Jacket of witchcraft, hoping to weaken his influence.
So in 1801, Red Jacket was put on trial before a council of Seneca warriors. Conviction could mean death. But he defended himself with the same eloquence that made him famous, arguing that the charges were born of jealousy and factional rivalry, not truth. His words swayed the council. He walked away acquitted, though the shadow of suspicion never fully disappeared.
Both American settlers and the Haudenosaunee believed in dark magic, feared its power, and at times used witchcraft accusations as weapons in political struggles.
Handsome Lake’s Vision
The prophet Handsome Lake’s story began in despair. After the American Revolution, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was shattered: lands stripped, villages burned, families torn apart by disease and alcohol. Handsome Lake himself nearly died from illness and drink.
In 1799, in a longhouse near today’s Avon, New York, he fell into what seemed like a final sickness. Instead, he awoke with a vision. Three messengers appeared—clothed like Iroquois but resembling Quaker missionaries—and warned that his people were on the brink of destruction. From that vision came the Gaiwiio, or “Good Word,” later known as the Code of Handsome Lake.
The code urged a revival of tradition and strict moral reform: never cede more land, abandon alcohol, condemn witchcraft, strengthen families, and shun greed. From these teachings grew the Longhouse Religion, still practiced today.
One of his most striking prophecies retold the story of Columbus. In Handsome Lake’s version, Columbus is no hero but a fool who ignores warnings, bringing across the ocean the devil’s “gifts”—cards, money, the fiddle, whiskey, and disease. Even the devil regrets the destruction. It is protest literature in its rawest form: a reimagining of America’s “discovery” that exposes greed and hypocrisy at the heart of colonization.
Handsome Lake’s movement divided the Seneca. To some, he was a savior who offered spiritual armor in an age of collapse. To others, especially defenders of older ceremonies like Red Jacket, he was a threat—an innovator blending Quaker morality with Haudenosaunee tradition, reshaping the culture by force of vision.
Cornplanter: The Soldier and Statesman
Cornplanter—known to his people as Kaintwakon—was Red Jacket’s great rival. A war leader during the American Revolution, he first fought with the British, leading Seneca warriors in brutal raids across New York and Pennsylvania. After the war, however, Cornplanter saw the devastation and believed survival lay in peace with the United States.
He signed treaties, including the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, which secured some land and recognition for the Seneca. For this, some hailed him as a pragmatist and statesman. Others saw him as a compromiser who gave up too much. Unlike Red Jacket, who clung fiercely to older traditions and suspicion of American promises, Cornplanter urged accommodation, farming, and coexistence.
By 1800, these differences hardened into rivalry. Cornplanter sided with those who embraced Handsome Lake’s reforms and denounced Red Jacket as dangerous, even accusing him of witchcraft in 1801. For Cornplanter and his allies, the accusation was more than superstition: it was a political weapon, a way to undercut a rival and align Seneca leadership with the new moral order.
Cornplanter himself lived a paradox. He was a warrior who turned peacemaker, a chief who lost faith in the promises he had signed, a man caught between two worlds. He eventually withdrew from public life, disillusioned by American betrayal. But for a time, his shadow loomed over Red Jacket, shaping the councils where eloquence and rivalry decided life or death.
Clash of Two Voices
Not everyone embraced Handsome Lake’s message. For some, his Gaiwiio was a lifeline—a code that promised discipline, healing, and renewal. For others, it was an intrusion, a sharp break from tradition. Red Jacket and Handsome Lake emerged as the two loudest voices in this storm, and their conflict defined an era.
Where Handsome Lake demanded sweeping reform—ban alcohol, ban witchcraft, and remake daily life—Red Jacket argued for freedom of choice. He believed the Seneca could adapt without surrendering the old ways. He distrusted prophets and missionaries alike. Handsome Lake spoke like a preacher; Red Jacket spoke like a lawyer.
The rivalry wasn’t just personal—it split villages, families, and councils. Handsome Lake’s followers accused Red Jacket of being a sorcerer, twisting the very witchcraft he condemned to undermine him. Red Jacket shot back that Handsome Lake’s visions were not divine but dangerous—that they mixed Seneca belief with Quaker morality and threatened to suffocate the traditions that had endured for centuries.
The clash revealed two paths for survival. Handsome Lake offered reform through moral revival, a strict code meant to hold the people together in a time of collapse. Red Jacket defended sovereignty and tradition, insisting the Seneca could stand without fear or imported dogma. Both wanted to save their nation. But their visions of salvation could not be reconciled.
The 1821 Witchcraft Trial
Two decades after Red Jacket’s own ordeal, witchcraft returned to center stage. In 1821, a Seneca man named Tommy Jemmy carried out a death sentence against a woman accused of sorcery under Seneca law. New York State responded by arresting him for murder. For the Seneca, the question was not guilt or innocence—it was authority. Who had the right to judge? The State of New York, or the Seneca themselves?
This time, Red Jacket was not the accused—he was the defender. In a Buffalo courtroom crowded with lawyers, onlookers, and clerks scratching notes, the old orator rose. He wore his silver medal from Washington across his chest, the gift of a president who had once promised friendship. The judges looked down in their black robes, murmurs rippled across the benches, but when Red Jacket began to speak, the room fell silent.
He reminded the court that the Seneca were not vassals but a nation, bound to the United States by treaties solemnly signed. Those treaties guaranteed that Seneca law still held on Seneca land. If the state could try Jemmy, then every promise made at Canandaigua was worthless. “Your laws are your own,” he said in substance. “Our laws are ours. What right have you to judge us?”
The argument cut through the legal wrangling like an axe. For once, the American court listened. The judges dismissed the case, and Tommy Jemmy walked free. For a fleeting moment, Native sovereignty had been recognized in American law—not as charity, but as right.
The Trial Remembered
The memory of that day did not fade. Forty years later, the painter John Mix Stanley turned it into spectacle. His great canvas, The Trial of Red Jacket, toured the country in the 1860s. Crowds paid pennies to see the drama in oil and color: a Seneca leader, framed by shadow and light, holding back the tide of American power with nothing but his voice.
It was more than art—it was mythmaking. Red Jacket’s eloquence lived on, not only in memory but in image, a reminder that in one Buffalo courtroom, for one moment, words alone had bent the course of law.
Plan Your Stop
Suggested add-ons (time/permission permitting):
Forest Lawn Cemetery – Red Jacket’s monument and resting place.
Buffalo History Museum – Exhibits related to Haudenosaunee history; ask about Stanley’s painting.
Tonawanda & Tuscarora territories – Cultural centers and events (visit respectfully; some areas are not tourism spaces).
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Depiction of Handsome Lake.