An Account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha, or Red Jacket, and His People, 1750-1830

An Account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha, or Red Jacket, and His People, 1750-1830 presents the life of the celebrated Seneca orator within the broader ordeal of the Haudenosaunee during the Revolutionary and early republican eras. Hubbard follows Red Jacket‘s diplomacy, resistance to dispossession, religious skepticism, and verbal brilliance, shaping biography into tribal history. Its prose is documentary and commemorative, characteristic of nineteenth-century antiquarian history, yet animated by admiration for Indigenous eloquence and political intelligence. John Niles Hubbard wrote from a period when Euro-American historians were beginning to preserve, though often through paternalistic frames, the memory of Native leaders whose worlds had been transformed by colonization. His interest in Red Jacket reflects both regional historical consciousness in western New York and a wider post-Civil War impulse to collect speeches, treaties, and recollections before they vanished from public record. This book is recommended for readers interested in Native American history, early American diplomacy, and the rhetoric of resistance. Though shaped by its era‘s assumptions, it remains a valuable portrait of Red Jacket as statesman, critic of missionary intrusion, and defender of Seneca autonomy.