The first screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and special guests to be announced. More decades passed before the issue flared up again, though this time it seemed the criticisms were coming less from individual students than outside organizations. "Town Destroyer" will have its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Oct. 6-16, with the first of three screenings at the CinArts Sequoia Theatre in Mill Valley, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. Our writings were lodged in the hands of Street of Niagara, as we supposed him to be our friend; but when we saw Phelps consulting with Street, on every occasion, we doubted of his honesty towards us, and we have since heard, that he was to our fathers where is the place which you have reserved for us to lie down on. Will California Save the Iconic Joshua Tree? It has also been translated as 'Town Taker', 'Burner of Towns', 'Devourer of Villages', or 'he destroys the town'. Like the statue of Christopher Columbus targeted in Boston last month, it was beheaded and the crown finials of its surrounding fence sawn off. In July 2020, Americans are once again divided, gathering in the streets and tearing down statues. Part of Colonial Williamsburg's "Prelude to Victory" weekend. George Washington is a polarizing character in American Indian history. Bob Spiegelman has been a freelance author and film producer, screenwriter, project-developer, multimedia advisor, research director and story consultant on a growing array of film, museum and multimedia projects. "When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you Hanadagyas (Town Destroyer): and to this day when that name is heard our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers. Sat. It did not leave our 1st POTUS unblemished as a participant in both those officially sanctioned wrongs. When you gave us peace we called you father, because you promised to secure us in the possession of our Land. He then threatened us with immediate war if we did not comply. It is translated as Town Taker, Burner of Towns By Josh Sippie / July 27, 2022 11:39 pm EST. Washington dined with Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Kaskaskias, Mahicans, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Senecas; in one week late in 1796, he had dinner with four different groups of Indians on four different daysand on such occasions the most powerful man in the United States followed the . They then left us to consider the bargain till the next day. Just an hour long, Snitow and Kaufmans documentary offers a fascinating overview of a case that encapsulates many of the bitterest divisions of our era. [1], Washington was given the name in 1753 by the Seneca leader Tanacharison. The current dispute over monuments in the US is not new. 1890. It involved members of both the Susquehannah and the Piscataway, an Algonquian tribe that lived across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon. The elder Washington's reputation was remembered and when they met his great-grandson in 1753 they called George Washington by the same name, Conotocarious.[2][3]. MVFF is an acclaimed eleven-day cinema event celebrating the best in US . Forty Indian villagesand a powerful indigenous nationwere razed on the orders of George Washington, Town Destroyer Versus the Iroquois Indians, By 1779, George Washington had already earned the famous moniker "Father of His Country." For GWs reply, see GW to the Seneca Chiefs, 29 Dec. 1790. During the Revolutionary War, Washington, known to the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) as Handaga:yas, or Town Destroyer, ordered a brutal campaign against them in which his generals devastated some 60 villages, and hundreds of prosperous houses, farms, and orchards. TOWN DESTROYER less than 1 minute read To the Irouqois, General George Washington was Ha-no-da-ga-nears, which means Town Destroyer, and this remained the name they gave to all Presidents of the United States. Newsletter Scarcely considered or acknowledged, our catastrophic losses, like those of other Native nations, are treated as settled business, rather than unsettling travesties in need of redress. If the British took the . The story focuses on a dispute over historic murals depicting the life of George Washington: slaveowner, general, land speculator, President, and a man Seneca leaders called "Town Destroyer" after he ordered their villages destroyed during the Revolutionary War. "Town Destroyer" sheds new light on our first president. They were men and when at peace had a right to live on the Earth. Gen, George Washington meets with representatives of the Iroquois nation before departing for Y. texts. New Anti-Colonialist Documentary Asks Big Questions, California Institute for Community, Arts & Nature, The CIAs Changing Take on the Climate Emergency, Emancipation, Hollywoods Best Civil War Film Ever. First came genocide, than came cultural plunder or maybe it was the other way around. 1890. But if Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman have their way, George Washington will also be remembered as the town destroyer. Thats the title of a new documentary that they have written, directed and produced about the controversial murals in San Francisco at George Washington High School. Our chiefs were unable to contend at that time, & therefore they sold the Lands up to the line which was then shewn to them as the line of that State. Its minders at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena demonstrate a very paternal mindset, saying things like Theres energy in its veins, it needs to be given love, and otherwise viewing Oppy more like a genius dog than a technological tool. orA.I. The French came among us and built Niagara. must know from you, whether you mean to leave us, and our children, any land to till. held a Council and they agreed that no event of war could be worse than being driven with our wives & children from the only Country which we had any right to. What the Commissioners had said about the land having been ceded to them at the peace our Chiefs considered only as intended to lessen the price, & they passed it by with very little notice; but since that time we have heard so much of the right to our lands which the King gave when you made peace with him that it is our earnest desire you will tell us what they mean. During the American Revolution, some Mohawks led by Joseph Brant chose to fight with the British and to defend the Proclamation Line. Would doing so be a redaction of history, identity politics gone off the railsor a justified blow to a lingering American colonized mentality as well as ongoing traumatization of young minds? The name in its original language (s) has been given variously as Conotocarius, Conotocaurious, Caunotaucarius, Conotocarious, Hanodaganears, and Hanadahguyus. Our nation empowered John Livingston to let out a part of our lands on rent. An installation of video projected onto a bust of George Washington mounted on a surveyor's tripod. to GW, 15 Aug. 1789, note 1. Black muralist Dewey Crumpler came of age in the era of Black Power. As GW explained in an undated memorandum on David Humphreys draft biography of GW: It was on this occasion he was named by the half-King (as he was called) and the tribes of Nations with whom he treatedCaunotaucarius (in English) the Town taker; which name being registered in their Manner & communicated to other Nations of Indians, has been remembered by them ever since in all their transactions with him during the late war (Comments on David Humphreys Biography of George Washington, 178788, in Papers, Confederation Series description begins W. W. Abbot et al., eds. In Town Destroyer, the filmmakers focus on the image of a dead Indian lying face down on the ground while settlers with guns stand close-by. When you kindled your thirteen fires seperately, the wise men Conotocaurious(Town Destroyer) was a nicknamegiven to George Washingtonby IroquoisNative Americansin 1753. Several years after the Revolutionary War, Seneca chiefs told Washington, "When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you Town Destroyer; and to this day when the name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale and our children cling to the necks of their mothers." The Iroquois Confederacy, arguably the strongest Indian government during the colonial period, would never recover. The name in its original language(s) has been given variously as Caunotaucarius, Conotocarious, Hanodaganears, and Hanadahguyus. Conotocaurius (Town Destroyer, Seneca: Handaganyas) was a nickname given to George Washington by Iroquois peoples in 1753. fort Stanwix, commissioners from Pensylvania, told our chiefs, that they had come there to purchase from us, all the Lands belonging to us within the lines of their State, and they told us that their line would strike the river Susquehanna below Tioga branch. The father of his country massacred men, women and children. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.. To the Irouqois, General George Washington was Ha-no-da-ga-nears, which means Town Destroyer, and this remained the name they gave to all Presidents of the United States. After suffering for nearly two years from Iroquois raids on the Colonies' northern frontier, Washington and Congress decided to strike back. All three had participated in the Iroquois campaigns during the Revolution; Cornplanter as a principal war chief and the others as head warriors. In the fall of 1753, as French forces moved into the Ohio Valley to build a series of forts, George Washington offered his services to the Governor of Virginia as an envoy to carry a message to the French commander Jacques Le Gardeur. This is an analysis of a controversy that was all over the local and national news not so long ago even if it seems very long ago, as it was just-pre-COVID. The title by which Washington was known to Native nations, Handaga:yas or Town Destroyer, was one he inherited from his great-grandfather, John Washington, a slave-owning planter and colonel in the Virginia militia who, during Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, had the chiefs of several tribes killed. This line was established after the French and Indian War by King George as a boundary between the colonists and Native lands. Nov. 6thBenefit forThe Association of Ramaytush Ohlone Q & A with filmmakers + Jonathan Cordero, chair of Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. As the first president of the United States, he established America's nation-to-nation relationship with its Indigenous people. Wanting to remain neutral but forced to choose sides, some Haudenosaunee nations fought alongside the colonists during the war. It opens with audio from a closed-door meeting Trump, Steve Bannon and others held with leaders of the religious right forty days before the 2016 election. Longtime Bay Area documentarians Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman interview historians, artists, activists, and GWHS students to probe a fascinating microcosm of todays culture wars. Well, OK, a few personalities here do seem driven by things other than (or in addition to) moral uprightness, such as the founder of an SF-based group who says Im perfectly aligned with mainstream feminism aside from the abortion issue. Still, she grew up in a religious cult and seems to have some, er, issueslike the kind of inordinate fondness for picking verbal fights with total strangers that can lead to fanaticism, and/or Fox News punditry.