Chief Cornplanter, or "the corn planter" to the Senecas, was born in the little town of Conewaugus on the Genessee River in New York state. Although the exact date of his birth is not known, it was somewhere between the years 1732 and 1740. Cornplanter was the son of a white man and an Indian woman member of a Seneca noble family and a hereditary matron of the Wolf clan. There has always been some question as to whether his father was an Englishman, John O'Bail, or a Dutch trader, John O'beel or Abeel. It is most probable that the latter is correct. At any rate, his father hailed from the Mohawk Valley.
Cornplanter was often referred to as one of the most valiant warriors of his tribe, of superior sagacity and eloquence. He first fought with the British during the war as chief of the Seneca Nation, but when his people were deserted by their British allies, he took part in Indian treaties with the American government. For his help during the ensuing Indian War he was given land in several locations.
Cornplanter's English name came down as John O'Bail. He was the earliest settler in Warren County, Pennsylvania, and a contemporary of George Washington. They became close friends during the Revolutionary War. George Washington gave a priceless relic in the form of a tomahawk peace pipe to Seneca Chief Cornplanter in 1792, which ultimately was stolen from the New York State Museum, disappearing for decades. Cornplanter’s peace pipe-tomahawk soon took a strange journey akin to Native rights and treaties. On March 14, 2019, Chief Cornplanter’s peace pipe-tomahawk was officially returned to the Seneca Nation of Indians, taking an overdue place in the new Seneca- Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca, New York, on the Allegany Indian Reservation. The tomahawk peace pipe is now on display and you can see it there.
John O’Bail, also known as Gaiant'wake (Gyantwachia - "the planter") or Kaiiontwa'kon (Kaintwakon - "By What One Plants") in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, was a Seneca war chief and diplomat. As a chief warrior, Cornplanter fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. In both wars, the Seneca and three other Iroquois nations were allied with the British. After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). He helped gain Iroquois neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
In 1789 the recommendation was made that Chief Cornplanter be given a grant of 1500 acres of land in western Pennsylvania. By act of the Pennsylvania assembly passed February 1, 1791, he was granted lands for which the patents were issued March 16, 1796. The final gift, an area of about 700 acres, was the Cornplanter Grant, located in Warren County about three miles below the southern boundary of New York state. There were three separate units in this grant, Planter's Field and the town of Jennesedaga on the mainland along the Allegheny River, and two adjacent islands, Liberality and Donation. This land was a partial recognition to Cornplanter for his services to the state, and he settled on the grant with his family, remaining there until his death in 1836. Chief Cornplanter was awarded the distinction of a biography in the "Encyclopedia Britanica" as one of Warren County's two most famous men.
In the postwar years, he worked to learn more about European-American ways and invited Quakers to establish schools in Seneca territory. Disillusioned by his people's poor reaction to European-American society, he had the schools closed and followed his half-brother Handsome Lake's movement returning to traditional Seneca way. The United States government granted him about 1500 acres of former Seneca territory in Pennsylvania in 1796 for "him and his heirs forever", which became known as the Cornplanter Tract. It was flooded in 1965 by the Kinzua Dam, and most of the remaining residents were relocated to the Allegany Reservation of the federally recognized Seneca Nation of New York.
Cornplanter requested that he have no grave marker. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania commissioned one in 1866, thought to be the first monument to a native american. The graves in this cemetery have been relocated due to the construction of the Kinzua Dam which created the Allegheny Reservoir. This current monument is a replica.
The Cornplanter monument is in Cornplanter Cemetery, which is one of three cemeteries grouped together: Cornplanter at the northwest, Corydon at the northeast, and Riverview across the south. The cemeteries are on the north side of the entrance to Willow Bay from the Allegheny Reservoir. Access is via a gated driveway from NY route 280, about 0.2 miles north of the Pennsylvania state boundary line. The driveway to the cemeteries is about 0.2 miles long, winding at the beginning, and crosses the state line. This virtual cache is placed with permission of the Corydon Memorial Cemetery Association. If the gate at the parking area is open you can drive back to the cemetery, but if it is closed, you are allowed to park outside the gate and walk in. Disregard the No Trespassing sign placed at the gate as it does not apply to geocaching visitors.
Sources: www.indigenouspeople.net/cornplnt.htm; https://enchantedmountains.com/blog/2019/03/chief-cornplanters-peace-pipe-tomahawk-returns-seneca-nation
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/exhibitions/cornplanters-pipe-tomahawk
To Qualify to log a find on this virtual cache, visit the monument at the posted coordinates and a nearby waypoint to answer these questions and email or message your answers to the cache owner: You do not have to wait for a reply before logging your find, however, all questions must be answered to document your find or your log may be deleted.
- What month did the state of Pennsylvania commission the original monument to honor Cornplanter?
- What year was this replica monument set in place after the Kinzua dam flooded the original cemetery?
- What were the three different alias names of Cornplanter according to the monument?
- Approximately how old was Cornplanter according to the monument?
- At the second waypoint listed for this cache is a grave marker honoring a Pennsylvania Veteran who served as a Private in the 47th U.S Volunteer Infantry. What was his name and date of his death?
Please leave the following text at the bottom of the page, so cache finders understand the Virtual Rewards 3.0 project.
Virtual Rewards 3.0 - 2022-2023
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between March 1, 2022 and March 1, 2023. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 3.0 on the Geocaching Blog.