An Account of Sa-go-ye-wat-ha; Or, Red Jacket and His People, 1750-1830

Red Jacket (known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha after 1780) (c. 1750-1830) was a Native American Seneca orator and chief of the Wolf clan. He played a prominent role in negotiations with the new federal government. In 1792 he was heading a delegation of 50 people to Philadelphia where president George Washington presented him with a special "peace medal," a large oval silver plate showing an image of Washington on the right hand side shaking his hand engraved upon it, below the inscription "George Washington," "Red Jacket," and "1792." In 1794, Red Jacket was a signatory along with Cornplanter and fifty other Iroquois, of the Treaty of Canandaigua confirming peace with the United States and the earlier boundaries of 1788 the Phelps and Gorham Purchase of most of the Seneca land east of the Genesee River in western New York. Red Jacket took this name, one of several, for a highly favored embroidered coat given to him by the British for his wartime services.