Chief Thunderwater: An Unexpected Indian in Unexpected Places by Gerald F. Reid

Reviewed by: Chief Thunderwater: An Unexpected Indian in Unexpected Places by Gerald F. Reid Paul McKenzie-Jones (bio) Chief Thunderwater: An Unexpected Indian in Unexpected Places by Gerald F. Reid University of Oklahoma Press, 2021 reid has produced an exceptionally well-researched biography of a somewhat controversial but also largely ignored Indigenous advocate for tribal self-determination in early twentieth-century United States and Canada. The provocative introduction retells the commonly understood narrative of Chief Thunderwater as an impostor, fraud, and conman—a reputation Reid dissects throughout the book—and his political movement as the vehicle for that fraud. The fact that this retelling is from an academic article published in 1965 in a reputable journal immediately leads the reader to ask: Who was this man? How is Reid going to tell his story? In answer to the first question, according to Reid’s research and the documents/testimony he examined, Oghema Niagara, or Chief Thunder-water as he was more commonly known, was a complicated, larger-than-life, Indigenous activist and a critical component of Haudenosaunee political revitalization in the early 1900s. The answer to the second question is that Reid tells his story compellingly, including exposing the smear campaigns that resulted in Thunderwater being essentially written out of history as a fake for almost a century. The campaigns were largely orchestrated by members of the Society of American Indians (SAI) and later by Duncan Campbell Scott, in his role as Canada’s deputy superintendent general of Indian affairs, highlighting how key a figure Thunderwater was in the sovereignty movement of the early 1900s. Reid traces the beginning of Thunderwater’s activism to Cleveland, Ohio, where he pushed back against U.S. federal assimilationist policies and especially local women’s church organizations championing those policies. His early activism led to the creation of the Council of the Tribes, a movement/organization modeled on the Haudenosaunee political organization of the Six Nations Confederacy, a model that quickly drew Thunderbird’s attention to Haudenosaunee rights to freely cross the U.S./Canadian border and their continuous attempts to protect those rights, several years before the more celebrated border activism of Tuscarora Chief Clinton Rickard and his Indian Defense League of America. [End Page 140] Reid argues that Thunderwater’s involvement in the border rights issues led to his deeper involvement in Haudenosaunee political revitalization on the Canadian side of the international border. His first Council of the Indians meeting in Canada was held at Kahnewake, and the movement subsequently spread across other communities and reserves, ultimately leading to a growth of Council of the Tribes chapters. As the council grew, multiple members of his movement began to get elected to leadership positions across various band councils. The growth and popularity of his movement and its political ideas led Arthur Parker of the SAI to contact Duncan Campbell Scott with accusations of Thunderwater’s racial fraud. Scott was a willing audience to Parker’s accusations and almost immediately used them as the springboard to launch a smear campaign to discredit Thunderwater and weaken his influence across Haudenosaunee politics. Reid shows how the Canadian government’s smear campaign was successful, leading to newspaper coverage “exposing” Thunderwater and a subsequent libel case that went unresolved. While not exclusively the reason for Thunderwater’s waning influence on Haudenosaunee politics—the rise of other leaders and movements, such as Laura Cornelius Kellogg’s great influence after she left the SAI, and F. O. Loft’s creation of the League of Indians of Canada were also factors—it was certainly a determining factor, especially in how his reputation remained tarnished long after his death. The news coverage and libel suit exemplify the larger controversies that marked Thunderwater’s life; Reid covers these areas with the same attention to detail as he gives Thunderwater’s activism. Ultimately, this text reintroduces a too-long-silenced figure in the long history of the Indigenous fight for self-determination in the United States and Canada. Long derided as a fraud and consigned to the fringes of history as a result, Thunder-water’s reputation is now at least partially restored—personal controversies notwithstanding—as a result of Reid’s fair, compelling...

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