Red Jacket & Religion By Sarah Becker ©2016 In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Benjamin Franklin presented his Plan of the Union to seven colonies at a meeting in Albany, New York. He acknowledged the Iroquois League, its national structure then explained his proposal. His Plan rejected, the Articles of Confederation followed in 1781. “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies,” Franklin a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly wrote in 1751. The Iroquois League included six nations or tribes: the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. Seneca Chief Otetiani was born in 1758. A British ally during the Revolutionary War Otetiani was also known as Red Jacket. In the 1770s the British employed him as a messenger. Red Jacket who could not read, write or speak English became famous not only for his oratory—the Seneca renamed him Sagoyewatha—but also his opposition to Christianity and religious conversion. The United States Constitution, as ratified in 1788, gave Congress the power “To regulate commerce…with the Indian tribes.” In 1790 President George Washington nominated Colonel, and soon-to-be Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering to serve as Indian Commissioner. Pickering’s goals: “peace and gradual civilization of the Indians.” George Washington first met Red Jacket, leader of the Six Nations, in Philadelphia in 1792. “One of the General’s greatest wishes was to make peace with the Native American nations bordering the United States,” Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson said. “As President he frequently welcomed delegations of Indians to the presidential mansion.” “In managing…