Content below is from #177 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast
RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT
- This week I recommend a YouTube channel called Code Blue Cam
- The description from their own YouTube Channel reads:
- Code Blue Cam delivers unbiased and genuine footage of incidents captured by body cameras. We are confident that this content can serve as an educational and informative tool for viewers to examine and assess different scenarios.The channel is not run by or affiliated with any law enforcement agency. We only provide unique and original content that hasn’t been covered before unless there is significant and meaningful information to include. Leave an anonymous tip or any general questions using the email below. 🛑 The featured content is NOT intended to be violent or glorify violence in any way. We are sharing the footage STRICTLY for the purposes of news reporting and educating. 🛑
- The description from their own YouTube Channel reads:
- It feels like a guilty pleasure. Sort of like Cops, but with a smaller budget.
- They say it is unbiased, and for the most part, I would agree… but it seems they side with Law Enforcement rather than the suspects.
- I do think the videos are educational and can benefit most people who watch them. Shannon and I frequently say how it teaches you a lot about one’s rights regarding interactions with Law Enforcement.
- That being said, it is entertaining as hell!
NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT
- No, this episode isn’t about Luke, Leia, or Anakin… these are a different kind of skywalkers… real ones.
- Indians or Native Americans, aren’t typically associated with the concrete jungles of America, certainly not one of the largest: NYC.
- But the Mohawk nation played a key role in the construction of the Big Apple, particularly its giant skyscrapers.
These “Skywalkers” have for generations traveled far and wide to work on the “high steel,” bringing back good wages to support their home communities such as Kahnawake, Six Nations Reserve and Akwesasne in northern New York State and southeastern Canada.” –History.com
- This wasn’t just a small story from history… these guys constructed virtually every skyscraper in NYC!
- They came to Pittsburgh too!
- They worked on iconic infrastructure like the U.S. Steel Building, the Civic Arena, and the Fort Pitt Bridge, and more.
BORIS SPREMO/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES
UNDATED PHOTOGRAPH OF ROBERT MCCOMBER, FROM CAUGHNAWAGA INDIAN RESERVE, WORKING ON HIGH STEEL CONSTRUCTIONS SITE IN DOWNTOWN MONTREAL AS A WELDER.
“It became a rite of passage really,” said Lynn Beauvais, a Kahnawake resident and grandmother from a fourth-generation ironworker family, in an interview with HISTORY.com. “The men were thrilled to be working away from home and seeing new sights. They were a band of brothers. But our men had always traveled—for the hunt, the fur trade or as lumber men.”
CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
MOHAWK MEN BUILDING A SKYSCRAPER.
- It started in 1886 over the St. Lawrence River. Mohawk men from Kahnawake agreed to contruct the Victoria Bridge across the behemoth river bordering their reserve near Montreal.
- This wasn’t a totally new revelation, the fearlessness these men displayed over deadly heights. Early settlers from Europe documented Mohawks running across logs laying over rivers and scaling large cliffs.
- This rare skill was put to use connecting steel beams for America’s infrastructure.
“Having once hunted, trapped and farmed throughout the northeast woodlands, the Mohawks of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, eventually took to the high steel in burgeoning metropolitan areas. These indigenous riveting gangs spoke their native languages on the job while helping to build the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Plaza and many other structures that shaped the New York City skyline in the 1920s and 1930s.” – History.com
- Aw inspiring construction wasn’t all there was to see during this SkyWalker era. Tragedy also befell these fearless steel men.
- It was in 1907 that 33 Mohawk workers from Kahnawake died in the collapse of the Quebec Bridge.
- The tragedy left widows and orphans… dozens of them. It gutted their community.
- There was protest that they not continue this dangerous work. Even the decent Hazard pay these men received, wasn’t enough to compensate the loss of life.
- But the Mohawk workers did return after their wives demanded they work in dispersed riveting gangs instead of in family groups.
- It was in 1907 that 33 Mohawk workers from Kahnawake died in the collapse of the Quebec Bridge.
Beauvais said it was typical for women to call the shots. “Women always chose the chiefs because they lived in matrilineal clans and saw the boys grow up,” she said. “They would choose leaders because they knew about their boys’ characteristics from infancy to manhood.” –History.com
- When it first started in the 1880’s it was a good-paying job for a lot of Mohawk men, but as it continued, it became part of their culture.
- Working on these towers became tradition, a rite of passage.
- Fathers and grandfathers taught the next generations to face their fears and get the job done.
- Some Iroquois compare working the iron to another chapter in their history.
- Working on these towers became tradition, a rite of passage.
“The Skywalker tradition was passed down for many generations as Mohawks worked the high steel from Ontario to Chicago and Philadelphia, and as far away as San Francisco. They even established a neighborhood of their own in Brooklyn, New York.” – History.com
COURTESY LYNN BEAUVAIS
MOHAWK IRONWORKER JOE JOCKS WAS ONE OF FOUR GENERATIONS OF ‘SKYWALKERS’ IN HIS FAMILY.
“Putting riveting tools in the Mohawks’ hands was like putting ham with eggs. They were natural-born bridgemen, said one construction company official.” – Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Riveting Gangs – History.com
Skyscrapers of the ’20s and ’30s were framed with steel columns, beams and girders fitted together by four-man riveting gangs. One man called a “heater” fired the rivets in a portable forge until they were red-hot, tossing them to the “sticker-in” who caught it in a metal can or glove. The “bucker-up” braced the rivet with a dolly bar while the “riveter” used a pneumatic hammer to mushroom out the rivet stem to secure the locking steel.
They took turns on each job while standing on narrow scaffolding hundreds of feet above the street. “It was always windy up there, and in winter the men cleaned off the steel beams of ice and snow before working on them,” Beauvais said. “In the old days there were no safety lines, and they didn’t wear helmets. It was hard work, but they never talked about the danger. Our men have always really enjoyed their work and were proud of it.”
- As time went on, technology advanced.
- With hardened steel skeletons fastned by rivet gangs, the towers these men created grew higher than anyone could have imagined. And so did their legend.
During the 1920s, this led to a “race to the sky” as some of the most notable skyscrapers in Gotham began to take shape. Mohawks worked on the 1,046-foot Chrysler Building, a stainless-steel-sided Art Deco masterpiece that was completed in 1930. It was the tallest building in the world until, less than a year later, it was surpassed by the Empire State Building at 1,250 feet, also with the help of the Mohawks. Skywalkers then helped out on Rockefeller Plaza, which was finished in 1933. –History.com
- This was the golden age of the SkyWalkers
Lynn Beauvais’ grandfather Joseph Jocks worked on several of them. He told her that during the Great Depression men were desperate for jobs. “Men would wait in the street for someone to fall off so they could take their job. My grandmother would walk miles to find day-old bread to eat, but they survived.”
Beauvais was proud of her grandfather’s work on the Empire State Building, once the tallest building in the world. “But when I got older, he told me there were going to be other buildings even taller—the World Trade Center towers. I was sad that my Empire State Building was going to be outdone, but Joe Jocks also went to work on the Trade Towers.” –History.com
- After World War II, as the rest of America was transforming into the world Super Power we know today, the American Indians started to move away from the reservations and into the urban areas of the country.
- Now it is over 60% of American Indians live in US Cities.
- The US government encouraged this urbanization in the 50’s with federal relocation programs…
- (sounds eerily similar to the “relocation” programs the US government imposed on the Native populations in the 17 and 1800’s)… bu i digress
- The federal US government said there would be cheap beautiful homes, well-paying jobs, and a happy life. But when thousands flocked to America’s cities, they found crap-paying jobs and expensive crappy apartment
- Many went back to their reservations.
- Unfamiliar challenges confront Native people who move to urban areas. Life in the city often means living next door to non-Indian strangers. It means trying to balance one’s traditional cultural values with the often-conflicting requirements for success in mainstream society.
- Despite all that, some did manage to call NYC their home.
Before researching this episode I had no idea NYC had a little Caughnawaga neighborhood.
- In the 1960s the SkyWalkers were well well-known and well-established class of respected and high-paid workers.
- and About 800 of these Mohawk Ironworkers called Brooklyn home.
- They went to the Wigwam Bar for drinks and attended church held by Reverand David Munroe Cory… Munroe Cory even learned the Mohawk language to address his flock with sermons given in their native language.
- Stores stayed stocked with Mohawk ingredients.
- Corn bread and beans were a hit.
” This enclave of indigenous tradesmen centered around the Brooklyn Local 361 Ironworkers’ Union, made up largely of Kahnawake Mohawks. Old-timers in the Brooklyn neighborhood, known as Little Caughnawaga (an early spelling of Kahnawake), would recall the booming 1920s and 1930s when the Mohawk Skywalkers became legend while building the nation’s most bustling metropolis. Above the entrance to the Wigwam was a sign that read, ‘THE GREATEST IRONWORKERS IN THE WORLD PASS THROUGH THESE DOORS.’ ” –History.com
Skywalkers at the World Trade Center
Hundreds of Mohawk ironworkers went to work on the World Trade Center towers in the late 1960s. Beauvais watched the towers rise from her mother’s kitchen window in Brooklyn. Her grandmother said not to visit the job site to see what the men do. “‘It’ll make you nervous,’ she said—and it does. I went to lower Manhattan later to see my brother Kyle Beauvais. He was working five stories up, and I saw him walking outside of the building to come see me. I couldn’t stand to watch him.”
- Then 9/11 happened and infamously destroyed the Twin Towers.
- The Mohawks familiar with steelwork and crane operating showed up to Ground Zero to help with rescue.
including members of the Beauvais family. “My brother Kyle went in eight hours after the towers came down. My grandfather had worked on the construction of the towers and retired from that job. My brothers worked on their final demolition and sent them to the scrapyard.”
- We non-indigenous people like to add mysticism to American Indians. There is lore surrounding the Mohawks and how their skill as SkyWalkers comes from other worldly powers… but that is malarky.
- It comes from generational training to controls ones fear, trust their team, and innate balance.
- Today the riveting gangs have been replaced by technology, but work on these skyscrapers is still perilous.
- There are still 35 to 50 fatalities each year, the majority from falls.
- Many Mohawk ironworkers have fallen to their deaths while on the job. Steel girder crosses mark the graves of fallen Skywalkers in the Kahnawake cemetery.
Now, Native people from all over the country are being trained as ironworkers in the National Ironworkers Training Program for American Indians. Walking the high steel earns a good wage, but it also is a source of pride.
Ironwork provides the Indians with an honorable way to make a living. Young ironworkers carry the reputation of their fathers, or uncles, to each job, but you earn your own name among the men, and a new reputation is born for your sons to live up to.
Joel Budd from the Guardian wrote in 2002:
Last autumn a new 10-storey building went up on West 4th Street in Manhattan. The road is a busy one, and recent events have made New Yorkers more curious about how large buildings are put together, so many people stopped to watch.
Those who happened to look up at the building before its steel skeleton was covered with fire retardant might have noticed an unusual detail. On a girder halfway up the building, a word was written in orange letters a foot high: ‘Mohawks.’ The man who put his nation’s name on the steel was following in a proud tradition.
The spectacle of native Americans working on the world’s most ambitious skyscrapers has long entranced photographers, who have aimed their cameras at Mohawk ironworkers almost as long as they have been around.”
- One recurring theme I noticed while looking into the SkyWalkers was photography.
- While my podcast is mainly meant for audio, and I do believe this story can be carried mainly through audible means, the photos of these men on top of the world is truly spectacular.
- Without the photos, their legend wouldn’t be as profound. So check out my blog or simply google the Mohawk IronWorkers or the Iroquois Skywalkers
CREDIT:
The Journal of A_C_Unit 