For other uses, see Red Jacket (disambiguation).Red Jacket from an 1835 lithograph by Henry Corbould, after a painting by Charles Bird King, printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, and published in History of the Indian Tribes of North America.
Red Jacket (known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha [Keeper Awake] Sa-go-ye-wa-tha because of his oratorical skills) (c. 1750–January 20, 1830) was a Native American Seneca orator and chief of the Wolf clan.[1] He negotiated on behalf of his nation with the new United States after the American Revolutionary War, when the Seneca as British allies were forced to cede much land, and signed the Treaty of Canandaigua (1794). He helped secure some Seneca territory in New York state, although most of the people had migrated to Canada for resettlement after the Paris Treaty.
His talk on "Religion for the White Man and the Red" (1805) has been preserved as an example of his great oratorical style.
