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In the 1930s, Mohawks helped build the Empire State Building. In 1951 the fearless skywalkers from Canada added the 222-foot communications tower to the same building [National Geographic Society] |
MOHAWK SKY WALKERS
Canadian Mohawks from the Caughnawaga Indian Reserve on the St. Lawrence near Montreal truly are skywalkers. These descendants of one of the main tribes of the historic Iroquois Confederacy took readily to working on aboveground high-steel construction, in particular on the giant skyscrapers that soared over New York City during the twentieth century. Theirs were careers of thrill and daring — and distinctive achievements by a native people still very much alive in Canada today.
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In the 1930s, Mohawks helped build the Empire State Building. In 1951 the fearless skywalkers from Canada added the 222-foot communications tower to the same building [National Geographic Society] |
The story of these Mohawks goes back to the days of New France. In 1667 Mohawk Christian converts moved north from their nation homelands in what is now upstate New York to the vicinity of Montreal. Under the auspices of French Catholic Jesuit priests, they settled at Caughnawaga (“By the Rapids”) on the south shore of the St. Lawrence across from Lachine. This mission settlement flourished, for the Mohawks had originally been farmers. They had also been enterprising traders who, during peace years, easily moved north to south, from Montreal to Albany in English New York Province or helped protect the frontiers of New France in time of war. Later, however, after Britain, by 1763, had won the French empire in America the Caughnawaga Mohawks, always realists, came quickly to accept the all-British connection. In fact, they would go on to play a notable part in defending Canada from American attacks, especially at the Battle of Beaver Dams in the Niagara Peninsula of Upper Canada during the War of 1812.
Yet what led these Mohawk farmer-trader-fighters to become erectors of the steel frames for skyscrapers? Perhaps their aptitudes were suggested early when an English traveller, John Lawson, noted in 1714 that the Caughnawaga Mohawks crossed rushing streams “on the smallest of poles” or ran sure-footed “along the ridge of barn or house.” More significant, by the later nineteenth century, was the coming of the age of iron and steel to Montreal and the St. Lawrence, particularly in the form of great bridges being built across the river. In 1886, for instance, when a big new railway bridge was being erected above the rapids between Caughnawaga and Lachine, Mohawk children were seen scrambling over it while fearless youths and men found employment in shifting, linking, and bolting great beams high in the air.
Hitherto, seamen had been primarily engaged on lofty bridge construction. But the Caughnawaga Mohawks showed such sure and fearless efficiency that their reputation as high-steel specialists spread far and wide. Soon they were enticed to New York City where tall buildings were about to rise above the jam-packed streets of a booming, central Manhattan.
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Mohawks from the Caughnawaga Indian Reserve, south of Montreal, have assisted in erecting many buildings across North America. This view depicts two skywalkers on narrow beams high above Manhattan. They are part of a Mohawk crew that helped build the Rockefeller Center's French Building. In the background is New York's famous former RCA Building, now named the GE Building, which they also assisted in erecting [ Rockefeller Center,© Rockefeller Group, Inc. 1994] |
Mohawks sought well-paid jobs in this high-steel work, often settling into cheap flats in Brooklyn within good reach of employment in Manhattan. One needs to keep in mind that these Caughnawagas operated in small, cousinly tribal crews, spoke fluent English, were prepared to live in downtown conditions, and did not mind commuting by subway. When their gruelling steel years inevitably ended, most would then retire to the Caughnawaga Reserve and its traditional family ties — having seen more of big-city living than a lot of Canadian small-town dwellers who thought they knew all about “native” ways.
Furthermore, through decades of construction centred mainly in New York, these First Canadians shared in creating many far-famed structures. Among these were the Woolworth Building which, when completed in 1915, was the world’s tallest in its own day; its still more celebrated successor, the Empire State Building of the 1930s; the splendid RCA Tower in Rockefeller Plaza, New York; the sumptuous Waldorf Astoria Hotel; the grand United Nations Assembly Building of the 1950s. The list could go on and on. Overall, however, these testify to the remarkable accomplishments of the Caughnawaga high-steel men who functioned in small, deft units, where each man knew and fully trusted his comrades and where the safety of all, on wind-blown beams 50 stories up, depended on each individual. There is surely something to be said here for the strength and value of age-old tribal bonds.
