Ancestor Recognized as Tom Cook Inducted into the Oldest Hereditary Society in U.S.

The Mohawk Revolutionary War historical figure, Lieutenant Colonel Louie Cook, was honored by the New York Society of the Cincinnati recently, when it adopted his descendant, Thomas Kanataken:iate Cook of Cook Road, Akwesasne, to lifetime membership in the prestigious society.

The Society of the Cincinnati is a hereditary society begun in 1783 of officers in the American Revolution and their lineal descendants. Cook demonstrated eligibility for membership by direct descent from the historical Louie Cook, Atiatonharon:kwen, a Lieutenant Colonel in the American War of Independence from England. The ancestor, Cook’s 4X great-grandfather, was an original member of the society founded by George Washington when the war ended. The ancestors’ line, however, had never been represented in the Society.

“Our ancestor, adopted with his Abenaki mother by the Kahnawake Mohawks, was a resounding historical personality,” Tom Cook said. “He was a major player, warrior and statesman, a learned man who commanded hundreds of warriors from several tribes.”

Atiatonharon:kwen, the ancestor, “must have been born in 1737,” according to a chronicler of his life in the 1850s. He was the son of a sub-Saharan African man sold into slavery in Boston, and an Abenaki mother. His slave status and early experiences made him a slave, in the British worldview. He was claimed as such by a French officer but then rescued by Kahnawake warriors in the November 1745 raid and destruction of Saratoga. Adopted in Kahnawake presumably by Chief Peter Tharonhiakeh:ton Cook – himself a 1711 captive – the young Mohawk rose to prominence as a warrior and leader of men.

Active through sixty years of storms, divisions, wars and difficulties without end, Cook became a youthful leader in war and then statesmanship in his later life. As a teenager he participated in the 1755 defeat and destruction of Britian’s second army at Fort Duquesne in the opening conflict of the Seven Years’ War. He was commissioned a Colonel in the French regime, presumably in 1758. The death entry of his first wife at Kahnawake attests that, “Husband served as a Colonel in the war between Fr and Eng 1755-1760, for French.” His record disappears after Britian conquered Canada and reappears fifteen years later in the American revolution.

Cook participated in the December 1775 American invasion of Canada and thereafter became a principal warrior for the Americans and particularly proficient in gathering intelligence. Present in the major battles of the Revolution, he was commissioned a Lieutenant Colonel by Congress in 1779 while commanding the Company of Indian Rangers that provided significant wartime service until disbanded at war’s end. Thereafter, he served as interpreter in the American treaties with British-aligned Iroquois nations. In the early 1790’s he worked with Washington in dealing with the western tribes for peace on the frontier.

In 1796 he led negotiations in the Seven Nations treaty with the state and federal governments with advice of the pro-British Kahnawake chiefs to “... do what you can.” The representatives were confronted with the reality of white Empire and arbitrary power: the state legislature had brazenly sold northern New York to one man in 1792 with money from the Bank of England without regard to its status as Indian land. The negotiators were denied recognition of northern NY ownership and their long-held 100,000-acre extent of Akwesasne on the American side. They reluctantly agreed to accept six-miles square plus, instead of nothing. Because of their efforts, and the Seven Nations treaty, the Saint Regis Mohawk tribe has its standing today. The treaty reinforced the tribe’s sovereignty simply because the U.S. does not make treaties with ethnic minorities, but only with other sovereignties.

Always hostile to the British, who only saw him as a slave, during the War of 1812, Atiatonharon:kwen went back into service for the new American nation. He died in battle on the Niagara frontier in October 1814, while leading a charge of Tuscaroras against the invading British and Indian allies.

His family of eight at Akwesasne made him progenitor of great numbers of Akwesasro:non today. In the 1950’s, his Cook line was the largest family on the American roll. Many settled along Cook Road and in the broader vicinity.

The historical ancestor provides rich heritage, not without controversy, yet grand, Tom Cook points out. “We need to always take our documented place, and with clear knowledge, write ourselves back into history,” Cook said. “Historical ancestors of great note, like Coronel Louie Cook need to be acknowledged and remembered respectfully,” Cook went on. “Society of the Cincinnati acknowledged our documentation. We knocked and they opened their doors.”

George Washington called the ancestor colonel, “my old friend,” and a man “of worth to our cause.” Washington had spoken often of fair and honorable treatment for Indians and at times had well-intentioned efforts to establish nation-to-nation relationships, but his vision remained elusive from the outset as his own Indian policies and his own business in Native lands speculation, continued to undermine the Indian rights he claimed to protect. Still, unlike many American countries, the concept of a Native based sovereignty, based on the legal memory of nation-to-nation treaty making, survives and is useful to have in U.S. law.

-Tom Cook

(Tom Cook is president of the Akwesasne Kahwatsi:re Genealogy and Historical Society)