American history lists many great Native American Chiefs, including Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh, Geronimo and Cochise. Long before these great leaders was one honored by colonial Americans and called a Saint, even though he was never a Christian.
I bet you don’t know his name even though you are probably familiar with his image.
Chief of the Lenni-Lenape nation in the Delaware Valley, he was known as the “Patron Saint of America” by the generation of America’s founding fathers.
A Moravian Missionary in 1817 described him as “an ancient Delaware chief, who never had [an] equal. He was in the highest degree endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity, affability, meekness, hospitality, in short, he was endowed with every good and noble qualification which a human being may possess.”
His name appears as one of the signers of a deed to William Penn in 1683 for lands not far north of Philadelphia. The two were signers of a peace treaty that lasted for 75 years.
General George Washington and the Continental Army held a festival at Valley Forge, on May 1, 1778, in his honor.
Chief Tamanend — also known as Taminent,Tammany, Saint Tammany or King Tammany, “the Affable,” lived from 1625 until 1701.
Starting in the early 1770s, Philadelphia and Annapolis held Tammany Festivals. On May 1, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, as John Adams attended the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he wrote to his wife Abigail about the King Tammany Day festival.
After the war with England, Tammany celebrations spread to other areas of the United States, including Savannah, Georgia.
“Tammany: the Indian Chief,” in 1794, was the first original American opera. James Fenimore Cooper mentions Tammany in his classic 1826 novel, “The Last of the Mohicans,”
Statues of Tammany can be found on the campus of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in Philadelphia at the corner of Front and Market streets and a battlefield monument at Gettysburg for the New York’s 42nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment — the Tammany Regiment.
On May 12, 1789, William Mooney, in New York City, founded the Society of St. Tammany, a few days after the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States. They built Tammany Hall.
The society became the political machine of the Democratic Party in New York City and, ironically, — under the control of William M. (Boss) Tweed — became everything opposite of what the great Delaware chief represented.
In 1912, James Gaffney, a Democrat operative from Tammany Hall, purchased the Boston Rustlers, a National League baseball team. He renamed the team the Boston Braves in honor of King Tammany. Gaffney then added the image of the Patron Saint of America to the team’s uniforms.
That image remained on the Braves’ uniform as the franchise moved to Milwaukee and Atlanta until 1989 when it was removed due to pressure from an early cancel culture.
Businessman George Preston Marshall started a National League football team in Boston in 1932. To tie in with the successful baseball team, he named it the Boston Braves. The football team played at Braves Field in Boston and adopted the same colors and logo as the Boston Baseball Braves.
Missourians witnessed this with the Cardinals Baseball and Football teams in St. Louis from 1960 to 1987.
The agreement with Braves Field lasted one short year. Marshall then moved his football team across town to Fenway Park — home of the American League Boston Red Socks. He changed the name from the Braves to the Redskins.
Kerry J. Byrne, in an article on Foxnews.com, described it this way, “The new name honored tradition, history and patriotism — and was consistent with his existing red color scheme, while paying tribute to the host organization.”
The Redskins remained in Boston until 1936 when Marshall moved the franchise to Washington D.C. in 1937.
The team updated their logo in 1972. Designed by Blackfeet native Walter “Blackie” Wetzel with input, and approval from Native American Groups, the new logo was very close to the only known portrait of Tamanend.
Since then, Marshall, who died in 1969, has been declared a racist and his football team’s name canceled. Now you know the rest of the story.
Tammany’s name lives on in statues, buildings, one of nine Louisiana parishes (counties) and several schools named after him. Still, his image has been canceled by those ignorant of American history.
A
merican history lists many great Native American Chiefs, including Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh, Geronimo and Cochise. Long before these great leaders was one honored by colonial Americans and called a Saint, even though he was never a Christian.
I bet you don’t know his name even though you are probably familiar with his image.
Chief of the Lenni-Lenape nation in the Delaware Valley, he was known as the “Patron Saint of America” by the generation of America’s founding fathers.
A Moravian Missionary in 1817 described him as “an ancient Delaware chief, who never had [an] equal. He was in the highest degree endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity, affability, meekness, hospitality, in short, he was endowed with every good and noble qualification which a human being may possess.”
His name appears as one of the signers of a deed to William Penn in 1683 for lands not far north of Philadelphia. The two were signers of a peace treaty that lasted for 75 years.
General George Washington and the Continental Army held a festival at Valley Forge, on May 1, 1778, in his honor.
Chief Tamanend — also known as Taminent, Tammany, Saint Tammany or King Tammany, “the Affable,” lived from 1625 until 1701.
Starting in the early 1770s, Philadelphia and Annapolis held Tammany Festivals. On May 1, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, as John Adams attended the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he wrote to his wife Abigail about the King Tammany Day festival.
After the war with England, Tammany celebrations spread to other areas of the United States, including Savannah, Georgia.
“Tammany: the Indian Chief,” in 1794, was the first original American opera. James Fenimore Cooper mentions Tammany in his classic 1826 novel, “The Last of the Mohicans,”
Statues of Tammany can be found on the campus of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in Philadelphia at the corner of Front and Market streets and a battlefield monument at Gettysburg for the New York’s 42nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment — the Tammany Regiment.
On May 12, 1789, William Mooney, in New York City, founded the Society of St. Tammany, a few days after the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States. They built Tammany Hall.
The society became the political machine of the Democratic Party in New York City and, ironically, — under the control of William M. (Boss) Tweed — became everything opposite of what the great Delaware chief represented.
In 1912, James Gaffney, a Democrat operative from Tammany Hall, purchased the Boston Rustlers, a National League baseball team. He renamed the team the Boston Braves in honor of King Tammany. Gaffney then added the image of the Patron Saint of America to the team’s uniforms.
That image remained on the Braves’ uniform as the franchise moved to Milwaukee and Atlanta until 1989 when it was removed due to pressure from an early cancel culture.
Businessman George Preston Marshall started a National League football team in Boston in 1932. To tie in with the successful baseball team, he named it the Boston Braves. The football team played at Braves Field in Boston and adopted the same colors and logo as the Boston Baseball Braves.
Missourians witnessed this with the Cardinals Baseball and Football teams in St. Louis from 1960 to 1987.
The agreement with Braves Field lasted one short year. Marshall then moved his football team across town to Fenway Park — home of the American League Boston Red Socks. He changed the name from the Braves to the Redskins.
Kerry J. Byrne, in an article on Foxnews.com, described it this way, “The new name honored tradition, history and patriotism — and was consistent with his existing red color scheme, while paying tribute to the host organization.”
The Redskins remained in Boston until 1936 when Marshall moved the franchise to Washington D.C. in 1937.
The team updated their logo in 1972. Designed by Blackfeet native Walter “Blackie” Wetzel with input, and approval from Native American Groups, the new logo was very close to the only known portrait of Tamanend.
Since then, Marshall, who died in 1969, has been declared a racist and his football team’s name canceled. Now you know the rest of the story.
Tammany’s name lives on in statues, buildings, one of nine Louisiana parishes (counties) and several schools named after him. Still, his image has been canceled by those ignorant of American history.
