The remains of a 16th-century Onondaga Nation chief named Ogeekeda Hoschenegada were found during the excavation of the old Syracuse University Women’s Building in the late 1920s.

The startling discovery of Hoschenegada’s remains became a symbol of indigenous heritage on campus grounds, a historical moment revealing the longstanding ties between the Onondaga Nation and SU.

At least, that’s how the legend went.

The tale of Hoschenegada, whose name roughly translates to “The Salt Warrior,” was published in a 1931 edition of The Orange Peel, a satirical campus magazine, according to SU Archives.

But even though the story of The Salt Warrior’s remains was later proven untrue, the legacy of the warrior is anything but.

The fictitious story went out to garner widespread attention across the university, in large part because of local news sources, including The Daily Orange, reporting the tale, according to SU Archives. The rumor later spread across the student body, and six years after the original article was published in The Orange Peel, the university had a new mascot that lasted for almost 50 years: the Saltine Warrior.

On Thursday, it will be 40 years since the Saltine Warrior was removed as SU’s mascot.

Mascot controversy

In 1951, a bronze statue of the Saltine Warrior was placed at the site where its remains were falsely believed to be found, according to SU Archives. It has since been moved in front of Carnegie Library where a muscular chief points his bow to the sky.

For many years, the Saltine Warrior was simply a symbol of school pride and the identity of Syracuse athletics did not completely revolve around the mascot. Syracuse was still largely known for what it is today: the color orange.

But in the mid-1950s, brothers of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, primarily white men, wore a caricature costume of the Saltine Warrior to football games, according to SU Archives.

Courtesy of SU Archives

A Lambda Chi Alpha brother dressed as the Saltine Warrior mascot in 1975.

“The mascot consisted of a shirtless Lambda Chi brother wearing a fringed leather vest, flannel pants, brown moccasins, a headdress, carrying a tomahawk and elaborate facial makeup, was worn to emulate ‘war paint,” according to SYR Guide.  The mascot would run around the stadium and chant battle cries to the stands.

“There were an awful lot of people who were offended by that,” said Stephen Saunders Webb, a professor emeritus of history who worked at the university when the Saltine Warrior was SU’s mascot. “I don’t think anybody felt that this representation did credit to anyone.”

Throughout the 1970s, other colleges and universities including Stanford University, Dartmouth College and Miami University in Ohio moved away from their indigenous based mascots, according to USA Today.

In 1976, Doug George-Kanentiio, a member of the Mohawk nation and vice president of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge, was a student at the University of New Mexico looking to transfer to a school in the northeast. He decided to attend SU because of the potential he saw for an innovative indigenous studies program, particularly because of the university’s location in the heart of the Onondaga Nation.

But what he found was quite the opposite, he said.

“What came to my attention immediately was the university had a serious problem with its image,” he said, referring to the Saltine Warrior mascot. “It obscured the real history and contributions that Native Americans contributed … (it) stood in the way of the realization of the potential of Native Americans.”

The meeting

In August of 1977, when George-Kanentiio sat down with Chancellor Melvin Eggers in hopes of discussing ways to remove the Saltine Warrior, the response he received took him a bit off guard, he recalled.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” George-Kanentiio said Eggers told him, at the time. Eggers died in 1994.

He said Eggers had long been willing to take steps to remove the Saltine Warrior as the university’s mascot, but lacked the organized representation needed to act on his vision. George-Kanentiio said the two decided to create the Native American Student Organization on campus, and collaborate with the Iroquois Confederacy.

Despite this, support for the mascot continued, with the backing of SU alumni.

“Do away with the Saltine Warrior and you will do away with Alumni enthusiasm and support across the country,” said a written statement by alumnus Harry McKinnon Jr., addressed to Melvin Mounts, the vice president of university affairs at the time, according to SU Archives.

Mounts received statements of support for keeping the mascot from dozens of alumni and organized groups, including the Beta Theta Pi alumni association, the sisters of Kappa Alpha Theta, the Chi Omega fraternity and the entire Panhellenic Conference at the university, according to SU Archives.

George-Kanentiio said he contacted the Onondaga Nation and arranged a meeting between the brothers from Lambda Chi Alpha and indigenous students.

To the surprise of the brothers, they were welcomed as guests, he said.

“It wasn’t going to be us against them,” George-Kanentiio said. “We were going to find a way to convert the student body, the faculty and the alumni and particularly the fraternity to our way of thinking.”

It was later announced that the spring semester of 1978 would be the last for the controversial mascot.

“The amazing thing that happened is that when we were leaving (Onondaga), everyone was talking,” George-Kanentiio said. “The Lambda Chi brothers shook the hands of the native students, and they said they agreed with us. They became our very good friends after that.”

40 years later

Regina Jones, the assistant director of SU’s Native Student Program, has the statue of the Saltine Warrior as a screensaver on her computer. She said she takes pride in the fact that the Haudenosaunee man who posed for it had a descendant that ended up attending SU.

Kacey Chopito, who is largely in charge of indigenous relations on campus, said he makes it a point to stop by the bronze statue while giving a tour of campus during the new indigenous student orientation.

“We use that to tell the story of how native students on campus, the administration and student body is working to move beyond (the) racist mascot,” Chopito said. “We try to use it as a learning tool to show that we can move forward from these racist portrayals of indigenous people.”

A new Haudenosaunee Promise scholarship that offers free tuition to students living on Haudenosaunee territory has increased the indigenous student population, said Saunders Webb, the professor emeritus.

Visible from the bronze statue of the Saltine Warrior, a purple Haudenosaunee flag flies in front of Hendricks Chapel, alongside the American flag and university flag.

The university now celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day, rather than Columbus Day, and tributes to the Onondaga Nation are often made before major campus events.

Professor Scott Manning Stevens, the director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, called these installations “symbolic, but highly significant.”

A new council on diversity and inclusion was created by Chancellor Kent Syverud and took the initiative on most of these projects for indigenous inclusivity.

Forty years after he helped abolish the Saltine Warrior mascot, though, George-Kanentiio said he failed in his goal to expand SU’s indigenous studies to its full potential while he was at SU.

“We were not a single-issue group,” he said. “We wanted Syracuse to become the Harvard of native studies. We wanted Syracuse to offer innovative programs that are not offered anywhere in the U.S. today — like native music, filmmaking, broadcasting, science and biology.”

George-Kanentiio, whose daughter and niece both attended SU, said he has seen flaws in the indigenous studies curriculum, including not enough indigenous professors teaching indigenous studies.

He said he has hopes of speaking to Syverud about the academic potential an increased number of prospective indigenous students can bring to Syracuse.

“We can make SU shine in terms of academics,” George-Kanentiio said.

Published on January 17, 2018 at 10:07 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326