Kanawalohale

Variant name of place

Kanawarohare; Canawarohare; Conawarohare in Oneida; Kaunoowawrora; Kanoarohare; Conawarohare in Oneida; Kanawaaohare; Kanwarohare; Kau,nau,rau,haur,y; Canawaraha,re; Kanonwalohale; Canawarohere; Canajohare; Kannawarohere; Cannowaurohary; Castle

Geographic position

43.0797° N, 75.5403° W

Sources

http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/history/firstallies/27022764.html. Taylor, Alan. The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage, 2007. Web. Andrews, Edward E. Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Print. Wheelock, Eleazar. A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity School, in Lebanon in Connecticut. London: J. and W. Oliver in Bartholomew-Close, 1769. Web. Tiro, Karin M. “James Dean in Iroquoia.” New York History. 80.4 (1994) 391-422. Web. Calloway, Colin G. The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth, 2010. Print. Fisher, Linford D. The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.

General note

Kanawalohale was a village located in the present-day town of Vernon in central New York state. In the 18th century, it was an Oneida village located about 60 miles west of the Mohawk village Canajoharie. Because the village’s name was similar to the Mohawk village of Canajoharie, many sources conflate the two. Founded in the mid-18th century, Kanawalohale was made up of a cluster of about 40 homes along the Oneida Creek, south of Oneida Lake. The name means head on a post in reference to an enemy soldier's skull displayed in the village. In 1765, David Fowler established an Indian school in Kanawalohale, where Wheelock’s son, Ralph, worked. Between the years of 1765 and 1767, Kanawalohale hosted many of Wheelock's missionaries including Samuel Kirkland, Joseph Johnson, David Avery, and Aaron Kinne. The Indians of Kanawalohale used their relationship with missionaries such as Kirkland to gain prestige over the formerly central Oneida village, Old Oneida. Kirkland often wrote in his journal about the dialogues he had with the Indians at Kanawalohale, who refused to receive his teachings silently. The Christian Indian population grew throughout the 1760s with at least 200 Indians attending church in the village. In 1780, Joseph Brant, a Mohawk allied with the British, led a war party against the revolting colonists, with whom the Oneidas had allied, that destroyed the Oneida village of Kanawalohale. This area is known today as Oneida Castle.