The “Chief Montour” statue (originally set dead in the intersection of Water and Hamilton Streets) has become a symbol of Painted Post. This harks back to the original “Painted Post” which gave its name to the whole region.

According to Cornplanter it was a memorial to a Seneca leader of note, whose name he declined to divulge, in accordance with cultural conventions. The post weathered away with time, and white inhabitants of the early 1800s replaced it with a sheet-metal silhouette (for which they paid the maker one cow), theoretically depicting an Indian. This was replaced decades later by a more elaborate version, and then by a fully-rounded metal statue, which blew down and broke in 1948. (You can see all three of these in the Town of Erwin Museum at the Depot.)

The current fully-rounded model, executed by a local art teacher and erected around 1951, is the most artistically-impressive of the series. It incorporates a representation of the “painted post” itself, along with a respectful portrayal of Chief Montour, acknowledging the early owners of the land, muscled out in the 1790s. A large plaque on the base of the statue summarizes this history.

Two other nearby pieces are little more outdated, or at least one-sided. “Recording the Victory” is a New Deal mural in the post office, seeming to conflate the original painted post with the capture of Boyd and Parker, which took place about a hundred miles away.

That capture marked the westernmost penetration of the “Sullivan Expedition” (actually, the Sullivan INVASION), designed to demolish Iroquois life during the Revolutionary War. A tombstone-like monument on the east side of Hamilton, just north of the railroad track, is one of dozens that were scattered throughout the region in 1929 ( 150th anniversary), commemorating the “expedition.”

This was the largest independent command that George Washington ever authorized. SOME Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) sided with the British, raiding, burning, and killing down into the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. Sullivan was to respond in kind, BUT with no attempt to sort out pro-British, neutral, or even pro-American. Everything was to be burned, everybody killed or expelled.

The invaders, of course, were considered heroes at the time. But the monument is an interesting relic of the early days of auto travel, when such markers were sort of checkpoints for tourists and drivers.

A 1966 marker, back near the statue, commemorates the 1791 Treaty of Painted Post… although as I understand it, the conference actually took place in today’s Elmira. Timothy Pickering represented the U.S., while Red Jacket and Cornplanter were among those negotiating for the Six Nations and others (1,800 of whom actually attended). The result, predictably, was a disappointment for the Haudenosaunee, but it did at least mark a general unenthusiastic acquiescence on both sides, normalizing arrangements at last.

The point where the Conhocton and Tuscarora form the Chemung… the point in which a town flourished, and on which the original painted post stood… was a key point for Native peoples and for the white invaders. The succession of markers and monuments here show a course beginning with Native life; then a 19th-century view of “the Indians” as exotic curios; then an early 20th-century age of growing concern for history, contaminated with white supremacy and flag-waving patriotism; and then a late 20th-century groping toward a more truthful and more respectful approach. We can find all of this with little more than a five-minute walk in Painted Post.