chapter 297

Mohawks

11/20/2012

an inside job

On my stakeout of the Cohoes Savings Bank, I entered surreptitiously posing merely as a guy off the street.

 I got into the inner sanctum and keeping the flash off so as to not attract attention made a record of the 1925 burglar alarm installation details and time lock sequence.

 My original plan was to photograph this 1951 David Cunningham Lithgow painting of the Great Mohawk spiritual mother Jigonsasa who influenced Hiawatha to create the Iroquois Federation. This was no little accomplishment as I crashed the luncheon where the Mohawks were assembled after the morning dedication of the land deal.  I climbed up on top of the tellers area and steadied my camera on top of the glass partition so I could get a sort of straight on shot across the 40 foot room of this maybe 30 foot mural. Yes, I was shooting right over the heads of Mohawk clans, some dressed just as in the picture. They didn't seem to mind and even thought I was part of the management. Bank is currently being used as an Albany Co Sheriff's sub station so I had to kick aside some of their radio equipment.

 The interesting thing about the dedication ceremony was the Mahican tribesman who first spoke and denounced this land deal. He maintained it was his tribe the Stockbridge-Munsee who first owned the Cohoes land? I shot this nice painted rocks memorial up at Amsterdam where some say the Mohawk Nation begins?

I will leave no stone unturned until I get to the bottom of this.

.