What’s the deal with the historical hiring of Native American Indians to work on skyscrapers? Have they all truly been blessed with a lack of fear of heights? –Robert Wallman, New York
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The Mohawks got into the business by happenstance. In 1886 a Canadian company was building a railroad bridge over the Saint Lawrence River near the Kahnawake reservation. The company hired a number of Mohawks as day laborers but found they loved to climb around on the ironwork without any apparent fear of heights. Since it was difficult to find men with the moxie for high work, the company decided to try an Indian crew. “We picked out some and gave them a little training, and it turned out that putting riveting tools in their hands was like putting ham with eggs,” a company official later wrote. Mohawks helped build bridges from then on.
The Mohawks eventually branched out from bridges into general high steel construction, including office buildings. During the late 1920s a number of Kahnawake crews started working on skyscrapers in New York, and they’ve been a fixture of the city’s construction scene ever since. Some crews–the members are often related to one another–spend the weekends on the reservation and drive down to New York for the week; others live in Brooklyn. But they’ll travel anywhere if there’s steel to climb.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
