Everyone's Grandmother

Elizabeth Winnie Waterman was a tall woman and she spoke almost no English. When she might have spoken English, she preferrred her native Seneca language. She was born on the Cattaraugus reservation of the Seneca Nation in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Her father John Winnie was from Canada. Her mother Eliza Mohawk was a revered medicine person, known as a doctor because she diagnosed and developed treatments for physical ills. She was also born and grew up on the Seneca Nation at Cattaraugus, New York.

The photographs of Elizabeth in her youth reveal a handsome young woman. Those who knew her say she was forthright and clearly the leader of her family after her mother died. Elizabeth practiced midwifery until the week she died at the age of 76. She was on her way to deliver a baby when she fell in a snowstorm and could not get up. She was missed at the home she was walking to and a search ensued. Sometime after she was found she contracted pneumonia and died.

Her equally handsome husband was from Stockbridge-Munsee in Wisconsin. His father had been removed from Cattaraugus to Wisconsin by the United States with a big nudge by the U.S. Army. The Stockbridge had originated in Massachusetts, part of the enormous group of nations known as the Anishinabe. By the time the Civil War was underway, they had been removed to far away Wisconsin. So two Waterman brothers and their families, practically walked back to New York and the Seneca Nation that they had come to feel at home on. Young John Waterman and his brother married two sisters and the families settled in at Cattaraugus. Another brother moved east to Onondaga and married there. That is how the Waterman name became established in the Seneca and Onondaga Nations.

Eliza Mohawk was Seneca through and through. Her membership in one of the medicine societies signified the status of her family. Her personality shone through as sure and confident, attributes needed for a doctor. People noticed her easy laugh and the grace of her small frame. No wonder John Winnie was attracted to her. He was about ten years older than her. They settled in on the southeast corner of the reservation. They had a lot of land for two people as we can see from all that was given or left to Elizabeth and her husband John's children.

Everything went well until John joined the Union Army. Like so many other Indian men the only warrior's path that was opportunities open to him was that of his former enemy. He served diligently, but during night manuveurs he fell into a ditch and hurt himself badly.That ended his active career and he was mustered out as a veteran. For Eliza, like thousands of Indian Union widows, she was denied a pension. She spent the rest of her life trying to get the pension so she and her children could live with some security but approval never came.


More on the life of Elizabeth Waterman to come.