Moses Carpenter

Moses Carpenter (1854, Grand River Territory, Canada – 1889, Middlesbrough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England) was a Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation Native American whose proposed repatriation from England to his ancestral home in southern Ontario, Canada generated controversy in 2008.[1]

Carpenter was born Ska-Run-Ya-Te (or Skaroniate) in Ontario, Canada in 1854, as a member of the Mohawk tribe,[2] reportedly of the Wolf clan of the Six Nations.[1] In the 1880s, he journeyed from his native Canada to Great Britain to join a traveling medicine show that sold alleged cures for illnesses ranging from rheumatism to the common cold.[1] Contemporary reports state that the arrival of the show caravan created a spectacle that attracted large crowds wherever it set up camp.[2] Using his Mohawk name, he and other members of the show provided entertainment as teeth were extracted and potions applied by the show's leader, a man who billed himself as "Sequah," but was actually an Englishman whose real name was reportedly William Hannaway Rowe.[2][3]

Not long after the show arrived in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire in August 1889, Carpenter developed a fever, and died on August 15, 1889 in the town's North Riding Infirmary.[2][4] He had reportedly converted to the Church of England, and was interred in accordance with Church of England rites.[1] His funeral, held at St. Pauls Church three days after his death, was said to have generated the largest turnout since the funeral of the town's first mayor a decade earlier.[1][2] A poem written by a local girl was inscribed on his gravestone,[2] which became a landmark, with people laying feathers at his grave over the years.[3] Recently, restoration of the gravestone was undertaken to repair deterioration and vandalism.[2][5]