‘Great Law of Peace’ Lost in Indian Gambling Feud

A voice squawks over a walkie-talkie at the headquarters of the Mohawk Warriors Society: “Tommy just got arrested.”

Stopped at one of the New York State Police roadblocks that dot the sprawling reservation at the U.S.-Canadian border, the Warriors Society member is being held on a warrant for smuggling cigarettes into Canada.

His fellow Warriors are angry but not about to confront the well-armed troopers occupying the reservation. “We can wait,” one says. “We’ve been here forever. We’ll be here when they leave.”

The Warriors have been the focal point of tensions here for 10 months, ever since they drove off legions of FBI agents and troopers trying to raid the warehouse-sized gambling casinos that line Route 37, the two-lane highway through the 14,000-acre American part of the reserve.

And since two men died in a shoot-out between the Warriors and anti-gambling forces May 1, the Warriors have been trying to live down allegations that they are an intimidating, vigilante police force--”thugs and terrorists,” in the words of one tribal official.

“They call us smugglers, they call us drunkards, they call us dope addicts, they call us a cult,” says the group’s war chief, Francis Boots, “but that’s all a slick propaganda campaign against the Warriors Society.”

In fact, the Warriors are the true keepers of the tribe’s centuries-old “Great Law of Peace,” he says, defenders of the sacred homeland against “external governments whose hands are still stained with the blood of our people.”

Even their fiercest critics admit that the militant sovereignty stance of the group has drawn dozens, perhaps hundreds, of converts on a reservation with a history of activism and Indian pride.

“Who do you think took care of Custer?” asks a burly ironworker who calls himself Joe Warrior. “Them were warriors.”

The St. Regis Reservation--most residents call it Akwesasne--”Land Where the Partridge Drums”--has long been a place of political turmoil. Straddling the St. Lawrence River, it falls not only in two countries, but in two Canadian provinces and two New York counties.

Then there is the complex internal political scene. Many tribes have two competing governments--an elected regime recognized by outside authorities and a traditional one that claims authority through age-old custom. But here there are elected councils on both the Canadian and New York sides of the reservation, as well as “longhouse” chiefs who would restore the tribe’s traditional values. They claim authority over the entire reservation through their appointment by “clan mothers.”

On top of that comes the Warriors Society, which does not recognize the authority of any of the other three entities.

“The problem is,” says Francis Boots, “we have too many chiefs around here and not enough Indians.”

The Warriors trace their modern roots to an incident in 1968 that provided an emotional moment of unity for the reservation. Angered by a Canadian ruling that they were not exempt from paying duties on goods carried across the border, Mohawks led by Mike Mitchell--now “grand chief” of the Canadian council--blockaded the international bridge leading to Cornwall, Ontario. Forty-eight were arrested.

The next year, a 26-year-old tribal member, Richard Oakes, spearheaded the takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by Indians from across the country.

In 1974, about 100 armed men from the St. Regis reservation occupied land in Upstate New York that they claimed had been stolen from the tribe. A three-year standoff ended only after mediation by Mario M. Cuomo, then New York’s secretary of state and now its governor, when the Indians agreed to accept another parcel of land.

“It all (the modern Warriors Society) started Dec. 9, 1968, when the Mohawk people stood up for their right to travel” at the international bridge, said Boots.

But in the current dispute, pitting Mohawk against Mohawk, Mike Mitchell is Boots’ enemy--a leader of the faction that sees gambling, and the Warriors, as the ruin of the reservation.

“They are the most dangerous type of terrorists,” says Doug George, another of the anti-gambling leaders. “They know how to disguise their criminal activity behind a cloak of patriotism.”

The casinos divided the reservation from the moment they started popping up along Route 37 in the mid-1980s, their slot machines and blackjack tables drawing thousands of customers each day from Ottawa and Montreal, both within a two-hour drive.

Although the gambling houses never were approved by any of the tribal councils and were declared illegal by federal and state officials, many residents welcomed the money and jobs they brought. The anti-gambling Indians complained that the casinos attracted unsavory investors and compromised tribal values. One bingo hall operator in turn dismissed traditionalist opposition as “phony Indian beads-and-braids bull. . . .”

Last July, the dispute escalated well beyond words after the FBI and state police raided the largest casino, Tony’s Vegas International, removing truckloads of slot machines.

Decrying the “invasion,” the Warriors, some wearing masks, began guarding entrances to the American part of the reserve. State police--clearly seeking to avoid a bloody confrontation such as the one that took two lives in 1973 at the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation of the Sioux in South Dakota--decided to pull back.

In the months following, the Warriors--left, in effect, in control of the U.S. side--clashed repeatedly with anti-gambling residents and the 14-member Akwesasne Mohawk Police, who operate on the Canadian part of the reservation. The nighttime echo of automatic weapons became a regular part of life. Cars were rammed. Bullet holes in the sides of homes and vehicles became almost badges of honor for some Mohawks.

On March 23, the anti-gambling Indians set up roadblocks on Route 37 to stop the buses and cars carrying bettors to the casinos. During the weeks after that, there was a series of tense skirmishes with the barricades being torn down, then put up again by the opposing sides. Finally armed Warriors set up their own roadblock at an intersection on a road leading from the Canadian side. The windows of several cars and a school bus were smashed there.

The anti-gambling forces retreated to the border, setting up a new roadblock on scenic River Road near the home of one of their members Dave George, the 42-year-old bricklayer brother of Doug George. They chopped down a tree and sprawled it across the road. Dave George erected a sign announcing a “Warrior Free Zone,” put on his camouflage coat and stood sentry with a rifle.

Doug George, also armed himself with a rifle. “If he stood,” Doug George says, “I was going to stand with him. . . . If we would have left and retreated, they would have controlled the whole area.”

Witnesses say that the early morning of Tuesday, May 1, sounded like open warfare.

“The two factions were shooting at each other. I got my family out of there,” says John Gray, who lives near the blockade set up by the Georges. When he returned in the morning, there were bullet holes in a pickup truck behind his home.

Doug George says that everyone kept firing, even though in the darkness, “we didn’t see anyone.”

Matthew Pyke, 22, stationed with the anti-gambling forces, was shot in the back. In the morning, the body of 32-year-old Harold Edwards Jr. was discovered on the Warriors’ side of the skirmish.

Soon after, the anti-gambling Indians and hundreds of other residents were evacuated from the reservation to Cornwall, some crossing the river by barge.

The Warriors, saying that they had nothing to fear from an investigation, agreed not to interfere with outside authorities seeking to reach the murder scene--which is on Canadian turf near the international border, although it can be reached only from the U.S. side. And that concession set the stage for the arrival of hundreds of State Police. Two weeks later, they are still around.

“As you can see, we are under siege,” says Melvin White, standing at the door of the Warriors Society headquarters. “They (the police) said they were merely here for investigative purposes. Instead, we have a mass invasion, an invading army.”

Gov. Cuomo has said that the troopers will remain until tribal leaders can establish an official Mohawk police force for the New York side of the reservation. Meanwhile, patrol cars and armed officers are stationed at entrances to the reservation, at main intersections on the reservation and in front of casinos. Logs smolder in metal trash cans to provide warmth on the 12-hour shifts.

The troopers grumble about how the Indians are allowed to sell cigarettes tax-free in the United States and smuggle them across the border--often by boat at night--for illegal profits in Canada.

“Look in there and you may see a few packs of gum, along with the cigarettes,” one young officer says, nodding at a roadside shop where cartons of Winstons and Marlboros are piled to the ceiling.

Troopers search cars and check the identity of everyone coming in and out. Nonresidents are kept off the reservation. The casinos are closed.

Graffiti attests to the long conflict: “Gambling Will Die” appears in red paint on a warehouse. “Warriors 1” appears on a fuel tank.

While the criminal investigation continues--there have been no arrests--two federal mediators and a representative of the governor are trying to work out a compromise among the factions that perhaps would include a referendum on gambling.

“The immediate answers are obvious,” says John Vance, one of the federal mediators. “Remove roadblocks. Stop illegal gambling. Reinstate law enforcement. . . . The Mohawk situation cries out for armistice.”

But “after the police leave, you’re going to see wholesale retribution,” predicts Doug George, who calls the Warriors paid goons of gambling interests who are “in it for self-interest, fast and easy money.”

“It’s not over by any means,” agrees Harold Tarbell, the anti-gambling head chief of the American-side tribal council, who runs for reelection next month. “I do think we’re in for a long, hot summer.”

Two flags fly atop Warriors Society headquarters, a blue aluminum-sided building. One flag is bright blue with a pattern taken from an ancient wampum belt that symbolizes unity of the six Indian nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, which includes the Mohawks. Below that flag is a red one featuring the legendary warrior Hiawatha, who is credited with bringing the six tribes together.

About two dozen cars and pickup trucks are parked in the muddy lot outside the headquarters. Traditional music--drums and chanting--filters from speakers in a neighboring house. There are no windows in the headquarters building. The only glass, on the small front door, has a large spider-web crack.

Inside, blue jean-clad warriors sit at long bingo tables, monitoring radios and waiting for instructions. Virtually everyone is smoking.

Some of the men work in the casinos, but many are ironworkers, installing girders on high-rise buildings across the country in the daring trade in which many of the tribe’s men work.

“The best thing the (anti-gambling forces) ever did for the Warrior Society was to put up those roadblocks,” says Joe Warrior, who is a member of the Los Angeles Ironworkers Union local but is home with his wife and four children awaiting his next job.

The roadblocks brought the troopers, he reasons, and that outside presence will only gain the Warriors more support as the “occupation” becomes an inconvenience.

“What you have here is a struggle for control of the territory of Akwesasne,” says spokesman Boots.

Moments later, two women enter the building leading a flock of children. Kathleen Oakes angrily describes how one of the troopers tried to search her purse.

“I said: ‘You have no right doing that,’ ” she recounts. “I said: ‘That’s getting a little too damn personal.’ ”

“I just wonder if they know what they’re getting into?” asks a 37-year-old ironworker who calls himself Runner.

“Am I supposed to be holding an AK-47 in there?” Oakes continued, waving her small black purse.

“You can push people just so far,” mutters Runner, who has a scraggly beard and hair well down his back.

“If they want to see Mohawks united, let them start killing people,” declares Joe. “If something happens, say they attack here, there will be one big massacre.”

“They’ll get massacred,” says Runner, “because they’ll be surrounded. We can’t fight them in one big group but we got them split up.

“They say they have us surrounded, but you ask the troops out there who feels uneasy. . . .”