Mohawk Skyscrappers

Mohawk Skyscrapers

Everyone has seen or heard of the Empire State Building and the One World Trade Center building, but not many are knowledgeable of their history and importance. People gaze at the beauty of these two buildings without knowing who contributed to its construction and why the buildings are even there to be amazed by. This essay will discuss how the Mohawk People were introduced to constructing skyscrapers, and will mainly discuss the history and importance of the two skyscrapers they have helped build.

The Mohawk People are the most famous of the Iroquois Native Americans in New York, and with great reason. Mohawk originates from the Narraganset word ‘mohowauuck’, which means ‘they animate things’. The Mohawk People originated in upstate New York, but the construction workers of New York City Manhattan eventually discovered them. These Manhattan construction workers noticed the Mohawk People did not suffer from vertigo. “Vertigo is an unpleasant distortion of static gravitational orientation”, as stated by Thomas Brandt in his book titled Vertigo: Its Multisensory Syndromes. Vertigo is not a disease of any shape or form; it is actually only the combination “of many pathological or physiological processes” (Brandt. 3). Vertigo is common amongst the average person, especially New Yorkers, but these Mohawk People did not experience any form of dizziness from being highly elevated. The Mohawk Peoples’ natural defense against vertigo made them prime specimens for helping construct the highest pieces of the Skyscrapers New York was beginning to build during the 1920s. A Mohawk worker is quoted saying, “I looked up and I could see the rivets on the plane, I could read the serial numbers it was so low, and I thought ‘What is he doing going down Broadway?’” when a jet flew less than 50 feet above his head in Renee Valois’s article titled The Mohawks Who Built Manhattan. The Mohawk people seemed to not find these working conditions dangerous....