Social Activist. Born the son of a Sauk mother and a Seneca father, he was given the name Oghema Niagara. As a youth he appeared in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. In 1889 he had an affair with Effie Waters, an Irish immigrant in Detroit with whom he had a son. When she died in 1899, he took his son and moved to Ohio. He established a home in Cleavland where he would often play host to the transient or indigent. He threw himself into a campaign to save the Cleveland Erie Street cemetery, the resting place Joc-O-Sot of the Fox nation, a personal hero. He supported himself by selling herbal cures, such as "Mohawk Penetrating Oil," "Thunderwater Tonic Bitters," "Seminole Sweet Gum Salve," and "Jee-wan-ga Tea." In 1907, he was vocal in his opposition to a campaign proposed by a pro-assimilation temperance group to ban traditional tribal dances. In 1909, the Tonowanda Seneca appointed him their advocate and "peace chief." In 1914, he first established the Council of the Tribes, "a pan-Indian self help and advocacy organization." Their first meeting was held on the St. Regis reservation, and more followed annually for the next several years, now considered the birth of the "Thunderwater Movement." Supporters sprung up on Iroquois reservations in both New York and Canada. The 1916 meeting advocated the need for education, to reestablish traditional governing councils and self government, and to distrust the establishment. He was marked as an agitator by the Canadian Indian Department. When Council representatives approached the Indian Department to air grievances, they were flatly refused a hearing. The Department actively set about to undermine Thunderwater's influence, and proposed an Indian Act revision limiting native rights of peaceful protest. By 1920, 18 Mohawk chiefs appointed him their "ambassador" and representative. Under a campaign of "dirty tricks" by the Canadian Indian Department, his character, ethnicity, and veracity were questioned. When this appeared in the "Louisville Times" in 1927, he sued for libel. After hundreds of affidavits and numerous witnesses confirmed his origins and character, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. The retrial, after several postponements, simply never happened. He remained highly visible and active until 1942, when illness forced him to give up most of his public appearances. That year, his herbal business was targeted and he was tried and acquitted of practicing medicine without a license. He died soon after, and was interred near Joc-O-Sot in the Erie Street Cemetery.