Mohawk Skywalkers

Long accustomed to traveling away from home for hunting, fur trading and logging, Mohawk Skywalkers from the Six Nations Reserve and Akwesasne in Northern New York State and southeastern Canada began building skyscrapers and bridges as far back as 1886, when daring Mohawk men helped in the construction of the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River.

Mohawk Ironworkers

Over the years, Mohawk ironworkers have shown an uncanny aptitude for working steel beams at increasingly higher altitudes, talking to each other for their mutual safety in their native language, as they helped to build such iconic landmarks as the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Plaza and the original World Trade Towers.

The Skywalker tradition almost came to an early end, when in 1907, 33 Mohawk men died during the collapse of the Quebec Bridge outside Quebec City, leaving behind wives and children to mourn their sudden passing. The tragedy taught surviving Skywalkers to split up into riveting gangs, so that any future disaster would minimize their losses as a tribe.

By the 1960s, the Atlantic Avenue and Boerum Hill area of Brooklyn—known as Kahnawake—became home to some 800 Mohawk Skywalkers and their families, as they built skyscrapers as far afield as Ontario, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

The Skywalker Riveting Gang Patriarchy

The Skywalker tradition has been passed down through generations of Mohawk men, allowing fathers and grandfathers to teach sons and grandsons how to control their fears and work in highly effective teams that were once known as riveting gangs.

Although modern technology has changed the way Skywalkers work, original riveting gangs were made up of four Skywalkers per gang. One man—known as the “heater”—would fire rivets in a portable forge until they glowed red, tossing them to the “sticker-in” man, who caught the red-hot rivet in a metal can or glove. The “bucker-up” braced the rivet with a dolly bar, while the “riveter” used a pneumatic hammer to flatten out the rivet stem, which locked a beam into place.

Working without safety lines or helmets until more recent times, even to this day, 35 to 50 ironworkers fall to their death each year. In the Kahnawake cemetery in Brooklyn, steel girder crosses mark the graves of fallen Skywalkers, offering a final tribute and resting place to the brave men who helped build America.