25 Brutal Truths About the Mohawk Ironworkers Who Built New York's Skyline

25 Brutal Truths About the Mohawk Ironworkers Who Built New York's Skyline They Saw the Steel Bending First — 25 Hard Truths About the Mohawk Ironworkers of Kahnawake August 28, 1907. On the Quebec Bridge, the biggest bridge anyone had ever tried to build, the riveting gangs report that the steel is bending. Many of them are Mohawk men from Kahnawake, near Montreal. They are told to go back to work. The next afternoon the bridge falls in fifteen seconds. We count down twenty-five documented truths from the Royal Commission's 1908 report and a 1922 history of the village: the Victoria Bridge thirty years before the usual story begins, the jobs the Mohawks demanded in 1886, the four-man rivet gang, the weight nobody checked, the telegram that went to the wrong place, the crosses of steel, the women's rule, Little Caughnawaga in Brooklyn, the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Then we test the most famous legend about these men — that they were born with no fear of heights. Sources and Further Reading Royal Commission, Quebec Bridge Inquiry: Report (Ottawa, 1908), Sessional Paper No. 154 E. J. Devine, S.J., Historic Caughnawaga (Montreal, 1922) Joseph Mitchell, "The Mohawks in High Steel," The New Yorker (1949) Mohawk ironworkers; Kahnawake; Quebec Bridge; Dominion Bridge Company (overviews with cited sources) Reaghan Tarbell, Little Caughnawaga: To Brooklyn and Back (2008); Don Owen, High Steel (National Film Board of Canada, 1966) Films: The Skyscrapers of New York (1906), Demolishing and Building Up the Star Theatre (1901), Starting a Skyscraper (1902) — Library of Congress paper prints; Skyscraper (Pathé, 1928); Bay Bridge construction films (1933–37) Chapters 00:00 August 28, 1907: the riveters find the bends 00:28 25. The legend 01:28 24. The village across the river 02:24 23. The bridge before the bridge 03:11 22. They asked for the jobs 03:59 21. The rivet gang 04:53 20. Booming out 05:39 19. The longest span in the world 06:38 18. The weight nobody checked 07:34 17. The men saw it first 08:43 16. Uneasy and alarmed 09:28 15. A letter, not a telegram 10:12 14. Fifteen seconds 11:00 13. Fifty feet 11:37 12. Crosses of steel 12:22 11. Who was to blame 13:12 10. The women's rule 13:51 9. The bridge that fell twice 14:59 8. New York 15:43 7. The border 16:25 6. Little Caughnawaga 17:10 5. The Empire State Building 17:57 4. The work of a lifetime 19:01 3. The river taken away 19:42 2. Then and now 20:43 1. The legend Visual Sources all public domain. The men in the archival films and in Hine's photographs are unidentified; none is captioned as Mohawk. Illustrated scenes are original illustrations made for this documentary; they are not historical photographs and do not depict any named person. Original presentation: Workworn America. About This Channel This video is made for educational and informational purposes. Workworn America explores American industrial and working-class history through historical sources, with references and further reading listed above. The narration and visual presentation are developed for this documentary. Historical interpretation is grounded in the cited record. Corrections and additional firsthand sources are welcome — especially from Kahnawake and Akwesasne families. Did anyone in your family walk steel — on a bridge, a skyscraper or any high iron job? Tell us their name, their trade and the year in the comments. Subscribe for more history through the lives of American workers. #americanhistory #ironworkers #mohawk