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Who were the "Skywalkers" who helped build New York?

  • Writer: MIP Author
    MIP Author
  • Jun 11
  • 6 min read

Updated: Jun 14

New York’s skyline is usually described through architects, steel, finance, and engineering. Less often is it described through the Indigenous workers who helped raise it beam by beam, many stories above the street.


For more than a century, Mohawk ironworkers from Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne have been part of that story. These workers traveled from their communities to build bridges, skyscrapers, and some of the most recognized structures in North America, including the World Trade Center.


Known widely as “skywalkers,” Mohawk ironworkers became respected for their ability to work high steel. The nickname can sound almost mythical, but the real history is stronger than myth. These were trained workers, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, husbands, and community members doing dangerous work with discipline, balance, trust, and knowledge passed across generations.


Their story is not separate from modern America. It is built into it.

Two ironworkers in hard hats and safety gear stand on steel beams high above a World Trade Center construction site, representing Mohawk high-iron work and Indigenous contributions to modern infrastructure.
Mohawk ironworker Peter Jacobs, Haudenosaunee and Mohawk Nation, is shown with a fellow ironworker during construction at the World Trade Center. Generations of Mohawk ironworkers from Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne helped build, recover, and rebuild parts of New York’s skyline.

A Trade Passed Through Generations


The Mohawk high-iron tradition is often traced to the late 1800s, when men from Kahnawà:ke worked on bridge construction near the St. Lawrence River. Early bridge jobs helped open a path into ironwork, and by the 20th century, Mohawk workers were traveling into cities where steel-frame construction was changing the shape of modern life.


This movement became known as “booming out,” a term used when ironworkers left their home communities to follow construction jobs. It was a way to earn a living, but it also came with real cost. Workers spent long periods away from home, families carried the weight of absence, and every job involved risk.


The danger became painfully clear in 1907, when the Quebec Bridge collapsed during construction and killed 33 Mohawk workers. The loss devastated Kahnawà:ke families and remains one of the defining tragedies in the history of Mohawk ironwork. It also shows why this history should never be reduced to a simple story about fearlessness. High iron required courage, but it also required training, sacrifice, family strength, and community memory.



The Indigenous Hands Behind the Skyline


By the early 1900s, Mohawk ironworkers from Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne were helping build the city that millions of people now recognize by its skyline. Their work is connected to major New York structures, including the Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge, and the World Trade Center.


This history also created a Native urban story that many people still do not know. Mohawk families formed strong community ties in Brooklyn, where workers could live closer to Manhattan job sites while still maintaining relationships with Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne. These were not temporary footnotes in someone else’s city. They were Indigenous families creating community across borders, job sites, and generations.


For museum visitors, this shifts the way the story is understood. Indigenous history is not only found in ancient structures, homelands, ceremonies, or rural landscapes. Indigenous people also helped build rail systems, bridges, towers, and cities. Their contributions live in the everyday infrastructure people use without thinking about who made it possible.



The World Trade Center Connection


The World Trade Center became one of the most powerful chapters in this history. Mohawk ironworkers helped build the original Twin Towers, including work high above the streets of lower Manhattan. Decades later, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Mohawk ironworkers returned to the site to help with rescue, recovery, debris removal, and reconstruction.



For many workers and families, the destruction of the towers was not only a national tragedy. It was also personal. The buildings carried the labor of fathers, grandfathers, brothers, relatives, union crews, and community members. When Mohawk workers returned to Ground Zero, they were not entering an unfamiliar place. They were returning to a site their own communities had helped raise.


The National September 11 Memorial & Museum later recognized this connection through the exhibition Skywalkers: A Portrait of Mohawk Ironworkers at the World Trade Center. The exhibition featured tintype portraits by artist Melissa Cacciola and explored the intergenerational relationship between Mohawk ironworkers and the World Trade Center site.



Three Things Visitors May Not Know


In 2015, the United States Mint honored Mohawk ironworkers on the Native American $1 Coin. The design showed a Mohawk ironworker reaching for an I-beam above a city skyline, recognizing the contributions of Kahnawà:ke Mohawk and Akwesasne Mohawk communities to high-iron construction.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum’s Skywalkers audio tour was made available in English and in two Mohawk dialects, Ahkwesáhsne and Kahnawá:ke. That detail matters because language is part of how communities carry memory, identity, and authority over their own stories.
The word “skywalkers” should be used with respect, not as a stereotype. Mohawk workers were admired for their ability to work high steel, but the work was not effortless or magical. It was a skilled trade shaped by training, family expectation, union labor, physical risk, and generations of experience.


Families Carried the Work Too


A fuller history of Mohawk ironwork must include the families who made the work possible. While men were away on job sites, women and extended family members often carried the daily responsibilities of home, children, community life, and cultural continuity.


The public tends to remember the men walking steel beams high above the city, but the trade survived because whole families absorbed the pressure of distance, danger, and uncertainty. The work was physical, but the sacrifice was shared.


This is part of what makes the story so human. The high-iron tradition was not only about individual bravery. It was about responsibility. Workers took dangerous jobs to support their families, and families sustained the homes and communities those workers returned to.



A Contribution Hidden in Plain Sight


Mohawk ironwork is one of the clearest examples of an Indigenous contribution hidden in plain sight. Bridges and skyscrapers are often treated as symbols of modern progress, but the people who built them are too often left unnamed.


The story of Mohawk ironworkers challenges that silence. Indigenous people were not merely witnesses to industrial America. They were builders within it. They shaped skylines, crossed borders for work, joined unions, raised families in cities, responded after national tragedy, and helped rebuild.


At the Museum of Indigenous People, the Contributions exhibit invites visitors to look again at the ideas, technologies, systems, and knowledge that continue to shape the world. Mohawk high-iron work expands that conversation into the steel frame of modern cities. It reminds visitors that Indigenous contributions are not always behind glass. Sometimes they are overhead, underfoot, and built into the places people pass through every day.



Remembering the High Iron "Skywalkers"


The history of Mohawk skywalkers is a story of skill, danger, grief, pride, family, and public service. It connects Kahnawà:ke and Akwesasne to New York, the St. Lawrence River to Manhattan, and Indigenous community knowledge to some of the most recognizable structures in North America.


When visitors learn about the World Trade Center, they often hear about architecture, economics, terrorism, loss, and national memory. The Mohawk ironworker story adds another necessary layer. Indigenous workers helped build the towers, helped recover the site after they fell, and helped rebuild what came next.

That is not a side note. It is part of the story.



Visit the Contributions Exhibit


The Museum of Indigenous People’s Contributions exhibit explores Indigenous ideas, technologies, systems, and knowledge that continue to influence modern life. From food systems and engineering to governance, science, medicine, and infrastructure, the exhibit invites visitors to see Indigenous contributions as specific, living, and ongoing.

Contributions is on view at the Museum of Indigenous People in Prescott, Arizona, from February 13 through July 31, 2026.

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