The formal name of the group is the "Improved Order of Red Men", it is a national patriotic organization, having many chapters across the USA. It reached a high in national membership in the 1930's, with almost half a million in many hundreds of local chapters. Current membership is less than 30,000. The Port Morris NJ group seems to have been most active between 1900 & the late 1930's, it no longer exists. Per the national office, The Schosheon Tribe No. 188 was instituted in Port Morris on September 7, 1893. In 1923, they met in Red Men Hall, their name for the upstairs meeting room in Thompson' General Store, at the northeast corner of Center & Palmer Streets. For a time F. E. Weiler was Chief of Records (secretary).

 The National group traces its origin to various secret patriotic societies founded before the American Revolution. They were established to defy the English Crown and work for independence. On December 16, 1773 a group of men met in Boston to protest the tax on tea imposed by England. When their protest went unheeded, they disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, proceeded to Boston harbor, and dumped overboard 342 chests of English tea, i.e., the Boston Tea Party.  In 1813, at historic Fort Mifflin, near Philadelphia, several of these groups came together and formed one organization known as the Improved Order of Red Men. While their rituals and regalia are loosely enthusiastically modeled after those used by Native Americans, the vast majority of members were white Protestants.

Port Morris is an historic community within Landing, New Jersey, in the Township of Roxbury, Morris County, NJ that owes it's existence to the Morris Canal, completed in 1830 to move large quantities of coal, timber, iron ore and other goods across the state. Little hamlets sprung up along it's route to service the crews and teams of mules that pulled the boats. Those little hamlets became towns, and Port Morris was one of them, a major stop, or 'Port', due to it's long inclined plane that pulled boats up the hill, or lowered them, all in massive wooden cradles that held the boats and moved along rails that ran up the incline. The coming of the Railroad in the 1860's spurred the growth of the town and it's population.

Port Morris old-timers recall that the Red Men Society would occasionally march through town in their regalia. As the membership of the Red Men was largely made up of those from American Protestant backgrounds, a number of the newer Italian Catholic immigrant families feared that the Red Men had some connection with the Ku Klux Klan, and their children would hide when the parade came through. A little research uncovers the fact that in 1922, the Red Men Society of California adopted a resolution condemning as "un-American the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and kindred organizations".