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PIONEER HISTORY
OF THE
HOLLAND PUKCHASE
OF
WESTERN NEW YORK:
EMBRACING
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT REMAINS:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
OUR IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS, THE CONFEDERATED IROQUOIS, THEIR SYSTEM
OF GOVERNMENT, WARS, ETC. A SYNOPSIS OF COLONIAL HISTORY I
SOME NOTICES OF THE BORDER WARS OF THE REVOLUTION:
AND A HISTORY OF
PIONEER SETTLEMENT
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE HOLLAND COMPANY; INCLUDING
REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR OF 18 12;
THE ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND COMPLETION OF THE
ERIE CANAL,
ETC. ETC. ETC.
BY O. TURNER.
BUFFALO:
PUBLISHED BY JEWETT, THOMAS <k CO.
GEO. U. DERBY & CO.
1849.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1849, by O. Turner, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New York.
JEWETT, THOMAS &. CO. BTKRE0TYPER3 AND PRINTERS, Euffalo, N. Y.
r
SUR^MVING PIONEERS
AND
DESCENDANTS OF PIONEERS,
OF THE
HOLLAND PURCHASE,
THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
Read the Preface ! A command that may be regarded as too imper- ative, and yet one that an author has some right to make, in consideration of the deep interest which he may be supposed to have in its observance. Having prepared an entertainment, as he is about to open the door to his guests, it is quite natural he should wish to pass them in with his own introduction.
First, as to the general plan of the work : — There may be readers of it who have anticipated a history more strictly local in its character, than they will find this. It was the original intention, of the author to have commenced with the close of the Revolution, and traced settlement and its progress westward, very much as has been done, with the exception of a more extended detail. Upon proceeding to his task, however, after mate- rials for it had been collected, the important -consideration presented itself, that, although there existed, in detached forms, sketches of the earliest approaches of civilization to this region — of early colonization tending in this direction — of the French and Indian and French and English wars; the long contest for supremacy and dominion; the occupancy of that extraordinary race of men, the Jesuit Missionaries; the Border Wars of the Revolution ; still, there was no history extant that connected all this, and furnished an unbroken chain of events allied to the region of Western New York, and especially the Holland Purchase. The distinguished historian, Mr. Bancroft, was the first to draw from French sources any considerable amount of the history of French occupancy of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the borders of our lakes and rivers; of the advents of Jesuit Missionaries, and their cotemporaries, the fur traders; and embellish his country's history with a long series of interesting events, before almost unnoticed. But little could be gathered by an humble local historian, after such a gleaner had passed over the gTound ; but his work is of a magnitude to preclude access to it, by the great mass of readers ;
Vi PREFACE.
and tliat portion of it having reference to this region, but incidental to the o-eneral history of the United States. Aside from this, the early history of our reo-ion, embracing the periods and events alluded to, was to be found only in detached forms — much of it in old newspaper files and magazmes — in conditions to make it generally inaccessible.
Havino- adopted the title, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase, early events, the first glimpses that our own race had of this region, was indicated as the starting point; and taking position there, the necessity of going even still farther back, seemed involved. The ancient remains, the mysterious, rude fortifications upon the bluffs, ridges, and banks of streams, throuo-hout our local region, form an interesting feature, and one that claimed a place in our local annals. Some account of our immediate predecessors, the Seneca Iroquois, was suggested as coming within the immediate 'range of local history ; and especially as they were to be mingled in almost our entire narrative. All that relates to them possesses a peculiar interest; that which relates to the system of government of the confederacy to which they belong, is a branch of their history but recently investigated to any considerable extent; is far less generally understood than most things appertaining to them, and has therefore been made to occupy a prominent position in that portion of the work.*
As civilization approached this region, from that direction, colonization upon the St. Lawrence has necessarily been the main feature of that portion of the work having reference to European Pioneer advents. Enough, however, of early colonization elsewhere has been embraced, to afford a glimpse of cotemporary events ; and especially such as finally had a bearing upon events in this quarter. Starting principally with the advent of Champlain, a connected chain of events has been attempted, extending through long and eventful years, down to the extinguishing of the Indian title, the advent of the Holland Company, Pioneer settlement under their auspices, and the two prominent events, the war of 1812, and the construction of the Erie Canal, belonging to a later period. The title of the work, of itself, indicates its general character, and the intention of the author not to embrace events, generally, beyond early settlement, — pioneer advents. Another volume would have been necessary, had it been concluded to extend the work to a later period ; and besides, as a
* The credit of a thorough investigation of this admirable specimen of Indian legislation — of unschooled forest statesmanship — and wisdom, if we regard its prac- tical workings — belongs to Lewis H. Morgan^ Esq. of Rochester, who communicated the result of his labors, in numbers, to the North American Review. In reading his essays, it is difficult to determine which most to admire, the careful and industrious researches of the author, in a matter so difficult to comprehend, with no records, and little beyond obscure tradition for his guides; or the zealous and lively feelings he manifests, in every thing that concerns the character and welfare of the unfortunate race whose interesting traditions he has aided in rescuing from oblivion.
PREFACE. Vll
general rule, public events should not assume the form of history, imtil time has ripened them for it ; and especially such as have involved contro- versy, many of the prominent actors in which may survive — the asperities it engendered, unobliterated. A political history of the Holland Purchase, has formed no part of the plan of work; on the contrary, even allusions to partisan contentions have been mostly avoided. That should form a distinct branch of history; its appropriate alliance is with the general history of the state ; and those who may desire to study it, have the means furnished them in the candid and impartial work of Judge Hammond.
The range of the work thus extended, its magnitude has been increased far beyond the original design. In adopting the general plan, there was a purpose to be subserved, in addition to those that have been named. Had the work been merely a history of settlement and local events upon the Holland Purchase, it must necessarily have been one of considerable magnitude — attended Avith an expense that any prospective local sale would not have warranted. It has therefore been the aim of the author, to impart to it both a local and general interest; how far he has been successful, time, and the ordeal to which he submits his labors, must determine. From the moment the general plan of the work was adopted, and its expense to the purchaser enhanced beyond the mark originally indicated, it has been the constant aim of the author to give it a corres- ponding value. It will be seen that little expensi,e has been spared in its mechanical execution ; and the author flatters himself that the twenty-two illustrations will be adequately appreciated by those who possess themselves of a copy of the work. The Maps of the eight Counties have been prepared by a competent hand, carefully adapted to locaUties as they now exist, and may be considei'ed of themselves as ha\-ing an intrinsic value, equal to any addition that has been made to the price of the work, from the lowest sum that has been named in connection with the enterprize; while the number of excellent Portraits of distinguished Pioneers, have been extended far beyond what was originally contemplated. The careful legal deduction of title in the Appendix, in addition to the historical deduction in the body of the work, will be found a valuable accession to law libraries, while it will aid the general reader in a better understanding of that subject, than can be obtained from any facilities hitherto furnished in a form of general access.
It is hardly necessary to inform the intelligent reader, that Mr. Ban- croft's History of the United States has been the basis of all that relates to French and English occupancy ; though the author has been materially aided by Lanman's History of Michigan, and Brown's History of Illinois, both of which had traced events from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to
Vlll PREFACE.
their local regions; and he regards himself as somewhat fortunate, in havinrv been enabled to add, from various sources, no inconsiderable amount of materials that have hitherto had no place in history, other than in the form of manuscript records, neglected newspaper files, or among the collections of Historical Societies.* If, as most historians are obliged to do, he has been under the necessity of culling his materials, in many instances, from iields already explored, he may, perhaps, without incurring the charge of egotism, assume that he has occasionally been enabled to bring fresh contributions to the common stock of historical knowledge.
There arc those to whom the author is indebted for local statistics, who will miss a portion of their contributions. The omissions have been reluc- tantly made. To have carried out the plan of giving in detail, all that related to early county and town organizations, would have been to exclude large portions of the work that were deemed more essential, and it is hoped, will prove in the end quite as acceptable. It was intended, however, to have given sketches of the first organization of all the Coun- ties; but that intention has been but imperfectly consummated, owing principally, to the absence of the necessary materials. The records of the primitive organization of the Courts, etc. of old Niagara, were inaccessible, owing to the condition in which the large mass of records were in, prepara- tory to a new arrangement of them, in the Clerk's office of Erie. The author unexpectedly failed in procuring the primitive records of Chautau- que and Allegany.
It was a paramount object in giving sketches of the Pioneer settlement of the Holland Purchase, to embrace as many of the names, and as much of personal reminiscences, as practicable. To this end, the general plan was adopted, of giving a list of all who took contracts previous to January 1st, 1807; and of the first five or six, and sometimes more, of those who took contracts in all the townships upon the Purchase that were not broken into previous to that date. These lists have been made with a great deal of care and labor, and yet, there are undoubtedly many errors in them. Contracts in many instances, were in the name of those who never became settlers, and in numerous other instances perhaps, there were transfers of contracts, the name of the actual settler not appearing upon the contract books. Although there are in these tabular lists, and in various other forms, the names of four or five thousand of the Pioneers upon the Holland Purchase, the author has sincerely to regret, in many instances, the omission of the names of early, prominent Pioneers. These omissions are principally of those who became settlers after January 1st, 1807, and were
* A principal one, haviug been that of the State of Maryland, as indicated in some portions of the work.
PREFACE. IX
not the earliest in their respective townships. The Table in the Appendix, containing a list of the townships, with reference to towns as they now exist, will be found useful, in designating the localities of early settlement.
Errors in dates, names, and events, in reference to Pioneer settlement, will undoubtedly be found ; in some instances they were unavoidable. They have depended, of course, mainly, upon the memory of the aged and infirm. None but those who have been enrao-ed in o-athering reminiscences from such sources, can know their liability to errror and discrepancies. Any two or three will seldom agree in their recollections. In many in- stances interesting reminiscences have been omitted, where it was impossible to reconcile conflicting statements. It is presumed, upon a consciousness of having exercised great care in this respect, that but few material errors will be found ; where such exist, and the author is referred to them, they will be corrected in a second edition.
Much as perhaps the necessity of apologies may be indicated throughout the work, they will be indulged in but sparingly. Intelligent narrative has been the highest mark aimed at in its literary execution. Long accustomed, as the author has been, to writing for the newspaper press — a branch of composition where a careful weighing of words and sentences is generally precluded by exigencies allied to it — he may have brought to his new task something of habit thus acquired, and incurred the just criticism of those who apply to the work no more than fair tests, or subject it to no more than a liberal ordeal. Reared amid the most rugged scenes of Pioneer life upon the Holland Purchase, with little of early opportunities for educa- tion, beyond those afforded in the primitive log school house, he can prefer no claim to any considerable attainments in scholarship ; and submits a work to the public, of the character and pretensions of this, not in the absence of an anxiety, and a distrust, which may be supposed to arise from a consciousness of what he has thus frankly acknowledged. " Literary leisure," so essential to the faultless execution of such a task as this has been, he has not enjoyed. It is about eighteen months since the collection of materials was commenced; during the fore part of that period, a connec- tion with a newspaper necessarily divided the time and attention of the Author; and since the preparation of the work for the press commenced, his own ill health, consequent upon a phyical constitution much impaired, and ill health in his family, have been the cause of frequent interruptions. Much the largest portion of the work has been prepared since the printing commenced. All this is not intended to disarm any just and fair criticism; but may perhaps, with some propriety, be preferred to break the force of technical cavilling, or the asperities of faultfinding, if they are encountered.
It only remains to make" personal acknowledgments of the kind offices and essential aids of those who have cooperated in the enterprise : — To
X PREFACE.
the Hon. Washington Hunt, of Niagara, for early encouragement to embark in it, and generous assistance, whenever needed, in its progress ; and to the Hon. Hiram Gardner, of Lockport, and the Hon. Wm. Buel, of Rochester, the Author is under hke obhgations. To his brother, C. P. Turner, Esq. of Black Rock, who, in various ways, has lent his zealous cooperation and assistance.
To Lyman C. Draper, Esq. a resident of Philadelphia, but a native of the Holland Purchase, for essential aid in procuring valuable and rare materials for the work. Leaving this region an ambitious boy, in search of an education ; that acquired, he engaged in historical researches, and now enjoys a well earned fame for valuable contributions to American history. Apprised of the Author's intention to commence this work, prompted by private friendship, and a laudable zeal to aid in the history of the region in which his parents were Pioneers, he has volunteered to search the ar- chives of historical societies, and give to the work the benefit of his discov- eries. He is now engaged in Philadelphia, in preparing for the press " The Life and Times of Gen. George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky," and intends to follow it up with histories of others of the prominent pioneers of the Valley of the Mississippi.
To 0. H. Marshall, Esq. of Buffalo, for free access to a library, in which he has gratified a highly cultivated hterary taste, by the accumula- tion of rare works, in various departments of American history. Meeting him as a stranger, the Author has found in him a friend, patiently and generously, from time to time, cooperating in his enterprise, and giving him the benefit of his more than ordinary familiarity with early Colonial history, and all that relates to our immediate predecessors, the Seneca Iroquois.
To Ebenezer Mix, Esq. of Batavia, for the benefit of his long familiar acquaintance with the Holland Purchase, and the details of the Land Office, in the preparation of the Maps, the Topographical Sketch, and the deduction of title in the Appendix. To Gov. Cass, of Michigan, and the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Long Island, for the possession of books and pamphlets, essential to the work. To James D. Bemis, Esq. of Canan- daigua, the respected Father of the Press of Western New York, for early cooperation in the enterprize ; and to Judge Oliver Phelps, of the same place, for free access to the papers of his grandfather, the patroon of settlement, whose brief biography is given in the body of the work. To the Members of the Buffalo Young Men's Association, for the benefit of free access to their extensive Library, and* all the faciUties their praise- worthy institution afforded. To Henry O'Rielly, Esq. for the possession of valuable papers that he had accumulated with reference to an historical enterprise that it is hoped he will yet find leisure to consummate. To the
PREFACE. XI
young friend of the author, Daniel W. Ballou, Jr. of Lockport, whom he transferred from his place as compositor in a printing office, to assist him as a copyist; for aid in historical researches he had so well qualified himself to render, by early studious habits, and an employment of his leisure hours in the laudable pursuit of knowledge. To all, who are identified in the body of the work, as having lent their cooperation and assistance ; and especially to such surviving Pioneers as have cheerfully ffiven the author the benefit of their recollections.
D
The Author closes with an acknowledgement of his obligations to the enterprising Printers and Publishers, Messrs. Jewett, Thomas, & Co. prompted as well by a sense of gratitude for their uniform personal courtesy and kindness, as by the gratification which is derived from seeing his work go out from their hands so good a specimen of the progress of the art of typography upon the Holland Purchase ; and so creditable to a craft with which he has himself been so long identified.
Note. — The Portraits in the work are mostly daguerreotype transfers from oil paint- ings, made at the Gallery of Messrs. Evans & PowELso>f, Buffalo. To the correctness of tho transfers, their excollenco is in a great measure to bo attributed; though their after execution is regarded as a creditable specimen of the progress of the art of Litho- graphy in the United States. The artists employed upon the illustrations are indicated by their names.
INDEX.
Page. Ancient Pre-occupants of Western N.
York, 17
Ancient Relics, 19
Ancient Battle Field, 30
Aurora, remains and implements found 30
An aged Indian, 31
Ancient works at Lancaster and Shelby 35
Antiquity of the Iroquois, 48
Arrangement of Tribes a( the Council
Fires 59
Allouez Ill, 113
Aix La Chappelle, treaty of 1748, 177
Amherst, General 205, 217
Account of a French Colony, 1655, 243
Arnold, Benedict 272
Alden, Col 275
Allan, Ebenezer 296
Autrechy, Alex'r 414
Alexander, 531
Allegany County, 579
Attica, 532
Brebeuf's journey to the Neuter Nation 65
Biart, Father. . .'. 99
Barre, De La 137
Blacksmith's Tradition, 150
Burnet, Gov. William 175
Barnwell 179
Bradstreet, Col 204, 233, 234
Brief notices of events under English
dominion, 226
Battle near Buffalo, 231
Burnt Ship Bay 233
Border Wars of the Revolution, 253
Brant — Thayendanega, 259
Brant, John 263
Butler, Col. Zebulon 274
Builer, Col. John 274, 278
Boyd, Lieut 279
Butler, Walter 282
Brief Biographical Sketches, 286
Butler, Thomas 317
Bruff, Capt 348
Butler, Richard 349
Boughton, Jared 378
Page.
Blackman, Mrs 386
Barton, Benj 392
Brisbane, James 416
Butfalo, 418, 498
Burr, Aaron 419
Busti, Paul 426
Batavia, 464, 545
Bush, Wm. H 471
Blacksnake, Gov 509
Brief reminiscences of the war of 1812 584
Burning of Buffalo 597
Buffalo" Gazette, 601
Brown, Major General, 608
Bouck, Wm. C 631
Changes of time, 19
Clinton, De Witt 20, 623
Cuisick's History, (note) 29
Captives of the Iroquois, 45
Council of the League, 50
Civil and Militaiy Relations of the
Iroquois, 52
Consanguinity of the Iroquois, 56
Cabot, John and Sebastian 71
Cortereal, Gaspar 72
Cartier, James 77,79
Champlain, Samuel 84,109
Company of New France, 108
Colonists of New France, (note) 109
Colbert, 112
Charlevoix's Description of Niagara
Falls, 194
Crown Point 216
Church at Lewiston, 265
Campbell, Mrs. (note) 276
Clinton, General James 277
Chamberlin, Hinds 321
Cornplanter's Speech, 335
Culver, Oliver 387
Cazenovo, Theophilus 425
Commencement of settlement and its
Progress to 1812, 445
Chapin, Cyrenius 452, 593
Clinton, Gov. George 466, 620
Chipman, Lemuel 481
INDEX.
XIU
Cook, Lemuel 496
Grouse, Peter R 510
Cuba, 538
Coon, Alexander 552
Carpenter, Rev. James 553
Carey, Ebenezer 568
Chautauque County, 570
Cattaraugus County, 578
Cook, Lothrop and Bates 592
Cass's visit to Niagara Frontier, 604
Commerce of the Upper Lakes, 638
Colles, Christopher 619
Dominion of the Iroquois, 41
Decay of the Iroquois, 43
Discoveries by Europeans, accidental 90 De Laet's Description of New Neth- erlands, 91
Dutch trade with the Natives, 91
Duhaut, 131
Dulbut 137
Dongan, Gov 138, 158, 162
De Nonville's Expedition, 143
Dallion, Joseph De La Roch%. 192
Dieskau, 200
Du Quesne, Fort 205
Devil's Hole, 227
Dorchester's, Lord, Indian Speech,... 342
Dunham, Gideon 467
Dunn, Jeptha 497
Doolittle, Ormus and Reuben 533
Douglass' description of Buffalo 606
Equahty of the Iroquois Confederacy, 59 Early European Voyages and Discov- eries, 71
Exports of Fur, 91
Early Notices of Niagara Fails, 192
Early glimpses of Western New York, 236
Ellicott, Joseph 404, 412, 430
Ellicott, Benjamin 408, 432
Ellicott, Andrew 432
Evans, David E 442
Egleston, George 414
Eddy, David 475
Erie County, 575
Erie Canal 617
Eddy, Thomas 624
Fort Hill, 31, 152
Franciscans, 93
First vessels upon the Upper Lakes, 116
Frontenac, Count 137, 162, 170, 172
Frontenac, Fort 161
Fur Trade, 223
Farmers Brother 230, 291
Fairbanks, Joshua 319
Frontier Posts after peace of 1783, ... 338 First assault and batter}' case in Buffalo 414 First crops raised on the Holland
Purchase, 490
Foster, Mrs. Anna 470
Page. First settlers on the Holland Purchase, from the commencement of land
sales to 1807 454
First settlers in townships, from ISOB
to 1821, 526
Farmersville, 540
Fillmore, Rev. Gleason 546
Fort Niagara 183, 206, 590
Geographical pofition of the Iroquois, 42
Goshnold 80
Griffin, the 121, 126, 133
Garangula 138, 142
Graffenried 178
Greonhalph, Wentworth 236
Gansevoort, Col 269, 272
Glimpses of Western New York after
■ the Revolution, 310
Gould, John 313
Gorham, Nathaniel, 329
Green, John 508
Garnsev, Hon. D. G 511, 642
Grilfith', Eh 516
Griffin, John 538
Genesee County 574
Human bones excavated, 27
Ho-de-rio-sau-nee 42
Henry VII 71
Hochelaga 78
Hunt, Capt 81
Hudson, Henry 82, 87
Hennepin's account of La Salle's boat, 1 19
Hennepin, 129
Hennepin's account of the Falls, 193
Hudson Bay Company, 222
Herkimer, General, 268
Hopkins, Silas 310
Hosmer, Timothy 376
Historical Deduction of Holland Com- pany Title, 401
Haudecour 414
Howell, Hon. Nathaniel W 417
Hamilton, Alexander 418
Hopkins, Gen'l Timothy S 421
Holland Go's. West Geneseo Lands, 424
Hurd, Reuben 497
Hoops, Maj. Adam 504
Hart, Joseph 554
Hall, General .594
Hawlev, Jessee 621, 629
Holley; Myron 626
Indications of preceding Races, 18
Indian Burial Grounds, 26
Indian Remains on Genesee River, 36
Iroquois or Five Nations, 40
Independence of each Indian Nation, 51
Iroquois Laws of Descent, 56
Indian Treatment of Children, 64
Indian Trade, 175
Indian Treaties for Lands, 304
XIV
INDEX.
Page.
Joliet, 114, 117
Joutel, 132
Joncairo, 184, 18G
Journal of the Seige of Fort Niagara, 209 Johnson, Sir William. 217, 228, 233, 247
Johnson, Guy 255
Johnson, Sir John 265, 267
Jones, Horatio 286
Jemison, Marj- 293
Jemison, John 295
Johnston, Capt. Wm 411, 498
Kienuka, 26
Kah-Kwahs 30
Kirkland's Visit to Genesee, 36
Kirkland's Observations on Indian
Remains, 37
Kirkland, Rev. Samuel 238
Kelsey, Jehiel 383
Kemp, Burgoyne 387
L'Allemant, 65
Letters Patent, 81
Leon, Ponce De 90
Loyola, Ignatius 95
LaSalle, 116
L'Archiveque 131
La Hontan's Account of De Nonville's
Expedition, 147
La Hontan's Account of Niagara Falls, 157
La Force, (note) 210
Lindsay, 2-46
Laincourt, La Rochefoucauld 318
Land Titles, 325
Lessee Company's Claims, (note)... 337
Lewiston, '. 420
Loomis, Chauncev 485
Lost Boy, '. 486
Le Couteulx, 501
Lockport, Prominent Settlers 551
Lovejoy, Mrs 599
Mountain Ridge, 26
Missions among the Iroquois, 41
Marriage Regulations, 54
Marquette 112
Mercer, Col 201
Montcalm 202, 214
Murray, Gen'l 217
Massacre of Wyoming, 274
Mountpleasant, John 314
Morris, Robert 349
Morris Purchase 396
Morris's Reserve, 397
McKav, John , 381
Mile Strip, 409
McKain, James 487
Morrison, Major John 494
Molyneux, William 496
Matiior, David 498
Marshall, Mrs 510
McMahan, Col. James 511
Page.
Maxon, Joseph 534
Methodist Church, 547
McCall, James 536
Mathews, James 555
Mix, Ebenezer 567
McClure, Gen 589
Names of the Iroquois Confederacy, . . 40
Naming of children, 58
Neuter Nation, 65
Number of Jesuit Missionaries, 103
North West Company, 223
Noble, Russell 468
Nevi^ Amsterdam, 500
Niagara County,. 582
Newark, ' 589
Original Nations of the Iroquois, 40
Order of the Jesuits, 95
Oswego, 175, 202
Oglethrop, Gen 176
Onondagas, destruction of. 281
Otto, Jacob S 441
O'Fling, Patrick 467
Olean Point 506
Organization of Courts, 521
Oil Springs 539
Oak Orchard, 558
Orleans County, 581
Poem 28
Power and bravery of the Iroquois, ... 43
Periods of holding Council Fires, 60
Plymouth Company, 81
Protestant Missionaries of New Eng- land, 99
Pallisades of Fort Niagara, 134
Pitt, William 203
Prideaux, Gen 206
Pontiac, 218, 235
Palatines 245
Palatine Committee, 254
Parrish, Jasper 292
Pickering, Timothy , 307
Progress of settlement westward after
the Revolution,. 304
Pemberton, James 316
Phelps and Gorham's purchase, 325
Pultnev, Sir William 327
Phelps", Oliver 328
Porter, Augustus 358, 489
Porter's Narrative, 361
Pitts, Capt. Peter 385
Pine Grove, 446
Palmer, James R 454
Palmer, Joseph 466
Peters. T. C 547
Pioneer Settler upon the Holland Pur- chase and his progress, 562
Phelps and Chipman's purchase, 481
Peacock, William 569
Porter, Peter B 611
Qr WM ENDICOTT a CO N
iiii>]iLirL(S(o)^^,
INDEX.
XV
Page.
Ring Fort, 29
Romans of the West, 47
Representatives of the Iroquois, 49
Roche, Francis De La 79
Ralei^rh, Sir Walter 80, 90
Ralle, Father 105
Reminiscences of Fort Niagara, 188
Rogers, Major 218
Red Jacket and Lafayette, (note). . . . 305
Ransom, Asa and Elias 453
Rhea, Alexander 467
Ridge Road 497
Rushford, 535
Rawson, Solomon 537
Riddle, Lieut 598
Structure of the Iroquois Confederacy, 48
Senecas and Eries, 69
Smith, John 81
Slowness of Colonization, 89
Schenectady, 164
Shirley, Gov 201
Seige of Fort Niagara, 206
Stanvvix, Gon'l 205
Schlosser, Fort (note) 227
Stedman, John 229
St. Leger, Gen'l 269
Schuyler, Gen'l 267
Schuyler, Han Yost 272
Sullivan's Expedition, 277
Steuben, Baron 388
Simcoe, Governor 341
Scotch Colony 380
Surveys, 404
Stevens, James 474
Sheldon, 482
Slavton, Joshua 495
Salt Works 558
State of the frontier at the beginning
of the War, 585
St. John, Mrs 599
Sortie of Fort Erie, 606
Tonawanda Island, 34
Territory of the Iroquois, 41
Treatment of Prisoners among the
Indians, 45
Tradition of the Senecas, 46
Ta-do-da-hoh, 50
Tribes of the Iroquois, 53
Page.
Trails, 62
Tonti, 118
Tuscaroras, 177
Treaty of 1763, 219
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1784, 304
Tax Roll 390
Turner, Roswell 481
Turner, Otis 557
Topography of the Holland Purchase, 570
Unanimity of the Iroquois Council,.. 61 Utrecht, treaty of 174
Verrazana, 72
Victor 145
Vaudreuil, 170, 216
Van Schaick 281
Van Campen, 288
Variation of the Magnetic Needle,
(note,) 407
Vander Kemp, John J 429
Van Horn, Judge 551
Washington, (note,) 200, 619
Williams, Col. Ephraim 200
Wolfe, Gen. James 205, 213
Walpole, 177
West, Dr. Joseph 188
Womp, 240
Willett, Col 271, 282
Williamson, Charles 329, 417
Wayne, Gen 344
Wilkenson, Gen. James 446
Winne 418
Walthers, Frederick 420
Warren, Gen. William 473
Warren, Mrs 488
Wilder, John 479
Walsvi^orth, James 517
Wilson, Reuben 548, 593
Whitney, Gen 559
Wyoming County, 580
Wadsworth, Gen 587
Walden, Judge 598
Watson, Elkanah 620
Wilkeson, Samuel 643
Yonnondio, 152
Young, John 469
INDEX TO APPENDIX AND NOTES.
Albion, 658
Ancient Remains, 663
Black Rock i . . . 653
Brant's Birthplace, 664
Brace, Orange 665
Battle of Buffalo, 665
Canal Villages, 653
Clerks in Land Office, 663
Deduction of Title from Robert Morris to Holland Company, 646
Ellicott's Monument, 659
1!
XVI
INDEX.
Page.
Expeditions of Gen. Sullivan and Col. Brodhead — Cotemporary Records in possession of D. W. Ballou, Jr. . . . 660
Ellicott's Ancestors, 665
Fort Porter, 666
German Emigrants, 662
Islands in Niagara River, 663
Indian Burial at Black Rock, 664
Joncaire's Sons, 664
Joncaire and the Oil Springs, 666
Lockport, 654
Middleport, 657
Medina, 6.58
Middlebury Academy, 664
Page. Marshall's Communications to the Historical Society, 664
Ogden Pre-emption, 662
Pioneer Printers upon the Holland Purchase, 663
Sequel of Holland Company's Invest- ment, 661
Smith, Richard 662
Sainted Seneca Maiden, 664
Sources of Morris's Biography, 665
Townships of the Holland Purchase,. 651 Tonawanda, 653
Williamson, Charles 665
Warren, Gen 665
ERRATA.
Page 62, 19th line from the top, read little "above Batavia village," instead of "mile," &c. Page 71, 4th line from the top, read "latter end of the" fftecntk "centuiy." Page 441; the death of Mr. Otto was in 1827, instead of 1826. The commencement of Mr. Evan's agency, is of course, to correspond v/ith this alteration. Whereever it occurs, read Shenandoah, instead of " S/tenandoah."
Page 26. — The last sentence of the first paragraph on this page, is obscure. It ia intended to say, that there are no ancient remains between the Mountain Ridge and lake Ontario.
PART FIRST,
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT PRE-OCCUPANTS OF THE REGION OF WESTERN NEW-YORK.
The local historian of almost our entire continent, finds at the threshold of the task he enters upon, difficulties and embarrass- ments. If for a starting point the first advent of civilization is chosen, a summary disposition is made of all that preceded it, unsatisfactory to author and reader. Our own race was the suc- cessor of others. Here in ou-r own region, when the waters of the Niagara were first disturbed by a craft of European architecture — when the adventurous Frenchman would first pitch a tent upon its banks, there were "lords of the Forests and the Lakes" to be consulted. — WheFe stood that humble primitive "pallisade," its site grudgingly and suspiciously granted, in process of time arose strong walls — ramparts, from behind which the armies of successive nations have been arranged to repel assailants. The dense forests that for more than a century enshrouded them, unbroken by the woodman's axe, have now disappeared, or but skirt a peaceful and beautiful cultivated landscape. Civilization, improvement and industry, have made an Empire of the region that for a long period was tributary to this nucleus of early events. Cities have been founded — the Arts, Sciences taught; — Learning has its temples and its votaries; History its enlightened and earnest enquirers. And yet, with the pre-occupant lingering until even now in our midst, we have but the unsatisfactory knowledge of him and his race, which is gathered from dim and obscure tradition. That which is suited to the pages of fiction and romance, but can be incorporated in the pages of history, only with suspicion and dis- trust. The learned and the curious have from time to time enquired of their old men ; they have set down in their wigwams 2
18 HISTORY OF THE
and listened to their recitals; the pages of history have been searched and compared with their imperfect revelations, to discover some faint coincidence or analogy; and yet we know nothing of the origin, and have but unsatisfactory traditions of the people we found here, and have almost dispossessed.
If their own history is obscure; if their relations of themselves, after they have gone back but little more than a century beyond the period of the first European emigration, degenerates to fable and obscure tradition; they are but poor revelators of a still greater mystery. We are surrounded by evidences that a race preceded them, farther advanced in civilization and the arts, and far more numerous. Here and there upon the brows of our hills, at the head of our ravines, are their fortifications; their locations selected with sldll, adapted to refuge, subsistence and defence. The up- rooted trees of our forest, that are the growth of centuries, expose their mouldering remains; the uncovered mounds masses of their skeletons promiscuously heaped one upon the other, as if they were the gathered and hurriedly entombed of well contested fields. In our vallies, upon our hill sides, the plough and the spade discover their rude implements, adapted to war, the chase, and domestic use. All these are dumb yet eloquent chronicles of by-gone ages. We ask the red man to tell us from whence they came and whither they went? and he either amuses us with wild and extravagant traditionary legends, or acknowledges himself as ignorant as his interrogators. He and his progenitors have gazed upon these ancient relics for centuries, as we do now, — wondered and consul- ted their wise men, and yet he is unable to aid our inquiries. We invoke the aid of revelation, turn over the pages of history, trace the origin and dispersion of the races of mankind from the earliest period of the world's existence, and yet we gather only enough to form the basis of vague surmise and conjecture. The crumbling walls — the " Ruins," overgrown by the gigantic forests of Central America, are not involved in more impenetrable obscurity, than are the more humble, but equally interesting mounds and relics that abound in our own region.
We are prone to speak of ourselves as the inhabitants of a nr2v world; and yet we are confronted with such evidences of antiquity! We clear away the forests and speak familiarly of subduing a "virgin soil;" — and yet the plough up-turns the skulls of those whose history is lost ! We say that Columbus discovered a neio
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 19
world. Why not that he helped to make two old ones acquainted with each other 1
Our advent here is but one of the changes of time. \Vc are consulting dumb signs, inanimate and unintelligible witnesses, gleaning but unsatisfactory knowledge of races that have preceded us. Who in view of earth's revolutions; the developments that the young but rapidly progressive science of Geology has made; the organic remains that are found in the alluvial deposits in our vallies, deeply embedded under successive strata of rock in our mountain ranges; the impressions in our coal formations; history's emphatic teachings; fails to reflect that our own race may not be exempt from the operations of what may be regarded as general laws? Who shall say that the scholar, the antiquarian, of another far off century, may not be a Champollion deciphering the inscrip- tions upon our monuments, — or a Stevens, wandering among the ruins of our cities, to gather relics to identify our existence'?
" Since the first sun-light spread itself o'er earth ; Since Chuos gave a thousand systems birth ; Since first the morning stars together sung ; Since first this globe was on its axis hung; Untiriug changk, with ever moving hand. Has waved o'er earth its more than magic wand."*
Although not peculiar to this region, there is perhaps no portion of the United States where ancient relics are more numerous. Commencing principally near the Oswego River, they extend westwardly over all the western counties of our State, Canada West, the western Lake Region, the vallies of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Either as now, the western portion of our State had attractions and inducements to make it a favorite residence; or these people, assailed from the north and the east, made this a refuge in a war of extermination, fortified the commanding eminences, met the shock of a final issue; were subject to its adverse results. Were their habits and pursuits mixed ones, their residence was well chosen. The Forest invited to the chase; the Lakes and Rivers to local commerce, — to the use of the net and the angling rod; the soil, to agriculture. The evidences that this was one at least, of their final battlegrounds, predominate. They are the for- tifications, entrenchments, and warlike instruments. That here was a war of extermination, we may conclude, from the masses
' "Changes of Time," a Poem by B. B. French.
20 HISTORY OF THE
of human skeletons we find indiscriminately thrown together, in- dicating a common and simultaneous sepulture; from which age, infancy, sex, no condition, was exempt.
In assuming that these are the remains of a people other than the Indian race we found here, the author has the authority of De Witt Clinton,— a name scarcely less identified with our litera- ture, than with our achievements in internal improvements. In a discourse delivered before the New-York Historical Society in 1811, Mr. Clinton says: — ''Previous to the occupation of this country by the progenitors of the present race of Indians, it was inhabited by a race of men much more populous, and much farther advanced in civilization." Indeed the abstract position may be regarded as conceded. Who they were, whence they came, and whither they went, have been themes of speculation with learned antiquarians, who have failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclu- sions. In a field, or historical department, so ably and thoroughly explored, the author would not venture opinions or theories of his own, even were it not a subject of enquiry in the main, distinct from the objects of his work. It is a topic prolific enough, of reflection, enquiry and speculation, for volumes, rather than an incidental historical chapter. And yet, it is a subject of too much local interest, to be wholly passed over. A liberal extract from the historical discourse of Mr. Clinton, presents the matter in a concise form, and while it will serve as a valuable memento of a venerated Scholar, Statesman, and Public Benefactor; the theories and conclusions are far more consistent and reasonable than any Others that have fallen under the author's observation: —
"I have seen several of these works in the western part of this state. There is a large one in the town of Onondaga, one in Pompey, and another in Manlius; one in Camillus, eight miles from Auburn; one in Scipio, six miles, another one mile, and one about half a mile from that village. Between the Seneca and Cayuga Lakes there are several — three within a few miles of each other. Near the village of Canandaigua there are three. In a word, they are scattered all over that country.
"These forts were, generally speaking, erected on the most commanding ground. The walls or breastworks were earthen. The ditches were on the exterior of works. On some of the para- pets, oak trees were to be seen, which, from the number of con- centric circles, must have been standing 150, 260, and 300 years; and there were evident indications, not only that they had sprung up since the creation of those works, but that they were at least a
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 21
second growth. The trenches were in some cases deep and wide, and in others shallow and narrow; and the breastworks varied in altitude from three to eight feet. They sometimes had one, and sometimes two entrances, as was to be inferred from there being no ditch at those places. When the works were protected by a deep ravine or a large stream of water no ditch was to be seen. The areas of these forts varied from two to six acres; and the form was generally an irregular elipsis; and in some of them frag- ments of earthenware and pulverized substances, supposed to have been originally human bones, were to be found.
"These fortifications, thus diffused over the interior of our country, have been generally considered as surpassing the skill, patience, and industry of the Indian race, and various hypotheses have been advanced to prove them of European origin.
"An American writer of no inconsiderable repute pronounced some years ago that the two forts at the confluence of the Muskin- gum and Ohio Rivers, one covering forty and the other twenty acres, were erected by Ferdinand de Soto, who landed with 1000 men in Florida in 1539, and penetrated a considerable distance into the interior of the country. He allotted the large fort for the use of the Spanish army; and after being extremely puzzled how to dis- pose of the small one in its vicinity, he at last assigned it to the swine that generally, as he says, attended the Spaniards in those days — being in his opinion very necessary, in order to prevent them from becoming estrays, and to protect them from the depredations of the Indians.
•'When two ancient forts, one containing six and the other three acres, were found in Lexington in Kentucky, another theory was propounded; and it was supposed that they were erected by the descendants of the Welsh colonists who are said to have migrated under the auspices of Madoc to this country, in the twelfth century; that they formerly inhabited Kentucky; but, being attacked by the Indians, were forced to take refuge near the sources of the Missouri.
"Another suggestion has been made, that the French, in their expeditions from Canada to the Mississippi, were the authors of these works; but the most numerous are to be found in the territory of the Senecas, whose hostility to the French was such, that they were not allowed for a long time to have any footing among them.* The fort at Niagara was obtained from them by the intrigues and eloquence of Joncaire, an adopted child of the nation.f
" Lewis Dennie, a Frenchman, aged upward of seventy, and who had been settled and married among the Confederates for more than half a century, told me (1810)that, according to the traditions of the ancient Indians, these forts were erected by an army of Spaniards, who were the first Europeans ever seen by them — the
•* 1 Golden, p. 6L t 3 Charlevoix, letter 15, p. 227.
22 HISTORY OF THE
French the next — then the Dutch — and, finally, the English; that this army first appeared at Oswego in great force; and })enetrated through the interior of the country, searching for the precious metals; that they continued there two years, and went down the Ohio.
" Some of the Senecas told Mr. Kirkland, the missionary, that those in their territory were raised by their ancestors in their wars with the western Indians, three, four, or five hundred years ago. All the cantons have traditions that their ancestors came originally from the west; and the Senecas say that theirs first settled in the country of the Creeks. The early histories mention that the Iro- quois first inhabited on the north side of the great lakes; that they were driven to their present territory in a war with the Algonkins or Adirondacks, from whence they expelled the Satanas. If these accounts are correct, the ancestors of the Senecas did not, in all probability, occupy their present territory at the time they allege.
"I believe we may confidently pronounce that all the hypotheses which attribute those works to Europeans are incorrect and fanciful — first, on account of the present number of the works; secondly, on account of their antiquity; having from every appearance, been erected a long time before the discovery of America; and, finally, their form and manner are totally variant from European fortifica- tions, either in ancient or modern times.
"It is equally clear that they were not the work of the Indians. Until the Senecas, who are renowned for their national vanity, had seen the attention of the Americans attracted to these erections, and had invented the fabulous account of which I have spoken, the Indians of the present day did not pretend to know anything about their origin. They were beyond the reach of all their traditions, and were lost in the abyss of unexplored antiquity.
" The erection of such prodigious works must have been the result of labor far beyond the patience and perseverance of our Indians; and the form and materials are entirely different from those which they are known to make. These earthen walls, it is supposed, will retain their original form much longer than those constructed with brick and stone. They have undoubtedly been greatly diminished by the washing away of the earth, the filling up of the interior, and the accumulation of fresh soil: yet their firm- ness and solidity indicate them to be the work of some remote age. Add to this, that the Indians have never practiced the mode of fortifying by intrenchments. Their villages or castles were pro- tected by palisades, which afford a sufficient defence aginst Indian weapons. When Cartier went to Hochelaga, now Montreal, in 1535, he discovered a town of the Iroquois, or Hurons, containing about fifty huts. It was encompassed with three lines of palisadoes, through which was one entrance, well secured with stakes and bars. On the inside was a rampart of timber, to which were ascents by ladders; and heaps of stones were laid in proper places to cast at
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 23
an enemy. Charlevoix and other writers agree in representing the Indian fortresses as fabricated with wood. JSuch, also, were the forts of Sassacus. the great chief of the Pequots; and the principal for- tress of the Narragansets was on an island in a swamp, of five or six acres of rising land: the sides were made with palisades set upright, encompassed with a hedge of a rod in thickness.*
'•1 have already alluded to the argument for the great antiquity of those ancient forts to be derived from the number of concentric cir- cles. On the ramparts of one of the Muskingum forts, 463 were ascertained on a tree decayed at the centre; and there are likewi.se the strongest marks of a former growth of a similar size. This would make those works near a thousand years old.
"But there is another consideration which has never before been urged, and which appears to me to be not unworthy of attention. It is certainly novel, and I believe it to be founded on a basis which cannot easily be subverted.
'• From the Genesee near Rochester to Lewiston on the Niagara, there is a remarkable ridge or elevation of land running almost the whole distance, which is seventy-eight miles, and in a direction from east to west. Its general altitude above the neighbouring land is thirty feet, and its width varies considerably; in some places it is not more than forty yards. Its elevation above the level of Lake Ontario is perhaps 160 feet, to which it decends with a gradual slope; and its distance from that water is between six and ten miles. Tills remarkable strip of land would appear as if intended by nature for the purpose of an easy communication. It is, in fact, a stupen- dous natural turnjjike, descending gently on each side, and covered with gravel; and but little labour is requisite to make it the best road in the United States. When the forests between it and the lake are cleared, the prospect and scenery which will be afforded from a tour on this route to the Cataract of Niagara will surpass all competition for sublimity and beauty, variety and number.
'•There is every reason to believe that this remarkable ridge w'a.s the ancient boundary of this great lake. The gravel with which it is covered was deposited there by the waters; and the stones every- wdiere indicate by their shape the abrasion and agitation produced by that element. All along the borders of the western rivers and lakes there are small mounds or heaps of gravel of a conical form, erected by the fish for the protection of their spawn; these fishbanks are found in a state that cannot be mistaken, at the foot of the ridge, on the side towards the lake ; on the opposite side none have been dis- covered. All rivers and streams which enter the lake from the south have their mouths effected W'ith sand in a peculiar way, from the prevalence and power of the northwesterly winds. The points of the creeks which pass through this ridge correspond exactly in appearance with the entrance of the streams into the lakes. These
* Mather's Magnalia, p. 693.
24 HISTORY OF THE
facts evince beyond doubt that Lake Ontario has, perhaps, one or two thousand years ago, receded from this elevated ground. And the cause of this retreat must be ascribed to its having enlarged its former outlet, or to its imprisoned waters (aided, probably, by an earthquake)forcing a passage down the present bed of the St. Law- rence, as the Hudson did at the Highlands, and the Mohawk at Lit- tle Falls. On the south side of this great ridge, in its vicinity, and in all directions through this country, the remains of numerous forts are to be seen; but on the north side, that is, on the side towards the lake, not a single one has been discovered, although the whole ground has been carefully explored. Considering the distance to be, say seventy miles in length, and eight in bi-eadth, and that the border of the lake is the very place that would be selected for habitation, and consequently for works of defence, on account of the facilities it would afford for subsistence, for safety, and all domestic accommodations and military purposes; and that on the south shores of Lake Erie these ancient fortresses exist in great number, there can be no doubt that these works were erected when this ridge was the southern boundary of Lake Ontario, and, consequently, that their origin must be sought in a very remote age.
"A great part of North America was then inhabited by populous nations, who had made considei'able advances in civilization. These numerous works could never have been supplied with provisions without the aid of agriculture. Nor could they have been con- structed without the use of iron or copper, and without a persever- ance, labour, and design which demonstrate considerable progress in the arts of civilized life. A learned writer has said, "I perceive no reason why the Asiatic North might not be an ofhcina virorum, as well as the European. The overteeming country to the east of the Ripha;an Mountains must find it necessary to discharge its inhab- itants. The first great wave of people was forced forward by the next to it, more tumid and more powerful than itself: successive and new impulses continually arriving, short rest was given to that which spread over a more eastern tract: disturbed again and again, it covered fresh regions. At length, reaching the farthest limits of the old world, it found a new one, with ample space to occupy, unmolested for ages."* After the north of Asia had thus exhausted its exuberant population by such a great migration, it would require a very long period of time to produce a co-operation of causes suffi- cient to effect another. The first mighty stream of people that flowed into America must have remained free from external pressure for ages. Availing themselves of this period of tranquility, they would devote themselves to the arts of peace, make rapid progress in civ- ilization, and acquire an immense population. In course of time discord and war would rage among them, and compel the establish- ment of places of security. At last, they became alarmed by the
* 1 Pennant's Arctic Zoology, 260.
HOLLAND PURCHASE, 25
irruption of a horde of barbarians, who rushed like an overwhelming flood from the north of Asia —
*• A Multitude, like which the populous North Poured from her frozen loins to pass Rhone or the Dauaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the South, and spread Beneatli Gibraltar to the Lybian sands." *
"The great law of self-preservation compelled them to stand on their defence, to resist these ruthless invaders, and to construct numerous and extensive works for protection. And for a long series of time the scale of victory was suspended in doubt, and they firmly withstood the torrent; but, like the Romans in the decline of their empire, they were finally worn down and destroyed by successive inroads and renewed attacks. And the fortifications of which we have treated are the only remaining monuments of these ancient and exterminated nations. This is perhaps, the airy nothing of imagination, and may be reckoned the extravagant dream of a vis- ionary mind: but may we not, considering the wonderful events of the past and present times, and the inscrutable dispensations of an overruling Providence, may we not look forward into futurity, and without departing from the rigid laws of probability, j)redict the occurrence of similar scenes at some remote period of time? And, perhaps, in the decrepitude of our empire, some transcendant genius, whose powers of mind shall only be bounded by that impenetrable circle which prescribes the limits of human nature,! may rally the barbarous nations of Asia under the standard of a mighty empire. Following the track of the Russian colonies and commerce towards the northwest coast, and availing himself of the navigation, arms, and military skill of civilized nations, he may, after subverting the neighbouring despotisms of the Old World, bend his course towards European America. The destinies of our country may then be decided on the waters of the Missouri or on the banks of Lake Superior. And if Asia shall then revenge upon our posterity the injuries we have inflicted upon her sons, a new, a long, and a gloomy night of Gothic darkness will set in upon mankind. And when, after theefHuxof ages, the returning effulgence of intellectual light shall again gladden the nations, then the widespread ruins of our cloud-capped towers, of our solemn temples, and of our magnificent cities, will, like the works of which we have treated, become the subject of curious research and elaborate investigation."
At the early period at which Mr. Clinton advanced the theory that the Ridge Road was once the southern shore of Lake Ontario — 1811 — when settlement was but just begun, and a dense forest precluded a close observation, he was quite liable to fall into the error, that
* Milton's Paradise Lost. t Roscoe's Lorenzo de Medicis, 24L
26 HISTORY OF THE
time and better opportunities for investigation have corrected. The formation, composition, alluvial deposits, &c., of the Ridge Road, with reference to its two sides, present almost an entire uniformity. There is at least, not the distinction that would be apparent if there had been the action of water, depositing its mate- rials only upon its nothern side. By supposing the Mountain Ridge to have once been the southern shore of Lake Ontario, it would follow that the Ridge Road may have been a Sand bar. The nature of both, their relative positions, would render this a far more I'easonable hypothesis than the other; and when we add the fact that the immediate slope, or falling off, is almost as much gene- rally, upon the south as the north side of the Ridge Road, we are under the necessity of abandoning the precedent theory. There is from the Niagara to the Genesee River, upon the Moun- tain Ridge, a line, or cordon, of these ancient fortifications — none, as the author concludes, from observation and enquiry, between the two.*
But a few of the most prominent of these ancient fortifications, will be noticed, enough only to give the reader who has not had an opportunity of seeing them, a general idea of their structure, and relics which almost uniformly may be found in and about them.
Upon a slope or offset of the Mountain Ridge three and a half miles from the village of Lewiston, is a marked spot, that the Tus- carora Indians call Kienuka.] There is a burial ground, and two eliptic mounds or barrows that have a diameter of 20 feet, and an elevation of from 4 to 5 feet. A mass of detached works, with spaces intervening, seem to have been chosen as a rock citadel; and well chosen, — for the mountain fastnesses of Switzerland are but little better adapted to the purposes of a look-out and defence. The sites of habitations are marked by remains of pottery, pipes, and other evidences.
Eight miles east of this, upon one of the most elevated points of the mountain ridge in the town of Cambria, upon the farm until recently owned by Eliakim Hammond, now owned by John Gould,
* Upon an elevation, on the shore of Lake Ontario near the Eifjhteen -mile-Creek, there is a mound similar in appearance to some of those that have been termed ancient; though it is unquestionably incident to the early French and Indian wars of this rej^ion. And the same conclusion may be formed in reference to other similar ones along the shore of the lake.
tMeaning a fort, or strong hold, that has a commanding position, or from which there is a fine view.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 27
is an ancient fortification and burial place, possessing perhaps as great a degree of interest, and as distinct characteristics as any that have been discovered in Western New York. The author hav- ing been one of a party that made a thorough examination of the spot soon after its first discovery in 1823, he is enabled from memory and some published accounts of his at the time, to state the extent and character of the relics.
The location commands a view of Lake Ontario and the surround- ing country. An area of about six acres of level ground appears to have been occupied; fronting which upon a circular verge of the mountain, were distinct remains of a wall. Nearly in the centre of the area was a depository of the dead. It was a pit excavated to the depth of four or five feet, filled with human bones, over which were slabs of sand stone. Hundreds seem to have been thrown in promiscuously, of both sexes and all ages. Extreme old age was distinctly identified by toothless jaws, and the complete absorption of the avcola processes; and extreme infancy, by the small skulls and incomplete ossification. Numerous barbs or arrow points were found among the bones, and in the vicinity. One skull retained the arrow that had pierced it, the aperture it had made on entering being distinctly visible. In the position of the skeletons, there was none of the signs of ordinary Indian burial; but evidences that the bodies were thrown in promiscuously, and at the same time. The conjec- ture might well be indulged that it had been the theatre of a san- guinary battle, terminating in favor of the assailants, and a general massacre. A thigh bone of unusual length, was preserved for a considerable period by a physician of Lockport, and excited much curiosity. It had been fractured obliquely. In the absence of any surgical skill, or at least any application of it, the bone had strongly re-united, though evidently so as to have left the foot turned out at nearly a right angle. Of course, the natural surfaces of the bone were in contact, and not the fractured surfaces; and yet spurs, or ligaments were thrown out by nature, in its healing process, and so firmly knit and interwoven, as to form, if not a perfect, a firm re-union ! It was by no means a finished piece of surgery, but to all appearances had answered a very good purpose. The medical student will think the patient must have possessed all the fortitude and stoicism of his race, to have kept his fractured limb in a neces- sary fixed position, during the long months that the healing process must have been going on, in the absence of splints and gum elastic
28
HISTORY OF THE
bands. A tree had been cut down growing directly over the mound, upon the stump of which could be counted 230 concentric circles. Remains of rude specimens of earthen ware, pieces of copper, and iron instruments of rude workmanship were ploughed up within the area ; also, charred wood, corn and cobs.
Soon after these ancient relics had begun to excite public atten- tion, the author received the following poetic contribution which he inserted in the columns of a newspaper of which he was the editor. Upon a review of it, he regards it as not unworthy to be preserved with the other reminiscences, in a more durable form. From a note made at the time, it would seem to have been anonymous : —
THE ARGUMENT.
The author's imagination, kindled by a description of the mouldering relics, the evi- dences of a sanguinary conflict of arms, aided by the then recently published tradi- tions of David Custck, supposes the spirit of an Erie Chieftain, (whose skeleton is one of the congregated mass) to rise and address the gazing and enquiring anti- quarian:— He reminds him of their common origin and common destiny, notwith- standing the lapse of intervening ages ; tiiat his ancestors are the races which slumber in the vallies of the Caucassus, the Alps, and plains of Britain ; the relator assuming that this was the forest home of his fathers. He sketches the last battle, fatal to his nation and himself; from the shouts of the victors echoing amid his native scenery, he adverts to the disembodied repose of his fathers ; — and concludes with the pleasing anticipation of again meeting the disturber of his sleep of ages, in "happier regions undefined," when he too shall have finished the pilgrimage of mortality.
"Mortal of other age and clime. Where the broad plain abrupt descends,
Pilgrim not having reach'd the bourne. To where Ontario's billows lave.
Know thou that kindred soul with thine, Whence the delighted view extends
Once tenanted this mould'ring form. Far o'er the blue and boundless wave;
Here once the warm blood freely flow'd. By the heart's active impulse press'd.
And all the varied passions glovv'd, That struggle in thy throbbing breast.
Though o'er this crumbling dust of mine, Full many a summer's sun has roU'd ;
Yet equal destiny is thine, Though fairer cast of kindred mould.
E'en though afar thy sires may sleep. Beyond the Atlantic's rolling waves
Where Caucassus' stupendous steep, O'er hangs the shores, the Caspian laves.
Or where the Alpine glaciers pile. High o'er thy Gothic fathers' graves.
Or where Brittania's verdant isle Smiles in the bosom of the waves.
Deep in Columbia's wilds, afar Upon lake Erie's forest shores.
Where, glimm'ring 'neath the ev'ning star, Niagara's awful torrent roars.
There brightly blaz'd my country's fires, Wliile oft succeeding ages roU'd,
And there the ashes of ray sireg Lie mingled with the forest mould.
There on the heights refulgent play'd Aurora's brightest, earliest ray ;
And vesper's milder beams delay'd To lengthen the departing day
There brightening with the shades of even. The hunter's scatter'd watch fires beam'd
Respondent to the stars of Heaven, That o'er my native forests gleamed.
Gladly would memory restore That scenery from oblivion's night.
Ere from those happy scenes of yore. My deathless spirit took its flight.
The vapours o'er the lake that lour. How bright the setting sun display'd.
When mid those scenes in childhood's hour. The boyhood of the village stray'd.
HOLLAND PURCHASE.
29
Or listen'd as our fathers taught
To recognize the 'iVJanitou,' Eternal Power with wisdom fraught
Througliout Creation's boundless view.
Or as some hoary chieftain told The wampum legend of his band,
Chivalric scenery of old, On limpid lake or shaded land.
When youthful vigor nerv'd ray prime. How oft I chas'd the boumiing deer.
Or o'er the mountain's height sublime, Or through the ravine dark and drear.
How the melodious echoes rang, Responsive through those awful groves.
When the returning hunter sang The ardor of his youthful loves.
Such were the happy scenes of yore,
Ere from another world afar, Thy fathers sought this western shore.
Where ocean hides the morning star.
Those happy scenes, alas ! are o'er. Extinguished are my country's fires.
Where on lake Erie's forest shore. Crumble the ashes of my sires.
The foreign ploughshare rudely drives Where sunk in peace ray fathers rest.
And a sad remnant scarce survives In the dark forests of the west.
Bid me not further to pursue
The sad'ning theme that mercy stores, And all the murd'rous scenes renew
That slumber on lake Erie's shores.
When from toward the morning light. Along the ocean's sounding strand.
The ' Menque' poured their banded might Relentless o'er ray native land :
Then proudly waved my Eagle plume, Amid the foeman's fiercest yell,
Where, on my struggling country's tomb The War Club's bloodiest effort fell.
Till slowly forced at last to yield Unconquer'd in the arms of death,
Where.sunk upon the leaf strown field. Her bravest sons resign'd their breath.
As rising from Ontario's waves,
Amid the tumult of the fight. Pale on the fainting warrior's grave
The moon beams shed a glira'ring light.
And loudly broke the victor's yell Upon the distant torrent's roar,
And my devoted country's knell Re-echoeil from the sounding shore.
Calmly my buoyant spirit rose High o'er the echoing scenery.
To join my father's long repose In undisturb'd eternity.
In happier regions undefin'd.
Where, stranger ! happy we may greet In the great Haven of mankind.
Where mingling generations meet.
Then we'll the broken tale renew. When we shall meet to part no more,
Our mortal pilgrimage review And tell of joys and sorrows o'er."
At the head of a deep gorge, a mile west of Lockport, (similar to the one that forms the natural canal basin, from which the combined Locks ascend,) in the early settlement of the country, a circular raised work, or ring-fort, could be distinctly traced. Leading from the enclosed area, there had been a covered way to a spring of pure cold water that issues from a fissure in the rock, some 50 or 60 feet
Note. — The following; passage appears in " Cusick's History of the Six Nations," the extraordinaiT production of a native Tuscarora, that it will be necessar}- to notice in another part of the work.
About this time the King of the Five Nations had ordered the Great War chief, Shorihawne, (a Mohawk,) to march directly with an army of five thousand warriors to aid the Governor of Canandaigua against the Erians, to attack the Fort Kavquatkav and endeavor to extinguish the council fire of the enemy, which was becoming dange- rous to the neighboring nations ; but unfortunately during the siege, a shower of arrows was flying from the fort, the great war chief Shorihawne was killed, and his body was conveyed back to the woods and was buried in a solemn manner ; but however, the siege continued for several days ; the Erians sued for peace ; the army immediatelv ceased from hostilities, and left the Erians in entire possession of the country.
30 HISTORY OF THE
down the declivity. Such covered paths, or rather the remains of them, lead from many of these ancient fortifications. Mr. School- craft concludes that they w^ere intended for the emergency of a prolonged siege. They would seem now, to have been but a poor defence for the water carriers, against the weapons of modern war- fare; yet probably sufficient to protect them from arrows, and a foe that had no sappers or miners in their ranks.
There is an ancient batlje field upon the Buffalo creek, six miles from Buffalo, near the Mission station. There are appearances of an enclosed area, a mound where human bones have been excavated, remains of pottery ware, &c. The Senecas have a tradition that here was a last decisive battle between their people and their invet- erate enemies the Kah-Kwahs; though there would seem to be no reason why the fortification should not be classed among those that existed long before the Senecas are supposed to have inhabited this region.
A mile north of Aurora village, in Erie county, there are several small lakes or ponds, around and between which, there are knobs or elevations, thickly covered with a tall growth of pine; upon them, are several mounds, where many human bones have been excavated. In fact, Aurora and its vicinity, seems to have been a favorite resort not only for the ancient people whose works and remains we are noticing, but for the other races that succeeded them. Relics abound there perhaps to a greater extent than in any other locality in Western New York. An area of from three to four miles in extent, embracing the village, the ponds, the fine springs of water at the foot of the bluffs to the north, and the level plain to the south, would seem to have been thickly populated. There are in the village and vicinity few gardens and fields where ancient and Indian relics are not found at each successive ploughing. Few cellars are excavated without discovering them. In digging a cellar a few years since upon the farm of Chas. P. Pierson, a skeleton was exhumed, the thigh bones of which would indicate great height; exceeding by several inches, that of the tallest of our own race. In digging another cellar, a large number of skeletons, or detached bones, were thrown out. Upon the farm of M. B. Crooks, two miles from the village, where a tree had been turned up, several hundred pounds of axes were found; a blacksmith who was working up some axes that were found in Aurora, told the author that most of them were without any steel, but that the iron was of a superior quality. He
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 31
had one that was entirely of steel, out of which he was manufacturing some edge tools.
Near the village, principally upon the farm of the late Horace S. TuRNKR, was an extensive Beaver Dam, It is but a few years since an aged Seneca strolled away from the road, visited the ponds, the springs, and coming to a field once overflowed by the dam, but then reclaimed and cultivated, said these were the haunts of his youth — upon the hills he had chased the deer, at the springs he had slaked his thirst, and in the field he had trapped the beaver.
The ancient works at Fort Hill, Le Roy, are especially worthy of observation in connection with this interesting branch of history, or rather enquiry. The author is principally indebted for an account of them to Mr. Schoolcraft's "Notes on the Iroquois," for which it was communicated by F. Follett, of Batavia. They are three miles north of Le Roy, on an elevated point of land, formed by the junction of a small stream called Fordham's Brook, with Aliens Creek. The better view of Fort Hill, is had to the north of it, about a quarter of a mile on the road leading from Bergen to Le Roy. From this point of observation it needs little aid of the imagination to conceive that it was erected as a fortifi- cation by a large and powerful army, looking for a permanent and inaccessible bulwark of defence. From the center of the hill, in a northwesterly course, the country lies quite flat ; more immediately north, and inclining to the east, the land is also level for one hun- dred rods, where it rises nearly as high as the hill, and continues for several miles quite elevated. In approaching the hill from the north it stands very prominently before you, rising rather abruptly but not perpendicularly, to the height of eighty or ninety feet, ex- tending about forty rods on a line east and west, the corners being round or truncated, and continuing to the south on the west side for some fifty or sixty rods, and on the east side for about half a mile, maintaining about the same elevation on the sides as in front; beyond which distance the line of the hill is that of the land around. There are undoubted evidences of its having been resorted to as a fortifi- cation, and of its having constituted a valuable point of defence to a rude and half civilized people. Forty years ago an entrenchment ten feet deep, and some twelve or fifteen feet wide, extended from the west to the east end, along the north or front part, and contin- ued up each side about twenty rods, where it crossed over, and joining, made the circuit of entrenchment complete. At this day a
83 HISTORY OF THE
portion of the entrenchment is easily perceived, for fifteen rods along the extreme western half of the north or front part, the cul- tivation of the soil and other causes having nearly obliterated all other portions. It would seem that this fortification was arranged more for protection against invasion from the north, this direction being evidently its most commanding position. Near the northwest corner, piles of rounded stones, have, at different times, been col- lected of hard consistence, which are supposed to have been used as weapons of defence by the besieged against the besiegers. Such skeletons as have been found in and about this locality, indicate a race of men averaging one third larger than the present race; so adjudged by anatomists. From the fortification, a trench leads to a spring of water. Arrow heads, pipes, beads, gouges, pestles, stone hatch- ets, have been found upon the ground, and excavated, in and about these fortifications. The pipes were of both stone and earthen ware ; there was one of baked clay, the bowl of which was in the form of a man's head and face, ihe nose, eyes, and other features being depicted in a style resembling some of the figures in Mr. Steven's plate of the ruins of Central America. Forest trees were standing in the trench and on its sides, in size and age not differing from those in the neighboring forests ; and upon the ground, the heart-woods of black-cherry trees of large size, the remains undoubt- edly of a growth of timber that preceded the present growth. They were in such a state of soundness as to be used for timber by the first settlers. This last circumstance would establish greater antiquity for these works, than has been generally claimed from other evidences. The black-cherry of this region, attains usually the age of two hundred and seventy-five, and three hundred years ; the beech and maple groves of Western New York, bear evidences of having existed at least two hundred and forty or fifty years. These aggregates would shew that these works were over five hun- dred years old. But this, like other timber growth testimony that has been adduced — that seems to have been relied upon somewhat by Mr. Clinton and others — is far from being satisfactory. We can only determine by this species of evidence that timber has been growing upon these mounds and fortifications at least a certain length of time ; — have no warrant for saying how much longer. Take for instance the case under immediate consideration : — How is it to be determined that there were not more than the two growths, of cherry, and beech and maple ; that other growths did not precede
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 33
or intervene. These relics arc found in our dense and heaviest timbered wood lands, below a deep vegetable mould interspersed with evidences of a long succession of timber growths and decays. We can in truth, form but a vague conception of the length of time since these works were constructed, — while we are authorized in saying they are of great antiquity, we are not authorized in lim- iting the period.
The following are among some reflections of Professor Dewey of Rochester, who has reviewed Fort Hill at Le Roy, and fur- nished Mr. Schoolcraft with his observations. They may aid the reader, who is an antiquarian, in his speculations: —
" The forest has been removed. Not a tree remains on the quad- rangle, and only a few on the edge of the ravine on the west. By cultivating the land, the trench is nearly filled in some places, though the line of it is clearly seen. On the north side the trench is con- siderable, and where the bridge crosses it, is three or four feet deep at the sides of the road. It will take only a few years more to obliterate it entirely, as not even a stump remains to mark out its line. , From this view it may be seen, or inferred, t 1. That a real trench bounded three sides of the quadrangle. On the south side there was not found any trace of trench, palisadoes, blocks, &c.
2. It was formed long before the whites came into the country. The large trees on the ground and in the trench, carry us back to an early era.
3. The workers must have had some convenient tools for exca- vation.
4. The direction of the sides may have had some reference to the four cardinal points, though the situation of the ravines naturally marked out the lines.
5. It cannot have been designed merely to catch wild animals, to be driven into it from the south. The oblique line down to the spring is opposed to this supposition, as well as the insufficiency of such a trench to confine the animals of the forest.
6. The same reasons render it improbable that the quadrangle was designed to confine and protect domestic animals.
7. It was probably a sort of fortified place. There might have been a defence on the south side by a stockade, or some similar means which might have entirely disappeared.
By what people was this work done?
The articles found in the burying ground here, ofller no certain
reply. The axes, chisels, &c. found on tne Indian grounds in this
part of the state, were evidently made of the green stone or trap
of New England, like those found on the Connecticut river in Mas-
3
34 HISTORY OF THE
sachusetts. The pipe of limestone might be from that part of the comitry. The pipes seem to belong to different eras.
1. The limestone pipe indicates the work of the savage or aborigines.
2. The third indicates the age of French influence over the Indians. An intelligent French gentleman says such clay pipes are frequent among the town population in parts of France.
3. The second, and most curious, seems to indicate an earlier age and people.
The beads found at Fort Hill are long and coarse, made of baked clay, and may have had the same origin as the third pipe.
Fort Hill cannot have been formed by the French as one of their posts to aid in the destruction of the English colony of New-York ; if the French had made Fort Hill a post as early as 1660 or 185 years ago, and then deserted it, the trees could not have grown to the size of the forest generally in 1810, or in 150 years afterwards. The white settlements had extended only twelve miles west of Avon in 1798, and some years after, (1800,) Fort Hill was covered with a dense forest. A chestnut tree, cut down in 1842, at Rochester, showed 254 concentric circles of wood, and must have been more than 200 years old in 1 800. So opposed is the notion that this was a deserted French post.
Must we not refer Fort Hill to that race which peopled this country before the Indians who raised so many monuments greatly exceeding the power of the Indians, and who lived at a remote era."
Upon the upper end of Tonawanda Island, in the Niagara River, near the dwelling house of the late Stephen White, in full view of the village of Tonawanda, and the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Rail Road, is an ancient mound, the elevation of which within the recol- lection of the early settlers, was at least ten feet. It is now from six to eight feet, — circular — twenty-five feet diameter at the base. In the centre, a deep excavation has been made, at different periods, in search of relics. A large number of human bones have been taken from it, — arrows, beads, hatchets, &c. The mound occupies a prominent position in the pleasure grounds laid out by Mr. White. How distinctly are different ages marked upon this spot ! Here are the mouldering remains of a primitive race — a race whose highest achievments in the arts, was the fashioning from flint the rude wea- pons of war and the chase, the pipe and hatchet of stone; and here upon the other hand, is a mansion presenting good specimens
Note. — The title of this chapter would confine these notices to Holland Purchase. The author has gone a short distance beyond his bounds, to include a well defined specimen of these ancient works.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 35
of modern architecture. Commerce has brought the materials for its chimney pieces from the quarries of Italy, and skill and genius have chiseled and given to them a mirror-like polish. Here in the midst of relics of another age, and of occupants of whom we know nothing beyond these evidences of their existence, are choice fruits, ornamental shrubbery, and graveled walks.
Directly opposite this mound upon the point formed by the junc- tion of Tonawanda creek with the Niagara River there would seem to have been an ancient armory, and upon no small scale. There is intermingled with at least an acre of earth, chips of flint, refuse pieces, and imperfect arrows that were broken in process of manu- facture. In the early cultivation of the ground, the plough would occasionally strike spots where these chips and pieces of arrows predominated over the natural soil.
On the north side of the Little Buffalo Creek, in the town of Lancaster, Erie County, there is an ancient work upon a bluff, about thirty feet above the level of the stream. A circular embankment encloses an acre. Thirty years ago this embankment was nearly breast high to a man of ordinary height. There were five gate-ways distinctly marked. A pine tree of the largest class in our forest, grew directly in one of the gate-ways. It was adjudged, (at the period named,) by practical lumbermen, to be five hundred years OLD. Nearly opposite, a small stream puts into the Little Buffalo. Upon the point formed by the junction of the two streams, a mound extends across from one to the other, as if to enclose or fortify the point. In modern military practice, strong fortifications are invested sometimes by setting an army down before them and throwing' up breast-works. May not this smaller work bear a similar relation to the larger one 1
About one and a half miles west of Shelby Centre, Orleans county, is an ancient work. A broad ditch encloses in a form nearly circular, about three acres of land. The ditch is at this day, well defined several feet deep. Adjoining the spot on the south, is a swamp about one mile in width by two in length. This swamp was once, doubtless, if not a lake, an impassable morass. From the interior of the enclosure made by the ditch, there is what appears to have been, a passage way on the side next to the swamp. No other breach occurs in the entire circuit of the embankment. There are accumulated within and near this fort large piles of small stones
36 HISTORY OF THE
of a size convenient to be thrown by the hand, or with a sling.* Ar- row heads of flint are found in and near the enclosure, in great abundance, stone axes, &c. Trees of four hundred years growth stand upon the embankment, and underneath them have been found, earthen ware, pieces of plates or dishes, wrought with skill, pre- senting ornaments in relief, of various patterns. Some skeletons almost entire have been exhumed ; many of giant size, not less than seven to eight feet in length. The skulls are large and well devel- oped in the anterior lobe, broad between the ears, and flattened in the coronal region. Half a mile west of the fort is a sand hill. Here a large number of human skeletons have been exhumed, in a perfect state. Great numbers appeared to have been buried in the same grave. Many of the skulls appear to have been broken in with clubs or stones. " This," says S. M. Burroughs, Esq, of Medina, (to whom the author is indebted for the description,) "was doubt- less the spot where a great battle had been fought. Were not these people a branch of the Aztecs? The earthen ware found herg seems to indicate a knowledge of the arts known to that oncd powerful nation." '
The p,Ev. Samuel Kirklandj visited and described several or these remains west of the Genesee River, in the year 1788. At that early period, before they had been disturbed by the antiqua- rian, the plough or the harrow, they must have been much more per- fect, and better defined than now. Mr. Kirkland says in his journal, that after leaving " Kanawageas," J he travelled twenty-six miles and encamped for the night at a place called " Joaki," J| on the
* These piles of small stone are frequently spoken of in connection with these works, by those who saw them at an early period of white settlement.
t Mr. K. was the pioneer Protestant Missionary among the Iroquois. The Rev. Dr. Wheelock, of Lebanon, Conn., who was his early tutor, in one of his letters to the Countess of Huntingdon, in 1765, says : — " A young Englishman, whom I sent last fall to winter with the numerous and savage tribes of the Senecas, in order to learn their language, and fit him for a mission among them ; where no missionaiy has hitherto dared to venture. This bold adventure of his, which under all the circumstances of it is the most extraordinary of the kind I have ever known, has been attended with abun- dant evidence of a divine blessing." Connected as was the subject of this eulogy with other branches of our local histor)', he will be frequently referred to in the course of this work.
t Avon,
II Batavia, or the " Great Bend of the Tonnewanta," as it was uniformly called by the early travellers on the trail from Tioga Point to Fort Niagara and Canada. ttT" See account of Indian Trails. Batavia was favored with several Indian names. In Sen- eca, the one used by Mr K. would be Racoon.
HOLLAND PURCHASE, 37
river *' Tonawanda." Six miles from the place of encampment, he rode to the " open fields."* Here he " walked out about half a mile with one of the Seneca chiefs to view " the remains -whioh he thus describes : —
*' This place is called by the Senecas Tegatainasghque, which imports a double fortified town, or a town with a fort at each end. Here are the vestiges of two forts; the one contains about four acres of ground; the other, distant from this about two miles, and situated at the other extremity of the ancient town, encloses twice that quantity. The ditch around the former (which I particularly examined) is about five or six feet deep. A small stream of living water, with a high bank, circumscribed nearly one third of the en- closed ground. There were traces of six gates, or avenues, around the ditch, and a dug-way near the works to the water. The ground on the opposite side of the water, was in some places nearly as high as that on which they built the fort, which might make it nessessary for this covered way to the water. A considerable num- ber of large, thrifty oaks have grown up within the enclosed grounds, both in and upon the ditch; some of them at least, appeared to be Wo hundred years old or more. The ground is of a hard gravelly kind, intermixed with loam, and more plentifully at the brow of the hill. In some places, at the bottom of the ditch, I could run my cane a foot or more into the ground; so that probably the ditch was much deeper in its original state than it appears to be now. Near the northern fortification, which is situated on high ground, are the remains of a funeral pile. The earth is raised about six feet above the common surface, and betwixt twenty and thirty feet in diameter. From the best information I can get of the Indian Historians, these Forts were made previous to the Senecas being admitted into the confederacy of the Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas, and when the former were at war with the Mississaugas and other Indians around the great lakes. This must have been near three hundred years ago, if not more, by many concurring accounts which I have obtained from different Indians of several different tribes. Indian tradition says also that these works were raised, and a famous battle fought here, in the pure Indian style and with Indian weapons, long before tlieir knowledge and use of fire arms or any knowledge of the Europeans, These nations at that time used, in fighting, bows and arrows, the spear or javelin, pointed with bone, and the
* The openings, as they are termed, in the towns of Elba and Alabama ; lying on either side of the Batavia and Lockport road, but chiefly, between that road and the Tonawanda Creek. The antiquarian who goes in search of the ancient Tegatain- asghque, will be likely to divide his attention between old and new things. It was a part of Tonawanda Indian Reservation. About twenty-five years since, it was sold to the Ogden Company ; and the ancient " open fields " now present a broad expanse of wheat fields, interspersed with farm buildings that give evidence of the elements of wealth that have been fouad in the soil.
38 HISTORY OF THE
war club or death mall. When the former were expended, they came into close engagement in using the latter. Their warrior's dress or coat of mail for this method of fighting, was a short jacket made of willow sticks, or moon wood, and laced tight around the body; the head covered with a cap of the same kind, but commonly worn double for the better security of that part against a stroke from the war club. In the great battle fought at this place, between the Senecas and Western Indians, some affirm their ancestors have told them there were eight hundred of their enemies slain; others include the killed on both sides to make that number. All their historians agree in this, that the battle was fought here, where the heaps of slain are buried, before the arrival of the Europeans; some say three, some say four, others five ages ago; they reckon an age one hundred winters or colds. I would further remark upon this subject that there are vestiges of ancient fortified towns in various parts, throughout the extensive territory of the Six Nations. I find also by constant enquiry, that a tradition prevails among the Indians in general, that all Indians came from the west. I have wished for an opportunity to pursue this inquiry with the more remote tribes of Indians, to satisfy myself, at least, if it be their univei'sal opinion.
" On the south side of Lake Erie, are a series of old fortifications, from Cattaraugus Creek to the Pennsylvania line, a distance of fifty miles. Some are from two to four miles apart, others half a mile only. Some contain five acres. The walls or breast-works are of earth, and are generally on grounds where tiiere are appearances of creeks having flowed into the lake, or where there was a bay. Further south there is said to be another chain parallel with the first, about equi-distant from the lake,
" These remains of art, may be viewed as connecting links of a great chain, which extends beyond the confines of our state, and becomes more magnificent and curious as we recede from the northern lakes, pass through Ohio into the great valley of the Mis- sissippi, thence to the gulf of Mexico through Texas into New Mexico and South America. In this vast range of more than three thousand miles, these monuments of ancient skill gradually become more remarkable for their number, magnitude and interesting variety, until we are lost in admiration and astonishment, to find, as Baron Humboldt informs us, in a world which we call new^ ancient institutions, religious ideas, and forms of edifices, similar to those of Asia, which there seem to go back to the dawn of civilization."
" Over the great secondary region of the Ohio, are the ruins of what once were forts, cemeteries, temples, altars, camps, towns,
Note. — The traditions given to Mr. Kirkland at so early a period, are added to his account of the old Forts, to be taken in connection with adverse theories and conclusions upon the same point As has before been observed, many of the Senecas who have since been consulted, do not pretend to any satisfactory knowledge upon the subjects.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 39
villages, race-grounds and other places of amusement, habitations of chieftains, videttes, watch-towers and monuments."
"It is," says Mr. Atwater,* "nothing but one vast cemetery of the beings of past ages. Man and his works, the mammoth, tropi- cal animals, the cassia tree and other tropical plants, are here repo- sing together in the same formation. By what catastrophe they were overwhelmed and buried in the same strata it would be impossible to say, unless it was that of the general deluge."
"In the valley of the Mississippi, the monuments of buried nations are unsurpassed in magnitude and melancholy grandeur by any in North America, Here cities have been traced similar to those of Ancien,t Mexico, once containing hundreds of thousands of souls. Here are to be seen thousands of tumuli, some an hundred feet high, others many hundred feet in circumference, the places of their worship, their sepulchre, and perhaps of their defence. Similar mounds are scattered throughout the continent, from the shores of the Pacific into the interior of our State as far as Black River and from the Lakes to South America."!
So much for all we can see or know of our ancient predecessors. The whole subject is but incidental to the main purposes of local history. The reader who wishes to pursue it farther will be assisted in his enquiries by a perusal of Mr. Schoolcraft's Notes on the Iroquois. But the mystery of this pre-occupancy is far from being satisfactorily explained. It is an interesting, fruitful source of the- ories, enquiry and speculation.
•Atwater's Antiquities of the West.
tYates and Moulton's History of New York.
40 HISTORY OF THE
CHAPTER II
THE IROQUOIS, OR FIVE NATIONS.*
Emerging from a region of doubt and conjecture, we arrive at another branch of local history, replete with interest — less obscure, — though upon its threshold we feel the want of reliable data, the lights that guide us in tracing the history of those who have writ- ten records.
The Seneca Indians were our immediate predecessors — the pre-occupants from whom the title of the Holland Purchase was derived. They were the Fifth Nation of a Confederacy, termed by themselves Mingoes, as inferred by Mr. Clinton, Ho-de-no-sau- nee,t as inferred by other writers ; the Confederates, by the Eng- lish ; the Maquaws, by the Dutch ; the Massowamacs, by the Southern Indians ; the IROQUOIS, by the French ; by which last name they are now usually designated, in speaking or writing of the distinct branches of the Aborigines of the United States.
The original Confederates were the Mohawks, having their prin- cipal abode upon that river ; the Oneidas, upon the southern shore of Oneida Lake ; the Cayugas near Cayuga Lake ; the Senecas, upon Seneca Lake and the Genesee River. Those localities were their principal seats, or the places of their Council fires. They may be said generally, to have occupied in detached towns and vil- lages the whole of this State, from the Hudson to the Niagara River, now embraced in the counties of Schenectady, Schoharie, Montgomery, Fulton, Herkimer, Oneida, Madison, Onondaga, Cay- uga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Livingston, Genesee, Wyoming, Monroe, Orleans, Niagara, Erie, Chautauque, Cattaragus, Alle-
* The "Five" Nations, at the period of our earliest knowledge of them — the •• Six " Nations after they had adopted the Tuscaroras, in 1712.
t " The People of the Long House," from the circumstance that they likeued their political structure to a long tenement or dwelling.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 41
ghany, Steuben and Yates. A narrower limit of their dwelling places, the author is aware, has been usually designated ; but in reference to the period of the first European advent among them — 1678 — it is to be inferred that their habitations were thus extended, not only from the traces of their dwellings, and the relics of their rude cultivation of the soil, but from the records of the early Jesuit Missionaries. Their missions were at different periods, extended from the Hudson to the Niagara River, and each one of them would seem to have had several villages in its vicinity. Each of the Five Nations undoubtedly had a principal seat. They were as indicated by their names. And each had its tributary villages, extended as has been assumed. It was plainly a coming together from separate localities — a gathering of clansmen — to resist the invasion of De Nonville; and it is to be inferred from the journal of Father Hen- nepin that there were villages of the " Iroquois Senecas " in the neighborhood of La Salle's ship yard on the Niagara River, and the primitive garrison or " palisade," at its mouth. The Missionaries who went out from the "place of ship building," and from the "Fort at Niagara" from time to time, upon apparently short excursions, visited different villages. The Jesuit Missions upon the Mohawk, and at Onondaga would seem to have been visited, each by the inhabitants of several villages. The author rejects the conclusion, that the Tonawanda, and the Buffalo Indian villages, were not founded until after the expedition of General Sullivan ; and con- cludes that these and other settlements of the Iroquois existed prior to the European advent, west of the Genesee River. While some of the Seneca Indians assume the first position, others, equally intelligent, and as well instructed in their traditions, do not pretend to thus limit the period of settlement at these points.
Their actual dominion had a far wider range. The Five Nations claimed " all the land not sold to the English, from the mouth of Sorrel River, on the south side of Lakes Erie and Ontario, on both sides of the Ohio till it falls into the Mississippi ; and on the north side of these Lakes that whole territory between the Ottawa River and Lake Huron, and even beyond the straits between that and Lake Erie." * And in another place the same author says : — "When the Dutch began the settlement of tliis country, all the Indians on Long Island, and the northern shores of the Sound, on
•Smith's Histor}' of New York.
42 HISTORY OF THE
the banks of the Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehannah Rivers, were in subjection to the Five Nations, and acknowledged it by paying tribute. The French historians of Canada, both ancient and modern, agree that the more Northern Indians, were driven before the superior martial prowess of the Confederates." " The Ho-de-no-sau-nee, occupied our precise territory, and their council fires burned continually from the Hudson to the Niagara. Our old forests have rung with their war shouts, and been enli- vened with their festivals of peace. Their feathered bands, their eloquence, their deeds of valor have had their time and place. In their progressive course, they had stretched around the half of our republic, and rendered their name a terror nearly from ocean to ocean ; when the advent of the Saxon race arrested their career, and prepared the way for the destruction of the Long House, and the final extinguishment of the Council Fires of the Confederacy.* " At 6ne period we hear the sound of their war cry along the Straits of the St. Mary's, and at the foot of Lake Superior. At another, under the walls of Quebec, where they finally defeated the Hurons, under the eyes of the French. They put out the fires of the Gah-kwas and Eries. They eradicated the Susquehannocks. They placed the Lenapes, the Nanticokes, and the Munsees under the yoke of subjection. They put the Metoacks and Manhattans under tribute. They spread the terror of their arms over all New England. They traversed the whole length of the Appalachian Chain and descended like the enraged yagisho and megalonyx, on the Cherokees and Catawbas. Smith encountered their warriors in the settlement of Virginia, and La Salle on the discovery of the Illinois."! "The immediate dominion of the Iroquois — when the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, were first visited by the trader, the Missionary, or the war parties of the French — stretched, as we have seen, from the borders of Vermont to Western New York, from the Lakes to the head waters of the Ohio, the Susquehannah and the Delaware. The number of their warriors was declared by the French in 1660, to have been two thousand two hundred; and in 1677, an English agent sent on pur- pose to ascertain their strength, confirmed the precision of the state- ment. Their geographical position made them umpires in the
* Letters on the Iroquois, by Shenandoah in American Review, t Schoolcraft.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 43
contest of the French for dominion in the west. Besides their political importance was increased by their conquests. Not only did they claim some supremacy in Northern New England as far as the Kennebeck, and to the south as far as New Haven, and were acknowledged as absolute lords over the conquered Lenappe, — the peninsula of Upper Canada was their hunting field by right of war ; they had exterminated the Eries and Andastes, both tribes of their own family, the one dwelling on the south-eastern banks of lake Erie, the other on the head waters of the Ohio; they had triumphantly invaded the tribes of the west as far as Illinois ; their warriors had reached the soil of Kentucky and Western Virginia ; and England, to whose alliance they steadily inclined, availed itself of their treaties for the cession of territories, to encroach even on the Empire of France in America." *
While the citations that we have made from reliable authorities, sufficiently establish the extended dominions of the Iroquois, they also sanction the highest estimate that has been made of their bravery and martial prowess. Their strength and unifoi-m success, are mainly to be attributed to their social and political organization. They were Confederates. Their enemies, or the nations they chose to make war with, for the purposes of conquest, extended rule, poli- tical supremacy — were detached, — had feuds perhaps between themselves — could not act in concert. The Iroquois were a five fold cord. Their antagonists, but single strands, and if acting occasionally in concert, it was in the absence of a league or union, of that peculiar character that made their assailants invincible. Added to this, is the concurrent testimony of historians, that the Iroquois, in physical and mental organization far excelled all other of the aboriginal nations, or tribes of our country. A position justified by our own observation and comparisons. Even in our own day, now that they are dwindled down to a mere remnant of what they were ; confined to a few thousand acres of a broad domain they once posessed, (and even these stinted allotments grudgingly made, and their possession envied by rapacious pre-emptionists,) now that they have survived the terrible ordeal — a contest with our race, and all its blighting and contaminating influences, — their supei iority is evinced in various ways; their supremacy apparent. Upon the banks of the Tonawanda, the Alleghany, the Cattaragus,
•Bancroft's History of the United States.
44 HISTORY OF THE
there are now unbroken, proud spirits of this noble race of men, who would justify the highest encomiums that history has bestowed. If we are told that they have degenerated, the position can be controverted by the citation of individual instances. If their ambition has been crushed; if they feel, as well they may, that their condition has been changed ; that they are in a measure dependants upon a soil, and in a region, where they were but a little time since, lords and masters ; if they are conscious, as well they may be, that superior diplomacy, artful and over-reaching negotiation, has as effectually conquered and despoiled them of their possessions as a conquest of arms would have done; if they feel that they are aliens, as they are made by our laws, upon the native soil of themselves and a long line of ancestors. — There are yet worthy descendants of the primitive stock — the same "Seneca Iroquois," in mind, in fea- ture, in some of the best attributes of our common nature, — that La Salle, Hennepin, Tonti, Joncair, found here in these western forests; that the seemingly partial, yet truthful historian has describ- ed. While the vices of civilization — or those .that civilization has introduced — have effectually degenerated a large portion of them; debased them to a level with the worst of the whites; there are those, and a large class of them, that have, with a moral firmness that is admirable — a native, uneducated sense of right and wrong, of virtue and vice ; resisted all the temptations wiih which they have been beset and surrounded, and command our highest es- teem, not for what they, or their progenitors have been ; but for their intrinsic merits. Their ancient council fires, are not extin- guished; though they burn not as brightly in the allotted retreat where they are now kindled, as of yore, when they blazed in the " Long House," from Hudson to Lake Erie. Their confederacy is dwindled to a mere shadow of what it was, but it yet exists. " They have been stripped so entirely of their possessions as to have retained scarcely sufficient for a sepulchre. They have been shorn so entirely of their power as to be scarcely heard when appealing to justice from the rapacity of the pre-emptive claimants."* And yet they are a distinctive people — their Ancient League in force; their ancient rites and ceremonies are still performed. From their ancient seat at Onondaga, the council fire is transferred to Tonawanda. Here it is yet kindled. Here the representatives of
Shenandoah.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. ' 45
the Senecas, the Tuscaroras, the Onondagas, the scattered rem- n-ants of the Mohawks, Cayugas and Oneidas, yet assemble, go through with their ancient rites and ceremonies ; — their speeches, dances, exhortations, sacrifices, &c.; supply vacancies that have occurred in the ranks of their sachems and chiefs, furnish a feeble but true representation of the doings of their ancient confederacy, when it was the sole conservator and legislature of two thirds of our Empire State, and held in subjection nearly that proportion of our own modern and similarly constructed Union.
The historians of the Iroquois, have found ample authority for the extended dominion, and military supremacy they have conceded to them, in the writings of the French Missionaries, and in their own well authenticated traditions; and there is still more reliable testimony. As in after times — in their wars with the French, and in the Border Wars of the Revolution, a large proportion of their prisoners were saved from torture and execution and adopted into families and tribes, for the double purpose of supplying the loss of their own people slain in battle or taken prisoners — of keeping their numbers good — and for solacing the bereaved relatives, by substituting a favorite captive in the family circle. This was not only the ancient, but the modern custom of the Iroquois. The commentators upon their institutions, have inferred that this was a part of their system and policy. This will be quite apparent in some accounts that will follow of white prisoners who were found among the Senecas in Western New York, at the earliest period of white settlement, and whose descendants are still among them. There are now upon the Tonawanda Reservation, at Cattaragus and Alleghany, descendants of Cherokee, Seminole and Catawba captives; in fact of nearly all the nations, which we are told in their traditions, they were at war with in early times. It is singular, with what apparent precision, they will trace the mixed blood, when none but themselves can discover any difference of complexion or features. Tradition must be their helper, in deter- mining after the lapse of centuries, and a long succession of gene- rations, where the blood of the captive is mingled with their ovm. They are good genealogists; far better than we are, who can avail ourselves of written records.
And there is a fact connected with this reprieving and adopting captives, that commands our especial wonder, if not our admiration. In all the numerous cases that we have accounts of, with few
46 ' HISTORY OF THE
exceptions, captivity soon ceased to be irksome; an escape from it hardly a desirable consummation ! Was the captive of their own race and color, he soon forgot that he was in the wigwam of stran- gers, away from his country and kindred; he was no alien; social, political, and family immunities were extended to him. He was as one of them in all respects. Had he left behind father, mother, brother, sister or wife, they were supplied him; and it baffles all our preconceived opinions of an arbitrary, instinctive sense of kin- dred blood affinity, when told how easily the captive adapted him- self to his new relations; how soon the adopter and the adopted conformed to an alliance that was merely conventional. And so it was in a great degree with our own race. They too, were captives among the Iroquois, but wore no captive's chains. After a little there was no restraint, no coercion, no desire to escape. Upon this point, we have the recorded testimony of Mary Jemison, of Horatio Jones, and several others. Mrs. Jemison, who had more than ordinary natural endowments; who possessed a mind and affections adapted to the enjoyments of civilization and refinement ; affirms that in a short time after she was made a captive, she was content with her condition; and she affirmed at the close of a long life, spent principally among the Senecas, that she had uniformly been treated with kindness. The author in his boyhood has listened to the recitals of captive whites among the Senecas, and well remembers how incredible it seemed that they should have preferred a continuance among them to a return to their own race. This to us seemingly singular choice, with those who were young when captured, is partly to be accounted for in the novelty of the change — the sports and pastimes — the "freedom of the woods" — the absence of restraints and checks, upon youthful inclinations. But chiefly it was the influence of kindness, extended to them as soon as they were adopted. The Indian mother knew no difference between her natural and adopted children; there were no social discriminations, or if any, in favor of the adopted captive; they had all the rights and privileges in their tribes, nations, confederacy, enjoyed by the native Iroquois.*
The Senecas have traditions of the execution of several
* This kind treatment of prisoners, it is not contended, was uniform. A portiou of them were subjected to torture and death. It was however, one thing or the other: — death attended by all the horrors of savage custom, or adoption into a family, and the treatment that has been indicated.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 47
prisoners, that were made captives in their wars with the Southern Indians. A stream that puts into the Alleghany, below Olean, bears the Seneca name of a Cherokee prisoner, who, their traditions say, was executed there. Mrs. Jemison * says, her husband, Hiokatoo, was engaged in 1731, to assist in collecting an army to go against the Catawbas, Cherokees, and other Southern Indians. That they met the enemy on the Tennessee River, "rushed upon them in ambuscade, and massacred 1200 on the spot ; " that after that, the battle continued for two days. She names several other wars with the Southern Indians, in which her warrior husband was engaged. It is but a few years since there were surviving aged Seneca Indians, who recounted their exploits in wars waged by the Iroquois against neighboring and far distant nations.
The reader who has not made himself familiar with the history of the aboriginal pre-occupants of our region, has, perhaps, in this brief introduction of them, their wars and extended dominion — their pre-eminence among the nations of their race — the high position assigned them by historians, — been sufficiently interested to desire to know more of them ; especially to know something of the organization and frame work of a political system — a confederacy so wisely conceived by the untaught Statesmen of the forest, who had no precedents to consult, no written lore of ages to refer to, no failures or triumphs of systems of human government to serve for models or comparisons ; nothing to guide them but the lights of nature ; nothing to prompt them but necessity and emergency.
The French historian, Volney, was the first to pronounce the Iroquois the romans of the west ; a proud, and not undeserved title, which succeeding historians and commentators have not withheld. " Had they enjoyed the advantages possessed by the Greeks and Romans, there is no reason to believe they would have been at all inferior to these celebrated nations. Their minds appear to have been equal to any effort within the reach of man. Their conquests, if we consider their numbers and circumstances, were little inferior to those of Rome itself. In their harmony, the unity of their operations, the energy of their character, the vastness, vigor, and success of their enterprises, and the strength
* Life of Mary Jemison by James E. Seaver, revised aud enlarged by Ebenezer Mix
48 HISTORY OF THE
and sublimity of their eloquence, they may be fairly compared with the Greeks. Both the Greeks and Romans, before they began to rise into distinction, had already reached the state of society in which men are able to improve. The Iroquois had not. The Greeks and Romans had ample means for improvement ; the Iroquois had none."* " If we except the celebrated league, which united the Five Nations into a Federal Republic, we can discern few traces of political wisdom among the rude American tribes as discover any great degree of foresight or extent of intellectual abilities."! "The Iroquois bore this proud appellation, not only by conquests over other tribes, but by encouraging the people of other nations to incorporate with them ; ' a Roman principle,' says Thatcher, ' recognized in the practice as well as theory of these lords of the forest."| " From whatever point we scrutinize the general features of their confederacy, we are induced to regard it, in many respects, as a beautiful, as well as remarkable structure, and to hold it up as the triumph of Indian legislation."§ " It cannot, I presume, be doubted, that- the confederates were a peculiar and extraordinary people, contra-distinguished from the wars of the Indian Nations by great attainments in polity, in government, in negotiation, in eloquence, and in war."||
The peculiar structure of the confederacy of the Iroquois, is one of the most interesting features of our aboriginal history. A brief analysis of it is all that will be attempted. Its general features were known to their earliest historians, but it was left to a recent contributor H to the archives of the New York Historical Society, to investigate the subject with a zeal, industry and ability, which do him great credit ; to give us a better knowledge of the legislation and laws of these sons of the forest, than we before possessed. To that source principally, with occasional reference to other authorities ; the author is indebted for the materials for the sketch that follows : —
The existence of the Iroquois upon the soil now constituting Western and Middle New York, is distinctly traced back to the period of the discovery of America. Their traditions go beyond
* President Dwight. t Robertson's America.
t Yonnondio, or the Warriors of Genesee, by W. H. C. Hosmer.
§ Shenandoah. ||Mh. Clinton.
f^Letters on the Iroquois, Shenandoah ; addressed to Albert Gallatin, President. N. Y. Historical Society.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 49
that period — or in fact have no Hmits ; some of their relators contending that this was always their home; others, that they came here by conquest ; and others, that they were peaceful emigrants from a former home in the south. This involves a mooted question, which it is not necessary here to discuss, if indeed it admits of any satisfactory conclusion. They fix upon no definite period in refer- ence to the origin of their confederacy. It existed, and was recognized by the Dutch, who were the first adventurers in the eastern portion of our state ; by the earliest French Jesuits in the valley of the Mohawk, at Onondaga, and along the south shores of Lake Ontario, and upon the Niagara River ; and there were evidences of a long precedent existence, that corresponded with their traditions.
Like most systems of human governments, and especially the better ones — it was undoubtedly the offspring of emergency. Protracted wars, such as their race have been subject to since our first acquaintance with it — and which has often called into requisi- tion the mediatory offices of our government, had created the necessity of a union of strength — an alliance, for offence and defence. It was upon a smaller scale to be sure, than an alliance that followed centuries after, between the crowned heads of Europe ; but was dictated by better motives, and far more wisdom ; though with a history of Iroquois conquests before us, it is not to be denied, that they not only contemplated peace and union at home, but like their imitators meditated assaults upon their neighbors. The one was suggested by the autocrat of Russia, from a palace — tradition attributes the other to a "wise man* of the Onondaga nation," whose dwelling was but a hunter's lodge.
The confederacy in one leading feature at least, was not unlike our Federal Union. The Five Nations were as so many states, reserving to themselves some well defined powers, but yielding others for the general good.
The supreme power of the confederacy, was vested in a con- gress of sachems, fifty in number. The Mohawks were entitled to nine representatives ; the Oneidas to nine ; the Onondagas to fourteen; the Cayugas to ten; the Senecas to eight. "The office of sachem was hereditary. They were " raised up," not by their respective nations, but by a council of all the sachems. They formed the
* Dajrdnowedd,
50 HISTORY OF THE
"council of the League," and in them resided the Executive legisla- tive and judicial authority. In their own localities, at home among their ov^^n people, these sachems were the government, forming five independent local sovereignties, modelled after the general cen- gress of sachems. There were in fact five distinct local republics within one general republic. It was as it would be with our dele- gation in Congress, if after discharging their duties at the seat of the general government, they came home and formed a council for all purposes of local government. Although not a monarchy, it " was the rule of the few,'^ and these few possessing what would look to us like a power very liable to abuse — the power of self creation ; filling up their own ranks, as vacancies occured from time to time; and yet we are told that this formed no exception to the general well working of the system. The members of the council of the League were equals in power and authority ; and yet from some provision in their organization, or from a necessity which must have existed with the Iroquois Council as with all conventional or legislative bodies, it is to be inferred that they had a head or leader — something answering the purposes of a speaker in our system of legislation, or a president, in our conventional arrangement. How all this was managed it is difficult to understand. There was always residing in the central Onondaga nation, a sachem who had at least a nominal superiority; he was regarded as the head of the confederacy, and had dignities and honors, above his fellow sachems; and yet his prerogatives were only such as were tacitly allowed or conceded ; not derived as we would say, from any " constitutional " provisions. His position was an hereditary one, derived, as is affirmed by tradition, from an Onondaga chief — Ta-do-da-hoh, a famous chief and warrior, who was co-temporary with the formation of the confederacy. He had rendered himself
Note — Those into whose hands may chance to have fallen the pamphlet of the native Tuscarora historian, David Cusick, will remember his picture of "At-to-tar-ho." This was the real or iniag-inary " Ta-do-da-hoh " of Onondag^a; the name varying with the different dialects. With rather more than the ordinary love of fancy and fiction, inherent in his race, the Tuscarora narrator has invested his hero with something more than human attributes : and has awarded to his memory, a wood cut — rude but graphic. He is represented as a monarch, quietly smoking his pipe, sitting in one of the marshes of Onondaga, giving audience to an embassy from the Mohawks, who have come to solicit his co-operation in the formation of a League. Living serpents are entwined around him, extending their hissing heads in every direction. Every thing around him, and the place of his residence, were such as to inspire fear and respect. His dishes and spoons were made of the skulls of enemies he had slain in battle. Him, when they had duly approached with presents, and burned tobacco in friendship, in their pipes, by way of frankincense, they placed at the head of the League as its presiding officer.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 51
illustrious by military achievements. " Down to this day, among the Iroquois, his name is the personification of heroism, of forecast, and of dignity of character. He was reluctant to consent to the new order of things, as he would be shorn of his power, and placed among a number of equals. To remove this objection, his sachem- ship was dignified above the others, by certain special privileges, not inconsistent, however, with an equal distribution of powers ; and from his day to the present, this title has been regarded as more noble and illustrious than any other, in the catalogue of Iroquois nobility."
" With a mere league of Indian nations, the constant tendency would be to a rupture, from remoteness of position and interest, and from the inherent weakness of such a compact. In the case under inspection, something more lasting was aimed at than a simple union of the five nations, in the nature of an alliance. A blending of the national sovereignties into one government, with direct and manifold relations between the people and the Confed- eracy, as such, was sought for and achieved by these forest statesmen. On first observation, the powers of the government appear to be so entirely centralized, that the national independencies nearly disappear ; but this is very far from the fact. The crowning feature of the Confederacy, as a political structure, is the perfect independence and individuality of the nations, in the midst of a central and embracing government, which presents such a united and cemented exterior, that its subdivisions would scarcely be discovered in transacting business with the Confederacy. This remarkable result was in part eflfected by the provision that the same rulers who governed the Confederacy in their joint capacity, should, in their separate state, still be the rulers of the several nations.
" For all the purposes of a local and domestic, and many of a political character, the nations were entirely independent of each other. The nine Mohawk sachems administered the affairs of that nation with joint authority, precisely in the same manner as they did, in connection with others, the affairs of the League at large. With similar powers, the ten Cayuga sachems, by their joint councils, regulated the internal and domestic affairs of their nation. As the sachems of each nation stood upon a perfect equality, in authority and privileges, the measure of inffuence was determined entirely by the talents and address of the individual. In the council's of the nation, which were of frequent occurrence, all business of national concernment was transacted ; and, although the questions moved on such occasions would be finally settled by the opinions of the sachems, yet such was the spirit of the Iroquois system of government, that the influence of the inferior chiefs, the
52 HISTORY OF THE
warriors, and even of the women, would make itself felt, whenever the subject itself aroused a general public interest.
" The powers and duties of the sachems were entirely of a civil character, but yet were arbitrary within their sphere of action. If we sought their warrant for the exercise of power, in the etymol- ogy of the word, in their language, which corresponds with sachem, it would intimate a check upon, rather than an enlargement of, the civil authority ; for it signifies, simply, ' a counsellor of the people,' — a beautiful and appropriate designation of a ruler."
There were in each of the Five Nations, and in the aggregate, the same number of War Chiefs as sachems. The subordination of the military to the civil power, was indicated upon all occasions of the assembling of the councils, by each sachem having a War Chief standing behind him to aid with his counsel, and execute the commands of his superior. If the two, however, went out upon a war party, the precedence was reversed, or in fact the sachem, who was supreme in council, was but a subordinate in the ranks. The supreme command of the war forces, and the general conduct of the wars of the confederacy was entrusted to two military chiefs raised up as the sachems were, their offices hereditary. These were, in all cases to be of the Seneca nation.*
The third class of officers was created long after the organiza- tion of the Confederacy, since the advent of Europeans among them, — the chiefs. They were elected from time to time as necessity or convenience required, their number unlimited. Their powers were originally confined to the local affairs of their respect- ive nations ; they were home advisers and counsellors of the sachems ; but in process of time they became in some respects, equal in rank and authority to the sachems.
" It is, perhaps, in itself singular that no religious functionaries were recognized in the Confederacy (none ever being raised up) ; although thei'e were certain officers in the several nations who officiated at the religious festivals, which were held at stated seasons throughout the year. There never existed, among the Iroquois, a regular and distinct religious profession, or office, as
* They likened, as will have been seen, their political edifice, to a Long^ House ; its door opening to the West. The Senecas occupying the door way, at the West, where hostile onsets were looked for, the location of the chief military commanders was assigned to them. It was the province of the Senecas, from their location, to first take the war path. If invaded, they were to drive back the invaders. If too formidable for them, they called upon the nej^t allies, the Onondagas, and so on when necessary, to the Eastern end of the Long House, occupied by the Mohawks.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 53
among most nations ; and it was, doubtless, owing to the simplicity, as w^ell as narrowness, of their religious creed.
" With the officers above enumerated, the administration of the Confederacy was entrusted. The government sat lightly upon the people, who, in effect, were governed but little. It seemed to each that individual independence, which the Hodenosaunee knew how to prize as well as the Saxon ; and which, amid all political changes, they have contrived to preserve. The institutions which would be expected to exi-st under the government whose frame-w'ork has just been sketched, would necessarily be simple. Their mode of life, and limited wants, the absence of all property, and the infre- quency of crime, dispensed with a vast amount of the legislation and machinery, incident to the protection of civilized society. While, therefore, it would be unreasonable to seek those high qualities of mind, which result from ages of cultivation, in such a rude state of existence, it would be equally irrational to regard the Indian character as devoid of all those higher characteristics which ennoble the human race. If he has never contributed a page to science, nor a discovery to art ; if he loses, in the progress of generations, as much as he gains ; still, there are certain qualities of his mind which shine forth in all the lustre of natural perfection, and which must ever elicit admiration. His simple integrity, his generosity, his unbounded hospitality, his love of truth, and, above all, his unbroken fidelity, — a sentiment inborn, and standing out so conspicuously in his character, that it has, not untruthfully, become its living characteristic ; all these are adornments of humanity, which no art of education can instill, nor refinement of civilization can bestow. If they exist at all, it is because the gifts of the Deity have never been debased. The high state of public morals, celebrated by the poet as reached and secured under Augustus, it was the higher and prouder boast of the Iroquois never to have lost. In such an atmosphere of moral purity, he grew up to manhood.
• Culpari metuit fides : Nullis polluitur casta domus stupris : Mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas.'
If our Indian predecessor, with the virtues and blemishes, the pow'er and w'eakness, which alternate in his character, is ever rightly comprehended, it will be the result of an insight into his social relations, and an understanding of the institutions which reflect the higher elements of his intellect."
In each nation there were eight tribes, which were arranged in two divisions and named as follows : —
Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle,
Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk.
"The division of the people of each nation into eight tribes,
54 HISTORY OF THE
whether pre-existing, or perfected at the establishment of the Con- feracy did not terminate in its objects with the nation itself. It became the means of effecting the most perfect union of separate nations 'ever devised by the wit of man.' In efi'ect, the Wolf Tribe was divided into five parts, and one-fifth of it placed in each of the five nations. The I'emaining tribes were subjected to the same division and distribution: thus giving to each nation the eigift tribes, and making in their separated state, forty tribes in the Con- federacy. Between those of the same name — or in other words, between the separated parts of each tribe — there existed a tie of brotherhood which linked the nations together with indissoluble bonds. The Mohawk of the Beaver Tribe, recognized the Seneca of the Beaver Tribe as his brother, and they were bound to each other by the ties of consanguinity. In like manner the Oneida of the Turtle or other Tribe, received the Cayuga, or the Onondaga of the same tribe, as a brother ; and with a fraternal welcome. This cross-relationship between the tribes of the same name, and which was stronger, if possible, than the chain of brotherhood between the several tribes of the same nation, is still preserved in all its original strength. It doubtless furnishes the chief reason of the tenacity with which the fragments of the old Confederacy still cling together. If either of the five nations had wished to cast off the alliance, it must also have broken the bond of brotherhood. Had the nations fallen into collision, it would have turned Hawk Tribe against Hawk Tribe, Heron against Heron, in a word, brother against brother. The history of the Hodenosaunee exhibits the wisdom of these organic provisions ; for they never fell into anarchy during the long period which the league subsisted ; nor even approximated to a dissolution of the Confederacy from inter- nal disorders.
'• With the progress of the mquiry, it becomes more apparent that the Confederacy was in effect a League of Tribes. With the ties of kindred as its principle of union, the whole race was inter- woven into one great family, composed of tribes in its first subdi- vision (for the nations were counterparts of each other); and the tribes themselves, in their subdivisions, composed of parts of many households. Without these close inter-relations, resting, as many of them do, upon the strong impulses of nature, a mere alliance between the Iroquois nations would have been feeble and transitory.
"In this manner was constructed the Tribal League of the Hode- nosaunee ; in itself, an extraordinary specimen of Indian legislation. Simple in its foundation upon the Family Relationship; effective, in the lasting vigor inherent in the ties of kindred ; and perfect in its success, in achieving a lasting and harmonious union of the nations; it forms an enduring monument to that proud and progressive race, who reared under its protection, a wide-spread Indian sovereignty.
"All the institutions of the Iroquois, have regard to the division of the people into tribes. Originally with reference to marriage,
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 55
the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle Tribes, were brothers to each other, and cousins to the remaining four. They were not allowed to intermarry. The opposite four tribes were also brothers to each other, and cousins to the first four ; and were also prohibited from intermarrying. Either of the first four tribes, however, could intermarry with either of the last four ; thus Hawk could inter- marry with Bear or Beaver, Heron with Turtle ; but not Beaver and Turtle, nor Deer and Deer. Whoever violated these laws of marriage incurred the deepest detestation and disgrace. In process of time, however, the rigor of the system was relaxed, until finally, the prohibition was confined to the tribe of the individual, which among the residue of the Iroquois, is still religiously observed. They can now marry into any tribe but their own. Under the original as well as modern regulation, the husband and wife were of difi'erent tribes. The children always followed the tribe of the mother.
'•As the whole Iroquois system rested upon the tribes as an organic division of the people, it was very natural that the separate rights of each should be jealously guarded. Not the least remark- able among their institutions, of which most appear to have been original with the race, was that which confined the transmission of all titles, rights and property in the female line to the exclusion of the male. It is strangely unlike the canons of descent adopted by civilized nations, but it secured several important objects. If the Deer Tribe of the Cayugas, for example, received a sachem- ship or warchiefship at the original distribution of these offices, the descent of such title being limited to the female line, it could never pass out of the tribe. It thus became instrumental in giving the tribe individuality. A still more marked result, and perhaps leading object, of this enactment was, the perpetual disinheritance of the son. Being of the tribe of his mother, it formed an impas- sable barrier against him ; and he could neither succeed his father as a sachem, nor inherit from him even his medal, or his toma- hawk. The inheritance, for the protection of tribal rights, was thus directed from the descendants of the sachem, to his brothers, his sisters, children, or some individual of the tribe at large under certain circumstances ; each and all of whom were in his tribe, while his children being in another's tribe, as before remarked, were placed out of the line of succession.
" By the operation of this principle, also, the certainty of descent in the tribe, of their principal chiefs, was secured by a rule infal- lible ; for the child must be the son of its mother, although not necessarily of its mother's husband. If the purity of blood be of any moment, the lawgivers of the Iroquois established the only certain rule the case admits of, whereby the assurance might be enjoyed that the ruling sachem was of the same family or tribe with the first taker of the title.
" The Iroquois mode of computing degrees of consanguinity
56 HISTORY OF THE
was unlike that of the civil or canon law ; but was yet a clear and definite system. No distinction was made between the Hneal and collateral line, either in the ascending or descending series. The maternal grandmother and her sisters were equally grandmothers ; the mother and her sisters were equally mothers ; the children of a mother's sisters were brothers and sisters ; the children of a sister would be nephews and nieces ; and the grandchildren of a sister would be his grandchildren — that is to say, the grandchil- dren of the propositus, or individual from whom the degree of relationship is reckoned. These were the chief relatives within the tribe, though not fully extended to number. Out of the tribe, the paternal grandfather and his brothers were equally grand- fathers ; the father and his brothers equally fathers ; the father's sisters were aunts, while, in the tribe, the mother's brothers were uncles ; the father's sister's children would be cousins as in the civil law ; the children of these cousins would be nephews and nieces, and the children of these nephews and nieces would be his grandchildren, or the grandchilden of the propositus. Again : the children of a brother would be his children, and the grand- children of a brother would be his grandchildren ; also, the children of a father's brothens, are his brothers and sisters, instead of cousins, as under the civil law ; and lastly, their children are his grandchildren, or the grandchildren of the propositus.
"It was the leading object of the Iroquois law of descent, to merge the collateral in the lineal line, as sufficiently appears in the above outline. By the civil law, every departure from the common ancestor in the descending series, removed the collateral from the lineal ; while, by the law under consideration, the two lines were finally brought into one.* Under the civil law mode of computation, the degrees of relationship become too remote to be traced among collaterals; while, by the mode of the Iroquois, none of the collaterals were lost by remoteness of degree. The number of those linked together by the nearer family ties, was largely mul- tiplied by preventing, in this manner, the subdivision of a family into collateral branches.
" The succession of the rulers of the Confederacy is one of the most intricate subjects to be met with in the political system of the Hodenosaunee. It has been so difficult to procure a satisfactory exposition of the enactments by which the mode of succession was
* The following are the nnmes of the several degrees of relationship, recognized among the Hodenosaunee, in the language of the Seneca :
Hoc-sote, Grandfather. Hoc-no-eeh, Uncle.
Uc-sote, Grandmother. Ah-geh-huc, Aunt,
Ha-nih, Father. Ha-yan-wan-deh, Nephew.
Noh-yeh, Mother. Ka-yan-wan-deh, Niece.
Ho-ah-wuk, Son. Da-ya-gwa-dan-no-da, Brothers and Sisters.
Go-ah wuk. Daughter. Ah-gare-seh, Cousin.
Ka-1-a-da, Grandchildren.
HOLLAND PURCHASE. 57
regulated, that the sachemships have sometimes been considered elective ; at others, as hereditary. Many of the obstacles which beset the inquiry are removed by the single fact, that the titles of sachem and war-chief are absolutely hereditary in the tribe to which they were originally assigned ; and can never pass out of it, but with its extinction. How far these titles were hereditary in that pai't of the family of the sachem or war-chief, who were of the same tribe with himself, becomes the true question to consider. The sachem's brothers, and the sons of his sisters, are of his tribe, and consequently in the line of succession. Between a brother and a nephew of the deceased, there was no law which estab- lished a preference ; neither between several brothers, on the one hand, and several sons of a sister, on the other, was there any law of primogeniture ; nor, finally, was there any positive law, that the choice should be confined to the brothers of the deceased ruler, or the descendants of his sister in the female line, until all these should fail, before a selection could be made from the tribe at lai'ge. Hence, it appears, so far as positive enactments were concerned, that the otiices of sachem and war-chief, as between the eight tribes, were hereditary in the particular tribe in which they ran; while they were elective, as between the male members of the tribe itself.
" In the absence of laws, designating with certainty the indi- vidual upon whom the inheritance should fall, custom would come in and assume the force of law, in directing the manner of choice, from among a number equally eligible. Upon the decease of a sachem, a tribal council assembled to determine upon his successor. The choice usually fell upon a son of one of the deceased ruler's sisters, or upon one of his brothers — in the absence of physical and moral objections ; and this preference of one of his near relatives would be suggested by feelings of respect for his memory. Infancy was no obstacle : it uniting only the necessity of setting over him a guardian, to discharge the duties of a sachem until he reached a suitable age. It sometimes occurred that all the rela- tives of the deceased were set aside, and a selection was made from the tribe generally ; but it seldom thus happened, unless from the great unfitness of the near relatives of the deceased.
" When the individual was finally determined, the nation sum- moned a council, in the name of the deceased, of all the sachems of the league ; and the new sachem was raised up by such council, and invested with his office.
" In connection with the power of the tribes to designate the sachems and war-chiefs, should be noticed the equal power of deposition. If, by misconduct, a sachem lost the confidence and respect of tribe, and became unworthy of authority, a tribal council at once deposed him ; and, having selected a successor, summoned a council of the Confederacy, to perform the ceremony of liis investiture.
58 HISTORY OF THE
" Still further to illustrate the characteristics of the tribes of the Iroquois, some reference to their mode of bestowing names would not be inapt.* Soon after the birth of an infant, the near relatives of the same tribe selected a name. At the first subsequent council of the nation, the birth and name were publicly announced, together with the name and tribe of the father, and the name and tribe of the mother. In each nation the proper names were so strongly marked by a tribal peculiarity, that the tribe of the indi- vidual could usually be determined from the name alone. Making, as they did, a part of their language, they were, consequently, all significant. When an individual was raised up as a sachem, his original name was laid aside, and that of the sachemship itself assumed. The war-chief followed the same rule. In hke manner, at the raising up of a chief, the council of the nation which per- forms the ceremony, took away the former name of the incipient chief and assigned him a new one, perhaps, like Napoleon's titles, commemorative of the event which led to its bestowment. Thus, when the celebrated Red-Jacket was elevated by election to the dignity of chief, his original name, 0-te-ti-an-i (Always Ready) was taken from him, and in its place was bestowed Sa-go-ve- WAT-HA, (Keeper Awake,) in allusion to the powers of his eloquence.
" It now remains to define a tribe of the Hodenosaunee. From the preceding considerations it sufficiently appears, that it was not, like the Grecian and Roman, a circle or group of families ; for two tribes were, necessarily, represented in every family : neither, hke the Jewish, was it constituted of the lineal descendants of a com- mon father ; on the contrary, it distinctly involves the idea of descent from a common mother : nor has it any resemblance to the Scottish clan, or the Canton of the Switzer. In the formation of an Iroquois tribe, a portion was taken from many households, and bound together by a tribal bond. The bond consisted in the ties of consanguinity ; for all the members of the tribe, thus composed, were connected by relationships, which, under their law of descents, were easily traceable. To the tribe attached the incident of descent in the female line, the prohibition of intermarriage, the capacity of holding and exercising political rights, and the ability to contract and sustain relationships with the other tribes.
'' The wife, her children, and her descendants in the female line, would, in perpetuity, be linked wiih the destinies of her own tribe and kindred ; while the husband, his brothers and sisters, and the descendants of the latter, in the female line, would, in like manner, be united to another tribe, and held by its affinities. Herein was a bond of union between the several tribes of the same nation, corresponding, in some degree, with the cross-rela-
* Like the ancient Saxons, the Iroquois had neither a prenomen, nor a cognomen; but contented themselves with a single name.
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tionship founded upon consanguinity, which bound together the tribes of the same emblem in the diflerent nations.
" Of the comparative value of these institutions, when contrasted with those of civilized countries, and of their capability of eleva- ting the race, it is not necessary here to inquire. It was the boast of the Iroquois that the great object of their confederacy was peace: — to break up the spirit of perpetual warfare, which wasted the red race from age to age. Such an insight into the true end and object of all legitimate government, by those who constructed this tribal league, excites as great surprise as admiration. It is the highest and the noblest aspect in which human institutions can be viewed; and the thought itself — universal peace among Indian races possible of attainment — was a ray of intellect from no ordinary mind. To consummate such a purpose, the Iroquois nations were to be concentrated into one political fraternity; and in a manner effectively to prevent off-shoots and secessions. By its natural growth, this fraternity would accumulate sufficient power to absorb adjacent nations, moulding them, successively, by affiliation, into one common family. Thus, in its nature, it was designed to be a progressive confederacy. What means could have been employed with greater promise of success than the stupendous system of relationships, which was fabricated through the division of the Hodenosaunee into tribes? It was a system sufficiently ample to infold the whole Indian race. Unlimited in their capacity for extension ; inflexible in their relationships ; the tribes thus interleagued would have suffered no loss of unity by their enlargement, nor loss of strength by the increasing distance between their council-fires. The destiny of this league, if it had been left to work out its results among the red race exclusively, it is impossible to conjecture. With vast capacities for enlargement, with remarkable durability of structure, and a vigorous, animating spirit, it must have attained a great elevation and a general supremacy."
The Confederacy was based upon terms of perfect equality; equal rights and immunities were secured to each integral part. If in some respects there would seem to be especial privileges, and precedence, it is explained as arising from locality or convenience; as in the case of the Senecas being allowed to have the head war chiefs, the Mohawks being the receivers of tribute from subjugated nations; or the Onondagas, the central nation, supplying their Ta- do-da-hoh and his successors. "The nations were divided into classes or divisions, and when assembled in general council were arranged on opposite sides of the Council fire; on the one side stood the Mohawks, Onondagas and Senecas, who as nations, were regarded as brothers to each other, but as fathers to the remainder.
60 HISTORY OF THE
Upon the other side were the Oneidas and Cayugas, and at a suljy sequent day, the Tuscaroras ; who in like manner were brother nations by interchange, but sons to the three first. These divisions were in harmony with their system of relationships, or more prop- erly formed a part of it. They may have secured for the senior nations increased respect, but they involve no idea of dependence in the junior, or inequality in civil rights."
There was no annual or other fixed periods for the assembling of the general Council. It was convened only when there was occasion for it. When not in session, there was no visible general government; nor in fact, a need of any, as the local governments were so constituted as to subserve all the ordinay purposes. When events occured that concerned the general welfare, the council was convened, the business despatched, and then followed a mutual prorogation; an example worthy of imitation by modern legislators. With the Iroquois law makers, however, there was no self-sacrifice involved, no inducement to protracted sessions. Their services were gratuitous. Having no other government, the councils were the sole arbiters in all their concerns : — they made war, planned systems of offence and defence ; regulated successions, their ath- letic games, dances and feasts. " The life of the Iroquois was either spent in the chase, or the war path, or at the council fire." Simplicity marked every feature of their system, and yet all was effective, and accomplished its purpose. Councils were convened by runners who were sent out with their belts of wampum, indica- ting the nature of the emergency, or the business in hand. In proportion as it was urgent, or interesting, would be the attendance of lay members, or those who constitute " the third house," in modern legislation. Upon important occasions, when matters' of great moment were to be discussed and determined, the villages of the several nations would be nearly depopulated ; the mass of the subjects of the League would flock to the council fire, and make a formidable lobby in its precincts. Their interests and curiosity, it is aflirmed were excited by a regard for the general welfare. There were no special favors to be asked or granted. This was a long while anterior to the invention of the system of "log-rolling." The primitive childrpn of the forest, were less sinister in all their motives and incentives, than the race that has succeeded them. Among the general powers vested in the council of the confede- racy, may be enumerated those of declaring war and making
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peace, of admitting new nations into the league, or of incorporating fragments of nations into those existing, of extending jurisdiction over subjugated territory, of levying tribute, of sending and renew- ing embassies, of forming alliances, and of enacting and executing laws. Unanimity was a fundamental law.* The idea of majori- ties and minorities was entirely unknown to our Indian predecessors. To hasten their deliberations to a conclusion and ascertain the result, they adopted an expedient which dispensed entirely with the necessity of casting votes. The founders of the Confederacy, seeking to obviate as far as possible, altercations in council, and to facilitate their progress to unanimity, divided the sachems of each nation into classes, usually of two and three each. Each sachem was forbidden to express an opinion in council, until he had agreed with the other sachems of his class, upon the opinion to be expressed, and had received an appointment to act as speaker of his class. Thus the eight Seneca sachems, being in four classes, could have but four opinions ; the ten Cayuga sachems but four. In this manner, each class was brought to unanimity within itself. A cross consultation was then held between the four sachems who represented the four classes, and when they had agreed, they appointed one of their number to express their opinion, which was the answer of the nation. The several nations having by this ingenious method become of " one mind," separately, it remained to compare their several opinions, to arrive at the final sentiment of all the sachems of the league. This was effected by a cross conference between the individual representatives of the several nations ; and when they had arrived at unanimity, the answer of the Confederacy was determined, f
When the white man first entered this, the country of the Seneca Iroquois, he found deeply indented, well trodden paths, threading the forests in different directions. They led from village to village, thence to their favorite hunting and fishing grounds, or here
* Their war against the French was declared by a unanimous vote. After this, when the question came up of taking the British side in the war of the Revolution, the coun- cil was divided, a number of the Oneida sachems strongly opposing it, and although most of the confederates were allies of the English in that contest, it was an act of the League, but each nation chose its own position.
tThe senate of the United States, in 1838, committed a great error in abrogating this unanimity principle, and substituting the rule of the majority, in reference to the sale of Seneca lands to the pre-emptionists. It was over-riding an ancient law of the confede- racy, and in fact, as was the ultimate result, aiding a system of coercion and briber\-, to dispossess them of their reservations.
62 HISTORY OF THE
and there marked their intercourse with neighboring aboriginal nations. They are termed Trails. They were the routes pursued by the French Missionaries and traders, by the Dutch and English in their intercourse with the Indians; by the British troops and Indians of Canada in their incursions into Western New-York, during the Revolution; by Butler's rangers, in all their bloody enterprises to the valleys of the Mohawk and Susquehannah; and afterwards guided our early Pioneers through the forest, enabling them to appreciate the beauty and value of this goodly land. With reference to the Holland Purchase, these trails were mainly as follows : —
The trail from the east, the valleys of the Hudson, the Mohawk, &c., passing through Canandaigua, West Bloomfield and Lima, came upon the Genesee River at Avon; crossing the River a few rods above the Bridge it went up the west bank to the Indian village a mile above the ford, and then bore off north-west to Cale- donia. Turning westward, it crossed Allen's creek at Le Roy, and Black creek at Stafford, coming upon the banks of the Tonawanda a little above Batavia. Passing down the east bank of that stream, around what was early known as the Great Bend, at the Arsenal it turned north-west, came upon the openings at Caryville, and bearing westwardly across the openings it crossed the Tonawanda at the Indian village. Here the trail branched: — one branch taking a north-westwardly direction, re-crossed the creek below the village, and passing through the Tonawanda swamp, emerged from it nearly south-east of Royahon Centre, coming out upon the Lockport and Batavia road in the valley of Millard's Brook, and from thence it continued upon the Chestnut Ridge to the Cold Springs. Pursuing the route of the Lewiston road, with occasional deviations it struck the Ridge Road at Warren's. It followed the Ridge until it passed Hopkins' Marsh, when it gradually ascended the Mountain Ridge, passed through the Tuscarora village, and then down again to the Ridge Road, which it continued on to the River. This was the principal route into Canada, crossing from Lewiston to Queenston; a branch trail however, going down the River to Fort Niagara.
The other branch of the trail leaving the village of Tonawanda, took a south-west direction, and crossing Murder creek at Akron, it came upon the Buffalo road at Clarence Hollow ; from thence west, nearly on the line of the Buffalo road to Williams ville, cross- ing EUicott's creek it continued its westerly course to the Cold
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Springs near Buffalo, and entering the city at what havS since become the head of Main Street, it came out at the mouth of Buf- falo creek. A branch Trail diverging at Clarence came upon the Cayuga branch of the Buffalo creek at Lancaster, thence down that stream to the Seneca village, and down the Buffalo creek to its entrance into the lake.
The Ontario trail, starting from Oswego, came upon the Ridge Road at Irondequoit Bay; then turning up the Bay to its head, where a branch trail went to Canandaigua, it turned west, crossing the Genesee River at the acqueduct, and passing down the river, came again upon the Ridge Road, which it pursued west to near the west line of Hartland, Niagara county, where it diverged to the south-west, crossing the east branch of the Eighteen-mile Creek, and forming a junction with the Canada or Niagara trail at the Cold Springs.
From Mount Morris, on the Genesee River, a trail passed up the river to Gardow, and Canadea, and from thence to Allegany River at Olean.
A trail left Little Beard's Town on the Genesee river, and cross- ing the east line of the Holland Purchase, entered it in the north side of T. 10 R. 1, and crossing the north-east corner of T. 10 R. 2, and south-west corner of T. 1 1 same range, passed through the south sides of T. 11 R. 3. T. 11 R. 4, T. 11 R. 5, entered the Seneca Resefvation at the south-west corner of the latter township ; and pursuing a westerly course, came upon the banks of Buffalo creek, near the Seneca Indian village.
These were the principal highways of the Seneca Iroquois. How nearly the simple primitive paths of the aborigines, corres- pond with our now principal thorough-fares ; but how changed ! The trails are obliterated in the progress of improvement, the forests that enshrouded them are principally cleared away, and in their place are turnpikes, M'Adam roads, canals, rail roads, and tele- graphic posts and wires. The waters upon which they paddled their bark canoes, supply our canals; the swamps they avoided, and the ridges they traversed, are passed along and across by our steam propelled locomoti'ves. The "forked lightning," they saw in the clouds, which occasionally scathed the tall trees of their forest home, reminding them of the power and omnipotence of the Great Spirit they adored, the Manitou of their simple creed, — is
64 HISTORY OF THE
tamed, and in an instant accomplishes the purposes, that employed their swiftest runners for days !
" The wild man hates restraint, and loves to do what is right in his own eyes."* Hence there was little in all the frame work of the government of the Iroquois, of restraint or coercive laws. They seemed to have acted upon the maxim that "nations are governed too much." And this principle extended in a great degree to family government. Their children were reproved, not injured or beaten, and none but the milder forms of punishment ever resorted to. Theirs was a simple form of government — so simple as to excite a wonder that it could have been effectual; — an oligarchy, and yet cherishing the democratic principle, of the common good; an here- ditary council in whom was vested all power, and yet there was no castes, no privileged orders; no conventional or social exclusiveness. Their system of government, like themselves, is a mystery. Both have been but imperfectly understood; both are well worthy of enquiry and investigation. The student, or historical reader of our country, may well turn occasionally from the beaten track of our colleges and schools — from the histories of far off ages, races and people — and taking the humble "trails" of the Iroquois, see if there is not in the history of our own country — our predecessors — that which will interest and instruct him.
As has been assumed in the preceding pages, the Seneca branch of the Iroquois were our immediate predecessors; out we gather from their traditions, and from the writings of the earliest Jesuit
Note. — At the time of the delivery of the admirable * Letters on the Iroquois,' before the N. Y. Historical Society ; or rather when that portion of them which related to the Trails was read. Dr. Peter Wilson, an educated Cayuga chief, happened to be present. He accepted an invitation to address the Society. 'He spoke with such pathos and eloquence of his people and his race, their ancient prowess and generosity — their present weakness and dependence — and especially upon the hard fate of a small band of Senacas and Cayugas which had recently been hurried into the western wilderness to perish, that all present were deeply moved by his eloquence.' ' The land of Ga-nun-no, or the ' Empire State' as you love to call it, was once laced by our Trails from Albany to Buffalo — Trails that we had trod for centuries — trails Worn so deep by the feet of the Iroquois, that they became your roads of travel as your pos- sessions gradually eat into those of my people ! Your roads still traverse those same lines of communication which bound one part of the Long House to the other. Have we, the first holders of this prosperous region, no longer a share in your history ? Glad were your fathers to set down upon the threshold of the Long House. Rich did they hold themselves in getting the mere sweepings from its door. Had our forefathers spurned you from it when the French were thundering at the opposite side to get a passage through, and drive you into the sea, whatever has been the fate of other Indians, we might still have had a nation, and I — I, instead of pleading here for the privilege of lingering within your borders, I — I might have had a country.'
* Bancroft.
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Missionaries, that they had only possessed the country west of the Genesee river, since about the middle of the seventeenth century. In the "Relations of the Jesuits" there is a letter from Father L' Allemaxt to the Provincial of the Jesuits in France, dated at St. Mary's Mission, May 19, 1641, in which he gives an account of a journey made to the country of the Neuter Nation the year previous, by Jean de Brebeuf and Joseph Marie Chau3ionot, two Jesuit Fathers. As this letter is one of the earliest reminiscence of this region, other than Indian tradition, the author copies it entire:
"Jean de Brebeuf and Joseph Marie Chaumonot, two Fathers of our company which have charge of the Mission to the Neuter Nation set out from St. Marie on the 2d day of November, 1640, to visit this people. Father Brebeuf is peculiarly fitted for such an expedition, God having in an eminent degree endowed him with a capacity for learning languages. His companion was also consid- ered a proper person for the enterprise.
"Although many of our French in that quarter have visited this people to profit by their furs and other commodities, we have no knowledge of any who have been there to preach the gospel except Father De la Roch Daillon, a Recollect, who passed the winter there in the year 1626.
" The nation is very populous, there being estimated about forty villages. After leaving the Hurons it is four or five days journey or about forty leagues to the nearest of their villages, the course being nearly due south. If, as indicated by the latest and most exact observations we can make, our new station, St. Marie,* in the interior of the Huron country, is in north latitude about 44 degrees, 25 minutes, then the entrance of the Neuter Nation from the Huron side, is about 44 degrees, f More exact surveys and observations, cannot now be made, for the sight of a single instru- ment would bring to extremes those who cannot resist the temptation of an inkhorn.
" From the first village of the Neuter Nation that we met with in travelling from this place, as we proceed south or southwest, it is about four days travel to the place where the celebrated river of the nation empties into lake Ontario, or St. Louis. On the west side of that river, and not on the east, are the most numerous of the villages of the Neuter Nation. There are three or four on the cast side, extending from east to west towards the Eries, or Cat nation.-'
Note. — This would of course be along our side of the Niagara, and probably extended along the shores of lake Erie.
* A Jesuit Mission on the river Severn, near the eastern extremity of lake Huron, t The good father is about a degree out of the way. 5
66 HISTORY OF THE
" This river is that by which our great lake of the Hurons, or fresh sea, is discharged, which first empties into the lake of Erie, or of the nation of the Cat, from thence it enters the territory of the Neuter Nation, and takes the name of Oiiguiaaliiri, (Niagara,) until it empties into Ontario or St. Louis lake, from which latter flows the river which passes before Quebec, called the St. Lawrence, so that if we once had control of the side of the lake nearest the residence of the Iroquois, we could ascend by the river St. Lawrence, without danger, even to the Neuter Nation, and much beyond, with great saving of time and trouble.
" According to the estimate of these illustrious fathers who have been there, the Neuter Nation comprises about 12,000 souls, which enables them to furnish 4,000 warriors, notwithstanding war, pestilence and famine have prevailed among them for three years in an extraordinary manner.
" After all, I think that those who have heretofore ascribed such an extent and population to this nation, have understood by the Neuter Nation, all who live south and southwest of our Hurons, and who are truly in great number, and, being at first only partially known, have all been comprised under the same name. The more perfect knowledge of their language and country, which has since been obtained, has resulted in a clearer distinction between the tribes. Our French who first discovered this people, named them the 'Neu- ter Nation ' ; and not without reason, for their country being the ordinary passage, by land, between some of the Iroquois nations and the Hurons, who are sworn enemies, they remained at peace v\Tth both ; so that in times past, the Hurons and Iroquois, meeting in the same wigwam or village of that nation, were both in safety while they remained. Recently, their enmity against each other is so great, that there is no safety for either party in any place, particularly for the Hurons, for whom the Neuter Nation entertain the least good will.
" There is every reason for believing, that not long since, the Hurons, Iroquois, and Neuter Nations, formed one people, and originally came from the same family, but have in the lapse of time, became separated from each other, more or less, in distance, interests and affection, so that some are now enemies, others neutral, and others still live in intimate friendship and intercourse.
" The food and clothing of the Neuter Nation seem httle different from that of our Hurons. They have Indian corn, beans and gourds in equal abundance. Also plenty of fish, some kinds of which abound in particular places only.
"They are much employed in hunting deer, buffalo, wildcats, wolves, wild boars, beaver, and other animals. Meat is very abundant this year, an account of the heavy snow, w^hich has aided the hunters. It is rare to see snow in this country more than half a foot deep. But this year it is more than three feet.
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There is also abundance of wild turkeys, which go in flocks in the fields and woods,
" Their iruits are the same as with the Hurons, except chestnuts, which are more abundant, and crab apples, which are somewhat larger.
" The men, like all savages, cover their naked flesh with skins, but are less particular than the Hurons in concealing what should not appear. The squaws are ordinarily clothed, at least from the waist to the knees, but are more free and shameless in their immod- esty than the Hurons.
"As for their remaining customs and manners, they are almost entirely similar to the other savage tribes of the country.
" There are some things in which they diflcr from our Hurons. They are larger, stronger, and better formed. They also entertain a great affection for the dead, and have a greater number of fools or jugglers,
" The Sonontonheronons, (Senecas) one of the Iroquois nations, the nearest to and most dreaded by the Hurons, are not more than a day's journey distant from the easternmost village of the Neuter Nation, named 'Onguiaahra' (Niagara) of the same name as the river.
"Our fathers returned from the mission in safety, not having found in all the eighteen villages which they visited, but one, named ^Khe-o-e-tn-a,^ or St, Michael, which gave them the reception which their embassy deserved. In this village, a certain foreign nation, which lived beyond the lake of Erie, or of the nation of the ('at, named '•A-ouen-re-ro-non^^ has taken refuge for many years for fear of their enemies, and they seem to have been brought here by a good Providence, to hear the word of God."
Charlevoix says that in the year 1G42, " a people, larger, stronger, and better formed than any other savages, and who lived south of the Huron country, were visited by the Jesuits, who preached to them the Kingdom of God. They were called the Neuter Nation, because they took no part in the wars which deso- lated the country. But in the end, they could not themselves, escape entire destruction. To avoid the fury of the Iroquois, they finally joined them against the Hurons, but gained nothing by the union. The Iroquois, that like lions that have tasted blood, cannot be satiated, destroyed indiscriminately all that came in their way, and at this day, there remains no trace of the Neuter Nation." In another place, the same author says that the Neuter Nation was destroyed about the year 1013, La Fiteu, in his '■'JMcrurs dcs Sauvages,^^ published at Paris in 1724, relates, on the authority of Father Garxier, a Jesuit Missionary, the origin of the quarrel
68 HISTORY OF THE
between the Senecas and the Neuter Nation, which is hinted at in the letter of Father L' Allemant. He says, " the war did not terminate but by the total destruction of the Neuter Nation."
Mr. Schoolcraft assumes that the Senecas had warred upon, conquered the Neuter Nation, and come in possession of their terri- tory, twenty-four years before the advent of La Salle upon the Niagara river. A writer in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser of March, 1846, who is named in the preface of this work, says: — " From all that can be derived from history, it is very probable, that the Kah-Kwas and the Neutral Nation were identical, that the singular tribe whose institution of neutrality has been likened by an eloquent writer, to a 'calm and peaceful island looking out upon a world of waves and tempests,' in whose wigwams the fierce Hurons and relentless Iroquois met on neutral ground, fell victims near this city, (Buffalo) to the insatiable ferocity of the latter. They were the first proprietors, as far as we can learn, of the soil we now occupy. Their savage spoilers gave them a grave on the spot which they died in defending, and have recently, in their turn, yielded to the encroachments of a more powerful adversary. The white man is now lord of the soil where the fires of the nation are put out forever. Around that scene, the proudest recollections and devout associations of the Senecashave long loved to Hnger. Let it be forever dedicated to the repose of the dead. Let the sanctity of the grave be inviolate. A simple enclosure should protect a spot which will increase in interest with the lapse of time." *
The Senecas have within few years, yielded to the importunities and appliances of the pre-emptionists, and abandoned their Reser- vation. It is now in the hands of another race. The plough, the pickaxe and spade, will soon obliterate all that remains of the evidences of the conquests of their ancestors. " It is a site around which the Senecas have clung, as if it marked an era in their national history; although the work was clearly erected by their enemies. It has been the seat of their government or council fire, from an early period of our acquaintance with them. It was here that Red Jacket uttered some of his most eloquent harrangues against the steady encroachments of the white race, and in favor
* The spot here alluded to, is upon the Reservation near Buffalo, on the creek, near the old council and mission houses. The author has included it in some preceding notices of ancient remains : but yielding to the better knowledge in this branch of histor}-, of the author of the above extract, he is disposed to regard it as he has assumed, the field of fintd conquest of this region, by the Senecas.
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of retaining this cherished portion of their lands, and transmitting them with full title to their descendants. It was here that the noted captive, Dehewamis, better known as Mary Jemison, came to live after a long life of most extraordinary vicissitudes. And it is here that the bones of the distinguished orator, and the no less distinguished captive, rest, side by side, with a multitude of warriors, chiefs and sages. But there will soon be no one left whose heart vibrates with the blood of a Seneca, to watch the venerated resting places of their dead." *
And in this connection it may be well to observe generally, that at the period when the French Missionaries and traders first reached the southern shores of lake Ontario and the Niagara river, the Neuter Nation was in possession of the region west of the Genesee river, including both sides of the Niagara river. The immediate domain of the Senecas, was east of the Genesee, until it reached that of the Cayugas. The Hurons occupied the interior of Canada West, west to lake Huron. The domain of the Eries, or Cat nation, according to Hennepin, commenced upon the southern shore of lake Erie, the dividing line between them and the Neuter Nation being about midway, up the lake. After the conquest of the Neuter Nation, the Senecas conquered the Eries, as is supposed, about the year 1653.
There are few into whose hand this local history will fall, who are not familiar with the general character, domestic habits, &c., of the aborigines. The first settlers of the Holland Purchase, had them for their primitive neighbors, and they even now, diminished as they are, linger among us in four locahties: — at Tuscarora, Tonawanda, Cattaraugus and Alleghany. Their eloquence, their deeds of valor, their peculiarly interesting traits of character; the wrongs they have done our race, as traced .in the often too highly colored, but generally truthful legends of the Mohawk and the Susquehannah; and the terrible retributions that have, in turn, been visited upon their race, in the extinguishing of most of the fires that " blazed in their Long House from the Hudson to lake Erie"— in subjecting them to the urgent and pressing overtures of pre-emptionists, who were better schooled in the diplomacy of bargain and gain, than were these men of simple habits and of honest impulses; and last and worst of all,
* Schoolcraft.
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in visiting upon them the curse of the darker features of civiliza- tion. With all this, the reader, in most instances, will be familiar; a part of it is interwoven in the nursery tales of our region. The author has only aimed thus far to give a general idea of the Indians as found here by the first European adventurers, and afford an insight, an induction, into their political institutions, their system of government, laws, &,c. , which have been subjects of too recent investigation, to admit of any very general familiarity with them. He is admonished that this branch of his main subject, is occupying too much space here, inasmuch as the Seneca Iroquois especially, must be frequently mingled with the local annals of our own race, as they will occur in chronological narra+ive.
^
PART SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES.
The prevailing spirit of the INIonarchs of Europe, and their subjects, during the fifteenth and a greater portion of tlie sixteenth centuries, tended to the enlargement of their dominions, and the extension of their powers. In the latter end of the fourteenth century, Colu3ibus had discovered a New World. vSpain then at the height of its prosperity and grandeur, profiting by the discoveries of an expedition that had sailed under her flag, under the auspices of her Queen had followed up the event, by farther discoveries and colonization in the Southern portion of our con- tinent. The reigning monarch of England, Hexry VII, stimu- lated by regret that he had allowed a rival power to be the fii-st in the discovery of a continent, the advantages and resources of which, as the tidings of the discovery were promulgated, dazzled the eyes and awakened the emulation of all Europe; ambitious to make his subjects co-discoverers with the subjects of the Spanish monarch; listened with favor to the theory of John Cabot, a Venetian, but a resident of England — who inferred that as lands had been discovered in the southwest, they might also be in the northwest, and offered to the king to conduct an expedition in this direction.
With a commission of discovery, granted by the king, and a ship provided by him, and four small vessels equipped by the merchants of Bristol, Cabot with his son Sebastian, set sail from England, in less than three years after Columbus had discovered the Island of San Salvador. As the discovery of Columbus was incidental to the main object of his daring enterprise — the discovery of a shorter route to the Indies, — the Cabots, adopting
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his opinion that he had discovered one of the outskirts or depend- encies of those countries, conceived that they had only to bear to the northwest, to find a still shorter route. Taking that course they reached the continent of North America, discovering the Islands of New Foundland and St. John, and sailed along it from the confines of Labrador to the coast of Virginia. Thus, England was the second nation that visited the western world, and the first that discovered the vast continent that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico towards the north pole. Instead of discovering a shorter route to the Indies, the one discovered a New World, and the other, by far the most important portions of it.
From dissentions and troubles that existed at home, and some schemes of family ambition that diverted his attention, Cabot found his patron king, on his return, indisposed to profit by his important discoveries. All the benefit that accrued to England from this enterprise, was a priority of discovery that she afterwards had frequent occasion to assert.
In 1498, the Cabots, father and son, made a second expedi- tion, with the double object of traffic with the natives, and in the quaint language of their commission, to explore and ascertain "what manner of landes those Indies were to inhabit." They sailed for Labrador by the way of Iceland, but on reaching the coast, impelled by the severity of the cold, and a declared purpose of exploring farther to the south, they sailed along the shores of the United States to the southern boundary of Maryland; after which, they returned to England.
Portugal, desirous of participating in the career of discovery, in 1501, fitted out an expedition under the command of Gaspar CoRTEREAL. The uiost northern point he gained was probably about the fiftieth degree. The expedition resulted in a partial survey of the coast, and the taking captive of fifty Indians that were taken to Portugal and sold as slaves.
It was twenty-seven years after the last voyage of Cabot, under English auspices that Francis I, King of France, awakened by the spirit of adventure, and protesting against the partition that had made of the newly discovered continent, by the Pope, between Spain and Portugal, soon after its discovery; and determined not to overlook the commercial interests of his people; extended his patronage to John de Verrazana, ordering him to set sail for that country "of which so much was spoken at the time in France."
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The account of his first voyage is not presei-ved. He sailed with four ships, encountered storms in the north, landed in Britain; and going from thence to the island of Madeira, started from there with a single vessel, the Dolphin, with fifty men and provisions for eight months. After a stormy passage he arrived in latitude 34 deg. near Wilmington, North Carolina. In his own report to his king and patron, he says : —
"Great store of people came to the sea side, and seeing us approach they fled away, and sometimes would stand still and look backc, beholding us with great admiration; but afterwards, being animated and assured with signs that we made them, some of them came hard to the sea side, seeming to rejoice very much at the sight of us, and marvelling greatly at our apparel, shape, and whitenesse; shewed us by sundry signes where we might most commodiouslv come to land with our boate, oflTering us also victuals to eat. Remaining there for a few days, and taking note of the country, he sailed northwardly, and viewed, if he did not enter, the harbor of New York. In the haven of Newport he remained for fifteen days, where he found the natives the ' goodliest people ' he had seen in his whole voyage. At one period during his coasting along the shores of New England, he was compelled for the sake of fresh water, to send off' his boat. The shore was lined with savages ' whose countenances betrayed at the same time, surpi'ise, joy and fear.' They made signs of friendship, and ' showed they were content we should come to land.' A boat with twenty-five men, attempted to land with some presents, but on nearing the shore were intimidated by the frightful appearance of the natives, and halted to turn back. One moi'e resolute than the rest, seizing a few of the articles designed as presents, plunged into the water and advanced within three or four yards of the shore. Throwing them the presents, he attempted to regain the boat, but was caught by a wave and dashed upon the beach. The savages caught him, and sitting him down by a large fire, took oflT his clothes. His comrades supposed he was to be ' roasted and eat.' Their fears subsided however, when they saw them testify their kindness by caresses. It turned out that they were only gratifying their curiosity in an examination of his person,, the 'whitenesse of his skin,' &c. They released him and after ' with great love clasping him faste about,' they allowed him to swim to his comrades. Verrazaxa found the natives of the more northern regions more hostile and jealous, from having, as has been inferred, been visited for the purpose of carrying them off" as slaves. At another anchorage, after following the shore fifty leagues, * an old woman with a young maid of 18 or 20 yeeres old, seeing our company, hid themselves in the grasse for feare; the old woman carried two infants on her shoulders, and behind her neck a child of 8 yeeres
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old. The young woman was laden likewise with as many; but when our men came unto them the woman cried out; the old wo- man made signs that the men were fled into the woods. As soon as they saw us, to quiet them, and to win their favor, our men gave them such victuals as they had with them to eate, which the old woman received thankfully, but the young woman threw them disdainfully on the ground. They took a child from the old woman to bring into France; and going about to take the young woman, which was very beautiful and of tall stature, they could not possibly, for the great outcries she made, bring her to the sea; and especially havmg great woodes to pass through, and being far from the ship, we purposed to leave her behind, bearing away the child onely.' At another anchorage,* ' there ran down into the sea an exceed- ing great streme of water, which at the mouth was very decjjc, and from the sea to the mouthe of the same, with the tide which they found to raise eight foote, any great ship laden might pass up.' Sending up their boat the natives expressed their admiration and showed them where they might safely come to land. They went up the river half a league, where it made a ' most pleasant lake, about three leagues in compass, on which the natives rode from one side to the other to the number of thirty of their small boats, wherein were many people which passed from one shore to the other.' At another anchorage they 'met the goodliest people and of the fairest conditions that they had found in their voyage : — exceeding us in bigness — of the color of brasse, some inclining to whiteness, black and quick eyed, of sweete and pleasant counte- nance, imitating much the old fashion.' Among them, they discovered pieces of wrought copper, which they 'esteemed more than gold.' ' They did not desire cloth of silk or of gold, or of other sort, neither did they care for things made of steel or iron, which we often shewed them in our armour, which they made no wonder at; and in beholding them they only asked the art of making them; the like they did at our glasses, which when they suddenly beheld, they laughed and gave them to us again.' The ship neared the land and finally cast anchor ' in the haven,' when, continues Verrazana, 'we bestowed fifteen days in providing ourselves with many necessary things, whither every day the people repaired to see our ship, bringing their wives with them whereof they were very jelous; and they themselves entering aboard the ship and staying there a good space, caused their wives to stay in their boats; and for all the entreaty we could make, offering to give them divers things, we could never obtaine that they should suffer to to come aboard our ship. Oftentimes one of the two kings (of this people) comming with his queene, and many gentlemen for their pleasure to see us, they all staid on shore two hundred paces from us till they sent a message they were coming. The queene and
* Off Sandy Hook, as has been inferred.
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her maides staid in a very light boat at an island a quarter of a league off, while the king abode along space in the ship, uttering divers conceits with gestures, viewing with great admiration the ship, demanding the property of everything particularly. ' There were plaines twenty- five or thirty leagues in width, which were open, and without any impediment.' They entered the woods and found them 'so greate and thick, that any army were it never so greate might have hid itself therein; the trees whei'eof are oakes, cipresse, and other sorts unknown in Europe.' The natives fed upon pulse that grew in the country, with better order of hus- bandry than in the others. They observed in their sowing the course of the moone and the rising of certain starres, and diverse other customes spoken of by antiquity. They dwell together in great numbers, some twenty-five or thirty persons in one house. They are very pitifull and charitable towards their neighbors, they make great lamentations in their adversitie, and in their miserie, the kindred reckone up all their felicite. At their departure out of life they use mourning mixed with singing which continue th for a
1 >> DO
long space.
Verrazana having coasted 700 leagues of new country, and being refitted with water and wood, returned to France, arriving at Dieppe in July, whence he addressed his letter to the king. His, in all probability, were the first interviews with the natives upon all our northern, and a part of our southern coast, and for that reason his narrative which gives us a glimpse of them in the primitive condition that civilization found them, possesses a great degree of interest. " We have detailed these instances in their favor," say Yates and Moulton, "because they arrived at a period when the warm native fountain of good feeling and disin- terested charity, had not been frozen by the chilly approach and death-like contact of civilized man. We have dwelt upon these incidents as the most interesting portion of Verrazana's adventures. They present human nature in an amiable point of view, when unsophisticated by metaphysical subtlety, undisguised by art, or even when adorned by the refinements, the pride and circumstance of civilization. They illustrate the position which we believe is true, that the natives of this continent, before they had been exasperated by the encroachments and provocations of Europeans, when the former were confiding and unsuspicious, without any foresight of the terrible disasters which their inter- views with the latter were destined to become the tragical prelude,
76 HISTORY OF THE
entertained uniform feelings of kindness, of hospitality and benevolence."
" When Columbus visited the new world, the natives viewed him as a super-natural being, and treated him with the veneration inseparable from a delusion, which Colon was wilHng to counte- nance. When Vespucius Americus landed, he also was treated as a superior being. When the Cabots coasted this continent, when Cartier first visited the St. Lawrence, when the French first settled in Florida as friends, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and after him the captains employed by Sir Walter Raleigh, first landed in Virginia, when Hudson discovered and explored our bay and river, when the Pilgrims colonized New England, the generous reception which they all met from the natives, should stand a monumental rebuke to be shameful prejudices too prevalent among ourselves, since we supplanted their desendants on a soil which their fathers left them as a patrimony. We will cite proofs of two instances which took place thirty-seven years apart, but which are given as a general illustration of our position. In the first report of Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, it is said by his captain, and those in the employ, in 1584, that they were enter- tained with as much bounty as they could possibly devise. They found the people most gentle, loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age."
The following is an extract from the first sermon ever preached in New England. It was by one of the Pilgrims, and bears date Dec. 1621: — *'Tous they (the Indians,) have been like lambs, so kind, so submissive and trusty, as a man may truly say many chris- tians are not so kind and sincere. When we first came into this country we were few, and many of us were sick, and many died by reason of the cold and wet, it being the depth of winter, and we having no houses or shelter; yet when there were not six able persons among us, and that they came daily to us by hundreds with their sachems or kings, and might in one hour have made a dispatch of us, &c. yet they never offered us the least injury. The greatest commander of the country, called Massasoit, cometh often to visit us, though he lives fifty miles from us, often sends us presents, &c."
And yet aggressions and wrongs commenced on the part of our race in its earliest intercourse with theirs. Verrazana after the reception he has himself acknowledged, attempted to carry away two of their people; Cabot had carried two as a present to his
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sovereign Henry VII, that were never returned. The Spaniards and Portugese immediately followed up their first intercourse with them by carrying them into captivity and slavery. Can it be wondered that in numerous instances that occurred in after attempts at settlement, in New England — upon the Hudson — in Virginia, North Carolina &c. — this primitive good feeling — the simple hospitality with which they met the first adventurers upon their shores, gave place to self-defence — perhaps revenge? Of the Spaniards, and their early intercourse with them, Kotzebue says: — "Wherever they moved in anger, desolation tracked their progress, — wherever they paused in amity, affliction mourned their friendship."
Well has it been observed that the Indian has had no historian of his own. Were some one of his own race, the chronicler of events; — commencing with the discovery of Columbus, and coming down to our present day of pre-emption bribes, and treaties attained with wrong and outrage; — he would gather up a fearful account which would meet with no adequate offsets. It would be that which would admit of but one manner of recompense: — the care- ful guardianship and protection hereafter of our states and general governments, and a co-operation in all measures that tend to pro- mote their rights, their peace and happiness, on the part of our people.
On the 20th of April, 1534, James Cartier, a mariner of St. Malo, was commissioned by Francis First, to fit out an expedition for the purpose of exploring and colonizing the new world. He sailed with two ships of sixty tons burthen, and each a crew of sixty men. He visited New Foundland, surveyed the coast, and returned. ^ The favorable report he was enabled to make, increased the confidence of his patron, and in May, 1535, he was enabled to set sail again with a squadron of three ships, well furnished. " A solemn and gorgeous pageant," a confessional and sacrament, and the benediction of a bishop attended his departure. In this voyage he passed to the west of New Foundland and entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence, gave it its name. In September, he ascended the river as far as the Island of Orleans. Here he met with the
Note. — In ascribing the discovery of the Hudson river to the navipator whose name it bears, it is assumed that the coasting and entering of rivers, of Verrazana did not embrace it. It is generally admitted, however, that he came to anchor at Sandy Hook and that the bay within it, is the "pleasant lake," he alludes to
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natives of the country. Although they considered the French intruders, and wished to prevent their further advances, they never- theless treated them with kindness and hospitality. To direct them from their purpose of advancing, they first gave them bountiful presents of corn and fish, and to discourage them they resorted to jugglery, in which they declared they had drawn maledictions from the Great Spirit, against them. They repre- sented that there was so much ice and snow in the countiy above, that certain death awaited them if they advanced. Undismayed by the arts and devices of the natives, the intrepid mariner contin- ued to ascend the river, and arrived at a principal Indian village called Hochelaga, the present site of Montreal. That region he found occupied by a branch of the Wyandot, or Hui'on tribe of Indians, who were there by recent conquest. " Having climbed the hill at the base of which lay the village, he beheld spread around him a gorgeous scene of woods and waters, promising glorious visions of future opulence and national strength. The hill he called Mount Royal, and this name was afterwards extended to the Island of Montreal. At that period, more than three centuries ago, the village of Hochelaga was surrounded by large fields of corn and stately forests. The hill called Montreal, was fertile and highly cultivated." The form of the village was round and encompassed with timber, with three courses of ramparts, framed like a sharp spire, but laid across above. The middlemost of them was made and built as a direct line, but perpendicular. These ramparts were framed and fashioned with pieces of timber laid along the ground, very well and cunningly joined together after this fashion: — The enclosure was in height about two rods. It had but one gate which was shut with piles, stakes aid bars. Over it, and also in many places in the wall there were places to run along and ladders to get up, full of stones for its defence. In the town there were about fifty houses, about fifty paces long and twelve or fifteen broad, built of wood, covered only with the bark of the wood as broad as any board, very finely and cunningly joined together. Within their houses there were many rooms, lodgings and chambers. In the midst of these, there was a great court, in the middle whereof they made their fire. They lived in common together. Then did the husbands, wives and children, each one retire themselves to their chambers. They also had on
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the tops of their houses, garrets, where they kept their corn to make their bread, which they called caraconnyy*
These Indians gave Cartier a glimpse of the vast region that lay at the west of him and for the first time perhaps directed French enterprise to a region where it was destined to occupy so wide a space. They told him there were three great lakes and a sea of fresh water f of which no man had found the end; that a river \ ran south-west, upon which there was a "month's sailing to go down to a certain land where there was no ice nor snow, where the inhabitants continually warred against each other," and where "there was a great abundance of oranges, lemons, nuts and apples"; that the people || there were clad as the French, lived in towns, were very honest, and had great stores of gold and copper.
By the authority of his king, and in the name of his country, Cartier erected a cross and shield, emblazoned with the arms of France, and called the country New France.
Cartier's report on his return from this voyage, was made with candor. "This country which he had visited abounded with no gold or precious stones and its shores were alledged to be bleak and stormy." The project of colonization was not renewed until six years after.
In 1540, Francis de la Roque, Seigneur de Roberval, was granted a charter by Francis I, which invested him wnth all the powers of his sovereign, over the newly discovered and claimed colony of New France. Under his immediate auspices a squadron of five ships was fitted out, with Cartier commissioned by the king as chief Pilot of the expedition. He was directed to take with him persons of every trade and art, and to dwell in the newly discovered territory. The expedition had an untoward commence- ment and ultimately resulted in but a feeble advance toward per- manent settlement. As good colonists could not be obtained to go to the inhospitable and bleak northern regions, the prisons and work houses of France were resorted to to supply the demand. In addition to this, a feeling of rivalry and jealousy sprang up between
* The author finds this ancient account of Hochelaga, in Lanman's History of Michijran.
tErie, Huron, Michigan. The "sea," lake Superior.
X The Mississippi.
II Florida and the Spanish colonies.
80 HISTORY OF THE
RoBERVAL. and Cartier. They neither embarked in company, nor acted in concert. Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence and built a fort at Quebec; but no considerable advances in geographical knowledge would seem to have been made. . In June, 1542 he returned to France. On the way back he met Roberval on the banks of New Foundland, with more provisions and arms, and returning with him to the fort, he assumed the command, while Roberval ascended the St. Lawrence. Cartier not entering with cordiality into the views or measures of Roberval, the expedition after remaining about a year returned to France.
In the career of French discovery in New France there occurs here an hiatus or suspension of over fifty years. The causes of this suspension may be found in that portion of the history of France which embraces that period; they were domestic troubles, civil war. &c., which divested the nation from all projects of discovery and colonization.
It was under the reign of Elizabeth, that England made the first attempt at colonization in America. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh, under the patronage of the Queen, fitted out two vessels, to "visit the districts which he intended to occupy, and to examine the accommodations of the coasts, the productions of the soil, and the condition of the inhabitants." These ships approached the North American Continent by the Gulf of Florida, and anchored in Roanoke Bay, oflf the coast of North Carolina. This was followed the year after by seven more ships, which left 108 men at the Roanoke Colony, The immediate prospect of forming a colony was finally unsuccessful. A fleet under Sir Admiral Drake, that was returning home after a successful expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, touched at Roanoke on its home- ward passage, and took the colonists home to England.
There were several other attempts to colonize by Raleigh, and under his auspices, but were failures ; amounting only to the landing of several ship loads of emigrants, illy provided for sub- sistance or defence ; to become a prey to the natives, or perish for food. At the period of Queen Elizabeth's death, not an English- man was settled in America.
In 1603, Bartholomew Gosnold, planned an expedition in a small vessel with only thirty men — disco«vered a much nearer route than had hitherto been pursued — visited the coast of Massachusetts, and returned with a rich freight of peltry. His favorable account
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led a few merchants of Bristol to send out two vessels, to examine tlie country Gosnold had visited. They returned, confii'ming his statements. Another expedition followed, which, returning, reported so many "additional particulars commendatory of the region, that all doubt and hesitation vanished from the minds of the projectors of American Colonization; and an association sufficiently numerous wealthy and powerful to undertake this enterprise, being speedily formed, a petition was presented to the King for his sanction of the plan, and the inlei'position of his authority towards its execution."
In April 1606, King James issued letters patent to Sir Thomas Gates, George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and their associates granting to them those territories in America, lying on the sea coast between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude, together with all the Islands situated within one hundred miles of their shores.
The patentees were divided into two companies. The territory appropriated to the first, or Southern Colony, was called Virginia. That appropriated to the Northern Colony, was called New Eng- land. They were termed the London and Plymouth companies.
Three vessels soon sailed under the auspices of the London Company, having on board one hundred and five men destined to remain in America; among the adventurers, were George Percy, a brother of the Duke of Northumberland, Gosnold, the enter- prising navigator, and Capt. John Smith. The squadron arrived in the Chesapeake Bay, April 1607. These colonists founded the settlement at Jamestown, and theirs was the first successful scheme of English colonization in America. In 1608, this colony first tilled the soil of what now constitutes the United States, unless the Spaniards had previously planted in Florida.
In 1607 the Plymouth company made an abortive attempt to form a colony in northern Virginia. The expedition returned to England and damped the spirit of emigration by the representations it made of the soil and climate they had visited. Six years after they fitted out two vessels, and placed one of them under the com- mand of Capt. Smith, who had become identified with the colony at Jamestown previously. This expedition explored with care and diligence, the whole coast from Cape Cod to Penobscot. Capt. Smith went into the interior of the country, made a map of the coast, which on his return he presented to the King, accompanied with a highly favorable account of the countrv. Capt. Hunt, who G
82 HISTORY OF THE
commanded one of the vessels, instead of returning with Smith, enticed a number of Indians on board his vessel, and touching at Malaga on his homeward voyage, sold them as slaves; thus upon the threshold of New England colonization, provoking the natives to abandon their pacific policy, and look upon the new comers as enemies. The very next vessel that visited the coast of New England, brought news of their vindictive hostility.
It was reserved for the pilgrim fathers, who, to escape persecu- tion in England, had fled to Leyden, to commence the colonization of New England. Obtaining from King James a tacit acquiescence and from the Plymouth Company a grant of a portion of their territory, one hundred and twenty of their number embarked at Delft Haven, reaching the coast of America, after a long and dangerous voyage, on the 9th of November, 1620, and the coast of Massachusetts, the spot they afterwards called New Plymouth, on the 11th of December.
On the 30th day of September, 1609, two hundred and thirty- nine years ago, Henry Hudson an EngHshman, but then in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, entered the southern waters of New York, and the next day moored his ship within Sandy Hook. He ascended the river that now bears his name, as far up as Albany, some exploring parties of- his expedition having gone as far as Troy. He was from the day he passed Sandy Hook, until the fourth of October, engaged in an examination of the bay of New York, the banks of the river, &c., trafficking with the natives, gratifying his own and their curiosity, by receiving them on board his vessel, and otherwise cultivating their acquain- tance and friendship.
There have been preserved minute details of this first European visit to our State. It forms a chapter in our history of great interest, not only from the fact that it informs us of the discovery of our now Empire State — of the first European advent upon the waters of the Hudson, to the site of our great northern commercial emporium, but from its giving us by far the best and most satisfac- tory accounts of the natives, as they were found in their primitive condition. Hudson testifies, as precedent navigators had done to their general friendly reception of the stranger European. In his four weeks' interview with the natives, nothing occured to mar its pacific character, until one of their number had been wantonly Idlled by one of his men. The Indian, attracted by curiosity, and
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having perhaps but imperfect ideas of the rights of property, stole into the cabin window, and pilfered a pillow, and some wearing apparel. The men discovering his retreat with the articles shot at and killed him. In an attempt to recover the articles, another native was killed. Previous to this, there had been what the natives construed into an attempt to carry off two of their number. Following after these events, was a concerted attempt on the part of the natives to get possession of the vessel. At the head of Manhattan Island in the inlet of Harlem river, they had collected a large force. The vessel going down the river approached the shore near the place of ambush. Hudson discovering them, and their hostile intentions, lay off, the Indians discharging at the vessel a volley of arrows, which was returned by the discharge of muskets. This skirmishing continued as the vessel moved farther down, the Indians assaulting with their arrows, the Europeans retaliating with their muskets, and occasionally by the discharge of a cannon. Nine