USA > Michigan > Genesee County > History of Genesee County, Michigan, Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 11
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And when he had dreamed his dream, he arose and, weak with fasting, but with a vision of the peace that was once the heritage of the world, he came to the village of the hill people, and there he lifted his hands to the east, the south, the west and the north, and said: "Oh, Rawennyo, I have seen the world at peace in my dream, and I understand what you have set for me to do; I accept the task and will perform what you have appointed for me to do. I am content."
Then Ay-oun-a-wa-ta went out among the men of his tribe and told them of his dream, and besought them to make peace forever with their brothers to the east and to the west, for they were of one blood and flesh. And he told them that it was the will of Him-who-made-the-world that they should form an alliance to last forever with these, their brothers; and the men said that his words were good, but in the council that was called the people rejected the words of Ay-oun-a-wa-ta because they feared A-ho- tar-o, the war chief, who carried serpents about his neck, so he was called A-ho-tar-o of the Snaky Locks.
Then Ay-oun-a-wa-ta, rejected by his own people, went to the east, till he came to the land of the Mohawks, bearing the white wampum which means peace, and he told them of his mission from Him-who-made-the- world, to unite the people to the east and the west in one league so that the people of the race would be forever at peace and become numerous so they
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would fear no other tribe, and the Mohawks said that this was good, and they adopted Ay-oun-a-wa-ta to be one of them, for his own people had rejected his words, which were the words of Rawennyo. Then they sent him with others of the Mohawks to the Oneidas, the Cayugas and the Sene- cas, bearing the white wampum, and all of these people said likewise that his words were good. And when they had taken council all together, they went to the people of the hill, bearing the white wampum, and told them that they had entered into an alliance forever, and that they wanted the people of the hill to join them, as they were the fathers of all, and that A-ho-tar-o should be the great chief of all the tribes, in war. So it was agreed that they should become the great league, and this was the great peace, Kayanerenh-Kowa, and all the five tribes took an oath to be forever at peace with each other. So became the Wis-nyeh-goin-sa-geh, or the five peoples bound together by an oath, and it became in the history of the land of America what the Romans were in the early history of Europe.
Ay-oun-a-wa-ta, adopted by the Mohawks, became the great man of that tribe and honored as the founder of the confederacy of the Iroquois, called by the whites the "Five Nations." To this day the Mohawks in their new home in Ontario, whither they moved after the War of the Rev- olution, still have their Ay-cun-a-wa-ta, the successor in a line of chiefs, "raised up" to perpetuate the name and place of the great dreamer, who brought about the league.
This poetic account of the formation of the great league is given here because it marks one of the most important events of Indian history, and in the opinion of the writer a far-reaching event in determining not only the subsequent trend of Indian history, but that of the whites in America.
THE FIVE NATIONS.
At the time of the discovery of America the league of the Iroquois had grown to such a status that it formed the most important political entity in North America, north of Mexico. Its territory was the state of New York except the valley of the Hudson, a small part in the northeast, and another in the western end of the state. This territory was poetically named by the Indians the Ho-den-o-sau-nee, or long house. This term, however, fails to express adequately the figurative meaning of the Indian. The Indian home was rather substantially built, of a frame work of tim- bers covered with bark. The house was orientated, and in case a daughter grew to marriageable age and married, an addition was built on the east
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end for the new fire, and the marriage of a second daughter resulted in a similar addition to the western end; a third daughter's marriage caused another addition to the east of the first daughter's home, and a fourth daughter's home was built on the western end. This resulted in a house of five fires, or a long house, and this growth of the home from the original fire to the five fires, is figuratively expressed by the Indians' terms, Ho-den- o-sau-nee, which they poetically applied to their home land, with its five tribes. It is also to be noted that this log-house had no other doors than to the east and west, so we find at the time the league first came to the knowledge of the whites, that their central fire was that of the Onondagas, the fathers of the league, the first to the east was that of the Oneidas, next the Mohawks, who were the keepers of the eastern door, west of the Onon- dagas was the fire of the Cayugas, and west of it, that of the Senecas, the keepers of the west door. As in case of the actual home, it was the reverse of etiquette to approach any fire except by the proper door, and the duty of protection owed by the youth to age is exemplified by the keepers of the two doors, who owed the duty of protecting all the fires of the interior tribes from assault from either direction. We hear of the Mohawks informing the emissaries of the whites who had come on a diplomatic errand to the Onondagas and had gone direct to that tribe, avoiding the Mohawks, that it was very improper to gain admission to the long-house through the chim- ney, instead of entering at the doorway.
The term Iroquois, the exact meaning of which is in doubt, is racial in its suggestion rather than political, and included the various detached branches of the people of similar language and habits, as well as the consti- tuent members of the Five Nations.
These outlying members of the Iroquois race were clustered about the western end of the long-house. Those to the south were properly called the Southern Iroquois. Professor Gass, in the "Historical Register," gives a considerable number of bands or tribes of Iroquoisan stock ; these, he says, melted away from disease and ceased to have any place in history, their remnants being absorbed in other surviving tribes. Of them all, two tribes were prominent, the Andastes and the Tuscaroras. The Andastes, also known as the Susquehannocks, Connestogas, and other unpronounceable names, were later destroyed by the members of the league, while the Tus- caroras, in 1714, returned northward from their southern home and formed an alliance with the league, and are now perhaps the most progressive of all the remaining of the Iroquois stock.
The western Iroquois consisted of the Eries, Cats or Gahquahs, living
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in the western end of New York and extending into Pennsylvania and Ohio. They were subdued by the league and their name is preserved as the name of the lake that formed the northern bounds of their territory. The Neutral Nation lived on both sides of the Niagara river, but mostly on the Ontario side. The Senecas called them the Attiowandaronks, or the people whose language is a little different. Further west and toward the lake of the Hurons, was the Tionnontates, or people over the mountain, also called the Petuns, or Tobacco Nation. These Canadian tribes and other outlying branches whose names are lost to the historian of the present day, were sometimes called the Hurons, and the ethnologists of today, following the very apposite suggestion of the Canadians, use the term Huron-Iroquois, as embracing the entire family of tribes above named.
The Tuscaroras, coming from the south in the year of 1714, asked for admission to the league, and a council of the five tribes was held at the central fire, at the rock which marked the place of these great meetings. After due deliberation, it was decided that the sanctity of the league was such that it could not be enlarged by admitting another tribe on equal foot- ing with its five constituent members. It was, however, determined that as the Tuscaroras were of their own blood and of similar language, to whom the right of hospitality was due, it would be cruel to ignore the petition of their own kindred by an utter refusal of protection, so it was in the figura- tive words of the Indians, decided that the Tuscaroras might come to the west door of the long-house to the tree which by a fiction of the Indians grew at the door, and there, holding onto the tree under its branches, remain under the protection of the league, and especially under care of the Senecas, the keepers of the west door; an officer was "raised up," who was called the holder-onto-the-tree, and his duty was forever to keep in the minds of the Tuscaroras their subordinate position in the league. To this day this condi- tion exists, and in the councils of the league this subordinate position of the Tuscarora is still insisted on by the other members; no Tuscaroras has any voice in the general council, except on the favor of the others, and a lifted finger by any of the other councilors brings him to his seat.
After the formation of the league it is said that the members offered to each of the other tribes of like blood membership in the league; but they refused or rather ignored the invitation, and their failure to avail themselves of the offer resulted in their being regarded as enemies of the confederacy and treated as such.
North and south, east and west of this Huron-Iroquois race were lo- cated an alien race divided into many tribes, which in later years came to
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be called by the name of Algonquins. This name it seems was that of a small and rather insignificant tribe of this stock, also called the Adirondacks. Of these Algonquins, those at the south had early been brought into some- thing like subjugation to the league. The principal of these, the Delawares, who called themselves the Lenni Lenape, deserve especial attention. If the league of the Iroquois may be called the Romans of the new world, the Delawares may be called the Greeks. They were a subjugated people, but their conquerors always held them in highest esteem for their superior intel- ligence. They were in habits and character, as well as intelligence, superior to the other Algonquins, and their name rather than the other should have been applied to the races now called Algonquin, as they were regarded as the fathers of their race. From their traditionary history we get the key that unlocks the mystery of that vanished people called the Mound Builders. The Indians were great visitors and the Iroquois often visited the Dela- wares and from them learned many things. They were to the various other Algonquin peoples, grandfathers; and this is a term of great respect and suggests the highest honor, as ancient lineage and old age were to the In- dians proof of great wisdom.
The Delaware tradition tells of their migration from the west, in which, coming to a river across which was a people numerous and powerful, their advance was stayed. These people were advanced in status, had fixed abodes, and were of a peaceful disposition; however, they objected to the advance of the Delawares through their territories, and thus matters stood when another tide of emigration of the race, called by the Delawares the Mengwe-that being their name for the Iroquois-also came to the same river with intent of seeking a homeland beyond the river. These two races, being thus barred from further progress by the Tallegewi, or trans-river people, planned to force a way through the opposing people. Negotiations followed, and the Tallegewi apparently acquiesced in their crossing, but the good faith of the Tallegewi was doubtful and when a portion of the forces had crossed, it was attacked by the Tallegewi and roughly handled; but the others. coming to the assistance of their people, soon routed the enemy and in the war that followed drove them out of their territory to the south- ward; the Lenni Lenape and Mengwe passed on to their future homeland. The alliance between these two, however, did not continue for a long period, and when the whites came they found the Delawares or Lenni a subject race to the Iroquois, or descendants of the ancient Mengwe of the story, who, to make use of the idiom of the Indians, had made women of them and deprived them of the right to carry warlike weapons.
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The seats of the Delawares at this time was the state of Pennsylvania and westward, while the cognate tribes, or grandchildren of the Delawares, were to be found in the Hudson valley, on Long Island, and in the New England states. Closely allied with the Delawares were the Shawanoes, who, if tradition may be relied on, were driven from their early home in New York by the Iroquois, and who became the Gypsies of the new world; their habits were nomadic, even more than those of the other Indians, most of whom were given to wanderlust.
The Indians to the south of the Delawares were the Powhatans of Virginia, the small tribes, the Corees, Pamlicos, Mattamskeets, Pasquotanks, along the North Carolina coast, all of Algonquin stock, and it is even claimed that the Sioux, or Dakotas, were represented near Cape Fear, by name the Catawbas, Waxaws, Waterees, Tutelos, Soponis and Manahoaes. Wedged in among these Sioux, if they were Sioux, were the Tuscaroras, Iroquois emigrants from the northland. South were various tribes consisting of the members of the Mobilian family, but of these southern Indians, the Chero- kees, whose ancestors are supposed to have been the once numerous Talle- gewi, of the Delaware tradition, driven from their former country along the Tallegewi Sipu, as the Delawares called the Ohio river and Allegheny river from the headwaters of the latter, to the entry into the Mississippi. These are probably the present representatives of the ancient Mound Build- ers, so called, whose remains are found along this river of the Tallegewi, especially at Marietta, Ohio, Moundsville, West Virginia, and other places along that river.
The more southern Indians are for the most part known only his- torically. Their tribes have ceased to have any political existence, and their names are preserved only by the chronicler and in various geographic names that commemorate their former localities and suggest their former power.
Two exceptions to this rule are worthy of mention. The Tuscaroras and Cherokees, who were of northern origin, showed exceptional vitality and to this day have their own reservations and to some extent keep up their tribal traditions.
Along the valley of the Hudson river were bands of Algonquins, the most notable being the Mohicans and the less known Wappingers, Warana- waukongs, Tappans, Tachami, Sintsinks, Kitchawauks, Makimanes and, on Long Island, the Matonwaks. In New England were the Naragansetts, the Pequods, the Wampangoags and the Micamacs. In the extreme north of the New England states were the Wabenaki. All these were of Algonquin stock.
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To the north of the Huron-Iroquois were the Adirondacks and the Ottawas, and the far northern forests sheltered the men of the puckered blankets, the Ojibways, destined to break through the barrier and, like the Goths of old, to find a more congenial homeland toward the south. These northern people were not closely united by any political bond and many of them belonged to a lower stratum in the scale of advancement toward civ- ilization; they had not learned the art of making pottery, and in derision the people of the confederated Iroquois referred to them as the men-who- boiled-stones, referring to their habit in cooking meat by placing it in a skin sunk into a hole in the ground, and after pouring in water to drop hot stones on it.
For the sake of classification it is well here to divide the Indians into three classes : the first, the confederated Iroquois of New York, calling them- selves Wis-nyeh-goin-sa-geh, or the five peoples bound together by an oath, whose territory was poetically called the Ho-den-o-sau-nee, or the house that has grown out to form a home for more than one family; the second, the various members of the Huron-Iroquois races, forming a fringe about the western end of the long-house, with some branches in the far south, all of similar language to the Five Nations, but who failed to attach themselves to the league when the opportunity offered, and who may be called the un- confederated Huron-Iroquois; the third, the Algonquins, north, south, east and west of the Huron-Iroquois, confederated and unconfederated, whose principal and typical member was the Delaware nation, and whose lowest type were probably the men-who-boil-stones, in the far north. Of the sec- ond division, most were conquered by the confederated Iroquois, within the historical period, losing their tribal identity, except the Tuscaroras, who came back north and took the subordinate position in the confederacy. The loss of tribal identity in the history of the redmen, however, does not mean the loss of all its members. The habit of adoption, which prevailed among the Iroquois especially, suggests that the members of a subjugated tribe were largely incorporated into the tribe of the conquerors, so increasing its numbers and adding to its prestige and power. This custom of adoption was an ancient one and had its ritual sanctified by ancient usage, which car- ried with it a sacred obligation on the part of the person adopted and the tribe adopting. These ancient ceremonies meant much to the Indian, who by nature was given to formalities, especially when those rites were sanc- tioned by ancient usage. To illustrate, a few years ago there was still living on the Mohawk reservation near Brantford, Ontario, one John Key, who was the last survivor of the progeny of the Tutelos, who had, before the
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War of the Revolution, fled from their home on the Rapahannock river and became incorporated into the tribe of the Mohawks; likely many others of various other tribes had in the same manner found refuge in adoption and incorporation into the various other members of the confederacy. The wife of King Tandy, a Seneca friend of the writer, admitted herself to be an Abenaki, and when she was bantered for her alliance with the enemies of her race, she suggested that it was to get even with one of them that she married him-this with a twinkle in her expressive black eyes.
When the white man came, the confederated Iroquois had established their military superiority over the Algonquins to the south and east, so that all fear of invasion from either of these points had ceased. Nor did they have any fear of the unconfederated Huron-Iroquois. To them they were bound by ties of blood and a common language. Among them there was no power that could stand before the warriors of the league. Traffic was carried on between these various peoples; an aged Seneca informed the writer that, according to the traditions of his forefathers, the trail to Canada, whither they went for materials for arrow points, led under the falls of Niagara; that one could then walk dry shod from the American side down under the falling waters and come up again on the Canadian side, but that falling rocks in later times had obliterated and destroyed the old trail and forced them to resort to the canoe in crossing.
HOCHELAGA.
When Jaques Cartier, in September, 1535, reached the Indian town of Hochelaga on the site of the present city of Montreal, he found a village containing about fifty houses. His description of these houses is a descrip- tion of the Iroquois long-house. The name of the village also suggests Iroquois people as its inhabitants. The final syllable of the name is the Iro- quois locative, and it means "the place of." Similar to it is the same ending of the Iroquois name Onondaga. Here and at the village of Stadcona, farther down the river, the whites first came into communication with the people of that great and dominant race. The reports these people gave to Cartier were to the effect that up the Ottawa river there were fierce people continually waging war with each other. How far up, the Hochelagans did not know. The Hochelagans were very friendly and hospitable, and the method of extending their hospitality also is distinctively Iroquoisan. The glimpse we get of Indian character from Cartier's account is one of the first and best, unfortunately a momentary one; but there appears to have been
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about fifty houses and a palisaded fort. There seems, too, a suggestion that the town was within a palisaded enclosure, but in some portions the record seems to be at variance with that fact; if, in accordance with the usual cus- tom of the Iroquois who builded on a frontier, the village would be outside of the fort, but adjacent, and the fort of palisades would be kept up as a place of refuge in case of invasion. That there was a fort of palisades at Hochelaga also suggests the nearness of the frontier, and this supposition is borne out by all the facts that come down to us as to the dispersion of the Indian tribes.
Much speculation has been indulged in by later writers as to the popu- lation of Hochelaga, and in an article read by the celebrated Horatio Hale, before the Congress of Anthropology at Chicago, at the World's Fair, in 1893, he estimated the population as from two to three thousand. This esti- mate is probably extremely exaggerated. If the town had as many hundreds as he estimates thousands, it would have been remarkable among the villages of that race, considering the status of the Indians of that day. The Indians were not prolific.
The coming and going of Cartier gives us a glimpse of the Indians of the St. Lawrence, but the intercourse between the whites and red men soon ceased and a period of oblivion succeeded, continuing until the coming of Champlain, of renowned memory, in the year 1603. In the meantime Stand- cone and Hochelaga had disappeared, and in the place of these villages of Cartier's time, Champlain found a few wandering Algonquins along the river. The people up the Ottawa were no longer an alien and inimical race. This disappearance of Hochelaga has been the subject of much conjecture; the historians and romancers have found in it the source of much conjec- tural writing, some of which is put forth as history and some purely as fiction. From the fact that an alien and enemy race was found to hold the territory of the former villagers, it has been generally supposed that the former and numerous inhabitants, with their palisaded forts, had been driven out in war waged against them by the Algonquins who were found to have succeeded to the occupancy of the territories of the former Iroquois inhabitants. This supposition seems unfounded and carries evidences of its own fallacy. Assuming that the villages of Hochelaga and Standcone were of the size and importance of the assumed figures of Hale, and palisaded as reported by Cartier, it is difficult to concede that they would have fallen victims to their northern Algonquin enemies, especially as Champlain found these latter few in number and living in mortal fear of the Iroquois; more-
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over, in all subsequent encounters the Iroquois proved themselves to be far superior to the Algonquins. Probably the exaggerated idea of the size and importance of these towns, or hamlets, are responsible for these fallacies as to the fate of the two towns, and when we more properly come to con- sider them as of very little importance, and of very small size, the his- toric value of their subsequent fate becomes proportionately diminished. Mr. Hale finds in the habits and traditions of the Wyandots evidence that they were the descendants of the remnant of the Hochelagans, who fled west and south when their village was attacked and destroyed by the Algonquins. Mr. Lightall. in his most interesting romance, "The Master of Life," has made the disaster to the Hochelagans the starting point for the emigration of the Iroquois from Canada into New York and the formation of the great league.
It is, however, quite unnecessary to appeal to warfare as the cause of the fall of Hochelaga, and it seems to be more probable that war had nothing to do with it. There was among the Iroquois a traditional myth of a great serpent whose breath was the pestilence which buried itself under the village of the red man and, by the emanations of its body and the pesti- lence of its breath, brought sickness and death to the people of the fated village. The first knowledge of the visitation of the serpent came from the appearance of these dire results and, to escape the serpent, the people, with adroit skill would gather together the few needed utensils and silently de- mart, in a stealthy manner so as to avoid giving their hidden enemy any alarm. They then sought in some remote locality a new place of habitation, where they might live free from the poisonous presence of the serpent, un- less that enemy, after long seeking again, should find them out and again bring the pestilence upon them.
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