USA > New York > Niagara County > A brief history of old Fort Niagara > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
routed, and Buffalo and Western New York saved from invasion. Lord Napier refers to this sortie as the only instance in modern warfare, where a besieging army was totally routed by such a movement. A few more desultory en- gagements occurred along the Canadian bank of the river, Gen. Izard having assumed command of the American army ; but the season was too far ad- vanced for any further offensive opera- tions on this peninsula, and Canada was abandoned. Fort Erie was mined, and on November 5, 1814, was laid in ruins. It still remains so, -a picturesque spot. Some space has been devoted to this war, although not a fraction of what its importance demands. During its con- tinuance almost every foot of land along both banks of the Niagara river was the scene of strife, of victory and defeat, of triumphs of armies and of bravery and heroism of individuals.
The treaty of Ghent restored peace to both countries, to the delight of all, especially of the inhabitants along the frontier. The commissioners appointed under that treaty to settle the question of the boundary between the United States and Canada agreed subsequently that that line, " between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario should run through the centre of the deepest channel of the Niagara river, and through the point of the Horse Shoe Fall." Later years proved this to be a variable line as far as the point of the Fall is concerned, though this fact will never impair the validity of the boundary line. By the above decision Grand Island and Goat Island became American soil, and Navy Island fell under British rule. The frontier, especially on the American side, recovered rapidly from the effects of the war, for it was a section sought by settlers, and many who reached the Niagara river on a projected journey to lands farther west, became residents of the locality.
Prior to 1825, all heavy goods were sent westwards by Lake Ontario vessels to Lewiston ; thence, were carted over the well-known "Portage road" to Schlosser, and there again reloaded into vessels which went up the Niagara
NIAGARA IN HISTORY
river, past Black Rock and Buffalo at the source of the river, and then out into Lake Erie. Freights from the west followed the opposite course, over the same route; and this carrying trade along the frontier, controlled almost en- tirely by one firm, was a source of per- sonal wealth to its members, a means of livelihood to many a family, and a prominent factor in the speedy develop- ment of the region. On October 26, 1825, a cannon in the village of Buffalo, at the source of the Niagara river boomed forth its greeting, followed, a few sec- onds later, by another cannon, near Black Rock ; and thus thundered can- non after cannon, down the Niagara river, to Tonawanda; thence, easterly to Albany, and south, along the Hudson river, to New York city, announcing the glad message that, at the source of the Niagara river, the waters of Lake Erie had just been let into that barely completed water-way, the Erie Canal. The completion of the canal built up Buffalo, but at the same time, checked the rapid growth of the northern portion of the region, by causing a total sus- pension of traffic over the old portage.'
Two events, entirely dissimilar and in no way connected with warlike opera- tions, occurred in this region in the year 1826, and each attracted the attention of the whole world. The first was the proposal of Major Mordecai M. Noah to create a second City of Jerusalem within clear view of the Falls of Niagara, by buying Grand Island, comprising some 18,000 acres, and there building up for the Hebrew race an ideal com- munity of wealth and industry. He even went so far, in his assumed capa- city of the Great High Priest of the project, as to lay the corner stone of the future city of Ararat. This he did, not even within the boundaries of his proposed city, but some miles away, on the altar of a Christian church in Buffalo, to which church, clad in sacerdotal robes, attended in procession by mili- tary and civic authorities, local societies, and a great concourse of people he was impressively escorted. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, however, refused his sanction to the project, money did not
pour in to its support, an I izonte ales mately abandoned. The corner stone was, however, built into a small boek monument at Wble Haven, a point en Grand Island opposte Toraw inci, and is now in the rooms of the Buffalo Historical Society.
The other event was the reputed murder of William Morgan, of Batavi, who had threatened to disclose the secrets of the masonic fraternity in print. He was quietly seized and taken away from his home, and was tracert, in the hands of his abductors, through Lewiston, to Fort Niagara. There he was confined in what is still called "Morgan's Dungeon," a windowless cell that was probably used as a powder magazine. All trace of him was lost after he entered the fort, and tradition says he was taken from his dungeon by night, placed in a boat, to be sent, as he was told, to Canada, rowed out on Lake Ontario, and forced into a watery grave. Several persons were arrested and tried for his murder, but no proof of their being directly con- cerned in the matter, for, in fact, any direct proof of Morgan's death being introduced, they were discharged. Some persons, however, were sentenced to imprisonment for conspiracy in con- nection with the matter. Thus the episode upon which the famous, power- ful and widespread anti-masonic agita- tion was based, occurred in, and became an integral part of Ningara's history.
In the same year, the first survey and report were made at Lewiston on a pre- ject, which, so far as any commence ment of it is concerned, is now as re- mote as it was then. Yet. it is a pro- ject which has a national importance, on which, in at least four surveys, the United States Government has em- ployed some of its greatest engineer. and one which has, on numerous com- sions, been discussed and advocated by commercial bodies, and in the halls of the United States Congress ; namely, a ship canal, of a capacity large enough to float the largest waar vessels around the Falls of Niagara. From a point from two to four miles above the Falls, to the deep and quiet waters near
20
NIAGARA IN HISTORY.
Lewiston, has been the route most generally approved for such a canal, of which the cost would be enormous. The resulting benefits, however, especially as the population and wealth of the United States increase, might be ines- timable, especially in the event of a war with England and Canada.
The Niagara region again became the theatre of war in 1837, when the Patriots undertook to upset the Govern- ment of Canada. While the first revolt occurred at York, now Toronto, the entire Canadian bank of the Niagara river was kept in a ferment for several months. Navy Island was at one time the principal rendezvous of the Patriots, and from there, on December 17, 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie, the leader, signing himself "Chairman pro tem of the provincial (a printer's error, which should read provisional) government of the State of Upper Canada," issued his famous proclamation to the inhabitants of the Province.
Without reference to the various in- trigues carried on all along the frontier by the Patriots with their American sympathizers, of whom there were, doubtless, a goodly number, the writer would mention only the crucial event of the war, the Caroline episode. It was openly charged by the Canadians that substantial aid was being rendered from the American side to the Patriots, both by private individuals in various ways, and especially by reason of the non-in- terference of the national and New York State authorities when informed, on credible testimony, that arms and amunition were being shipped and other aid was being furnished from American soil to the Canadian rebels. This feel- ing was so bitter on the part of the English that it is not surprising that they seized the first opportunity for retaliation.
A small steamer, the Caroline, had been chartered by some people in Buffalo to run between that city, Navy Island where the insurgents were en- camped, and Schlosser, on the Ameri- can side, where there was a landing place for boats and a hotel. They maintained that it was a private money-
making venture, transporting the sight- seers to the Patriot's camp ; but from the Canadian's view the real object was to convey provisions and arms to their enemies. On the night of December 29, 1837, the Caroline lay moored at Schlosser dock. The excitement of the rebellion had drawn many people to this locality, the little hotel was filled and some persons had sought a night's lodging on the boat.
At midnight, six boats, filled with British soldiers, sent from Chippawa by Sir Allan McNab, silently approached the Caroline. The soldiers promptly boarded her, drove off all on board, both crew and lodgers, cut her adrift, set her on fire, and again taking to their boats, towed her out to the middle of the river and cast her loose. And a glorious sight, viewed merely from a scenic standpoint, it was. The clear dark sky above and the cold dark body of water beneath. Ablaze all along her decks, her shape clearly outlined by the flames, she drifted grandly and swiftly towards the Falls. Reaching the rapids, the waves extinguished most of the flames ; but, still on fire, racked and broken, she pitched and tossed forward to and over the Horse Shoe Fall, into the gulf below. The whole affair, the incentive therefor, the methods employed, and the manner of the attack caused intense excitement, and once again the Niagara frontier was threatened with war, and the militia along the border were actually called into the field.
Long diplomatic correspondence fol- lowed, the British Government assum- ing full responsibility for the claimed breaches of international law and the acts of her officers. During the melée at the dock, one man, Amos Durfee, was killed. A British subject, Alex- ander McLeod, claimed to have been one of the attacking force, was soon after arrested on American soil and was tried for the murder in New York State, but was finally acquitted. War was wisely averted, but another fateful chap- ter had been added to Niagara's history.
With the exception of the Fenian outbreak on the Canadian side of the
NIAGARA IN HISTORY
river in 1866, the region has been free from war's alarms since the days of the Patriots. The Fenian outbreak was one of the results of the plan of the revolutionary Irishmen to oppose the English Government, and to compel that government to restore Ireland's rights. The Fenian hostility to Canada was solely because of the fact that the latter was an English dependency. The special time was selected, because of the actual service that many loyal Irishmen
In ISS5, the State of New York after an agitation by prominent men for eral years, purchased the land on the American side, including Goat blind and all the smaller islands adjacent to the Falls, and above and below them. for a State Reservation. In 1587 the Province of Ontario, Canada, took a similar action. The Canadian Govern ment, many years ago, with fare fore- sight had reserved a strip of land, sixty- six feet wide, along the water's edge
THE STLAMER CAROLINE HERNY AND FORCED OVER THE FALLS ON HLU MEER .) 50- ( From an Old Engraving )
had just then seen in the United States army during the Rebellion. Of actual hostilities on this frontier there was but one occurrence during the brief agita- tion, fought on the Canadian side opposite Buffalo, from which city the Fenians invaded Canada. It was known as the battle of Ridgeway, the main contest having been at that point, with a subordinate engagement at a hamlet called Waterloo, close to the water'sedge. The Fenians were tempo- rarily successful, but were ultimately entirely defeated and their invading force quickly dispersed.
above the Falls, and along the edge of the high bank below them, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, as a military reserve. This is now under the control of the Canadian Pack Commissioners, and, together with the additional linds acquired near the Falls, and the land around Brock's Monument, forms an ideal government reservation.
The honour of first suggesting the preservation of the scenery about the Falls has been claimed for many per- sons. Others, later on, suggested it officially ; others still, advocated it more publicly and more persistently,
22
NIAGARA IN HISTORY.
A RECENT VIEW OF NIAGARA FALLS.
NLIG.IRA IN HISTORY
but the first real suggestion, though made without any reference to details, came from two Scotchmen, Andrew Reed and James Matheson, who, in 1835, in a work describing their visit as a deputation to the American churches, first broached the idea that " Niagara does not belong to Canada or America. Such spots should be deemed the prop- erty of civilized mankind, and nothing should be allowed to weaken their effi- cacy on the tastes, the morals, and the enjoyment of men."
Such, in the ordinary acceptation of the word and in the briefest form, is an outline of the history of the Niagara region. Many points and facts of in- terest have necessarily been left un- touched, but brief reference should be made to the old tramway, built from the water's edge, at the very head of navigation on the lower river, up the almost perpendicular bank, 300 feet high, close to Hennepin's " three moun- tains." It was used in very early days, probably before the American Revolu- tion, for raising and lowering heavy goods between the vessels and the port- age wagons, and consisted of a flat car, on broad runners, moving on wooden rails. It was raised and lowered by a windlass, and this latter was operated by Indian labour then accessible only at the Indians' own price. Braves who ordinarily would scorn to work at any manual labour, gladly toiled all day for a plug of tobacco and a pint of whiskey. The tramway was notable as being the first known adaptation of the crude principle of a railroad in the United States.
It may not be amiss to mention also, the reservation of the Tuscarora Indians, east of Lewiston, where the half-breed remnants of the last-embraced tribe of the Six Nations now reside, cultivating their fields, and educating their children under the care of the State. A tribute also is due to Canadian foresight in the building of the Welland Canal which connects Canada's frontage on the Great Lakes with her system of St. Lawrence canals to the seaboard. Mention, finally, should be made of the modern suggestion of a ship railway
around the Fall touching, df ity termi nals, about the une point on Ilies upper and lower river as those ludil to view in the previously suggested canal, and proposing. in the ascent ain descent of the Lewiston mountain ( which was the old shore of Lake Ontario before it receded to its present level), as remarkable a triumph of engi neering skill as was shown in the enormous projected locks and one hun dred-acre basin of the ship canal
Next, glance back to the many Indian villages which, long years ago, dotted the region, the four or more of the Neuter nation, or Kahkwas, on the eastern side of the river, and a much larger number on the western side : later on, to the gradual occupation of these lands by the Senecas, almost three generations after their ancestors had annihilated the Neuters ; then, to the Seneca village, built on the site of the present city of Buffalo, and then to the one built years ago on the site of the village still called Tonawanda, where, of late years, at the " long house " was annually held the council of the remnants of the Six Nations ; and then at the docks in that village where once floated the Indian's canoe, and where now is seen the maze of vessels whose cargoes have, in the last two decades, built up the commercial trade of this, the second largest lamber market in America.
Turn, next, to the geological page and recall the ever fresh and still much discussed question as to the ages that it has taken the Falls to cut their way back from Lewiston to their present location ; consider, too, the question regarding the time when a great inland sea covered the whole region, of which proof is, even to-day, found in the shells which underlie the soil on Goat Island and the adjacent country. Con sider, further, the query as to when and why the great flood of water, abandoned its old channel which ran westward from the whirlpool to the edge of the bluff at St. Davids far to the west of the present outlet of the river into Lake Ontario, and how that old channel, still easily traceable, was
24
NIAGARA IN HISTORY.
filled up to nearly the level of the sur- rounding country.
Look also at the view, given in very recent years by nature, of how her forces worked to excavate the Niagara gorge in the mass of old Table Rock, left hang- ing over the abyss for years and falling by its own weight in 1853. Remember the thrilling trip of the little steamer " Maid of the Mist," which, from the quiet waters of her usual, circumscribed limit below the Falls, was, in 1861, taken through the mad rapids safely into the whirlpool and, thence, through the lower rapids into Lake Ontario,- the only vessel that, during the 100 years of Queenston's existence as a port of entry, ever entered it from up-stream; and which vessel was compelled by the canny officer then in charge of the port, to take out entrance and clearance papers, although, according to these, she carried "no passengers and no freight." The trip of that little steamer proved, so far as the river below the Falls was concerned, what the courts have since decided, that the Niagara river throughout its entire length is a navigable stream.
Finally, think of Niagara as the Mecca of all travelers to the New World, think of
" What troops of tourists have eucamped upon the river's brink.
What poets have shed from countless quills, Niagaras of ink."
Turn also to the long list of noted persons who have paid their devotions and tributes at Niagara's shrine. Poten- tates and princes have come, gazed on the Falls, and gone away, their visit to Niagara, perhaps like their lives, color- less and without a trace. Then, with greater satisfaction, turn to the large number of famous men and women, un- crowned, but still, by reason of their abilities, rulers of the people, who by their words, their pens, or their pencils, have given their impressions of the cataract to the world, and have, at least, earned for themselves thereby the right to be allowed a niche in Niagara's temple of fame. And numerous are the names of men and women who, in these and other ways, have connected their names with Niagara, embracing the
leaders in every branch of science, knowledge and art.
There is yet another set of men whose greatest notoriety has been acquired at Niagara. Among these are Francis Abbott, "the hermit of Niagara," whose solitary life, close to the Falls themselves, and his death by drowning, have stood as a perpetual proof of the influence of the great cataract on human nature ; Sam Patch, whose daring led him to make two jumps from a scaffold, 100 feet high, into the deep waters at the base of the Goat Island cliff, safely in both cases, although, not long after- wards, a similar attempt at the Genesee Falls proved to be his last ; Blondin, whose marvelous nerve led him repeat- edly, and under various conditions, to cross the gorge on a tight-rope ; Joel Robinson, whose life was often risked thereabouts to save that of others ; and Matthew Webb, whose prowess as a swimmer led him to try, unaided by artificial appliances, to swim through the whirlpool rapids, in which attempt he lost his life.
Of early Indian names on the frontier, two are specially prominent, -Red Jacket, a Seneca, the greatest of all Indian orators, who spent most of his long life near Buffalo, and died there, and who fought, with the rest of his tribal warriors, in the American army in the war of 1812 ; and John Brant, son of the famous Joseph Brant, a Mohawk, educated mainly at Niagara at the mouth of the river in Canada, whose first leadership in war was as an ally of the British at the battle of Queenston.
Forever and inseparately connected with the Niagara region will be the names of all of the persons here referred to, some mentioned merely as members of a class, others individually. Among the first on this roll of honour, as they were among the first to view, depict, and describe the Falls, are the names of La Salle and Hennepin, -the intrepid explorer, and the noble, though much villified, priest, for since 1678 there has been no portion of the globe to which the attention of mankind has been more, and in more ways, attracted than to this Niagara region.
c
C
C
F6076E
505827
Title .. Lrier history of old Fort Niav rs . Author Porter, Peter LuguEtus
University of Toronto Library
-
DO NOT REMOVE
THE
CARD
FROM THIS
Acme Library Card Pocket LOWE-MARTIN CO. LIMITED
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.