USA > New York > Livingston County > A history of Livingston County, New York : from its earliest traditions, to its part in the war for our Union : with an account of the Seneca nation of Indians, and biographical sketches of earliest settlers and prominent public men > Part 12
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* The two boys, who were at the barn, escaped into Virginia, as Mary learned after the Revolutionary war.
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proved well-nigh fatal to the young captive, followed, but "by the time the corn was ripe," she recovered. Two years later, she became the mother of a son, whom, in honor of her father, she named Thomas Jemison. Her Indian mother lived on the Genesee, and hither, with her foster sisters, she now repaired. Her husband was to pass the winter down the river in fur hunting, and join her in the spring. Various mishaps attended the journey hitherward, but, late in the fall, they arrived at Beardstown, where a friendly welcome awaited the white girl from her Indian mother, whose friendship never relaxed. But her husband did not return, and at length the news was brought that She-nin-jee had sickened and died. About this period the British authorities offered a bounty for the surrender of prisoners taken during the French war. A Dutchman, who often visited the Indian villages, proposed to Mary to carry her to Niagara, but she had now become attached to the Indians, and she knew nothing of the whereabouts of her relatives, if, indeed, any survived. So she deter- mined not to go. The Dutchman, with the bounty in view, sought to take her by force. While in her corn-patch one day, she saw him running toward her. Dropping her hoe, she made for the. village at full speed, and escaped him. Some months later, the principal Chief of the village, resolved to carry Mary to Niagara. Her Indian brother determined that she should not go against her will, and high words ensued. He told the Chief that she should die by his hand sooner than be surrendered. Mary's sisters, in great consternation, hid her and her child in some high weeds that grew near by, agreeing that if the decision should be unfavorable, the fact should be indicated by placing a small cake on the door-step of her hut. A few hours after, Mary crept to the place,
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and, to her great distress, found the cake. Creeping back, she placed her three year old boy on her back and ran for a certain spring, as agreed, which she reached, greatly exhausted .* Here she remained, anxious and fearful, until the Chief started for Niagara, when her Indian brother sought her and brought her to the village where she was received with joy. Soon after this she married Hio-ka-too, who was a warrior of note. By him she had four daughters and two sons, all of whom she named after her rela- tives. The girls were called Jane, Nancy, Betsey and Polly, and the boys John and Jesse. Jane died just before the Big Tree treaty, aged 29 years. The other daughters married and had families. More than a dozen years of peace had come and gone after her second marriage, when quiet was rudely broken by the Indians taking up arms for the British in the war of the Revolution. Mary's hut became the stop- ping place of Butler and Brant whenever they chanced at Beardstown. She often pounded corn from sun-set to sun-rise for her warrior guests. When the Beardstown families retreated before Sullivan, Mary, with her children, accompanied them to Fort Niagara, and was among the first to return to the Genesee. But destitution prevailed at Beardstown. She, therefore, took her children, one afternoon, and, on foot, went to Gardow, where she engaged to two negroes, who alone occupied the place, to husk their corn on shares. After the war was over she was again offered her liberty. Thomas was anxious for her to accept it, but she had Indian children. Should she have the fortune to find her relatives, they might be received with coldness ; hence she resolved to spend her days among the Senecas. At the Big Tree treaty
* The spring is located on the farm of Hon. John H. Jones, in Leieester .
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the Indians set apart a large tract of land at Gardow, for Mary. Red Jacket opposed the grant with great earnestness, and, even after it was made, he delayed moneys due her. Family troubles gathered around her. Thomas and John had long disagreed. The former charged the latter with practicing witchcraft. He married two wives, and this greatly offended Thomas, who urged that bigamy was a violation of wholesome laws. Early in July, 1811, Thomas, who had been drinking, came to his mother's house in her absence, and there found John, whom he began to pound. The latter, in a moment of anger, seized Thomas, dragged him to the door and killed him by a blow of his tomahawk. Grief overwhelmed the mother. The chiefs met, heard the case, and acquitted the murderer. In November of the same year, Hio-ka-too died of consumption at the age of more than a hundred years, during fifty of which he had lived with Mary. He was a leading warrior, taking part in the expedition to Wyoming, and was noted for strength, and, in his younger days, for fleet- ness. In May following, John's hands were again imbrued in a brother's blood. This time Jesse, the youngest and favorite son, was the victim. The two, with a brother-in-law, had spent the day in sliding a quantity of boards into the river for a raft. Some difficulty arose between John and a workman. Both had been drinking. Jesse had started homeward. His brother's delay caused him to turn back, and he too became involved in the quarrel. John threw him, and, drawing his knife, plunged it several times into his heart. Either stab would have been fatal. The mother never recovered from the shock. A rude inquest was held, and John escaped punishment. He continued to reside at Gardow, devoting himself to the practice of medicine, in which he had skill. Five
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years after Jesse's death, he was sent for to a distant Seneca village. During his absence, the great land slide occurred. near his house. On his return he became impressed with the belief that it was ominous of his end. He told his sisters he should live but a few days. A week or two later, in visiting Squakie Hill, he quarrelled with two Indians, who followed him a short distance, dragged him from his horse into the bushes, and dashed his brains out with a stone. He was essentially a man of violence Turner mentions seeing him on his way to the Buffalo reservation, at the head of a small band of Senecas, to kill the black- smith Reese, who had cut off Young King's arm with a seythe in an altercation. Jemison was armed with a war club and tomahawk, his face covered with red paint ; and long bunches of horse hair dyed red, hung from his arms. Under the advice of friends, Mary procured the passage of an enabling act, and sold a portion of her great landed reserve ; and, in 1823, she parted with all save a tract two miles long and one mile wide, lying on the river. This she continued to occupy until her removal to the Buffalo reservation, where, after a life of vicissitudes, her death occurred in September, 1833. She was held in high esteem by the Indians, for during a large portion of her life she formel the principal medium of communication between the whites and the Senecas. According to Indian ideas she always conducted herself virtuously, and was discreet in the observance of native customs. The late Elder John Wiley, of Springwater, spent a day with her shortly before she left Gardow. He found her lively and intelligent. "I have seldom seen an old lady so smart and active, or one whose eyes were so bright," said he. She was small in per- son, her eyes were blue, and her hair was then quite gray. She never spoke the Indian language with
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entire fluency. The use of the English tongue was so far recovered by her, that she conversed, with much freedom with Yankees as she always styled the whites. She died on the Buffalo reservation near where Little Johnson then lived .* John A. Ken- nedy, t who visited the Seneca burial place on the Buffalo Reservation in 1840, and saw the grave of Mary Jemison, was there again in 1848, when every external vestige of it had disappeared. The grounds had been plowed over and the field was then planted to corn. "The grave-yard I saw in 1840," continues Mr. Kennedy, "suggested to my mind that the Mound Builders kept burying their dead on the same spot, one tier above another. It was about half an acre in size, quadrangular, on a level plain, and was four and a half to five feet high, the four sides sloping outward at the bottom. Except where graves were raised it was perfectly level on top ; the grass grew on the sides as though they had been sodded. There were probably a dozen tomb-stones on it, one of which was the White Woman's. The theory I formed was that it began to be used while on a level with the surrounding ground and when the area was filled up, earth enough was brought to make another story of graves, and so on, one story above another, until the mound was con- pleted, diminishing toward the top as the work of inhuming mortality proceeded .;
* The Indian name of her eldest son, Thomas, was Yah-do-an-gweh; of John, Gen-yah-neh-gweh; and of Jesse, Gash-ye-un-dwe-geh.
+ Late Superintendent of metropolitan police, New York.
# Mr. Kennedy gives this as the outline of the general burial place alluded to in the text :
The White Woman's tomb-stone bore the following inscription :
" In memory of Mary Jemison, daughter of Thomas Jemison and Jano
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Thomas Jemison, So-sun-do-waah, or Buffalo Tom, as he is called on the reservation, was a native of Squakie Hill, where he resided until 1828, in a house yet standing. His step-father told him he was born between Christmas and New Year's, and was nearly two years old at the treaty of 1797. His father was Thomas, the eldest child of the White Woman by Sheninjee, her first husband, and his mother was Sally, the daughter of Indian Allan. He went to the Buffalo reservation in 1828 and to the Cattaraugus reservation in 1846. where he bought a farm of Hank Johnson, as he was generally called, a white man who was taken prisoner in the Revolution and mar- ried a Delaware woman. At Johnson's death the property reverted to the Seneca nation ; hence Jemison lost his rights, and returned to Buffalo, where he opened a tavern on the reservation. After remaining away fourteen years, he went back to the Cattaraugus reservation, where he has a fine farm which he culti- vates with exemplary industry and success. He has several houses and lots in the city of Buffalo. His eldest son graduated at the State Normal school in Albany, and married a white wife, and his eldest daughter has a white husband. Jemison himself has all a white man's notions of thrift and economy. He recollects, with great interest, the years he spent at Squakie Hill. His memory is remarkably clear and his form erect, although his age is now nearly seventy-five. In appearance he strongly resembles Thurlow Weed. "His word," says Governor Patter-
Irwin. Born on the ocean between Ireland and Philadelphia in 1742 or 3 ; taken captive at Marsh creek, l'a., in 1755, carried down the Ohio, adopted into an Indian family. In 1759 removed to Genesee river; was naturalized In 1817. Removed to this place (Buffalo reservation) in 1831, and having survived two husbands and five children, leaving three still alive, she died September 12, 1833, aged about 91 years. having a few weeks before ex- pressed a hope of pardon through Jesus Christ."
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son, "was as good as any white man's note in the valley. If he bought property on credit, it would be paid for the day it fell due, without grace." His English is as pure as any Yankee farmer's.
Philip Kenjockety, Ska-dyoh-gwa-dil," was the last survivor of the Genesee river Indians, whose per- sonal recollections extended back to the invasion of General Sullivan. His grandfather was a member of the almost mythological race, the Kah-kwas, and was adopted into the Senecas. His father acquired influ- ence among the latter nation and became a chief, and it was through his representation that the Senecas were induced to settle upon the banks of the Niagara river, when driven from the Genesee. Philip's parents were residing at the Nunda village when the war of the Revolution broke out, and when the resi- dents of that village removed to Beardstown, Philip's family went also. I saw him at the Cattaraugus res- ervation in the fall of 1865. He then claimed to be one hundred and twenty years old. He had come down to the mission-house at my request to give his recollections of the Genesee country. For a person of his age he possessed great vigor of body. His mind was clear and his memory proved to be marvel- ously correct. When the subject of Sullivan's expe- dition to this region in 1779, was mentioned, he seemed to forget his age and everything else in the interest revived by the associations of that period. .
"Yes, he recollected the Wah-ston-yans," (that is
* The changes in Kenjockety's name afford an instance of the difficulties attending Indian biography. O. H. Marshall, says, that when a youth, he was called Ji-ya-go-waah, meaning "large dog." After the war of 1812, another name was conferred upon him, as is customary among the Indians, to wit: Gat-go-wah-dah, that is "dressed deer skins," from the fact that Philip, being a good hunter, kept himself supplied with deer skin sometime after the rest of his tribe were unable to obtain it. Ska-dyoh-gwa-dih means " Beyond the multitude."
*
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" Bostonians, " as the colonial or Yankee troops were called by the Senecas) "He was large boy then, large enough to shoot small birds with a gun. The Yan- kees got as far as Conesus lake, all was consternation at Beardstown; it rained ; the warriors went out ; the air grew heavy with rumors; even the birds brought tidings of the enemy's doings."* After our interview, as he was bidding good bye, he took the hand of my son, and pointing to the clasped fingers, said, through the interpreter, "this bridges be- tween three generations, between that long past and the generation under the new order." He described the face of the country in this region with great accuracy and added essential facts to its history. . He died on the first of April, 1866, aged fully a hundred and ten years. The Academy of Art in Buffalo has preserved a fine portrait in oil of the venerable Kah- kwa, the last of his generation.
There were a number of Indians of lesser note, who, forty years ago, were well known to the settlers. Among these were Blinkey, a red man of much shrewdness, who had lost an eye, and thus secured an expressive name : Canaday, the brother of Blinkey, a fine looking Seneca, whose Imt stood near the high- way leading to High-banks, on the north side of the river, at Squakie Hill ; and Big Peg, who usually lived at Big Tree village. The latter possessed much good sense, was a speaker, and had no little force of char- acter. Accident secured him his name, as it often secures the names of other personages of more conse- quence. Green Blanket lived at Little Beardstown, and acquired his title from always wearing a blanket of a particular color, to which he was very partial.
* I havo incorporated his recollections in the chapter on Sullivan's Expe- dition.
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Of the leading warriors of the Senecas of this region, whose fame rests mainly on tradition, a sketch will scarcely be expected here, especially as Colonel Hosmer has so felicitously preserved their deeds in verse. The renowned chieftain, Old Can-ne-hoot, led the Senecas against the Marquis De Nonville, and, for the purposes of fiction, the poet has allowed him to die on the field of battle after the conflict .* Con- esus, whose romantic career has been so well given in Hosmer's Legends of the Senecas, is another. His name was a terror to the Chippewas, and often, with his band of braves, he chased the Adirondacks to their mountain lodges. A small island near Avon, formed by the sweeping bend of the Genesee, was the home of this warrior chief, who, often in the dim and shadowy past, "belted for the fight" with western tribes.t The list might easily be extended, but the limit I had assigned to Indian history is already more than reached.
* Yonnondio.
" Old CAN-NE-HOOT arose at last, And back his shaggy mantle cast-
" While proud as became a king, Presiding in monarchal state, His glance surveyed the tawny ring Of counsellors that round him sate.
" His eloquence of look and word Dark depths of every heart had stirred; And 'twas no time in dull debate For other tongues of war to prate."
+ The poet thus speaks of the chieftain's wood-embowered island home, near Avon :
"Yon aged group of maples * Long, long ago CONESUS made His dwelling in their graceful shade.
" His tribe could many a chieftain boast, Far-famed for deeds, but loved him most: Not by hereditary right Rank did he win above them all, But forced his way by skill in fight, And wisdom in the council-hall."
10
CHAPTER VI.
JESUIT MISSIONS-DE NONVILLE'S EXPEDITION.
The Jesuits, true to their zealous spirit, were first among religious societies to establish missions in the Seneca villages. In 1616, Le Caron, a missionary of the order of Franciscans, passed through what is now known as the Genesee country, and other portions of the territory occupied by the Iroquois, but made no attempt to propagate his faith. A score of years later these inland tribes of aborigines became known, by personal intercourse, to the Jesuits, who, as early as 1635, make particular mention of the Senecas.
In August, 1656, Father Chaumonot left the Onon- daga lodges to establish the mission of St. Michael, or Gan-na-go-rae, in the present town of East Bloomfield. When the Father arrived at the village the chiefs assembled a council to receive him and hear his message. He told them that his church intended to establish a mission in their country. He then gave them some presents. The way thus opened, he said, writes Marshall: "I offer myself as a guarantee of the truths which I utter, and if my life is deemed insufficient, I offer you, in addition, the lives of all the French I have left at Onondaga. Do you distrust these living presents ? Will you be so simple as to
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believe that we have left our native country, the finest in the world, to come so far, and to suffer so much, in order to bring to you a lie ?" They were moved by this appeal, and the council, after solemn deliberation, resolved to receive the missionaries, and allow the Senecas to be instructed in their mysteries. The Jesuit visited the other villages with similar success, in one of which he found the principal sachem of the nation (Ga-no-ga-i-da-wi) bedridden with disease. Him he converted to the faith, and the distinguished chief, having subsequently recovered, became a pow- erful friend of the French and Jesuits. The name which he bore, and by which he is always mentioned by the French, is the title of a sachemship, still pre- served among the Senecas, and which belongs to a chief now residing among the Tonawandas.
In 1668 came Father Fremin to St. Michael's, to minister regularly at this most prosperous of the Iroquois missions. The field of his labors, however, embraced at least three of the four Seneca villages of that day, one of which was Dyu-do o-sot, situated near East Avon A contagious fever broke out among the natives soon after his advent among them, and much of the good missionary's time was spent in respond- ing to the physical needs of the sick. His skill in the treatment of disease not only tended to mitigate the ravages of the fever-of which one hundred and fifty died in the four villages-but secured the favor of the natives as well. De Nonville mentions the fact that Fathers Fremin and Garnier had been stationary missionaries for twenty years at the four Seneca villages destroyed by him, prior to his invasion in 1687. The two other Seneca missions were called La Conception and St. James. Dablon, rector of the college of Quebec, and Superior of the Jesuit mis- sions in New France or Canada, says, in 1672, that
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the Fathers count two or three thousand souls at these three stations.
Father Fremin addressed letters to the general of the order of the Jesuits at Rome, giving an account of the progress of spiritual things among the rude converts here, thus opening communication between this land of forest and wigwam and that ecclesiastical centre which, for so many centuries, swayed the polit- ical, as it sought to sway the religious destinies of the civilized world. Garnier writes to Dablon in July, 1672, of the Senecas, who had threatened his life. He says their minds being ill-disposed, the devil uses every occasion to make them speak against the faith and those who preach it. An old man, he adds, who, some years before, came from the country of the Cay- ugas, a pragmatical fellow of big words, does what he likes with the Senecas, and passes among them for a prodigy of talent, has persuaded some of them that our religion causes them to die, and cites instances. Breviaries, ink horns and manuscripts were consid- ered as so many instruments of sorcery, and their prayers as magical incantations. A niece of one of the chiefs was sickly, and the chief was suspicious that the missionary, who spent much time in the rude chapel, was plotting with some demon for the death of the girl.
Bishop Kip says, "there is no page in our country's history more touching and romantic than that which records the labors and sufferings of the Jesuit mission- aries. In these western wilds they were the earliest pioneers of civilization and faith. The wild hunter or the adventurous traveller, who, penetrating the for- ests, came to new and strange tribes, often found that, years before, the disciples of Loyola had preceded him in the wilderness. Traditions of the 'Black robes' still lingered among the Indians. On some moss-
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grown trees they pointed out the traces of their work, and in wonder he deciphered, carved side by side on its trunk, the emblem of our salvation and the lilies of the Bourbons."
Without arms or other compulsory means, but simply by kindness, the Jesuits sought to secure the desired end. Music, knowledge of the healing art, assimilation to the peculiarities of the strange people among whom they labored, and curiosity, too, had its influence. Father Fremin says : "I neither see, nor hear, nor speak to any but the Indians. My food is very simple and light. I have never been able to con- form my taste to the meal or the smoked fish of the savages, and my nourishment is only composed of corn which they pound, and of which I make each day a kind of hominy, which I boil in water." Sometimes he was compelled to live on acorns.
Father Fenelon, afterward famous as the Archbishop of Cambray, and author of Telemachus, was engaged for a short period at St. Michaels.
One of the good Father's letters to Rome gives this incident: "A woman being surprised by the falling sickness, cast herself into the middle of a large fire. Before they could extricate her she was so badly burnt that the bones of her hands and her arms fell from her one after the other. As I was not then in the village, a young Frenchman whom I have with me, and who performs worthily the functions of Dogique, hastened to her, and finding her in possession of her senses, spoke to her of God and His salvation, instructed her, caused her to perform all the religious offices necessary upon such an occasion, and baptised her. The poor creature passed the eight or ten days of life which remained to her in prayer. This was her only con- solation in her grievous sufferings. In an entire hopelessness of all human succor, she suffered with
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admirable patience in the faith of eternal life. Such works of grace make the most sensible impression in these barbarous regions, and greatly assuage the anxieties, the fatigues and the afflictions of a mission- ary."
Though wedded to the interests of their order, the missionaries were not unmindful of the spirit of con- quest then prevalent in their beloved France. Indeed, it has been said that the Seneca missions were sug- gested by the Grand Monarch, Louis XIV. himself, the splendor of whose reign encouraged adventurous spirits to undertake distant enterprises, prompted by a desire to add to the glory of that proud ruler. Cer- tain it is that to the missionaries were the French indebted for their knowledge of the Genesee country.
The command of Lake Ontario, and control of a certain valuable fur trade, were, late in the seventeenth century, matters of contention between the French- and English ; and especially were the rich lands of western New York a coveted object by the French Canadian authorities. M. de La Bar, an infirm old man, had long held the office of Governor-general of those provinces, but, being signally over-matched by the shrewd and eloquent Seneca Garangula, in an expedition he had undertaken against the Iroquois, his government recalled him in 1685, and, in his stead, appointed the Marquis De Nonville, a colonel in the French dragoons, an officer equally esteemed for his valor, wisdom and piety.
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