USA > New York > Livingston County > A history of Livingston County, New York: > Part 4
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
tives, in their myths, peopled many parts of the vast wilderness stretching westward far beyond the Miss- issippi, and eastward to the ocean, with strange mon- sters, and their stories of this region are replete with accounts of winged heads, the feats of prodigious ser- pents, and the calamitous visits of giants, unearthly in size and formidable in power, who came eastward from the regions of the setting-sun.
Our account will not be wanting in the interest that attaches to aboriginal antiquities ; for the remains of several ancient mounds of undoubted military origin, links in that chain of ancient defensive works which, according to recent researches, extended from the shores of lake Erie to the lakes of central New York, have been found here. Natural history, too, has been illustrated by the discovery, in two or three places within the county, of the remains of that huge fossil animal known as the mastodon.
We shall note how the French, in Canada, obtaining their earliest knowledge of this section from the Jesuit missionaries, endeavored to get possession of it; and how a formidable expedition, under the Marquis De Nonville, dispatched hither with the design of con- quest, miscarried, as did all similar efforts of the French. The Jesuit missionaries, first among Euro- peans to seek these wilds, established missions in the neighborhood of the Genesee river, nurturing them in that spirit of self-sacrifice peculiar to their order, with the hope of planting here the standard of their faith, and enlarging the jurisdiction of the Romish See. But these efforts proved abortive, for here, as else- where in the New World, their creed found no perma- nent lodgment. From the letters of these religionists to the general of their order in Rome, we catch defi- nite views, during the period embraced between the years 1636 and 1687, of the homes of the Senecas.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
Thenceforward, nearly a hundred years, this.region affords little to arrest the historian ; but afterwards something like a connected account will be possible.
The expedition of General Sullivan to the country of the Senecas, in the fifth year of the Revolution- ary war, was charged by Washington with the de- struction of the Indian villages on the Genesee, as a penalty for a long series of bloody wrongs perpetrated by the savages upon the whites. As a measure of future security to the settlements, it fully accomplish- ed its object; this attained, red men and white alike briefly quit the region; the former, save as a broken remnant, never to return.
Reference will be made to the part taken by our citizens in the war of 1812 ; and to the reasons which, a few years later, controlled them in asking for the erection of the county : an event that occurred at a pe- riod of great derangement in the public finances, when communities were suffering from the effects of the un- wise monetary policy of our second war with Great Britain.
Several of Sullivan's officers and soldiers, allured by the natural advantages of this region, led hither, soon after the Revolution, a tide of emigration to occu- py the district then so recently wrested from the con- quered tribes. The settlement grew with unexampled rapidity. The forests disappeared as though de- voured, giving place to cultivated fields and incipient villages, and before the present century opened, the smoke of the pioneers' cabins might be seen drifting over widely-separated valleys and hill-sides. In or- der to show whence the early settlers mainly came, the origin of families will be traced, where practicable, and the fact will everywhere appear that our pioneers were, to a marked extent, actors in the war for In- dependence, mingled with families of refinement and
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
culture from the south and east, who early stereotyped the features of society here, and lent elevation to the aims of enterprise. Wholesome influences, thus early imparted, still operate with augmenting force. The people of this county have always been zealous pat- rons of education, foremost among the friends of po- litical and intellectual advancement, and staunch sup- porters of the moral and religious movements of the century. Of their patriotism, that rich fruit of all virtues, the record of the great Rebellion affords a thousand evidences, though its sacrifices are as yet too recent, and its wounds too fresh, to be dwelt upon now, even if the theme demanded no worthier pen than that which indites these pages.
Biographical sketches claim their place in this work; since actors in historic events, and men who have en- joyed the highest honors of the state and nation, as well as those of less note who impressed their individ- uality upon the times, have lived here, or, dying, have left their mortal frames to rest in our green and quiet church-yard.
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CHAPTER II.
INDIAN OCCUPANCY.
The SENECA nation of Indians were found occupy- ing the region between the Genesee river and Cayuga lake, when it first became known to the whites .* At what period their abode became fixed here is a ques- tion not easily solved, since it is to incidental facts and traditions we are to look for light upon this sub- ject, and these afford but uncertain data.
The country between the Genesee and the Niagara rivers, when first visited by Europeans, was nominally held by the KAH-KWAS, or Neutral Nation of Indians, though their villages were situated mainly along the latter river and extended nearly to the eastern shore of lake Huron, their hunting-grounds, however, included, as they claimed, the broad belt of debatable land that lay along the Genesee. In this doubtful frontier, in- roads were frequently made by the Senecas, and con- flicts between these two hostile tribes often took place. Soon after our knowledge of them begins, the Kah- kwas, as we shall see, were conquered by the Senecas, and were either driven southward or exterminated.
* The Dutch arrived at New York (by them called New Amsterdam) in 1609, and soon acquired some knowledge of the Western Indians, among others of the Nun'-do-wahl-o-no', to whom they gave the name of SENECAS; but so unsettled was the orthography of the latter word, that the Colonial documents of our state give it in no less than 63 different ways.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
At the opening of the Revolutionary war, a small band of ONEIDAS, and also a band of TUSCARORAS, adhering to the British cause, (though these two tribes mainly espoused the Colonial side, ) left their eastern villages and removed to the Genesee, where each es- tablished a town; and a few of the Kah-kwas, de- scendants of those who had been adopted into the Seneca nation when their tribal organization was bro- ken up, were found residing with the latter by the pioneers.
Of the races that preceded the Senecas and Kah- kwas we have little information, and even that little is derived mainly from local antiquities. This evidence, fragmentary at best, shows that, in the far off past, na- tions unlike the red aborigines have arisen, flourish- ed here, and disappeared. The story is one of miss- ing links and replete with mystery. Morgan says that the remains of Indian art here met with are of two kinds, and ascribable to widely-different periods. The former belong to the ante-Columbian, or era of Mound-Builders, whose defensive works, mounds, or sacred enclosures are scattered so profusely through- out the west; the latter include the remains of fugi- tive races who, after the extermination of the Mound- Builders, displaced each other in quick succession, until the period of the Iroquois commenced .*
The Senecas, first known to the whites as a part of the Five nations, have a history of their own, inde- pendent of their connection with their associate na-
* It was the opinion of Governor De Witt Clinton, that previous to the oc- cupation of this region by the progenitors of the Iroquois, it was inhabited by a race of men much more populous and much further advanced in civili- zation than they. Marshall, however, whose judgment is entitled to great weight, is not satisfied with the evidence so far produced of the existence in this vicinity of a race preceding the Indian. He thinks the ancient fortifica- tions, tumuli, and artificial structures that abound in western New York, can all be referred to a more modern race than the Mound-Builders.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
tions, and, consequently, earlier than the League of the Iroquois. This fact is found in certain special features of their system of consanguinity and affinity, wherein they differ from the Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas, and in which they agree with the Tuscaroras and Wyandots or ancient Hurons, tending to show that they and the two latter formed one people later in time than the separation of the na- tions from the common stem .* It is most likely, how- ever, that the Senecas were then north of the chain of lakes.
The Iroquois call themselves Ho-de'-no-sau-nee, or People of the Long House. Their league, formed about the year 1450, t embraced at first the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas. After- wards the Tuscaroras were admitted into the federa- tion, constituting the sixth nation .; Their territory then extended from the Hudson to the Genesee river.
Their legends say that the league was advised by Hiawatha, the tutelar patron of the Iroquois, on the occasion of a threatened invasion of their country by a ferocious band of warriors from north of the great lakes. Ruin seemed inevitable, and in their ex- tremity they appealed to Hiawatha. He urged the people to waste their efforts no longer in a desultory war, but to call a general council of the tribes. The meeting accordingly took place on the northern bank
* The Seneca child belongs to the mother's tribe, not to the father's. If the mother is of the clan of the Heron, her children also are Herons; and they call, not only their female parent, mother, but likewise call her sisters, mother, either "great " or "little" mother, as the sisters chance to be older . or younger than the real mother.
t The Five nations were called Maquas by the Dutch; Iroquois by the French ; Minges and Confederates by the English. They were sometimes called Aganuschioni, or People of the Long Cabin.
# Of these, the Mohawks, Onondagas and Senecas are called Fathers ; the Cayugas and Oneidas are called Sons, and in their great councils are always thus respectively addressed.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
of Onondaga lake. Here, referring to the pressing danger, Hiawatha said: "To oppose these northern hordes singly by tribes, often at variance with each other, is idle ; but by uniting in a band of brother- hood, we may hope to succeed." Appealing to the tribes in turn, he said to the Senecas: "You, who live in the open country and possess much wisdom, shall be the fifth nation, because you best understand the art of raising corn and beans and making cabins." Then addressing all, he concluded : "Unite the Five nations in a common interest, and no foe shall disturb or subdue us ; the Great Spirit will then smile upon us, and we shall be free, prosperous and happy. But if we remain as now, we shall be subject to his frown ; we shall be enslaved, perhaps annihilated, our war- riors will perish in the war-storm, and our names be forgotten in the dance and song." His advice pre- vailed, and the plan of union was adopted. His great mission on earth accomplished, Hiawatha went down to the water, seated himself in his mystic canoe, and, to the cadence of music from an unseen source, was wafted to the skies .*
The Iroquois owe their origin as a separate people, if not indeed their martial glory, to the encroachments of a neighboring nation more powerful than they. Originally inclined to tillage more than to arms, they resided upon the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, in the vicinity of Montreal. Here, as one nation, they lived in subjection to the Adirondacks. But provoked
* Longfellow lays the scene of his beautiful Indian Edda, The Song of Hiawatha, among the Ojibways, on the southern shore of lake Superior, in `the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable. In this poem the great bard has preserved the traditions prevalent among the North Amer- ican Indians respecting this "child of wonder."
Street, in his noble epic of Frontenac, has preserved, especially in the notes, no little of interest connected with Hiawatha, whom he makes a mute, communicating with the tribes by signs, through a fellow-spirit.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
by some infringement of rights, their latent spirit was aroused, and they struck for independent possession of the country. Failing in this, they were forced to quit Canada, and finally found their way into central and western New York, where, on the banks of its fair lakes and rivers, they at length laid the founda- tions of a power compared with which that of every other Indian nation falls far short.
It is said that the Iroquois had planned a mighty confederacy, and it is argued with reason, that had the arrival of the Europeans been delayed a century, the League would have absorbed all the tribes between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico ; indeed the whole continent would have been at their mercy.
In principal the league was not unlike the plan of our own federal government. It guaranteed the inde- pendence of each tribe, while recognizing the due powers of the confederation ; at the same time person- al rights were held in especial esteem.
The aboriginal congress consisted of fifty sachems, of whom the Senecas had eight. This body usually met at the council-house of the Onondagas, the cen- tral nation, where all questions affecting the confed- eracy were deliberated upon and decided. The busi- ness of this rude parliament was conducted with be- coming dignity. The reason and judgment of these grave sachems, rather than their passions, were ap- pealed to; and it is said to have been a breach of decorum for a sachem in the great council to reply to a speech on the day of its delivery. Unanimity was a requisite, indeed no question could be decided with- out the concurrence of every member. The authority of these wise men consisted in the nation's good opin- ion of their courage, wisdom and integrity. They served without badge of office, and without pay, find- ing their reward alone in the veneration of their peo-
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
ple, whose interests they unceasingly watched. In- deed, public opinion nowhere exercised a more pow- erful influence than among the Iroquois, whose ablest men shared with the humblest in the common dread of the people's frown.
Subordinate to the sachems was an order of chiefs famous for courage and eloquence, among whom may be named Red Jacket, Cornplanter and Big Kettle, whose reasoning moved the councils, or whose burn- ing words hurried the braves on to the war-path. No trait of the Iroquois is more to be commended than the regard they paid to woman. The sex were often represented in councils by orators known as Squaws' men. Red Jacket himself won no little reputation in that capacity. The Indian woman could thus oppose a war, or aid in bringing about peace. In the sale of the soil they claimed a special right to interfere, for, they urged, "the land belongs to the warriors who defend, and to the women who till it." The Iroquois squaw labored in the field, but so did females, even the daughters of princes, in the primitive ages. Re- bekah, the mother of Israel, first appears in biblical history as a drawer of water; and the sweet and pious Ruth won the love of the rich and powerful Boaz, as a gleaner of the harvest.
Though broken in power in our Revolutionary war, the Iroquois confederacy remained a distinct people long after the eastern and southern tribes had lost their standing; yet the excellence of their system has served only to delay their complete subversion to the whites, and their gradual extinction as a separate peo- ple. From fifteen thousand souls, they are now re- duced to a fourth of that number, and yet, with a per- sistency that must gain them at least poetic honors, they still preserve their ancient congress, and their
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
several national divisions, and keep intact their tribal cians or organizations .*
At a general council of sachems and wise men, held at the Cattaraugus reservation in the fall of 1862, the elder portion wanted to return to ancient usages, urg- ing that the league had fallen from its high estate by too readily admitting the customs of the pale face and the religion of the Bible. The younger men, on the other hand, advanced their ground, and showed a de- sire for even greater innovations. The end is sure, and, sooner or later, that marvel of pagan wisdom, the Confederacy of the Five Nations, must, even in name, disappear from living institutions.
Our scanty information about the early occupants of this region, forces us to complete the page of abor- iginal story from traditions. We turn therefore to the narrative of the Indian Cusick, and to similar sources.t In an account thus derived, dates must be wholly wanting in accuracy. As an instance, Cusick says the final troubles between the Senecas and the Eries took place about the time of the arrival of Col- umbus, when in truth they did not occur until a hun- dred and sixty years later.
We pass over Cusick's account of the origin of the Great Island which we call North America, the fabu- lous rise of the Indian Confederacy, six centuries be- fore the Christian era, as he says, and other portions of the curious recital, and come down to the period
* Those clans are, the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk-eight in all. An Indian and squaw of the same clan might not mar- ry-as in theory they were brother and sister-but must seek mates from another clan (though not necessarily of another tribe) than their own.
Each clan posesses its totem or symbol, which is a rude picture of a hawk, turtle, or other appropriate emblem.
t The narrative, to which we are indebted for data here, is by David Cu- sick, a Tuscarora Indian whose ancestors came from North Carolina and set- .tled near Lewiston, N. Y. See Schooler, Arch. of Abor. Knowl., Vol. V.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
of the allotment of homes to the tribes. The Senecas. were directed to settle on a knoll south of Canandai- gua lake, near the present village of Naples. Indeed, some traditions hold that they sprang from this knoll, hence their name, Nun'-do-wah'-o, which, in their tongue, signifies the Great Hill People.
An agent of the Superior Power was sent to instruct them in the duties of life; seeds were given, with di- rections for their use, and dogs, to aid in taking game. Villages sprang up, and prosperity abounded, but the Divine agent having returned to the heavens, monsters of singular forms invaded the country from time to time, and devoured many persons.
The monsters of the Indian were no borrowed prod- igies, but the creation of his own untutored imagina- tion, or natural beings invested by his fancy with su- pernatural attributes. The Flying-Head, a strange creature which, their legends say, invaded the homes of the Iroquois after night-fall to devour the inmates, until the villagers were compelled to build huts so fashioned as to exclude it, has no prototype. This bodiless hobgoblin, whose features were those of a man, with head, mane, and two hairy legs like the lion's, appears to have had a dread of fire, for its dis- appearance is ascribed to that cause. An old woman, parching acorns in her lodge one night, was visited by a Flying-Head. But on observing the burning fruit which the squaw appeared to be eating, the Head sunk into the earth, and with it vanished a legion of its fellows, to the great relief of the Indians, who held them in deadly fear .*
* The engraving presents Cusick's notion of the monster. The draw- ing is from a copy of the rare pam- phlot edition of Cusick's narrative, for which I am indebted to Mr. Mar- shall. The Indian name of the Fly- ing-Head was Ko-nea-rau-neh-nch.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
A great lake serpent traversed the trails from Gen- esee river to Canandaigua lake, stopping intercourse, and compelling the villages to fortify against it. La- ter came "Stonish Giants, " a cannibal race from beyond the Mississippi, who derived their name from the prac- tice of rolling in the earth until their bodies became encrusted with sand and gravel, which rendered them impenetrable to arrows. Warriors gathered to drive them away, but they overran the country of the Sen- ecas and others, and destroyed the people of several towns. The Holder of the Heavens now returned. By a stratagem he induced the giants to enter a deep hollow, and as they there lay sleeping, he hurled down upon them a mass of rocks which crushed to death all save one, who sought asylum in the regions of the north. A snake of great size, having a human head, soon after appeared in the principal pathway leading eastward from the sulphur springs at Avon. This too was destroyed by a band of braves, selected for their prowess, after a conflict, in which was ex- hibited, if we credit tradition, something more than mortal valor.
A thousand years before the arrival of Columbus, the. Senecas were at war with the Kah-kwas. Battle succeeded battle, and the Senecas were at length re- pulsed with severe loss. Tidings of their disaster soon reached the great Atotarho, * a war chief highly vener- ated by the league, whose seat was at Onondaga, and he sent an army to their relief. Thus strengthened, they assumed the offensive and drove the enemy into their forts, which, at the end of a long siege, were sur- rendered, the principal chief put to death. The remnant of the tribe became incorporated with that of the conquerors. The latter now established their
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* Or, more correctly, perhaps, To-do-da-ho.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY-
dominion in the country of the Kah-kwas, and for a time, in that remote age, the Senecas held the south- ern shores of lake Ontario westward to Oak Orchard creek.
Grave discords appear to have occurred in the league about this period, incited by Atotarho, whose power is symbolized by a body covered with black snakes, and whose dishes and spoons were of the skulls of enemies. His claim to a first rank among native dignitaries, was in the end admitted by the several nations, and the title borne by him still re- mains hereditary in the Onondagas.
Two centuries later, a certain youth living near the original seat of the Seneca council-fire, while in the bushes one day, caught a two-headed snake, which he carried to his mother's hut. It was quite small, very beautiful, and appeared to be harmless. He fed it on bird's flesh, but its growth was so rapid that the hunters had soon to unite in supplying its ever-in- creasing appetite. Their supplies however were un- equal to satisfy its voracious cravings, and it took to roaming through the forest and down into the lake, in quest of food. At length it went to the hill-top and there became inspired with ill-will toward its early friend, now a warrior. In dismay the young man re- moved to a distant village, and thus escaped the fate that was soon to befall his tribesmen. Game grew scarce before the serpent, and not only dreading evil from its wicked disposition but fearing lest its en- ormous appetite would reduce the tribe to starvation, the wise men resolved, in council, to put the monster to death. The hour of daylight one morning, was fixed upon for the work. But just as day was break- ing, so runs the legend, the serpent descended with great noise to the fort wherein the villagers took refuge at night, in security from a race of giants with whom
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
they were at war .* So great had became the monster's size that, after encircling the fortification, its head and tail are said to have met at the gate-way, and its huge jaws lay distended at the very entrance, thus cutting off all exit. The inmates were paralyzed with fear, and did nothing for several days. Finally, driven by hunger, and sickened by the fetid odor exhaled from the serpent's body, they made efforts to climb over it, but all, save a young warrior and his sister, were de- voured in the attempt. The young warrior, following the directions given in a dream, succeeded in piercing the serpent's vitals at a particular spot in the huge body, with a golden arrow delivered to him in a cloud. In its death-throes the monster plunged down the ac- clivity, uprooting trees by its weight, and disappeared beneath the waters of the lake, its course thitherward being marked by a trail of human heads disgorged at each bound, and, for generations afterwards, In- dians say, the beach about the spot was whitened with skeletons of its victims.t The Seneca council-fire was
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