USA > New York > Livingston County > A history of Livingston County, New York: > Part 5
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* The giants were called Jo-gah uh. I am, to some extent, indebted to Mr. Jno. M. Bradford's version of this tradition.
+ Hosmer, following Horatio Jones's version of the legend, says the pair whose lives were saved, were lovers:
-" remained at last
"Two lovers only of that mighty throng To chant with feeble voice a nation's funeral song. * * * *
-" Ou-wee-ne-you cried, Dropping a golden shaft-" and pierce the foe Under the rounded scales that wall his side !" * * * * * **
"Flame-hued and hissing played its nimble tongue Between thick, ghastly rows of pointed bone :- * * * * * *
"A twanging sound ! and on its errand sped The messenger of vengeance.
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" Down the steep hill, outstretched and dead, he rolled, Disgorging human heads in his descent ;
And far the beach with spots of foam besprent,
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
now removed to a spot near Geneva, and afterwards to a mountain ridge west of the Genesee, not unlikely to Squakie Hill, as thought by some.
Four centuries before the advent of Columbus, the Hurons began hostilities against the Five Nations. From these, as from all other contests with western tribes, the Senecas mainly suffered. In one most san- guinary conflict the enemy were repulsed, but at a great sacrifice of lives to the Senccas, and runners were hurried out along the Genesee for re-inforce- ments. A brief delay followed, when the fighting was resumed, the enemy being now routed and driven from the field. Though successful in the end, this war forms a bloody epoch in the traditions of the Senecas.
Notwithstanding their ill fortune, the Kah-kwas ap- pear to have regained power ; for, fifty years later, they once more held the country between the Genesee and the Niagara rivers, and were governed by a female chief named Ya/-go-wa'-ne-a, whose seat of power was at Kienuka, a town situated on a slope of the mountain ridge near the present site of Lewiston. In her keeping was the symbolic house of peace. She re- ceived chiefs of other tribes, formed treaties, and made alliances. The fiercest strife was hushed in her pres- ence, and warriors, whose nations were at feud, were bound to stay their quarrel while under her roof. Tradition concedes to her much wisdom, and relates how she long enjoyed peculiar influence, which, how- ever, in a moment of passion, she forfeited. Two Senecas had been received at her castle, and while there smoking the pipe of peace, were, in flagrant con- tempt of comity permitted to be murdered for an alleged outrage upon a subject of hers in a distant village.
When the huge carcass disappeared for aye In depths from whence it rose to curse the beams of day." GENUNDEWAH, P. 175.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
The rash act was followed by instant orders to her warriors to cross the Genesee and fall at once upon the Seneca villages, overpowering, if possible, the new-made enemy before they became fully aware of her perfidy.
While these measures were being hastened, a woman of the Kah-kwas, friendly to the Senecas, secretly made her way with the information to the war-chief of the latter nation at Canandaigua, who received it in great surprise. As no time was left him for pro- curing aid from the outlying bands of his own tribe, much less from allies, he drew fifteen hundred war- riors from the nearest towns, placed them in two divisions under different chiefs, and set out to meet the Kah-kwas. Halting near the fort at Gah-nyuh-sas,* ( Conesus,) the women, children and old men who had followed with supplies, were allowed to come up, and left here for safety.
The enemy had already crossed the river in large numbers, as runners, momently arriving, reported. The two divisions of the Senecas were accordingly moved forward and placed in ambush on either side of the pathway, while one of their number, disguised as a bear, was sent along the trail as a decoy. This the Kah-kwas soon met, but, suspecting nothing, chased the false bear into the midst of the hidden braves. Like a whirlwind the Senecas now fell upon them, their terrific yells, the din of war clubs and clash of spears adding to the confusion. A wild scene en- sued. The disorder of the Kah-kwas was temporary however, and the conflict quickly became one of varying fortunes, but the enemy's weight of numbers pushed the first division back upon the second, when
*Cusick gives the orthography, Kaw-nes-ats. Tho Indian fort was near Bosley's mill; the more modern Indian village was located half a mile south of Conesus lake, on the flat between the inlet and Henderson's creek.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
the Senecas, inspired by the impending danger, were seized with a war frenzy, and at length drove the en- emy from the field. The latter fled across the Genesee, leaving six hundred of their dead behind. The Sen- eca chief, declining to pursue, returned with his forces to Canandaigua, where he celebrated the victory with savage parade. Tradition fixes the place of this battle in the vicinity of Geneseo, and Schoolcraft, satisfied of the correctness of the location, calls it the Great Battle of Geneseo .*
Before setting out to beat off the invaders, the Sen- eca chieftain had despatched runners to the central fire at Onondaga, with an account of the situation, and the great battle-chief of the league, Shorihowane, was soon on the war-path with a large force for sup- port of the Senecas. Though learning the issue of the conflict, he yet resolved farther to punish the Kah- kwas by capturing their principal fort and extinguish- ing their council-fire.t It is said that his united force numbered five thousand warriors. Flushed with re- cent victory, they marched rapidly toward the Gene- see, crossed over and made for the fort, which they attacked with great energy. The enemy, fully pre- pared, delivered a cloud of arrows in return, one of which early in the siege struck the war-chief, whose death soon followed. The body enfolded in panther skins was carried across the Genesee, and there buried with befitting honors .; The siege, meanwhile,
* Cusick, General Ely Parker, Schoolcraft and other authorities, agree in locating the battle-ground at Geneseo. Colonel Hosmer thinks the battle occurred further to the east.
+ The fort was called Kau-quat-kay, and was on Eighteen-mile creek, in Erie County.
# Some years ago the remains of a giant Indian were found not far from Long Point on the Groveland side of Conesus lake. The head lay in a turtle- shell, and by the side were found implements of war and other evidences of a noted burial. For some reason that has now escaped me, I have associated
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
was zealously pressed, and the queen at length yielded and sued for peace, when hostilities ceased, and the Kah-kwas were left in possession of their country.
Just prior to the arrival of Columbus, the shock of an earthquake was felt, and comets and other omens of the heavens were observed. The meaning of these occurrences was not then divined, but a prophet soon appeared, who foretold the coming of a strange race from beyond the great waters. He announced that the expected strangers designed driving the Indians from their hunting-grounds and wresting away their homes, and he threatened the Great Spirit's wrath upon any who should listen to the pale-faces. To add to these perturbations, another war broke out between the tribes west of the Genesee and the Five Nations, the weight of which, as usual, fell heavily upon the Senecas. Long and bloody conflicts ensued, and, while hostilities were yet in progress, the great event foretold by the prophet-that most pregnant fact of all Indian history, the arrival of Columbus-was heralded by the fleetest of foot along the myriad pathways of the continent. The imagination alone can picture the bewildering effect of the tidings. Wonder, awe, doubt and fear, each in turn, must have moved them, but though hushed for a moment by this event, the de- cisive struggle between the warring tribes went for- ward. The cause of this contest was so slight that tradition says it originated in a breach of faith on the part of the Kah-kwas at a game of ball to which they had challenged the Senecas. Careful writers, how- ever, deriving their data from other sources than tra- dition, place this war at a much later period, and allege that it grew out of matters connected with the settlement of Canada by the French, which produced
this grave with the great war-chieftain referred to in the text, though most likely without much reason.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
quarrels in the great Indian family. In these the Wyandots adhered to the French side, and the Five Nations to that of the Dutch and English. The Al- gonquins made common cause with the French and their allies the Wyandots. The Kah-kwas had al- ready formed an alliance with the Mississaugas, an Algonquin tribe residing west and north of lake Ontario. The Kah-kwas were related both to the Wy- andots and Five Nations. Their country lay between that of the Canadian and western tribes and that of the Iroquois ; hence, from choice not only, but from mo- tives of prudence as well, they desired now to observe that policy of neutrality from practicing which, as a rule, they derived their designation of the Neutral Nation. The situation was one of extreme delicacy, and their state craft proved unequal to the occasion ; for, in attempting to please both belligerents, both be- came offended. The Iroquois, or, more properly, the Senecas, turned upon them in fury, but were met by a nation worthy their best courage. If we may credit tradition, the conflict lasted through twenty bloody moons, ending about the year 1651 in the decisive over- throw of the Kah-kwas, or, to give their Indian desig- nation, the Attiouandaronk, whose name, as a separate people, now disappears from the roll of tribes.
According to the early Jesuits, the Kah-kwas excelled the Hurons in stature, strength, and symmetry, and wore their dress with a superior grace. "They re- garded their dead with peculiar veneration. Once in every ten years the survivers of each family gathered the remains of their deceased ancestors from the plat- forms on which they had been deposited, and buried them in heaps with many superstitious ceremonies. This was called the feast 'of the dead.' Many of the mounds thus raised may still be seen."* This prac-
* Marshall's Niagara Frontier.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
tice, it may be remarked, was anciently observed by other tribes also. The skeletons of a family were often preserved from generation to generation in bark huts built beside the former cabin of the deceased. In seasons of public insecurity, the bones from many family depositories would be consigned to a common resting-place.
In 1655, the Eries, who had often opposed the Sen- ecas upon the hostile field, were also overthrown by the latter. The country west of the Genesee was now conquered. But "for more than a century this beau- tiful region was abandoned to the undisturbed domin- ion of nature, save when traversed by the warrior on his predatory errand, or the hunter in pursuit of game. A dense and unexplored wilderness extended from the Genesee to the Niagara, with but here and there an interval, where the oak openings let in the sunlight, or the prairie lured the deer and the elk to crop its luxuriant herbage."*
We have thus briefly traced some of the leading fea- tures of Indian tradition bearing upon this locality. Our knowledge of the aborigines is still in part de- pendent upon tradition or subject of conjecture only. But, from stray threads of fact and story, consistent theories have been framed, while research among tu- muli and other traces of Indian occupancy, and the ever-busy study of still living representatives of this strange people, serve to make their character better known, besides casting light upon their origin. Quit- ting the domain of tradition, we shall find that the veritable history of this region extends only two hun- dred and fifty years into the abyss of the past. In 1614 the Dutch planted a trading post on the island immediately below the site of Albany. Here they
* Marshall's Niagara Frontier.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
acquired a knowledge of the Five Nations, and, for a period of nearly fifty years, the friendliest relations existed between the two races. The English at length succeeded both to the territory and to this good un- derstanding, and, with singular fidelity, the covenant- chain was mutually preserved down to the opening of the Revolution, upwards of a century and a half, a fact that went far toward predisposing the Iroquois to take the British side in that struggle, as we well know they did, with most bloody effect.
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CHAPTER III.
THE SENECAS.
The Indians residing along the river were known to the Jesuits as the Senecas of the Je-nis'-hi-yuh, * and were noted for their thrift and good husbandry, 'using the word for squaw-labor,' as well as for their warlike deeds. The corn grown by them was of a superior quality. In destroying their crops General Sullivan's soldiers found ears of this grain full twenty-two inches in length ; and the first sweet corn ever seen in New England was carried thither, it is said, in a soldier's knapsack from Beardstown in 1779. Squashes, beans and melons were also raised in great abundance. Or- chards of apple and peach trees, produced from seeds or sprouts, grew near every village, their location be- ing still marked, here and there, by an apple tree ; and sometimes a small group remains, which escaped de- struction from Sullivan's soldiers. Pears, too, had been introduced, and there was no lack of wild fruits, such as plums, grapes, and cranberries. Tobacco was successfully raised by the Indians here. Indeed, the natives considered the quality of this article produced by our rich warm valley soil so fine that they gave it
* Or Jo-nis-hi-yuh, or Chenussio, as written by the Jesuits. The word is also given Cenosio, Chinossia, and Jenesio, in Col. Docs. of N. Y. The Sene- cas were sometimes called Chenessios, Tsinusios, Tsinontouans, or Sinnodowane. See Appendix for pronunciation of Indian names.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
a name signifying "the only tobacco."* Indian cul- tivation, however, embraced but a very limited share of the territory, for beyond an occasional spot on the river flats, tilled by squaws, this region remained es- sentially a wilderness until the advent of the whites.
The Senecas were not only the most populous na- tion of the league, but were foremost on the war-path and first in warlike deeds. They gloried in their na- tional title of Ho-nan-ne-ho'-ont, or "the door-keep- ors," for, as guardians of the upper entrance, they stood interposed as a living barrier between the hostile nations of the west and the eastern tribes of the con- federacy. And in later times they proved a safe- guard to the whites from incursions of the French and allies of the latter. The Senecas not only defended the Western door, but often, on their own account, carried their arms into the country of the southern and western nations, while "other tribes sat smoking in quiet on their mats." The league held that any warrior was at liberty to form a party, place himself at its head, and make war on his own account against foreign tribes, west or south.
A band of braves on the war-path presented nothing of display. Moving silently, in single file, they threaded the all but limitless forests. Each carried a little sack of parched corn, and usually a pouch of smoked venison. In expeditions of danger, at a dis- tance from home, if this supply gave out, a tightening of the waist belt would often serve instead of the scanty supper. In later times the flint and steel, with a handful of dried leaves, would produce a fire in some
* Morgan mentions a similar fact. Three several experiments in tobacco- raising have been made in this county : First, by the Indians, as mentioned above; next, by the pioneers, about the year 1795; and third, the present experiment, for it is now being raised to considerable extent here. The soil of our fertile bottoms and sandy uplands seems well adapted to the produc- tion of this great narcotic.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
well-hidden spot, where, for a night, with feet to the smouldering embers, unwatched by sentinel, the party would commit themselves to brief slumber. In 1680, the Senecas with six hundred warriors, invaded the country of the Illinois on the Mississippi .* School- craft says of the Senecas and other members of the league, that they roved at will from Lake Champlain to the Illinois, and extended their conquests along the Ohio into the region of Kentucky. At different periods they made inroads into.the Carolinas and else- where at the south, their courage and skill securing success in all quarters. The chronicles of no age af- ford examples excelling the fortitude with which those Iroquois braves suffered the tortures inflicted by their captors. "When taken in battle they asked nothing and expected nothing. The whole history of martyr- dom may be challenged for a parallel to the almost superhuman courage and constancy exhibited by the Iroquois captain put to the torture at Fort Frontenac."+ The captive warrior would often sing his song of defi- ance on being led with blackened face from the "cabin of death," ;- as the dark hut was called where the doomed were kept while preparations for torture were proceeding-and boast, in the very teeth of his re- morseless captors, while the fatal flames were crisping his flesh, of how many of their numbers he had slain, and how many scalps had been scored to him on the war-post.
* Street thus refers to this expedition (the Tortoise, the Wolf, and the Bear being used figurately for clans of the Iroquois.)
" By the far Mississippi the Illini shrank,
When the trail of the tortoise was seen at the bank, On the hills of New England the Pequot turned pale, When the howl of the wolf swelled at night on the gale, And the Cherokee shook in his green smiling bowers, When the foot of the bear stamped his carpet of flowers."
t He was a Seneca. The account is given by Charlevoix.
By some tribes called the "lodge of judgment."
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
Mary Jemison said that to commemorate great events and to preserve the chronology of them, the war chief in each tribe kept a war-post, a peeled stick of timber ten or twelve feet high erected in the town. For a campaign the chief made a perpendicular red mark about three inches long and half an inch wide; on the opposite side of this, for a scalp, they made a red cross, thus >, on another side, for a prisoner taken alive, they make a red cross in this manner X, with a head or dot."* These hieroglyphics enabled them to represent with no little certainty the facts they wished to record.
The Senecas shared fully in the superstitions com- mon to their race. Belief in witchcraft prevailed, and omens had no little influence in shaping their action both in peace and war. On the gravest occasion a dream ·would secure listeners and its teachings seldom went unheeded. At a New Year's festival in Squakie Hill, after the sacrificial dog was killed, an old Indian who lived on the flats below told the following dream at the council-house, the whole village giving their undivided attention : "I had got ready with my two sons the previous evening," said he, "to attend the festival, but before starting I fell asleep and dreamed that we had set out. Everything appeared strange along the path. Squakie Hill seemed thrice its usual height and looked as if covered with a deep snow, although there was very little. I stopped a moment when two winged men flew by us, one of whom alight- ed on a tree near by. I was frightened and asked 'what means this ?' 'We are devils,' said they, 'and are come because Indians are bad men and get drunk.' They told me that unless I stopped whiskey and be- came good, they would have me. The figure in the
* See Mary Jemison's life. Her husband, Hiakatco, had a war post on which were recorded his military and other exploits.
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
changed to a great negro, and taking his seat upon a limb, turned toward me with a horrible grin, thrust- ing at me a pole six feet long, on which was hung a dead Indian by the feet. The face of the corpse was very ghastly and its mouth widely stretched. The devil remarked that all who quarreled or got drunk would be treated in the like horrid manner. The · body of the dead Indian [was then whirled at me. The shock awoke me." Instead of a lecture on in- temperance, a vice to which the tribe were greatly addicted, the old Indian wisely chose to enforce the moral by availing himself of the regard held by his race for the supernatural. The dream seemed strong- ly to impress his audience.
To form a correct notion of the every-day life of the Seneca, we must penetrate into his domestic condition. We shall find him hospitable at his home, however re- lentless he proved on the war-path. His hut was always open, and if a family or company of several strangers came from a distance, it was not unusual to give up to them the best lodge in the village during their stay. In times of scarcity-and, owing to their improvidence, such times often came-they shared with each other even to the last morsel. Indeed, in- dividual starvation was unknown, and, save where a whole tribe was brought to famine, none suffered for want of food.
Their lodges in ancient days were of poles covered with bark or skins in form of the cone-shaped wig- wam, but when the axe came into use they built of poles or small logs in the style of a square or oblong hut. In general the size was ten feet by twelve within the walls, and about seven feet high at the sides. The door was invariably at the end. The roof was steep and covered with chestnut tree, hemlock or cucumber- wood bark, in broad folds, tied to the roof-poles with
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HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
strands of the inner bark of the hickory. Two courses thus laid on would cover the one side of the roof, and · a broad piece placed lengthwise at the ridge made all tight there. The fire was built on the ground, in the centre, for there were no floors, the smoke finding vent through an opening in the roof. Neither tables nor chairs were provided within, but along each side, and across the end opposite the door, a rude wooden bunk, raised a foot or more, and about three feet in width, covered with bark and skins, served instead of stools and beds. Four or five feet higher was a shelf, on which were thrown provisions and domestic utensils. A village comprised from five to fifty huts, seldom more than the latter number, and, as the Indian dug no wells, were located near copious springs, or in later times on the banks of considerable streams.
The simple culinary art required a kettle for meats and vegetables, one or more wooden platters, and three or four hunting-knives to a household. Wild game was often spitted on a stick before the fire, and the loaf of pounded corn and beans was roasted in the ashes under the embers. The Indian woman's cook- ery offered few temptations to the white man's palate. Her loaf was kneaded with unwashed hands, in a bark tray none too tidy, and her meats were prepared with- out attention to the care which civilization demands. The Indian trail over Groveland hill ran near the foot of a long meadow of John Harrison's, where a fine spring of water often beguiled the natives to stop and cook their game. On one occasion they made a feast there of corn and venison boiled together. The deer was skin- ned, cut up and cast into the brass kettle, flesh, bones, entrails and all. Mr. Harrison, who was at work near by, was urged by the Indians to partake of their pot- tage, but as he had seen it prepared, his appetite rebelled, and he declined, with thanks. A pioneer, on
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. another occasion, was invited to eat hominy with a strolling band of Senecas, who had already been some time at their meal. There was but one spoon to the party, and that had been used by each in turn. The chief took the spoon and, after wiping it upon the sole of his moccasin, passed it to the guest, who, though welcome, feasted with long teeth.
To us the Indian's home would not have been a place of comfort. Its single room, noxious with smoke, and the members of the household lounging here and there upon the ground, admitted neither of neatness or privacy, nor of delicacy. On poles, well varnished with soot, in the upper portion of the hut, (if indeed the dusky atmosphere had permitted that part to be seen) might be noticed a motley collection of clothing, corn, skins of animals, and dried pumpkins and squashes, intermingled with weapons and orna- ments. The huts were without windows, for the In- dian knew little of the thousand nameless comforts which make our homes so grateful, but, being un- known, were unmissed by him. The Seneca here passed his winters in contentment. His wants were few, his food was ample in quantity and, to him, pal- atable in kind; and, if his hut was uncleanly, it may yet have been preferable to the abodes of squalor in which many of the vicious and wretched of our great cities pass their lives. The squaw, who had planted, hoed and harvested the corn, prepared it for the win- ter's meal and cheerfully served it to her not exacting husband. And he was a happy man. Though taci- turn in public, he was not unsocial within his own domicil, where his neighbors often met to smoke his tobacco, laugh at his jest, not the most refined, and listen to his stories of war and the chase.
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