USA > New York > Livingston County > Geneseo > A history of the treaty of Big Tree : and an account of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the making of the treaty, held at Geneseo, N.Y., September the fifteenth, eighteen hundred ninety-seven > Part 6
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In the brief review of the period here contemplated, the contrasts of material progress present a strange blending of the humorous and the marvelous. One hundred years ago it often took seven or eight days for a sloop to go from New York to Albany. Washington Irving refers to a "nine days' voyage" up the river. One of our swift steamers today gives us a sort of a passing glimpse. I was recently in the Cats- kills when a search-light from a steamer ten miles away was thrown on the cliffs, and I got up and read by it at intervals for half an hour, Gibbon's "History of Rome." (Laughter.) The time was when it took a stage coach three days to go from New York to Boston, and two coaches carried all the passengers. In those days our grandfath- ers mowed these meadow lands with old-fashioned scythes, and gar- nered their wheat with quaint-fingered cradles. Today we start a great reaper on one side of a five-thousand acre lot out west, and the wheat is cut, threshed, winnowed and tied up in bags while the machine is in motion. It took the first steamship, the "Savannah." nineteen days to cross the Atlantic, and it was such a curiosity that it went visiting around at the various ports. Today we take one of the modern grayhounds of the deep, visit London, Paris, Berlin and Rome and are home again, at our desks in New York, within the time of the first outward voyage of that first steamer. Twenty-five years ago a writer in Harper's Monthly boasted that we could go from New York to San Francisco in twelve days. In a few years there will be a sum- mer excursion with a shorter schedule from New York to St. Peters- burg, and I expect some day to sit in a coach marked Behring Straits and hear the brakeman call out "Klondyke." (Applause.)
The other day I talked with Ann Arbor. She was eight hundred miles away (laughter) but we arranged a lecture appointment in three minutes by the watch. The telephone today accomplishes what the old century never dreamed of, and in addition to the telephone and the telegraph we now have captured the "X Ray," one of the main advantages of which is, if we happen to ask a friend for the loan of ten dollars, and he says he is sorry he hasn't it, all we have to do is to turn on the "ray" and he has to immediately transmit the X. (Laughter.) This is the first age that has been able to see through everybody. One of these days we will just sit in our rooms, push a button to bring an electric carriage, and finally we will all do our farm- ing, while swinging in a hammock under an awning, by simply turn- ing a few motor switches. (Applause.)
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What evolutions in labor and locomotion from the splint-broom and the sickle to the carpet-sweeper and the lawn-mower, from the sleepy coach and clicking reel to the trolly-car and the bicycle. Even the very word "Century" today no longer suggests to many people a period of glorious achievement but a cycling journey from New York to Philadelphia. I wrote a poem when a boy on the Moon trying to catch her husband, the Sun, but now she has only to get a "Lunar" to be equal to the course. (Laughter.) Our patient grandmothers knew nothing of sewing machines, and never dreamed of an apple parer ; nor would the latter invention have been more popular then than now, although I have known of the work being so pressing in my own native town that it kept many a young couple busy often until eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening in order to keep the family going in apples. (Laughter.) I remember an aunt who used to whirl the spinning-wheel in the homestead garret, and I recall today, no sweeter music, but now the old wheel is a silent heir-loom. Some great machine in Massachusetts or Rhode Island with pale-faced persons beside it transacts all the work. A bale of cotton is untied at one end of a steaming factory, and about a quarter of a mile away it comes out in cylinders of printed cloth. I visited last week a mill where a tree was ground into pulp and presented the next day in the shape of an illustrated newspaper, with news whispered in the meantime from, the furthermost islands of the sea. Wonderful, indeed, has been the work of the hundred years that we are contemplating here in retro- spect this Centennial day in this beautiful village of Geneseo ! (Ap- plause.)
In tracing the growth of material progress, we moreover note the development of a new type of character, for the productions of this country are not alone in the line of mechanism. It is a marvel that we can convert steam and electricity into servants of commerce. It is wonderful that a whisper along a trembling wire seems to know no limit, and that through storm and sunshine we are enabled to talk face to face with friends a thousand miles distant, that we can chronicle a laugh and almost transmit a smile, but the greatest marvel of the century is not the telephone, the telegraph, or the swift flying steamer nay nor the rearing of the greatest temple in the world, the Constitu- tion of the United States ; not the melting back of a great Citizen Army into the field, the office, and the workshop from which it came
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to guard the threshold of a nobler humanity, but the crowning devel- opment and marvel of these hundred years is the American Man. (Applause.) If the statement needs any amendment, the American Woman (laughter) or as Robert Burns has wittily put it in abiding truth :
"The prentice-hand was tried on man And then were made the lassies." (Applause.)
In this new type of character the crowning quality seems a natural readiness to meet emergencies and overcome them. When the young American officer went to Alexandria to bring to New York the obelisk presented to this country by the Khedive of Egypt and the people of Alexandria gathered about it in angry protest, the young American simply wrapped the stars and stripes about it and told his men to proceed. (Applause.) It is recorded in the history of the Hudson that General Putnam, at Peekskill, sent a despatch to Washington : "Nathan Palmer was taken as a spy, tried as a spy, and will be hanged as a spy. P. S .- He is hanged." That brief postscript suggests the germ of American straightforwardness without time for particulars or details. A gentleman from Boston dropped in recently on the pioneer life of an old college classmate, whom he had not seen for years, and was astonished to hear him tell of a great "petrified" forest only a few miles distant ; everything that approached it, he said, became petri- fied. A buffalo ran into it one day and there it stood on its fore-feet petrified-with heels in the air-suddenly arrested in his flight. A piece of dirt, he said, was thrown up in its flight and there it remains, in the air petrified. That can't be, said the Bostonian, think of gravity ! Gravity? Why that was petrified too. (Laughter.) No one but an American, with undaunted readiness, would have ever dreamed of a reply, which, in extravagant humor, set at naught even the primal laws of the universe. (Applause.)
Nor can we forget, as a people, in this hour of remembrance, the great Providences which have attended and shielded us, throughout the century just completed. The old motto of Connecticut, "He who transported us will sustain us," is as true today as when it was first written. It was providential in the beginning of our history that there was room enough here for the development of individual liberty, wherein the feudalism of man to man, of serf to superior, and of knight to lord, might pass into the grander and higher feudalism of
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institutions. The French and Indian wars were also providential, in that they taught the early colonists self-reliance. The Braddock cam- paign was a training-school of liberty ; the Blue Ridge a fortress and a refuge of fredom. Indeed, every battle of the Revolution records a series of Providences. A friend recently told me that his great aunt, who was a Tory, and lived on Long Island, had the fact brought to her that Washington was drawing off his forces under the cover of night. She sent a trusty servant to advise General Howe, but her messenger unwittingly found his way into the Hessian instead of the English camp, where even the officers were unable to understand the communication, so they locked the colored man up for the night and the next morning Washington and his army were on the Heights of Manhattan. If that servant had reached the British General, Washington would have been captured. Nor did these Providences close with the Revolution. They have abided all through our history. Napoleon was in need of money to prosecute his ambition, and while Britain was fitting out her ships to take possession of New Orleans, and thereby plant her flag on the Mississippi and all its tributaries, even to the gateway of Chautau- qua lake, Napoleon sold to us through our envoy, Thomas Jefferson, who was then in Paris, fully two-thirds of our present territory for a few millions of dollars. It was intended from the beginning that this country should be one and indivisible from gulf to lake, from sea to sea. (Applause.) This ceding of French territory brought to us naturally in a few years California and Florida, and then just to straighten out our national boundary we "redeemed" a portion of Mex- ico so that we wouldn't walk off. (Laughter.)
The Civil War came, and early in its history the Battle of Bull Run. General Slocum said a few years ago, in Brooklyn, that he regarded this defeat at first as a serious calamity, but came at last to see that it was a great Providence. If we had been victorious in the beginning, he said, the purposes of the war would not have been accomplished-a freedom for all beneath the flag. (Applause.) The battle of Gettysburg came. At the close of the first day's fight General Meade and his staff sat through a good part of the night in a little house on the hillside and discussed the question whether they should go or stay. They stayed-and all perhaps because a little boy had led the line as it fell back to Cemetery Ridge, which became a bulwark of freedom. It is said that a boy by mistake misdirected Grouchy or the
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decisive battle of Waterloo might have been a blow to Saxon suprem- acy in Europe and throughout the world. Every struggle of the centuries for human rights has been climactory. Marathon and Waterloo anticipate Yorktown and Appomatox, and this flag which we love to call Old Glory, has threads in it that reach back to Mt. Aararat. It was only quarter finished when Washington and Morris went to the old Scotch woman of Philadelphia to make a circle of thirteen stars. (Applause.)
The Providences of God have been great, not only in giving us Washington in the past, but also in these later days, the flower of American manhood, Abraham Lincoln. (Applause.) It sometimes seems that no one else could have guided the Ship so safely, a man who knew how to say and do the right thing at the right time. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." He said "It isn't safe to swap horses while crossing the stream," a sentence more effective in his re-election than a thousand campaign speeches. He wrote to one of his Generals that if he wasn't using the army he would like to borrow it. When Richmond was captured a great crowd early in the morning surged into the White House grounds and called for Lincoln. The window opened and the old Irish butler said, "Whist, boys, the old man will be down directly." The chief ruler of no other land in the world could have received such an introduction without loss of dignity, but no other sentence so clearly reveals the close relation between the people and their executive. Lincoln appear- ed and said "In this hour of our triumph let us remember that they are our brothers." How the man seems sent straight from the skies to speak words of love and honesty. (Applause.)
But in spite of all our Providences there have always been men who said "you can't do it." They proclaimed it way back there to Job. You remember the three who came to see him, Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar, but Job answered "No doubt ye are the people and wisdom shall die with you." Centuries go by and people said to Columbus "You can't do it. There is no land out there anyway," but Columbus said "sail on, sail on," until a new continent lifted itself from the sea. They came to John Hancock and said "there is no use of writing your name so big for it can't be done," and he replied "I propose to write it so that his Majesty can read it without his spectacles." Time went on
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until they came to Webster and said "It is no use, you can't answer the argument of Hayne." "I don't propose to answer it, but to crush him," replied the great statesman, as he welded another rivet in the history of Constitutional liberty. Then they found a man down at Shiloh, General Grant, whose very initials were somehow suggestive of the permanency of the United States, and they said, "Don't cross that stream for if you are defeated you will not have boats enough to bring you back," but the great soldier on his way to Vicksburg said "If we are defeated there will be boats enough to bring back what are left." (Applause.) There is only one thing which it seems this country can't do, and that is to complete the Capitol at Albany. (Laughter.) I am not sure however, but that they propose to take your Centennial for the crowning column this winter.
So much for these Providences and great marvels. Time does not permit us to continue or to elaborate them, and the hour does not allow us to call the long roll of heroes who went down to the front in the protection of country and birthright, for what would be the possessions recalled by this day's observance had it not been for their noble deeds ?
Who can paint that panorama, clear and perfect in detail ? Who can trace the telling bullets in that storm of leaden hail? Who can twine a fitting garland for each dear heroic name, Or untwist the strands of glory in the cable of our fame ? This sufficeth and abideth-every thread is firm and true ; Homespun texture, double woven, colors fast-red, white and blue ; Knotted well at Appomattox, tied to keep the threads in place, Never more to be unraveled in the nation's onward race.
But above all achievements, inventions and triumphs, one proph- ecy from out the ages still shines undimmed. "His name shall be called wonderful !" Our little dreams are fulfilled and the wonder ceases. When the great bridge between New York and Brooklyn was being built, day by day we looked up through the cables of woven steel, and wondered whether ever, from pier to pier, across that wide space, a highway could be constructed It was accomplished and the wonder ceased. We take a microscope and multiply the spaces beneath the glass a hundred-fold and wonder at the anatomy of life and the beauty of God's creation, but the wonder ceases with our attainment. We point a telescope into the sky and foretell the location of a new star by mathematics. The star appears and the marvel ceases. But after all material triumphs fade away and vanish, after all our greatest inventions have been lost in a series of higher accomplishments, this sentence shall abide in sublime futurity: "His name shall be called wonderful !" (Long continued applause.)
APPENDIX
ADDRESS BY MR. W. H. SAMSON
Before the Livingston County Historical Society in 1894.
A FTER the close of the Revolutionary war and the successful estab- lishment of the independence of the colonies, there was a serious dispute between New York and Massachusetts regarding the lands in what is now Western New York. Massachusetts claimed the title by virtue of a grant from King James I to the Ply- mouth company, made November 3, 1620, and New York claimed it by virtue of the grant of Charles II to the Duke of York, dated March 12, 1664, and the voluntary submission of the Iroquois to the crown in 1684.
Happily this dispute was amicably adjusted. By a compact dated December 16, 1786, signed by commissioners representing the two states, New York secured the sovereignty and jurisdiction and Massa- chusetts the right to buy from the native Indians.
There were no reasons why Massachusetts should delay the sale of its rights, and on April 1, 1788, the legislature of that state agreed to convey to Nathaniel Gorham and Oliver Phelps, who were acting for themselves and others, all its right and title for 300,000 pounds in the consolidated securities of the commonwealth, or about one million dol- lars, provided that these speculators would extinguish the Indian title.
On the 8th of July, 1788, a treaty was concluded at Buffalo Creek. It was attended by leading sachems, warriors and chiefs of the Five Nations. At this treaty the Indians sold to Phelps and Gorham for £2,100 and an annuity of $500, all their land east of the Genesee and a small portion west of it. The whole tract being described as follows: "Beginning in the north boundary line of the state of Pennsylvania in the parallelof forty-two degrees north latitude, at a point distant eighty-two miles west from the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, on the Delaware river, as the said boundary line hath been run and marked by the commissioners appointed by the states of New York and Pennsylvania respectively; and from said point or place of beginning, running west upon said line to a meridian which will pass through that corner or point of land made by the influence of the Shanahasgwaikon creek, so-called, with the waters of the Genesee river; thence running north along the said meridian to the corner or point last mentioned; thence northwardly along the waters of the said Genesee river to a point two miles north of Shanawageras village, so-called; thence running in a direction due west twelve miles; thence running a direc- tion northwardly, so as to be twelve miles distant from the most west- ward bends of said Genesee river to the shore of the Ontario lake; thence eastwardly along the shores of said lake to a meridian which will pass through the first point or place of beginning above mentioned; thence south along said meridian to the first point or place of beginning aforesaid; together with all and singular the woods, houses, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, upon, within, and in any wise appertaining to said territory."
This tract embraced a little over two and a half million acres, measuring about eighty-five miles on the east line and nearly forty-five miles on the south line. Within its bounds are the counties of Ontario,
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Steuben and Yates, and portions of the counties of Monroe, Livingston, Wayne, Allegany and Schuyler. On November 21, 1788, the legislature of Massachusetts passed an act conveying this land to Phelps and Gorham.
The advance in the value of the consolidated securities of Massa- chusetts, due to the assumption by the general government of the debts of the several states, brought ruin to Phelps and Gorham. They reserved to themselves two townships, but sold the remainder of the land to Robert Morris, who in turn disposed of it to Sir William Pultney and his associates in England.
Not only were Phelps and Gorham compelled to part with the lands purchased from the Indians, but they were obliged to surrender to Massachusetts the pre-emptive right to the lands west of the Genesee river, embracing about 3,750,000 acres, to which they had been unable- to extinguish the Indian title.
Robert Morris who had made a profit of something like $160,000 on his sale to the Englishmen, was ready to embark in further specula- tions, and on May 11, 1791, purchased from Massachusetts the pre-emp- tive right to the lands west of the Genesee. He paid 100,000 pounds, equal to $333,333.33 in Massachusetts currency. In 1792 and 1793 he sold this land, except the eastern portion, since known as the Morris reserve, to certain capitalists in Holland, and it now became his duty to extinguish the Indian title. Until this should be done the Holland- ers reserved 37,500 pounds of the purchase price.
Soon after making the purchase from Massachusetts, Mr. Morris resolved to settle his son Thomasin the Genesee country "as an evi- dence of his faith in its value and prospects," Thomas Morris was 20 years of age. He had been educated at Geneva and Leipsic and was then reading law. In obedience to the wishes of his father, he left Philadelphia in the early summer of 1791 and coming by way of Wilkes- barre and what was called "Sullivan's path," reached Newtown where he attended Pickering's council and received from the Indians the name of O-te-ti-ana, which Red Jacket had borne in his younger days. Proceeding on his journey, Mr. Morris visited Niagara Falls. On his return, he passed through Canandaigua. The aspect of the little frontier village pleased him, and he resolved to make the place his home. Arranging his affairs in the east, he left New York in March, 1792, and went to Canandaigua. In 1793 he built a framed house, filled in with brick-one of the two framed houses in the state west of Whites- boro. Mr. Morris was admitted to the bar, and in 1794 attended the first court held at Canandaigua. He devoted much of his time to the care of his father's property and the settlement and development of Western New York, and was honored and esteemed by the pioneers. In 1794, 1795 and 1796 he was a member of assembly from Ontario county. For five years beginning with 1796 he was a senator of the state of New York, and from December, 1801, till March 1803, he was a member of congress-the first representative in congress from that portion of the state of New York lying west of Seneca lake. He shared in the financial reverses of his father and in 1804 appointed John Greig his attorney and removed to New York city, where he practiced law until his death in 1848.
Though Robert Morris desired a speedy settlement of his specula-
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tions with the Hollanders, it was not until 1796 that he asked President Washington to order a treaty and appoint a commissioner to represent the United States. The delay in the application was very creditable, for it was due entirely to motives of public consideration. Morris's letter was as follows:
Philadelphia, August 25, 1796.
Sir-In the year 1791 I purchased from the state of Massachusetts a tract of country lying within the boundaries of the state of New York, which had been ceded by the latter to the former state under the sanction and with the concurrence of the congress of the United States. This tract of land is bounded to the east by the Genesee river, to the north by Lake Ontario, to the west partly by Lake Erie and partly by the boundary line of the Pennsylvania triangle, and to the south by the north boundary line of the state of Pennsylvania. A printed brief of title I take the liberty to transmit herewith. To perfect this title it is necessary to purchase of the Seneca nation of Indians their native right, which I should have done soon after the purchase was made of the state of Massachusetts, but that I felt myself restrained from doing so by motives of public consideration. The war between the Western Indian nations and the United States did not extend to the Six Nations, of which the Seneca nation is one; and as I apprehended that, if this nation should sell its right during the existence of that war, they might the more readily be induced to join the enemies of our country, I was determined not to make the purchase whilst that war lasted.
When peace was made with the Indian nations I turned my thoughts towards the purchase, which is to me an object very interest- ing ; but upon it being represented that a little longer patience, until the western posts should be delivered up by the British government, might be public utility, I concluded to wait for that event also, which is now happily accomplished, and there seems no obstacle to restrain me from making the purchase, especially as I have reason to believe the Indians are Fesirous to make the sale.
The delays which have already taken place and that arose solely from the considerations above mentioned have been extremely detri- mental to my private affairs ; but, still being desirous to comply with formalities prescribed by certain laws of the United States, although those laws probably do not reach my case, I now make application to the President of the United States and request that he will nominate and appoint a commissioner to be present and preside at a treaty, which he will be pleased to authorize to be held with the Seneca Nation, for the purpose of enabling me to make a purchase in conformity with the formalities required by law, of the tract of country for which I have already paid a very large sum of money. My right to pre-emption is unequivocal, and the land is become so necessary to the growing popu- lation and surrounding settlements that it is with difficulty that the white people can be restrained from squattering or settling down upon these lands, which if they should do, it may probably bring on conten- «tions with the Six Nations. This will be prevented by a timely, fair and honorable purchase.
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