USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > An authentic and comprehensive history of Buffalo : with some account of its early inhabitants, both savage and civilized ; comprising historic notices of the Six Nations or Iroquois Indians, including a sketch of the life of Sir William Johnson, and of other prominent white men, long resident among the Senecas ; arranged in chronologial order > Part 6
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
" Ogema and Ki-eu-wana differ in their explanation of the origin of the name of Buffalo. The former has made too large draughts upon fiction, to entitle his legend to credit, and thereby throws doubt upon the existence of any such "chronicle " as he refers to. The statement of Ki-eu-wa-na is more plausible, showing that our creek
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ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF BUFFALO.
and the neighboring Indian village were named by the Indians after the buffalos, which formerly frequented the well-known ' lick' on its banks.
" History establishes the fact that these animals for- merly ranged as far east as the St. Lawrence." Q:
This last statement of Q, is undoubtedly a mistake, into which he has been led as others have been by read- ing the journal of Father La Moine, of a journey he made from Quebec to the village of the Onondagas, in 1654, in which he speaks of a herd of " wild cows " that he saw on the banks of the River St. Lawrence, above the rapids, five or six hundred in one drove, but they were undoubtedly moose or elks. For on his return voyage, he says, under date of September 4th (of the same year), "Traveling through vast prairies, we saw in divers quar- ters, immense herds of wild bulls and cows. Their horns resemble in some respects the antlers of the stag." Of course they were either elks or moose. In another place he says, " Droves of twenty cows plunged into the water as if to meet us. Some were killed for the sake of amusement, with blows of an axe." Perhaps it is no more surprising that the moose were once so plenty where now they are unknown, than that buffaloes should have once roamed over the spot where we now dwell, and left their bones as the only memorial of their presence, mingled with those of other animals, about the salt lick, (near the Sulphur Spring,) in our immediate vicinity. But as has been already observed, doubts have been enter- tained, and expressed, as to the truth or probability of the statements upon which the theory as to the origin of the name of our city rested, from the supposed improba- bility of the tradition of the Indians on that subject.
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These doubts are predicated upon the insufficiency of the "evidence that the Buffalo, in his wild state, was ever found in Western New York; " that none of the early visitors to this region, who have left a record of their travels, saw them ; that the great prairies of the West being " his native haunts," he was never found in this region.
Let us examine these two classes of objections in a spirit of candor, and see whether they are entitled to the weight given them by those who have examined the sub- ject with perhaps equal candor and intelligence. In re- gard to the first class of objections, if it is intended to assume that there is no recorded evidence of the fact that buffaloes were seen here by those who made the record, it is undoubtedly true ; but it by no means fol- lows that there is no reliable evidence of the fact. The nature of the case precludes the possibility of such testi- mony ; and if we show that we have the best evidence that the nature of the case admits of, and that it all con- curs in establishing the truth of the Indian tradition that the buffalo, in his wild state, visited the salt lick upon the banks of our Creek, then the statement of our oldest Indian residents, made in 1820, is entitled to rank as " reliable testimony."
I consulted the oldest men (of the Senecas) living in 1820, as to their own knowledge and belief on the sub- ject. They had no doubt of the fact, though none of them pretended to have seen them here. They assured me that, within their own recollection, the bones of the buffalo, with those of other herbiverous animals which had been killed by the wolves, panthers, and other car- nivorous beasts that resorted hither in pursuit of their
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prey, were found at the salt lick. When asked as to the period when buffaloes were seen here, they fixed the time, in round numbers, at one hundred years before that time, which would be in 1720. It is not probable that the buffalo ranged as far east as this long after the introduction and general use of fire-arms among the Iroquois, or Six Nations, which was probably prior to this date ; and as they only visited this locality at par- ticular seasons of the year, and being a very shy animal, particularly when solitary or not in herds, they would be easily frightened away, perhaps not to return, even tem- porarily.
The Indians began to obtain fire-arms as early as 1650 or '60, as we find it was made a subject of com- plaint by the French government in Canada that the English or Dutch, in New York, were furnishing arms and ammunition to the Iroquois, which enabled them to carry on a destructive war against the western nations, who claimed French protection.
It could not be expected, therefore, that the first Euro- peans who visited here would find the buffalo. He had previously been driven from this locality, which may never have been his permanent residence. It is ad- mitted, I believe, that within the recollection of persons now living, the buffalo has " been seen in his wild state " in Ohio, probably within less than two hundred miles of this city. Mr. Thomas Moorhead, a resident of Zanes- ville, writes thus, under date of February 13th, 1863 :
" Capt. Ross, who has lived here fifty-five years, says that Ebenezer and James Ryan often talked with him of having killed buffaloes on the branch of Will's Creek, which is still called the 'Buffalo Fork,' twenty miles
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east of Zanesville. The Ryans were Indian fighters, and this must have been before Wayne's treaty. Buffalo ' beats ' are frequent on the ridges between this place and Marietta - at least, there are several of those ' beats.'"
In view of these facts, it would be extraordinary, in- deed, if, in the absence of civilization, or any natural obstacle to oppose or hinder his progress, the buffalo should not range as far east as this, and even farther, for there is nothing in the nature of the country or its cli- mate to prevent, as we shall abundantly show, Early travellers, almost without exception, speak of the buffalo as being abundant on the south shore of Lake Erie.
The journey of La Salle from the Illinois River to Quebec, in the winter of 1680, must have carried him through what are now the States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Western Virginia, and a part of Pennsylvania and Western New York. But he evidently kept to the south of the shore of Lake Erie. He gives a list of the ani- mals that inhabited the region through which he passed. He says :
"The mountains are covered with bears, stags, wild goats, turkey cocks and wolves, who are so fierce as hardly to be frightened at our guns. The wild bulls are grown somewhat scarce, since the Illinois have been at war with their neighbors, (the Iroquois) for now all par- ties are continually a hunting of them."
La Hontan, who accompanied an expedition of the Il- linois against the Iroquois, in 1687-8, coasted down the south shore of Lake Erie. He says :
" The Lake Erie is justly distinguished with the illus- trious name of Conti-a French Governor - for as"
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suredly it is the finest lake upon earth. Yon may judge of the goodness of the climate from the latitude of the countries which surround it. I cannot express what vast quantities of deer and turkeys are to be found in those woods and in the vast meadows that lie upon the south side of the lake. At the bottom of the lake (Fond du Lac) we find wild beeves, npon the banks of two rivers that disembogue into it, withont cataracts or rapid cur- rents. The banks of the lake are commonly frequented by none but warriors, whether the Iroquois, the Illinois or the Omiamies, &c., and it is very dangerous to stop there. By this means it comes to pass that stags, roe- bucks and turkeys, run in great bodies up and down the shore all round the lake.
" In former times the Errinons and the Andastaguere- nons lived upon the confines of this lake, but they were extirpated by the Iroquois, as well as other nations marked npon the map."
Charlevoix, who made the journey from Quebec to the Mississippi in 1721, following nearly the route of La Salle in 1679, in describing the journey across Lake On- tario, says :
" We intended to go into the River aux Boeufs. (Buf- falo River) but we found the stream shut up by the sands, which often happens to the little rivers that empty into the lakes. About two in the afternoon we entered into the River Niagara, formed by the great fall, which I shall mention presently."
After describing the passage up the river to a point beyond which they could not go with their boat, and their visit on foot to the falls, and passage up the river to the rapids, at what is now Black Rock, he proceeds :
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" I departed on the 27th of May, 1721, from the en- trance of the Lake Erie. The route is to keep the north coast. Lake Erie is a hundred leagues long from east to west ; its breadth from north to south is about thirty. The name it bears is that of a nation of the Huron lan- guage settled on its borders, and which the Iroquois have entirely destroyed. Erie means Cat. The Eries are named in some of the 'Relations,' the Nation of the Cat.
" The 28th I went nineteen leagues, and found myself over against the great (Grand) river which comes from the east, in forty-two degrees fifteen minutes. The first of June, being Whit-Sunday, after going up a pretty river almost an hour, which comes from a great way and runs between two fine meadows, we made a portage of about sixty paces, to escape going round a point which advances fifteen leagues into the lake; they call it 'Long Point.' It is very sandy, and produces naturally many vines. At every place where I landed, I was en- chanted with the beauty and variety of the landscape, bounded by the finest forests in the world. Besides this, waterfowl swarmed everywhere.
"I cannot say there is such a plenty of game in the woods, but I know that on the south side of the lake there are vast herds of wild cattle. On the 4th (of June) we were stopped a good part of the day on a point which runs three leagues north and south, which they call Point Pelee. There are many bears in this country ; and last winter they killed, on Point Pelee alone, above four hundred."
This was a great crossing place for several kinds of animals, as well as wild turkeys- passing from island
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ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF BUFFALO.
to island on the ice in winter, and by flight or swimming in summer.
After describing his journey to Mackinac and to the mouth of the St. Joseph River, near the southern ex- tremity of Lake Michigan, where the French had previ- ously established a post and built a fort, he passed up that river to a point where it bends farthest to the south (Great Bend.) They carried their canoes over a short portage to the head waters of the Kankikee, a confluent of the Illinois, and passed down that tortuous stream through extensive flat prairies, until they entered the II- linois River. He says :
"The meadows here extend beyond the sight, in which the buffalo go in herds of two or three hundred. Everywhere we met with paths that are as beaten as they can be in the most populous countries ; yet nothing passes through them but buffaloes."
Thus far we have the evidence of the early French travellers. They establish the fact of the existence of the buffalo upon the south shore of Lake Erie down to. about 1721.
We will now proceed to examine the evidence derived from other sources subsequent to the period last named, (1721.) I have already produced evidence of the pres- ence of the buffalo in the south-eastern part of Ohio, in the vicinity of Zanesville, to the period of the first set- tlement of that State, about the close of the war of the Revolution.
Mr. Thomas Ashe, in a letter dated at Erie, Pa., after he had made a minute examination of the head waters of the Allegany and Monongahela Rivers, in 1806, gives the following statement of an old man, one of the first
·
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settlers in that country, who built a log house, or hut, upon the borders of a salt spring, or lick :
" He informed me that, for several seasons, the buffa- loes paid him their visits with the utmost regularity. They traveled in single file, always following each other at equal distances, forming droves, on their arrival, of about three hundred each., The first and second year, so unacquainted were these poor brutes with the use of this man's house or his nature, that in a few hours they rubbed the house completely down, taking delight in turning the logs off with their horns, while he had some difficulty to escape being trampled under their feet, or being erushed in his own ruins. At that period he sup- posed there could not be less than ten thousand in the neighborhood of the springs. They sought for no man- ner of food, but bathed and drank three or four times a day, and rolled in the earth, or mud, or reposed with their flanks distended in the adjacent shades, and on the the fifth or sixth day separated into distinct droves, bathed, drank, and departed in single files, according to the exact order of their arrival. They all rolled succes- sively in the same hole, and each thus carried away a coat of mud, to preserve the moisture of the skin, which, when hardened and baked in the sun, would resist the stings of millions of inseets that otherwise would perse- .cute these peaceful travelers to madness, or even to death.
" In the first and second years the old man, with some companions, killed six or seven hundred of these noble creatures, merely for the sake of their skins, which to them were only worth two shillings each ; and after this "work of death, they were obliged to leave the place till
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the following season, or till the wolves, bears, panthers, eagles, rooks, &c., had devoured the carcases and aban- doned the place for other prey. In the two following years, the same persons killed great numbers out of the Arst droves that arrived, skinned them, and left their bodies exposed to the sun and air. But they soon had reason to repent of this, for the remaining droves, as they came up in succession, stopped, gazed on the man- gled and putrid bodies, sorrowfully moaned or furiously lowed aloud, and returned instantly to the wilderness in an unusual run, without tasting their favorite spring or licking the impregnated earth, which was also once their most agreeable occupation. Nor did they or any of their race ever visit the neighborhood again."
There are numerous salt springs, or licks, both in the eastern part of Ohio and in western Pennsylvania, and Dr. W. H. Irvine informs me that some of the oil springs were " deer licks." It was in the vicinity of one of these springs in western Pennsylvania, probably not over one hundred miles from this city, where this "old man's " cabin was located. If he was seventy-five years old when he made this statement to Mr. Ashe, in 1806, we may fix the date of the exodus of the buffalo at about the year 1755.
Dr. S. P. Hildreth, who now resides at Marietta, Ohio, writes me, under date of Febuary 25th, 1863, as follows :
"There is no doubt of their (the buffalo) traversing " the whole State of Ohio easterly into Pennsylvania, and the northern portion of New York, in the early stage of our history, or as late as the year 1750.
" I came to Marietta in 1806. I have seen many of the old inhabitants who have killed them and eaten of
6
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their flesh. The flesh of the fat cow buffalo was consid- ered to be better than that of domestic cattle.
" Near the vicinity of Salt Springs, their paths or roads were very distinct and plain, after I came to Ohio ; and to this day on the hills are large patches of ground, des- titute of bushes or trees, where they used to congregate, to stamp off the flies, digging the surface into deep hol- lows, called " buffalo stamps." The forests here were very open and filled with rich pea-vines, and buffalo clo- ver, a variety between the white and red kinds of our day."
Mr. Albert Gallatin, when a young man, was employed as a surveyor in Western Virginia, and made the ques- tion of the eastern range of the buffalo, a subject of in- vestigation and study. He has given the result of this investigation in an article furnished for publication in the transactions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. 2, page 50. In his introduction, he says, " Colonies of the buffaloes had traversed the Mississippi, and were at one time abundant in the forest country between the lakes and the Tennessee River, south of which I do not believe they were ever seen. The name of 'Buffalo Creek,' between Pittsburg and Wheeling proves that they had spread thus far eastwardly, when that country was first visited by the Anglo-Americans.
."In my time, 1784-5, they were abundant on the south side of the Ohio, between the Great and Little Kenawha. I have, during eight months, lived princi- pally on their flesh. The American settlement have of course destroyed them and not one is now seen east of the Mississippi. They had also, at a former period, pen- etrated east of the Allegany Mountains. But I have
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ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF BUFFALO.
been mistaken in supposing that they were to be seen only on the head waters of the Rhonoake or Cape Fear River. It appears by the publication of the Westover papers, that as late as the year 1728 they were found by Col. Bird on the borders of Virginia and North Carolina and also further north in what, if I am not mistaken, is now called Southampton county, in about latitude thirty- seven degrees, and longitude seventy-seven degrees. The frequent name of 'Buffalo Creek' indicates their for- mer range."
In a letter written to me in March last, by John H. James, Esq., Urbana, Ohio, this suggestion is made. He says :
" I have had occasion to observe that all our early hunters and those best acquainted with the Indians never gave an Indian name of any stream, but always a trans- lation of it. Hence our numerous Deer Creeks, Buck Creeks, Beaver Creeks, &c., all of which had been called so by the Indians.
" Your stream would naturally have its name of 'Buf- falo Creek ' in the same manner."
There are abundant authorities that might be quoted to show that the buffalo was found not only in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and other adjoining States, but in our own State.
Thomas Morton, one of the early settlers of New Eng- land, in his " New English Canaan," published in 1637, says :
" They (the Indians) have also made description of great herds of well-grown beasts, that live about the parts of this Lake Erocoise, (now Lake Ontario) such as the Christian world, until this discovery, hath not been
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made acquainted with. These beasts are of the bigness of a cowe, their flesh being very good food, their hides good leather, their fleeces very useful, being a kind of woolle, and the salvages do make garments thereof."
We have already mentioned that Charleviox speaks of the Rivere aux Bœuf, (or Buffalo Creek), now "Oak Orchard Creek," a few miles east of the entrance to the Niagara, on Lake Ontario, in 1721. Its name was un- doubtedly derived in the same way as our own Buffalo Creek, but had not the means of perpetuating the name by being the location of an aboriginal city; and had it not been for this early record, it would not now be known that it ever bore the name, as it is not known to the pres- ent inhabitants of that locality, as I have taken some pains to ascertain.
Doctor Richardson, in his Fauna-Boreali Americana in a compendious history of the former range of the buf- falo, or American bison, says :
" At the period when Europeans began to form settle- ments in North America, this animal was occasionally met with on the Atlantic coast. But even then it ap- pears to have been rare to the eastward of the Apalach- ian mountains, for Lawson has thought it to be a fact worth recording, that two were killed in one year on the Appomattox, a branch of the James River; and Warden mentions that at no distant date herds of them existed in the western parts of Pennsylvania, and that as late as 1766 they were pretty numerous in Kentucky. Great Slave Lake was at one time the northern boundary of their range (in the fur region) ; but of late years, accord- ing to the testimony of the natives, they have taken pos- session of the limestone district, on the north side of that
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lake, and have wandered to the vicinity of the Great Marten Lake, in latitude sixty-three or sixty-four de- grees.
" As far as I have been able to ascertain, the lime stone and sand stone formations lying between the Rocky Mountain Ridge and the lower eastern chain of primitive rocks are the only districts in the fur countries visited by the bison.
" In the comparatively level tracts, there is much prai- rie land, on which they find good grass in summer, and also many marshes overgrown with bullrushes and cara- cies, which supplies them with winter food. Salt springs and lakes also abound on the confines of the lime stone, and there are several well-known salt springs where bison are sure to be found at all seasons of the year."
Dr. Richardson accompanied the expedition of Capt. Back, in search of Capt Ross, in 1832, as naturalist, and had superior opportunities to inform himself in regard to what he wrote. He adds :
" The bisons are truly a wandering race. Their mo- tives of restlessness being either disturbance from hun- ters, or change of pasture, (and, he might have added, search of salt licks or springs.) They are less wary when they are in herds, and will then often follow their leaders regardless of, or trampling down the hunter, posted in their way."
In the Natural History of the State of New York, published under an act of the Legislature, Mr. De Kay speaks of the buffalo as a native of this State but "long since extirpated."
In the Documentary History published by the same authority, we find in a memoir of the Indians of Canada,
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HISTORY OF BUFFALO.
by M. De Vaudrael, under date of 1718, it is said : “ Buf- faloes abound on the south shore of Lake Erie, but not on the north." Again : "Thirty leagues up the Miamie River, at a place called La Glaize, buffaloes are always found." He also speaks of the "River-aux-bœuf's " on Lake Ontario, in this State, which was mentioned by Charlevoix.
It is hardly necessary to accumulate testimony on this branch of our subject, which might be done almost in- definitely. It will be readily seen, that any argument, built upon the hypothesis, that the buffalo in his wild state, was never found in Western New York, or that he would not voluntarily live, even temporarily, in a climate like ours, or that his native haunt, was confined to the great prairies of the West, will be found to be untenable.
That he ranged over a vast extent of country when un- disturbed, and no natural obstacles obstructed his way, is proved by all history and observation.
All accounts agree in representing the buffalo to be a great traveller. Nothwithstanding his enormous and apparently unweildy body, and comparatively small limbs, he has wonderful powers of endurance, and a speed nearly equal to that of an ordinary horse. " Of all animals," says Irving, " a buffalo, when closely press - ed by the hunter, has an aspect the most diabolical. His too short black horns, curve out of a huge frontlet of shaggy hair, his mouth is open, his tongue parched and drawn up into a half crescent, his eyes glow like coals of fire, his tail is erect, tufted and whisking about in the air, he is a perfect picture of mingled rage and terror." Godman says :
" They have been seen in herds of three, four and five
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thousand, blackening the plains as far as the eye could view. Some travellers are of the opinion that they have seen as many as eight or ten thousand in the same herd.
" The buffalo was formerly found throughout the whole territory of the United States, with the exception of that part east of the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, and of narrow strips on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico."
These are by no means all the evidences going to sus- tain the Indian tradition, that the buffalo in his native state was once a visitor at least, in this locality.
That he was ever seen here by white men is not at all probable, for the reason suggested, that he had been then, as he has been since, driven from all his ancient haunts, by advancing civilization. The representative of that civilization, being fire arms in the hands of the Iroquois, and the only memorial he left here was his bleaching bones around the "salt lick" on the banks of the " Buffalo Creek."
But the buffaloes like their cotemporaries, the aborig- inal inhabitants of this continent, are a doomed race ! They have been driven little by little from all their an- cient haunts or homes, even their bones have decayed out of our sight, and it is even now questioned, whether there was ever a buffalo here! But when the last of his race shall have sunk down in silence and solitude in the inaccessible gorges of the Rocky mountains, or in the far off cold sterile regions of the North, here shall flourish in all its life, its activity, and its beauty, a mon- ument, to perpetuate his memory, and his name, and carry it down the rapid stream of time, through all gen- erations of men who shall inhabit the city of Buffalo.
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