USA > New York > Erie County > Centennial history of Erie County, New York : being its annals from the earliest recorded events to the hundredth year of American independence > Part 5
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About 1712, an important event occurred in the history of the Hedonosaunee. The Five Nations became the Six Nations.
48
THE TUSCARORAS.
The Tuscaroras, a powerful tribe of North Carolina, had become involved in a war with the whites, originating as usual in a dis- pute about land. The colonists being aided by several other tribes, the Tuscaroras were soon defeated, many of them killed, and many others captured and sold as slaves. The greater part of the remainder fled northward to the Iroquois, who immedi- ately adopted them as one of the tribes of the confederacy, assigning them a seat near the Oneidas. The readiness of those haughty warriors to extend the valuable shelter of the Long House over a band of fleeing exiles is probably due to the fact that they had been the allies of the Iroquois against other South- ern Indians, which would also account for the eagerness of the latter to join the whites in the overthrow of the Tuscaroras.
Not long after this, one Chabert Joncaire, a Frenchman who had been captured in youth by the Senecas, who had been adopted into their tribe and had married a Seneca wife, but who had been released at the treaty of peace, was employed by the French authorities to promote their influence among the Iro- quois. Pleading his claims as an adopted child of the nation, he was allowed by the Seneca chiefs to build a cabin on the site of Lewiston, which soon became a center of French influence.
All the efforts of the English were impotent either to dislodge him or to obtain a similar privilege for any of their own people. "Joncaire is a child of the nation," was the sole reply vouch- safed to every complaint. Though Fort Niagara was for the time abandoned, and no regular fort was built at Lewiston, yet Joncaire's trading-post embraced a considerable group of cabins, and at least a part of the time a detachment of French soldiers was stationed there. Thus the active Gauls kept up communi- cation with their posts in the West, and maintained at least a slight ascendency over the territory which is the subject of this history.
About 1725, they began rebuilding Fort Niagara, on the site where De Nonville had erected his fortress. They did so with- out opposition, though it seems strange that they could so easily have allayed the jealousy of the Six Nations. It may be pre- sumed, however, that the very fact of the French being such poor colonizers worked to their advantage in establishing a cer- tain kind of influence among the Indians.
49
THE INCREASE OF FRENCH POWER.
Few of them being desirous of engaging in agriculture, they made little effort to obtain land, while the English were con- stantly arousing the jealousy of the natives by obtaining enor- mous grants from some of the chiefs, often doubtless by very dubious methods. Moreover, the French have always possessed a peculiar facility for assimilating with savage and half-civilized races, and thus gaining an influence over them.
Whatever the cause, the power of the French constantly in- creased among the Senecas. Fort Niagara was their stronghold, and Erie county with the rest of Western New York was, for over thirty years, to a very great extent under their control. The influence of Joncaire was maintained and increased by his sons, Chabert and Clauzonne Joncaire, all through the second quarter of 'the eighteenth century.
In the war between England and France, begun in 1744 and closed by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, the Six Nations generally maintained their neutrality, though the Mohawks gave some aid to the English. During the eight years of nominal peace which succeeded that treaty, both nations were making constant efforts to extend their dominion beyond their frontier settle- ments, the French with the more success. To Niagara, Detroit and other posts they added Presque Isle, (now Erie,) Venango, and finally Fort Du Quesne on the site of Pittsburg; designing to establish a line of forts from the lakes to the Ohio, and thence down that river to the Mississippi.
Frequent detachments of troops passed through along this line. Their course was up the Niagara to Buffalo, thence either by batteaux up the lake, or on foot along the shore, to Erie, and thence to Venango and Du Quesne. Gaily dressed French offi- cers sped backward and forward, attended by the feathered war- riors of their allied tribes, and not unfrequently by the Senecas. Dark-gowned Jesuits hastened to and fro, everywhere receiving the respect of the red men, even when their creed was rejected, and using all their art to magnify the power of both Rome and France.
It is possible that the whole Iroquois confederacy would have been induced to become active partisans of the French, had it not been for one man, the skillful English superintendent of In- dian affairs, soon to be known as Sir William Johnson. He,
50
THE FINAL STRUGGLE.
having in 1734 been sent to America as the agent of his uncle, a great landholder in the valley of the Mohawk, had gained almost unbounded influence over the Mohawks by integrity in dealing and native shrewdness, combined with a certain coarse- ness of nature which readily affiliated with them. He had made his power felt throughout the whole confederacy, and had been intrusted by the British government with the management of its relations with the Six Nations.
In 1756, after two years of open hostilities in America, and several important conflicts, war was again declared between England and France, being their last great struggle for suprem- acy in the new world. The ferment in the wilderness grew more earnest. More frequently sped the gay officers and soldiers of King Louis from Quebec, and Frontenac, and Niagara, now in bat- teaux, now on foot, along the western border of our county ; stay- ing perchance to hold a council with the Seneca sachems, then hurrying forward to strengthen the feeble line of posts on which so much depended. In this war the Mohawks were persuaded by Sir William Johnson to take the field in favor of the English. But the Senecas were friendly to the French, and were only re- strained from taking up arms for them by unwillingness to fight their Iroquois brethren, who were allies of the English.
At first the French were everywhere victorious. Braddock, almost at the gates of Fort Du Quesne, was slain, and his army cut in pieces, by a force utterly contemptible in comparison with his own. Montcalm captured Oswego. The French line up the lakes and across to the Ohio was stronger than ever.
But in 1858 William Pitt became prime minister, and then England flung herself in deadly earnest into the contest. That year Fort Du Quesne was captured by an English and provincial army, its garrison having retreated. Northward, Fort Frontenac was seized by Col. Bradstreet, and other victories prepared the way for the grand success of 1859. The cordon was broken, but Fort Niagara still held out for France, still the messengers ran backward and forward, to and from Presque Isle and Venango, still the Senccas strongly declared their friendship for Yon- nondio and Yonnondio's royal master.
In 1759, yet heavier blows were struck. Wolfe assailed Que- bec, the strongest of all the French strongholds. Almost at the
51
EXPEDITION OF D'AUBREY.
same time Gen. Prideaux, with two thousand British and provin- cials, accompanied by Sir William Johnson with one thousand of his faithful Iroquois, sailed up Lake Ontario and laid siege to Fort Niagara. Defended by only six hundred men, its cap- ture was certain unless relief could be obtained.
Its commander was not idle. Once again along the Niagara, and up Lake Erie, and away through the forest, sped his lithe, red- skinned messengers to summon the sons and the allies of France. D'Aubrey, at Venango, heard the call and responded with his most zealous endeavors. Gathering all the troops he could from far and near, stripping bare with desperate energy the little French posts of the West, and mustering every red man he could persuade to follow his banners, he set forth to relieve Niagara.
Thus it was that about the 20th of July, 1759, while the Eng- lish army was still camped around the walls of Quebec, while Wolfe and Montcalm were approaching that common grave to which the path of glory was so soon to lead them, a stirring scene took place on the western borders of our county. The largest European force which had yet been seen in this region at any one time came coasting down the lake from Presque Isle, past the mouth of the Cattaraugus, and along the shores of Brant, and Evans, and Hamburg, to the mouth of the limpid Buffalo. Fifty or sixty batteaux bore near a thousand French- men on their mission of relief, while a long line of canoes were freighted with four hundred of the dusky warriors of the West.
A motley yet gallant band it was which then hastened along our shores, on the desperate service of sustaining the failing for- tunes of France. Gay young officers from the court of the Grand Monarque sat side by side with sunburned trappers, whose feet had trodden every mountain and prairie from the St. Law- rence to the Mississippi. Veterans who had won laurels under the marshals of France were comrades of those who knew no other foe than the Iroquois and the Delawares.
One boat was filled with soldiers trained to obey with unques- tioning fidelity every word of their leaders; another contained only wild savages, who scarce acknowledged any other law than . their own fierce will. Here flashed swords and bayonets and brave attire, there appeared the dark rifles and buckskin gar-
52
EXPEDITION OF D'AUBREY.
ments of the hardy hunters, while, still further on, the tomahawks and scalping-knives and naked bodies of Ottawa and Huron braves glistened in the July sun.
There were some, too, among the younger men, who might fairly have taken their places in either batteau or canoe ; whose features bore unmistakable evidence of the commingling of diverse races ; who might perchance have justly claimed kindred with barons and chevaliers then resplendent in the salons of Paris, but who had drawn their infant nourishment from the breasts of dusky mothers, as they rested from hoeing corn on the banks of the Ohio.
History has preserved but a slight record of this last struggle of the French for dominion in these regions, but it has rescued from oblivion the names of D'Aubrey, the commander, and De Lignery, his second ; of Monsieur Marini, the leader of the In- dians ; and of the captains De Villie, Repentini, Martini and Basonc.
They were by no means despondent. The command contained many of the same men, both white and red, who had slaughtered the unlucky battalions of Braddock only two years before, and they might well hope that some similar turn of fortune would yet give them another victory over the foes of France.
The Seneca warriors, snuffing the battle from their homes on the Genesee and beyond, were roaming restlessly through Erie and Niagara counties, and along the shores of the river, uncer- tain how to act, more friendly to the French than the English, and yet unwilling to engage in conflict with their brethren of the Six Nations.
Hardly pausing to communicate with these doubtful friends, D'Aubrey led his flotilla past the pleasant groves whose place is now occupied by a great commercial emporium, hurried by the tall bluff now crowned by the battlements of Fort Porter, · dashed down the rapids, swept on in his eager course untroubled by the piers of any International bridge, startled the deer from their lairs on the banks of Grand Island, and only halted on reaching the shores of Navy Island.
Being then beyond the borders of Erie county, I can give the remainder of his expedition but the briefest mention. After staying at Navy Island a day or two to communicate with the
53
END OF FRENCH POWER.
fort, he passed over to the mainland and confidently marched forward to battle. But Sir William Johnson, who had succeeded to the command on the death of Prideaux, was not the kind of man likely to meet the fate of Braddock.
Appriscd of the approach of the French, he retained men enough before the fort to prevent an outbreak of the garrison, and stationed the rest in an advantageous position on the east side of the Niagara, just below the whirlpool. After a battle an hour long the French were utterly routed, several hundred being slain on the field, and a large part of the remainder being captured, including the wounded D'Aubrey.
On the receipt of these disastrous news the garrison at once surrendered. The control of the Niagara river, which had been in the hands of the French for over a hundred years, passed into those of the English. For a little while the French held posses- sion of their fort at Schlosser, and even repulsed an English force sent against it. Becoming satisfied, however, that they could not withstand their powerful foe, they determined to destroy their two armed vessels, laden with military stores. They accordingly took them into an arm of the river, separating Buck- horn from Grand Island, at the very northwesternmost limit of Erie county, burned them to the water's edge, and sunk the hulls. The remains of these hulls, nearly covered with mud and sand, are still, or were lately, to be seen in the shallow water where they sank, and the name of "Burnt Ship Bay" perpetuates the naval sacrifice of the defeated Gauls.
Soon the life-bought victory of Wolfe gave Quebec to the triumphant Britons. Still the French clung to their colonies with desperate but failing grasp, and it was not until September, 1760, that the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the governor general of Canada, surrendered Montreal, and with it Detroit, Venango, and all the other posts within his jurisdiction. This surrender was ratified by the treaty of peace between England and France in February, 1763, which ceded Canada to the former power.
The struggle was over. The English Octavius had defeated the Gallic Antony. Forever destroyed was the prospect of a French peasantry inhabiting the plains of Erie county, of baron- ial castles crowning its vine-clad heights, of a gay French city overlooking the mighty lake and the renowned river.
54
THE SENECAS HOSTILE.
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGLISH DOMINION.
Pontiac's League .- The Senecas Hostile. - The Devil's Hole .- Battle near Buffalo. -Treaty at Niagara .- Bradstreet's Expedition .- Israel Putnam .- Lake Com- merce .- Wreck of the Beaver .- Tryon County.
Notwithstanding the disappearance of the French soldiers, the western tribes still remembered them with affection, and were still disposed to wage war upon the English. The cele- brated Pontiac united nearly all these tribes in a league against the red-coats, immediately after the advent of the latter, and as no such confederation had been formed against the French, during all their long years of possession, his action must be as- signed to some cause other than mere hatred of all civilized intruders. 17
In May, 1863, the league surprised nine out of twelve English posts, and massacred their garrisons. Detroit, Pittsburg and Niagara alone escaped surprise, and each successfully resisted a siege, in which branch of war, indeed, the Indians were almost certain to fail. There is no positive evidence, but there is little doubt that the Senecas were involved in Pontiac's league, and were active in the attack on Fort Niagara. They had been un- willing to fight their brethren of the Long House, under Sir William Johnson, but had no scruples about killing the English when left alone, as was soon made terribly manifest.
In the September following occurred the awful tragedy of the Devil's Hole, when a band of Senecas, of whom Honayewus, afterwards celebrated as Farmer's Brother, was one, and Corn- planter probably another, ambushed a train of English army- wagons, with an escort of soldiers, the whole numbering ninety- six men, three and a half miles below the Falls, and massacred every man with four exceptions.
A few weeks later, on the 19th of October, 1763, there occurred the first hostile conflict in Erie county of which there is any record, in which white men took part. It is said to have been
55
A BATTLE NEAR BUFFALO.
at the "east end of Lake Erie," but was probably on the river just below the lake, as there would be no chance for ambushing boats on the lake shore.
Six hundred British soldiers, under one Major Wilkins, were on their way in boats to reinforce their comrades in Detroit. As they approached the lake, a hundred and sixty of them, who were half a mile astern of the others, were suddenly fired on by a band of Senecas, ensconced in a thicket on the river shore, probably on the site of Black Rock. Though even the British estimated the enemy at only sixty, yet so close was their aim that thirteen men were killed and wounded at the first fire. The captain in command of the nearest boats immediately ordered fifty men ashore, and attacked the Indians. The latter fell back a short distance, but rallied, and when the British pursued them they maintained their ground so well that three more men were killed on the spot, and twelve others badly wounded, including two commissioned officers. Meanwhile, under the protection of other soldiers, who formed on the beach, the boats made their way into the lake, and were joined by the men who had taken part in the fight. It does not appear that the Indians suffered near as heavily as the English.
This was the last serious attack by the Senecas upon the En- glish. Becoming at length convinced that the French had really yielded, and that Pontiac's scheme had failed as to its main pur- pose, they sullenly agreed to abandon Yonnondio, and be at peace with Corlear.
In April, 1764, Sir William Johnson concluded peace with eight chiefs of the Senecas, at Johnson's Hall. At that time, among other agreements, they formally conveyed to the king of Eng- land a tract fourteen miles by four, for a carrying place around Niagara Falls, lying on both sides of the river from Schlosser to Lake Ontario. This was the origin of the policy of reserv- ing a strip of land along the river, which was afterwards carried out by the United States and the State of New York.
This treaty was to be more fully ratified at a council to be held at Fort Niagara in the summer of 1764. Events in the West, where Pontiac still maintained active but unavailing hos- tility to the British, as well as the massacres previously per- petrated by the Senecas, determined the English commander-
56
BRADSTREET'S EXPEDITION.
in-chief to send a force up the lakes able to overcome all opposition.
Accordingly, in the summer of 1764, Gen. Bradstreet, an able officer, with twelve hundred British and Americans, came by water to Fort Niagara, accompanied by the indefatigable Sir William Johnson and a body of his Iroquois warriors. A grand council of friendly Indians was held at the fort, among whom Sir William exercised ·his customary skill, and satisfactory trea- ties were made with them.
But the Senecas, though repeatedly promising attendance in answer to the baronet's messages, still held aloof, and. were said to be meditating a renewal of the war. At length Gen. Brad- street ordered their immediate attendance, under penalty of the destruction of their settlements. They came, ratified the treaty, and thenceforward adhered to it pretty faithfully, not- withstanding the peremptory manner in which it was obtained. In the meantime a fort had been erected on the site of Fort Erie, the first ever built there.
In August Bradstreet's army, increased to nearly three thou- sand men, among whom were three hundred Senecas, (who seem to have been taken along partly as hostages,) came up the river to the site of Buffalo. Thence they proceeded up the south side of the lake, for the purpose of bringing the western Indians to terms, a task which was successfully accomplished without bloodshed. From the somewhat indefinite accounts which have come down to us, it is evident that the journey was made in open boats, rigged with sails, in which, when the wind was favor- able, excellent speed was made.
Bradstreet's force, like D'Aubrey's, was a somewhat motley one. There were stalwart, red-coated regulars, who, when they marched, did so as one man; hardy New England militia, whose dress and discipline and military maneuvers were but a poor imitation of the regulars, yet who had faced the legions of France on many a well-fought field ; rude hunters of the border, to whom all dis- cipline was irksome; faithful Indian allies from the Mohawk valley, trained to admiration of the English by Sir William Johnson ; and finally the three hundred scowling Senecas, their hands red from the massacre of the Devil's Hole, and almost ready to stain them again with English blood.
57
EARLY LAKE COMMERCE.
Of the British and Americans, who then in closest friendship and under the same banners passed along the western border of Erie county, there were not a few who in twelve years more were destined to seek each others lives on the blood-stained battle- fields of the Revolution. Among them was one whose name was a tower of strength to the patriots of America, whose voice ral- lied the faltering soldiers of Bunker Hill, and whose fame has come down to us surrounded by a peculiar halo of adventurous valor. This was Israel Putnam, then a loyal soldier of King George, and lieutenant colonel of the Connecticut battalion.
For a while, however, there was peace, not only between Eng- land and France, but between the Indians and the colonists. The Iroquois, though the seeds of dissension had been sown among them, were still a powerful confederacy, and their war- parties occasionally made incursions among the western Indians, striding over the plains of Erie county as they went, and return- ing by the same route with their scalps and prisoners.
Hither, too, came detachments of red-coated Britons, coming up the Niagara, usually landing at Fort Erie, where a post was all the while maintained, and going thence in open boats to De- troit, Mackinaw, and other western forts. It was not absolutely necessary to come this way to reach Pittsburgh, since the British base of supplies was not, like that of the French, confined to the St. Lawrence, but included Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Along the borders of Erie county, too, went all the commerce of the upper lakes, consisting of supplies for the military posts, goods to trade with the Indians, and the furs received in return. The trade was carried on almost entirely in open boats, pro- pelled by oars, with the occasional aid of a temporary sail. In good weather tolerable progress could be made, but woc to any of these frail craft which might be overtaken by a storm.
The New York Gazette, in February, 1770, informed its read- ers that several boats had been lost in crossing Lake Erie, and that the distress of the crews was so great that they were obliged to keep two human bodies found on the north shore, so as to kill for food the ravens and eagles which came to feed on the corpses. This remarkable narrative of what may be called sec- ond-hand cannibalism, gives a startling picture of the hardships at that time attending commercial operations on Lake Erie.
5
58
WRECK OF THE BEAVER.
Other boats were mentioned at the same time as frozen up or lost, but nothing is said as to sail-vessels. There were, however, at least two or three English trading vessels on Lake Erie before the Revolution, and probably one or two armed vessels belonging to the British government. One of the former, called the Beaver, is known to have been lost in a storm, and is believed by the best authorities to have been wrecked near the mouth of Eight- een-Mile creek, and to have furnished the relics found in that vicinity by early settlers, which by some have been attributed to the ill-fated Griffin.
The Senecas made frequent complaints of depredations com- mitted by whites on some of their number, who had villages on the head waters of the Susquehanna and Ohio. "Cressap's war," in which the celebrated Logan was an actor, contributed to render them uneasy, but they did not break out in open hos- tilities. They, like the rest of the Six Nations, had by this time learned to place implicit confidence in Sir William John- son, and made all their complaints through him.
He did his best to redress their grievances, and also sought to have them withdraw their villages from those isolated localities to their chief seats in New York, so they would be more com- pletely under his jurisdiction and protection. Ere this could be accomplished, however, all men's attention was drawn to certain mutterings in the political sky, low at first, but growing more and more angry, until at length there burst upon the country that long and desolating storm known as the Revolutionary war.
Before speaking of that it may be proper to remark that, mu- nicipally considered, all the western part of the colony of New York was nominally a part of Albany county up to 1772, though really all authority was divided between the Seneca chiefs and the officers of the nearest British garrisons. In that year a new county was formed, embracing all that part of the colony west of the Delaware river, and of a line running north- eastward from the head of that stream through the present county of Schoharie, then northward along the east line of Montgom- ery, Fulton and Hamilton counties, and continuing in a straight line to Canada. It was named Tryon, in honor of William Tryon, then the royal governor of New York. Guy Johnson,
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