USA > New York > Livingston County > Nunda > Centennial history of the town of Nunda : with a preliminary recital of the winning of western New York, from the fort builders age to the last conquest by our Revolutionary forefathers > Part 6
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The second village in Nunda that history mentions gets the name of Nundow, an equivalent for Nundao. Most Indian places had more than one name, as Gardeau was also Gardao, "A bank in front (of the river )"-so Nun- dow or Nundao had a hill or high hill in front. In 1780 this was here in the village and stone quarry hill was probably the hill that would be seen from any part of our present village.
A third village was located near the north line of the town, near Nunda Junction. Ancient manuscripts speak of a village and call it "Nundey." By a comparison with other Indian words that have either "Nunde" or "Nundey" in them we find they always apply to places where the hills are small or numer- ous. This exactly fits the conditions near Nunda Junction. There is abun- dant evidence of there having been a village there, such as quantities of arrow chips. The author spent his childhood here and knows that this was so (full sixty years ago).
Indian villages change locations for sanitary reasons, and also to get new corn lands for the squaws to use. This village moved southward several times till it was on the Sturgeon Farm. Exhausted corn lands were found on most of these Creek road farms by the first settlers.
In the village of to-day at least four sites of Indian camps or small villages are readily found. Two of them are on the Chautauqua Hollow trail that was formerly called by the first settlers Rawson Road. It extended through the farms of Thomas Rathbun. Ralph Page, Palmer Rawson, Elias Rawson ( Balty farm) and Coleman Rawson on State Street, and there branched up the Keshie- qua, and to Onondao and the Genesee River trail. These two, on the Balty farm, were near each other but on opposite sides of the trail. These were here in 1790 and were mentioned by Turner. Elk Hunter was Chief. Another was farther up the stream just back of the N. H. S. building. The land has not been plowed for years and a rich find of arrows are expected when it is. Still an- other is west of Gibbs and Buffalo Streets. These two were the last of the villages (in this present village) in 1813 to 1818. There was a potato field on the present farm of Mrs. Dowling, on lands near the creek, and this was the last field cultivated by the Indians. This potato patch indicates that one of these villages was that of Tuscarora Indians -- a Schone or Potato Race village. This circumstance led to the mistaken idea that the word Nunda meant Pota- to-Patch but "nun" does not mean potato nor "da," patch.
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CREEK
ORAIN
1319
DATKA
Glen
1000
CREEK AS
5
Silver SPRINGS
Silver Lake
71
POR CH
( GORGE ) >
GENESES RIT.
00768
CASHAQUACREEK
StragaCr. .
TOPOGRAPHICAL VIEW OF NUNDA
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7
C. VESLE RIV
DE-O-WESTA VILLAGE
The next Indian village to the south was near the middle falls, Hornby Lodge and the old camp ground of the Civil War days. The very cold spring that supplied good water then may have relieved the thirst of the Senecas at the village of Di-o-westa. There is just a hint of French aid in naming this place. It means "where the river breaks through," and just a hint of some geo- logical instinct in these keen observers of nature. It has taken a full century to find out that the untaught savage knew instinctively that the Genesee River did not always flow through its present gorge. Again where the river emerges from its gorge we once had an Indian village called De-a-nun-ga-o, which the Indians interpreted "where the stream eats the hill." This is also good geology.
CARACADERA AND NUNDOW
Writers from up the river assume that Caracadera was only another name for Caneadea just as those down the river have made the many forms of the word Nunda mean one place instead of many places. The writer thinks he has the authority of Horatio Jones himself that the place where he run the gauntlet was at Fort Hill and that it was called Caracadera. At a later date the Indians from Nundao or Nundow went up the river for better hunting ground and called the land in front of the Fort Hill, Nundow. There was no need to change their name. The hill (though an earth work) was still in front.
The writer believes that both Gilbert and Peart here ran the gauntlet and afterwards came to Nundao or Nundow, as a Kah Kwa or even a Tuscarora might have called it. None of these varying dialects called places alike. If Kenjockety's father was the Chief at that time, he being a half-blood Kah Kwa would have called the word differently, broader than a full blood Seneca would. The harshness in their words was largely the result of their way of pronunciation.
Still farther up the Genesee was the old Indian village mentioned in the deeds to its settlers of Owaiski or Wis-Coy. The latter means five-fall creek. "Wis" being the numeral for five, and Coy or Koya meaning creek. Probably a hint may be found here for our Keshequa with a Kah Kwa form of name. The last syllable may have meant simply creek, but what the other meant is still unknown. The early settlers, mostly squatters, found Wis-Coy village occu - pied by Indians when they came and it has its own story of some great chief who prefixed a great O to his village to increase his fame abroad.
Caneadea was not within the limits of our Greater Nunda. It was here the council house stood ; here Major Van Campen ran the gauntlet and here some Jesuit priest carved a cross on one of its timbers. Caneadea and O-wa- is-ki were probably under the control of a different chief from those villages in the lower valley : probably Chief Hudson.
The Caneadea Reservation made it the last survivor of all the villages of the Genesee. Its final sale was consumated at last and the last Seneca moved on towards the setting sun.
INDIAN CAPTIVES IN THE GENESEE VALLEY
While the white woman of the Genesee has been and will ever be of great- est interest to the citizens on both sides of the Genesee, as an Indian captive
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with an unusually interesting history, there were many more white captives in this section than is generally supposed. While the many Indians made cap- mes by the warlike Senecas so augmented their numbers that their rapid in- crease from 1,600 warriors in the middle of the seventeenth century to at least twice that number at a later period in spite of the fact that their constant wars must have decimated their national strength, but for the custom among them vi adopting sons and brothers to take the place of those killed in battle. In 1;05 there were 24 white prisoners among the Chennisseo Indians, i. e., the Senecas, so says Sir William Johnson, and a year later Sarah Carter, a white captive from Pennsylvania, reported that there were 40 yankees and one large. lusty negro blacksmith then working at his trade for the Indians. It is said two Delaware Chiefs, Squash Cutter and Long Coat, conducted quite a lucra- tive business by bringing captives to the towns of the Genesee and selling their time to the Indians until such time as they were exchanged or redeemed by their friends. All of these 40, however, were released after the captivity of Mary Jemison, Horatio Jones and Joseph Smith. Other captives were: The wife of Horatio Jones; Major Moses Van Campen, who run the gauntlet at Caneadea near the old council house: the Gilbert family, one member. Joseph, spent a winter at Nunda in 1780-I, and Thomas Peart, a com- panion, captured at the same time, who was also at Nunda a part of the time while in captivity. These have left slight records of harsh treatment at Caraca- dera (Fort Hill) and of kind treatment at the Nunda village after adoption. Youth of courage were spared for adoption if they showed sufficient courage unless the Indian losses had been too great during the engagement in which they were captured.
A condensed history of these captives may be of interest to the present generation. That of Mary Jemison, though an oft told tale, is always interest- ing. We repeat it with some new local matter told by Dr. Munson of Brooks Grove and give also an artist's picture taken at Gardeau of the White Woman.
One of the most interesting characters known in pioneer times, or even ante-pioneer days in Western New York, was Mary Jemison, known as "The White Woman of the Genesee." or "The Old White Woman," and called by the Senecas. De-he-wa-mis. a name they gave her when she was adopted into a family of Seneca Indians, and which has been said to signify "A pretty girl." "A handsome girl." or "A pleasant good thing."
A revival of interest (if possible?) in her strangely eventful life, the story of which has been read, and re-read. and told from one generation to another. until it has become inseparably connected with the history and legends of the Genesee, is evidenced by the fact that of late it has been reprinted in quite a number of papers of Western New York, some making an entire reprint, and so continuing from one issue to another, while others have been content to give to their readers only a more or less abbreviated sketch.
In view of this, and of the undesirable form of newspaper clippings for preservation, and that it is still frequently called for. and anxiously sought by many, the writer is led to believe that a brief account embodying substantially all the important particulars, and leading features of the complete work by John S. Minard, will supply this want.
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SKETCH OF MARY JEMISON BY JOHN S. MINARD, OF CUBA, N. Y.
Mary was the third in a family of five children of Thomas Jemison and Jane Irwin, of Scotland or Ireland, she could never tell which, and was born on the ocean, during the voyage to Philadelphia in 1742 or 1743. The family set- tled on Marsh creek on the then Pennsylvania frontier, and clearing up a large farm, became in a few years reasonably prosperous. Soon, however, came on the troublous times of the French and Indian wars, rendering the home on the exposed frontier subject at almost any time to the incursions of bands of predatory Indians.
In one of these descents in 1755 the whole Jemison family, with some of their neighbors, were taken prisoners by the Indians, and after two days' travel into the wilderness, Mary and one of the neighbor's boys were parted from the rest of the company, whom she afterward learned were murdered soon after. Her captors made for Fort Du Quesne (Pittsburg) at which place she was given to a couple of Seneca women, who at once adopted her in place of a brother whom they had recently lost. It was then that she was given the name Dehewamis.
Her sisters would not allow her to speak English, but she practiced it to what extent she could when alone, repeating her prayer and the catechism her mother had taught her. She soon learned to understand and speak fluently their language. The party soon proceeded some distance down the Ohio and located at a town at the mouth of the Shenanjee where they planted, hoed and harvested a large crop of corn, the first year, making a stay there of four years. during which time she married a Delaware Indian named Sheninjee, by whom she had two children, a girl and a boy-the girl dying while quite young and the son being named after his grandfather, Thomas Jemison.
The Indians treated her kindly, which made her situation as happy as the recollection of the sad events which had befallen her would permit and being young, and possessed of a naturally elastic and exuberant spirit, her husband and infant son soon engrossed her entire attention and became ties which strongly bound her to the new and wild life into which she had been intro- duced, and before a very long time had elapsed the desire to leave her new rela- tions and return to a life on the frontier was nearly obliterated. She in time came to regard the life of an Indian not as a drudge, although one of more or less hardship, still. not harder than that of the white woman, while their cares were not near so numerous, nor so great ; and was always accustomed to speak in high terms of the character of the Indian, when cut off from contact with the whites.
In the autumn of 1759 she left the Ohio town, and with two Indian broth- ers journeyed to Genisheyo, where it was planned to have Sheninjee, her In- dian husband, join her the following spring. The journey was made on foot she carrying her nine months' old papoose on her back. The party stopped for a day at Caneadea for rest. and then proceeded to Little Beardstown, then a large Seneca village where Cuylerville now is. Here she made her home with her Indian mother, brothers and sisters. Some time during the next summer she learned that her husband died shortly after she left him.
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In 1763 she was married to the noted Seneca warrior, Hiokatoo, by whom she had four daughters and two sons. There were no white people in all this region at that time, only occasional adventurers reaching places so secluded and so far away from civilization. Dehewamis continued to reside at Little Beardstown until 1779.
During the revolution, the Senecas were allied with the British, and after the massacres at Cherry Valley and Wyoming, which were generally conceded to have been perpetrated by the Senecas of the Genesee country, it was deter- mined to punish them by destroying their towns and devastating their country.
On this errand of destruction General John Sullivan was sent. When his army approached the Genesee many of the Indians fled to the neighboring woods, while others with women and children hastily made their way across what is now Wyoming County, into the present town of Sheldon, at a place near the little village of Varysburg.
It has been affirmed that the "white woman" lay concealed in the bushes near the outlet of Silver Lake, for several days. After Sullivan's army retired. they returned, and found their towns, cornfields and orchards one complete scene of ruin and desolation.
Dehewamis with her five children then made her way up the river to Gar- deau where she continued to reside for the next 52 years, removing to the Buffalo reservation in 1831.
She had on several occasions expressed a wish that she might have a piece of land set off for her that she could call her own, but it had not been done. However, in 1779, when the Big Tree treaty was held, she was sent for to attend the council, and was then informed that she had been remembered in making their several reservations, and was requested to make her own selection. She did so, and embraced in her description, the Gardeau flats where she had been living so many years. In 1798 Augustus Porter made a survey of it, and found it to contain 17,927 acres. This grant to Mary Jemison was made in total disre gard of the protests of the noted orator Red Jacket, who violently opposed it. and was proof positive of the high esteem in which she was held by the Sen- ecas.
During her residence at Gardeau her home was an asylum almost, for the needy and destitute, not only of Indians, but of whites as well. Ebenezer Allan (otherwise known as "Indian Allan") on one occasion at least found her home a retreat where, by concealing himself, he successfully evaded his pursuers.
Before making her selection of land, she was offered her choice of return- ing to the whites or remaining with the Indians. Carefully considering the matter, she concluded to end her days with her dusky companions, and con- tinued to live with her children as she had done all through her married life.
In 1811 Jellis Clute, Micah Brooks, and John B. Gibson commenced nego- tiations looking for a purchase of her lands. She was naturalized in 1817 by a special act of the legislature to enable her to convey land and transact any other business connected with real estate. In the winter of 1822-3 negotiations were concluded and she conveyed all her land, excepting a tract two miles long and one wide, to Messrs. Gibson. Clute and Brooks, the consideration being "three hundred dollars a year forever."
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Finally, however, she concluded to leave the Gardeau reservation, receiv- ing a commutation of her annuity, sold her remaining land, and with her rela- tives removed to Buffalo Creek Reservation, as before stated. in 1831, taking up her residence on Buffalo Flats, where she remained until her death, which occurred September 9, 1833, at about 91 years. She was buried at the Mission Church cemetery, and a marble slab with an appropriate inscription placed at her grave.
After the lapse of 40 years the stone had been mostly chipped away by relic hunters, eager for mementos of the "White Woman" who had so strangely figured in the history of Western New York, and a street had been surveyed through the cemetery which, when opened, would pass over the grave. So it was determined on the part of some of her descendants, seconded and encour- aged by a number of benevolent gentlemen of Buffalo, to remove her remains from the grave that had been thus desecrated, and was soon likely to become obliterated, and deposit them in some place where such desecrations would not be likely to again occur.
Accordingly, in March, 1874, her remains were carefully exhumed by an undertaker under the personal supervision of a grandson, Dr. James Shongo, and placed in a tasteful coffin of black walnut. In making the necessary exca- vations, there was found near the center of the grave a porcelain dish, which probably contained, when placed there, some articles of food. A wooden spoon very much decayed was found in the dish.
It is supposed they were placed there by the pagen Indians at the time of her burial, to provide her with food while on her journey to the Indians' happy hunting grounds. The coffin in which was placed everything found in her grave, was then taken to the country seat of Hon. William P. Letchworth. at Portage, where, after appropriate services in the old council house of the Sen- ecas, it was placed in a stone sarcophagus, sealed with cement and interred in a grave near by, which is curbed with stones that were formerly placed as headstones in the rude burial-ground at Gardeau, afterward plowed up and used in constructing a road culvert.
Mr. Letchworth and Dr. Shongo obtained permission to remove them from the culvert and place them around the grave of Mary Jemison, who quite likely helped to plant them at the heads of the graves of her kindred. so wan- tonly desecrated. Within this curbing the grave is planted with flowers. Dr. Shongo very appropriately furnishing the seed. Thomas Jemison, a grandson, and son of the babe she brought on her back from the Ohio town in 1759- planted a black walnut tree at the foot of her grave, which grew from seed borne by the tree which sheltered her grave at Buffalo.
What was left of the old headstone was placed at the head of her grave. near to which stands a marble monument some six feet in height, on one face of which is copied the inscription which appeared on her old tombstone, which reads as follows :
"In memory of 'The White Woman,' Mary Jemison, daughter of Thomas Jemison and Jane Irwin, born on the ocean between Ireland and Philadelphia. in 1742 or 3. Taken captive at Marsh Creek, Pennsylvania. in 1755: carried down the Ohio and adopted into an Indian family. In 1759 removed to Gen- esee River, was naturalized in 1817, removed to this place (now Buffalo) in
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1531. and having survived two husbands and five children, leaving three still alive, she died September 19, 1833, aged about 91 years ; having a few weeks Infore expressed a hope of pardon through Jesus Christ. 'The counsel of the Lord shall stand.'"
On another side appears this inscription :
"To the memory of MARY JEMISON,'
Whose home during more than 70 years of a life of strange vicissitudes was among the Senecas upon the banks of this river, and whose history, insepara- bly connected with that of this valley, has caused her to be known as 'The White Woman of the Genesee.'"
While on still another side appears :
"The remains of the 'White Woman' were removed from the Buffalo Creek Reservation, and re-interred at this place with appropriate ceremonies, on the 7th of March, 1874."
It is said to be the intention of Mr. Letchworth to place upon this monu- ment a statue of Mary Jemison in her Indian costume, bearing her babe upon her back as she came to the Genesee Valley. Here, within sound of the falls of the river, to the murmur of whose waters she listened for over seventy years of an eventful life, very properly repose her honored remains.
Mr. William C. Bryant, of Buffalo, is said to be the authority for the state- ment that the generally accepted orthography and signification of the name conferred upon the captive by the two gentle Indian women who adopted her as their sister, is incorrect. -
Brancher
MARY JEMISON, THE WHITE WOMAN OF THE GENESEE.
10,
RED JACKET
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He says "the name should be written Deh-ge-wa-nus, and the signification was "two wailing voices." given as a sort of memento of their own grief over the loss of their brother.
With manifest propriety, therefore, Mr. Letchworth has given the name to a beautiful little rivulet and waterfall in the neighborhood, and so Deh-ge-wa- nus, the crystal stream and murmuring fall. with its two voices, or the stream and of the forest. preserves and commemorates a name which has become renowned in the early history of Western New York.
Her three sons, Thomas, Jesse and James, all met with tragical deaths, thus contributing a heavy weight of sorrow, which, with other troubles, pressed upon their aged mother and made her last years quite despondent and sad.
John became the murderer first of Thomas, and afterwards of Jesse, and was not long afterward killed by two other Indians at Squakie Hill. These two Indians were named Jack and Doctor, and after the lapse of a few weeks. Jack poisoned himself by eating musk-rat root and Doctor died of consumption in 1819.
Her daughter Mary married an Indian named Billy Green, John Green married Betsy, and the youngest, Polly, married George Shongo, a son of the old Caneadea war chief.
They all settled on their mother's land at Gardeau, and all had large fam- ilies of children ; so the descendants of Mary Jemison are quite numerous, and many of the name are still found on the different Indian reservations in this and even other states. Indeed it has been strongly suspected that some have assumed the name who had no right to it, and all who bear the name or appro- priate it seem proud of being called a Jemison.
About fifteen years since. Mr. Carlos Stebbins, of Pike, Wyoming Coun- ty, an artist of celebrity, contributed to posterity and Indian history, a beauti- ful portrait in oil, which is considered by many who remember her. to be a re- markably correct representation of the form and features of this once noted and now historic character. In the prosecution of the work he called into requisition great natural aptitude for faithful delineation, which was supple- mented by many suggestions from persons whom he interviewed, who had the pleasure of her acquaintance, and the eminently successful portrait which re- sulted, reflects great credit upon the artist, and is considered a prize of great value by the Pioneers' Association to whom it was kindly presented by Mr. Stebbins.
Another conception, that of the late Mr. Martin Andrews, of Perry, is also in existence. The original was a pen and ink drawing, front that the photo- graph of which our cut was made. Mr. Andrews had the advantage of per- sonal recollection of the "White Woman" and many regard it as a very suc- cessful effort.
It is to be regretted that some great artist had not been employed to trans- fer to canvass her features and form during her lifetime. Artists in those days, however, were scarce. Photography had yet to be born, and so we give to our readers the best likeness, so far as known, that has ever been made. It bears no very close resemblance to the other, nor yet is it very dissimilar, and we
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fiatter ourselves that it will pass into history. as a thoroughly conscientious con- ception of the personal appearance of
De-he-wa-mis. "The White Woman of the Genesee."
Dr. William B. Munson, a pioneer physician, who lived between Nunda and Brooksgrove, in a letter to Hon. William P. Letchworth, narrates his per- sonal knowledge of the "White Woman of the Genesee." As a pen picture it is interesting.
"According to the picture of her I have in my mind she had the shape form and figure of an active. lovely little woman 75 or 80 years of age. She was about four and a half feet in height. exhibiting the remains of a fair com- plexion and regular features that had been in youth extremely beautiful. The cheek bones nor the chin were not prominent, neither was the nose large. Con- sidering her age all these features were quite symmetrical. The head was of medium size, covered with gray hair, smoothed backward ; the neck was not long but in due proportion to the head : her shoulders were rounded and stoop- ing forward, a position she may have acquired by bearing heavy burdens custo- mary with Indian women and from age, or resulted from the hardships she had encountered in her eventful life. Her eye sight had become dim, but her fea- tures were not wrinkled as much as might have been expected from the many trials and sorrows she had endured.
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