USA > New York > New York City > Historic tales of olden time; concerning the early settlement and advancement of New York city and state. For the use of families and schools > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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
37
OF OLDEN TIME.
board. As wealth and pride and numbers came in, it were off more and more ; till now it follows selfishness and reserve like other cities.
EARLY INLAND SETTLEMENTS.
"Bold master spirits-where they touch'd they gain'd Ascendance, -where they fix'd their foot, they reign'd."
FOR numerous years after the first settlement, Albany constituted the ultima Thule-the remotest point of in- terior civilization and improvement. Even as late as the war of independence, the present flourishing towns of Troy and Lansingburgh were scarcely named. Saratoga Springs and Ballstown, now so famed and fashionable, were in their native barrens.
Kinderhook, Esopus, and Rhinebeck, were among the earliest Dutch settlements along the banks of the Hud- son. They are mentioned as early as 1651 by Joost Hartgers ; and in 1656 by Vanderdonck. Esopus having been made a place of depot for our military stores, was assaulted in 1777 by the British gene- ral Vaughan, and taken and burnt.
Rhinebeck, as well as Strausburgh nigh it, were at an early period much occupied by Germans. The former place, in 1749, had its separate church and German pastor, the Rev. Mr. Harturig. The Germans were encouraged to settle in New-York state in the time of Queen Anne. Several got dissatisfied there and
4*
HISTORIC TALES
moved into Pennsylvania, under some encouragements received from Gov. Sir W. Keith.
Some Scotch presbyterians went out early under the auspices of the Livingston family. At the first settle- ment of Albany, Livingston was secretary to the Dutch government, his family being at the same time, Brown- ists in Holland, from Scotland. I have seen an autograph letter of his mother to his address, written from Am- sterdam when in her SOth year of age, and providing therein for his receiving out fifty of that people at a time, as his working men, to serve søven years a-piece for only food and raiment; all for the sake of freedom of conscience. The Livingston family settled near Hud- son city ; and one of the Livingstons (Robert) in later years (1752) took up 300,000 acres of forest land, ex- tending from Esopus to the Delaware river, and propos- ing to' rent them out forever on the condition of 50 bushels of wheat per 100 acres yearly.
Hudson city is but a modern affair, having been, till the year 1784, cultivated as a farm. It was then pur- chased by a few enterprizing persons of capital from the eastward, chiefly for the purpose of conducting there the whale fishery to the Pacific ocean. Such was its rapid progress, that in two years there were as many as 150 dwelling-houses erected. During the snowy winter of 1786, it was visited daily, it was said, by 1,200 sleds, bringing in and taking out articles of traffic. It is deemed at the head of tide water and ship naviga- tion.
Newburgh existed before the revolution ; and being a place beautifully situated, and not far from West Point, it was occasionally made a place of visit and re-
39
OF OLDEN TIME.
Jaxation by Gen. Washington, and other superior offi- cers serving during that war at that post.
The earliest inland advance of settlement and civili- zation beyond Albany, was made at Schenectada, on the Mohawk river, 16 miles westward from that city. It derived its Indian name from its situation, as placed in a surrounding pine-barren country. Its chief support was derived from its fur trade, which it continued down to the period of the revolution. While it was yet a village and frontier post, it was made the scene of sud- den and cruel destruction. On the Sth February, 1690, a small expedition of 200 French and a number of Canadian Indians, destined to assault Albany itself, arrived unapprehended, in the dead of the night, and entering the guard gates before the inhabitants could be aroused for defence, they forced and fired almost every house, butchering sixty persons of every age and sex, and bearing off several prisoners. . The rest fled almost naked in a terrible storm and deep snow. Several of them lost their limbs through the rigour of the cold. It was an awful time; and long, long was the calamity remembered and related by the few who survived to keep alive the painful story. Those who most felt for the sufferers, and sighed most for revenge, had an op- portunity, in the next year, to join in an expedition under the command of Major Peter Schuyler of Albany, " the Washington of his day." He conducted about 300 men, of whom the half were Mohawks and Scha- kook Indians ; and at La Prairé they encountered 1,200 men under De Callieres, and in several conflicts slew 13 officers and 300 men, returning home in safety.
The Mohawk river, extending far westward through a narrow and long valley of fruitful soil, presented the
40
HISTORIC TALES
earliest allurement for agricultural purposes inland ; and yet it was not until after the war of independence that it began to be sought after by white men. Filled as it now is with a prosperous and wealthy popu- lation ; planted with numerous thriving villages, traced along its margin with the recent grand canal, and made the line of the grand tour to Niagara by nume- rous passengers from the opulent sea-board cities ; yet it was not far beyond the period of that war, when it was still the beaver country of the aborigines or their wigwam locations ; and the general region of country, their hunting ground, through which ranged bears, foxes, wolves, deer, and other game ; the Indians them- selves calling the lands Coursachraga-the dismal wil- derness.
Men are still alive while we write (in 1830), who in the time of the revolutionary war were in the defence of several of its military redoubts as frontier posts. Mr. Parrish, Indian agent, now resident at Canandai- gua, was with a predatory party of Indians as a pri- soner when they came into the neighbourhood of the present town of Herkimer, only SO miles westward of Albany. Col. Fry of Conojohari, above 90 years of age, still alive, was commissary for these outposts in the " old French war." In his vicinity, at the town of Mohawk, but 36 miles west of Albany, at the junction of Schoharie creek with the river Mohawk, is the old Mohawk town; and their old church, still there, is the same built as a missionary station in the reign of Queen Anne, having fort Hunter to cover and defend it from predatory enemies. At this very place the Mohawks were actually dwelling as a nation until the year 1750.
Not far from the " Little Falls," now so romantic and
1 1
1
41
OF OLDEN TIME.
picturesque by reason of its rocky rapids and the ex- pensive constructions for the canal along its margin, once stood the advance post of fort Herkimer. An old church near it, by lock No. 28, is still standing, which was used as a place of defence against an Indian assault, even in the time of the revolution. From the village of Herkimer up to Canada creek, a distance of 14 miles, are the very lands, embracing now the present fashionable resort and elegant place of entertainment, called " the Trenton Falls," which were once given by King Hendricks, our good ally, to Gen. Sir Wm. John- son, who had taken his wife from the Indian race. King Hendricks himself lived at " Indian Castle" on the Mo- hawk river, 66 miles from Albany. As late as the revolution, a son of Sir Wm. Johnson, coming from Canada, made a hostile incursion with his Indians through all these lands, once his father's !
At the present flourishing city of Utica, only 95 miles west of Albany, once the site of Fort Scuyler, the set- tlement is so recent that in 1794 it had but two houses ; and in 1785 the whole region of country had but two families, dwelling in log houses as advance pioneers ; say Hugh White, after whom Whitestown is since named, and Moses Foot. From Utica to Canandaigua, they travelled for several years by " blazed paths ;" that is, by chipping pieces out of trees, to show the traveller his way through boundless forests.
At Fort Stanwix, still seen in its elevated embank- ments, on the site where now the town of Rome is flourishing, at but a few miles beyond Utica, was once sustained a most deadly and protracted conflict with In .. dians, by the present aged Col. Marius Willet of New- York city.
4.2
HISTORIC TALES
Even until now the Oneida Indians themselves, a little beyond Utica, are settled in their own town, the "Oneida Castle;" dwelling in their own houses and cultivating their own lands ; occasionally saluting the travelling tourists passing the place on the turnpike road, and sending out their racing children to hold up hands for a few pennies. The Onondagoes were set- tled only 20 miles westward of them ; and it was only as late as the year 1779, that Gen. Clinton went out with a regiment from Albany against them, surprised their town, killing fourteen and bringing off 33 pri- soners.
As we leave Utica we enter upon the "New-York military lands," containing 28 townships, severally ten miles square; " the proud and splendid monument of the gratitude of New-York to her revolutionary he- roes ; giving to each of her soldiers 550 acres of lands now so valuable." The very gift of such lands since the revolution, for services then performed, is itself the evidence of the recent cultivation of all those districts, now so essentially adding to the aggrandisement of this great state. Had the poor soldiers been individually benefitted by this generosity, and their descendants have found an easy home on the soil, the reflection would be much more grateful ; but rapacious speculators, in most instances, were the beneficiaries !
Those military lands extended as far west as the Seneca lake, at which place begins the eastern boun- dary of that great purchase of the celebrated pioneer, Oliver Phelps, who in 1787 purchased the immense and unexplored wilds of the west, from the line of that lake to the west boundary of the state, comprising a mass of sit millions of acres, for the inconsiderable sum,
:
43
OF OLDEN TIME.
as we now think it, of one million of dollars. To this Cecrops, this primary adventurer, the people of the west owe a lasting monument of gratitude and praise for his successful efforts in opening to them and their children their happy Canaan.
In the year 17SS, O. Phelps first penetrated the wil- derness, making his departure from Herkimer, the then most advanced settlement. Going thence 130 miles, through wilds and Indian hunting grounds to an Indian settlement, the present Canandaigua, a name then im- porting chosen place, where he held a treaty with the six nations, and purchasing from them their grant to the same as far as to the Genessee river. In the next year he opened his land office in that town, the first in Ame- rica, for the sale of forest lands to settlers, and giving a model, since adopted, for selling all new lands in the United States by "townships and ranges." In 1790 Phelps sold out 11 millions of his grant to Robert Mor- ris, the celebrated financier, for only 8d. an acre ; and he again sold it to Sir W. Pulteney, whose land office is now opened at Geneva and Bath. In 1796 Robert Morris made a further purchase of about two thirds of the western part, a part of which he sold out to the " Hol- land Land Company," which company in 1801 opened their land office at Batavia. Canandaigua and Geneva, now such elegant towns, so delightfully placed by their several picturesque lakes, had all their first houses con- structed of logs. But wild as the country was, it was all traversed in the summer of 1792-3, by the present Philip, king of France, and his two brothers, all on horseback, and making their rest for a short time at Canandaigua, at the house of Thomas Morris. Finally, such was the early history of a woody waste of coun-
44
HISTORIC TALES
try, so little valued then, and now so populous and pro- ductive. Through such regions original settlers made their way, with families, cattle, provisions, wagons, and carts; crossing waters without bridges; sleeping and eating in forests ; and, finally, dwelling without shelter until they could build a log house and home. The - obstacles and hazards and perils which beset a pioneer family going through a wilderness of hundreds of miles ; their constructing of rafts and canoes at water courses ; their swimming of horses, oxen, sheep, hogs, &c. ; their occasional mishaps and losses ; their hopes and fears ; altogether might form an eventful tale of truth.
In the very midst of those great purchases of Phelps, and where his earliest efforts were concentered, is now the great and wonderfully prosperous town of Roches- ter, filled with wealth and luxury and elegance ; hav- ing a population in 1827 of 8,000 persons, and not one adult a native of the place! for then the oldest person living, born in the place, was not seventeen years of . age ! The site was originally given to O. Phelps by the Indians as a mill seat, in allusion to which they called him Kauskonchicos, " waterfall." The very territory in which is was situated was but 40 years ago the hunting ground of such remnants of the six nations as survived the chastisement of Gen. Sullivan ; and many a veteran warrior is still alive on the neighbour- ing reservations of Canawagus, Tonewanda, and Tus- corora, &c., to recount to their degenerate sons the ex- ploits of his meridian vigour, when not a white man's axe had been lifted in all their forests ! In the time of the revolution the six nations were in alliance with
45 :
OF OLDEN TIME.
Great Britain and in hostility with us ; but in 1779 they were entirely defeated and their towns destroyed.
Can we contemplate such wonderful transitions in so 'short a term of years, and not exclaim with amazement, " behold, what a land of successful change we possess !" All these changes wrought within the lives of numerous patriarchal pioneers still alive, who live to see turnpikes and canals traversing the same lands where they for several years had only " blazed paths ;" and comfort- able cr splendid mansions replacing, throughout all the country, the former log houses, with their wooden chim- nies and their bark or straw roofs! The same lands have, in the hands of the sons of toil, been made to rise to incalculable value ; and all this effected in a term so short, that the burnt stumps of the " cleared lands," peeping from among the luxuriant fields of grain, like black bears, are still every where visible along the public highways.
The youth who may be favoured to travel through all these western lands, on the rout of the " grand tour" to Niagara ; who sees now good turnpike roads, first rate stages and extras, and splendid hotels, wherever he goes ; must bear in mind that all these are the erections of only a few years : that it is only since the peace with Great Britain of 1816 that such accommodations for travellers were created ; that the roads, in that des- perate " border war" were then terribly rude and toil- some, filled in numerous places with " cord du roy" an- noyances of logs. Niagara, now so splendid, was still " old fort Schlossa ;" and the single house of entertain- ment was a log tavern, where travellers took every thing as rough as the rude scenery of the Niagara it- self. .
5
46
HISTORIC TALES
Let the youth contemplate too the splendid enterprise of the Grand Canal, stretching through a former woody waste of 360 miles ; see on its bosom the numerous vehicles gliding through the surrounding forest foliage, bearing and scattering riches and plenty to every village and hamlet along its shores; then reflect on the active commerce now traversing every lake and in- land sea, where was lately loneliness and solemn still- ness :- the heart must exult in the contemplation, it must apostrophise our sires, and say,
" Ye who toil'd Through successive years to build us up A prosperous plan, behold at once The wonder done !
Here cities rise amid th' illumin'd waste,
O'er joyless deserts smiles the rural reign ;- Far distant flood to flood is social join'd, And navies ride on seas that never foam'd With daring keel before !"
THE INDIANS.
---- A swarthy tribe-
Slipt from the secret hand of Providence, They come we see not how, nor know we whence ;
That seem'd created on the spot-though born, In transatlantic climes, and thither brought, By paths as covert as the birth of thought !"
THERE is in the fate of these unfortunate beings much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment ; much in their characters to incite our involuntary admiration. What can be more
47
OF OLDEN TIME.
melancholy than their history ? By a law of their na- ture, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Every where at the approach of the white man they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn ; and them- selves, like " the sear and yellow leaf," are gone for- ever !
Once the smoke of their wigwams, and the fires of their councils, rose in every valley from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war dance rung through the mountains and the glades. The light arrows and the deadly toma- hawk whistled through the forest; and the hunter's trace, and the dark emcampment, startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. Braver men never lived ; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage and fortitude, and sagacity and perseve- rance, beyond most of the human race. They shrunk from no dangers and they feared no hardships. They were inured, and capable of sustaining every peril, and surmounting every obstacle for sweet country and home. But with all this, inveterate destiny has unceasingly driven them hence !
" Forc'd from the land that gave them birth, They dwindle from the face of earth !"'
In our present notice of the Indians, we desire to go back to the period when first observed by Europeans ; such as they were before debauched by their contact with the baser part of our white men. 'T'o this end we shall give the following description of them from the
49
HISTORIC TALES
personal observation and pen of the celebrated Wm. Penn ; to wit :-
The natives I shall consider in their persons, lan- guage, manners, religion and government, with my sense of their original. For their persons, they are generally tall, straight, well-built, and of singular pro- portion ; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin. Of complexion, black, but by design ; as the gypsies in England. They grease them- selves with bear's fat clarified ; and, using no defence against sun or weather, their skins must needs be swar- thy. Their eye is little and black, not unlike a straight- looked Jew. The thick lip, and flat nose, so frequent with the East Indians and blacks, are not common to them : many of them have fine Roman noses.
Their language is lofty, yet narrow ; but, like the Hebrew, in signification full ; like short-hand, in wri- ting, one word serveth in the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the hearer : im- perfect in their tenses, wanting in their moods, partici- ples, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections.
Of their customs and manners there is much to be said, I will begin with children. So soon as they are born, they wash them in water ; and while very young, and in cold weather, they plunge them in the rivers to harden and embolden them. The children will go very young, at nine months commonly ; if boys, they go a fish- ing till ripe for the woods, which is about fifteen ; then they hunt, and after having given some proofs of their manhood, by a good return of skins, they may marry ; else it is a shame to think of a wife. The girls stay with their mothers, and help to hoe the ground, plant corn, and carry burdens ; and they do well to use them
1
49
OF OLDEN TIME.
to that young which they must do when they are old ; for the wives are the true servants of the husbands ; otherwise the men are very affectionate to them.
When the young women are fit for marriage, they wear something upon their heads for an advertisement, but 30 as their faces are hardly to be seen but when they please. 'The age they marry at, if women, is about thirteen and fourteen ; if men, seventeen and eighteen ; they are rarely elder.
Their houses are mats, or barks of trees, set on poker, in the fashion of an English barn ; but out of the power of the winds, for they are hardly higher than a man : they lie on reeds or grass. In travel they lodge in the woods, about a great fire, with the mantle of duffils they wear by day wrapt about them, and a few boughs stuck round them.
Their diet is maize, or Indian corn, divers ways pre- pared ; sometimes roasted in the ashes ; sometimes beaten and boiled with water, which they call homire ; they also make cakes, not unpleasant to eat. They have likewise several sorts of beans and pease that are good nourishment ; and the woods and rivers are their larder.
If an European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at their house or wigwam, they give him the best place and first cut. If they come to visit us, they salute u. with an Itah ; which is as much as to say, good be to you, and set them down; which is mostly on the ground, close to their heels, their legs upright ; it na; be they speak not a word, but observe all passages li you give them any thing to eat or drink, well : for th .. s will not ask ; and be it little or much, if it be with kudd.
5*
50
HISTORIC TALES
ness they are well pleased, else they go away sullen, but say nothing.
They are great concealers of their own resentments ; brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been practised among them.
But in liberality they excel ; nothing is too good for their friend ; give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands before it sticks : light of heart, strong affections, but soon spent. The most merry creatures that live, feast and dance perpetually ; they never have much, nor want much : wealth circulateth like the blood, all parts partake; and though none shall want what another hath, yet exact observers of property. They care for little, because they want but little ; and the reason is, a little contents them. In this they are sufficiently revenged on us : if they are igno- rant of our pleasures, they are also free from our pains. We sweat and toil to live ; their pleasure feeds them ; I mean their hunting, fishing, and fowling ; and this table is spread every where. They eat twice a-day, morning and evening; their seats and table are the ground.
In sickness impatient to be cured, and for it give any thing, especially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural : they drink at those times a Tesan, or decoction of some roots in spring-water ; and if they eat any flesh, it must be of the female of any creature. If they die, they bury them with their apparel, be they man or woman, and the nearest of kin fling in something precious with them, as a token of their love : their mourning is .blacking of their faces, which they con- tinue for a year : they are choice of the graves of their dead for, lest they should be lost by time, and fall to
51
OF OLDEN TIME.
common use, they pick off the grass that grows upon them, and heap up the fallen earth with great care and exactness.
These poor people are under a dark night in things relating to religion, to be sure, the tradition of it ; yet they believe in a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics ; for they say, " There is a Great King that made them, who dwells in a glorious coun- try to the southward of them ; and that the souls of the good shall go thither, where they shall live again." Their worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and cantico: their sacrifice is their first fruits ; the first and fattest buck they kill goeth to the fire, where he is all burnt, with a mournful ditty of him that performeth the cere- mony, but with such marvellous fervency and labour of body, that he will even sweat to a foam. The other parts is their cantico, performed by round dances, some- times words, sometimes songs, then shouts, two being in the middle that begin, and by singing and drumming on a board, direct the chorus: their postures in the dance are very antick, and differing, but all keep mea- sure. This is done with equal earnestness and labour, but great appearance of joy. In the fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to feast one another.
Their government is by kings, which they call Sa- chama, and those by succession, but always of the mo- ther's side : for instance, the children of him that is now king will not succeed, but his brother by the mother, or the children of his sister, whose sons (and after them the children of her daughters) will reign ; for no woman in- herits. The reason they render for this way of descent is, that their issue may not be spurious.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.