USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 60
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Learned's farm six or seven miles north of Malone village, and are under- stood to have been a parsonage lot. Services used to be held at the school house. A Mr. Sisco was an early Wesleyan pastor, and under him the movement had its greatest activity and strength, and he planned at one time to erect a church building in the neighborhood. A Mr. Gaskill preceded Mr. Sisco, and in subsequent years Wallace Learned, a resident of the locality, and not ordained, officiated as preacher.
Fifty-five years ago, or thereabout, at a time when there was no clergyman of any denomination stationed in the town, Elder J. N. Webb, a Baptist, long stationed at Fort Covington, officiated often in the union church at the Corners.
Westville first appears in the records of the Black River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1837, apparently as an independ- ent charge, though no clergyman was assigned to it in that year - the minutes showing that it was "to be supplied." From 1838 to 1842 the conference records carry no mention of Westville, but in the latter year Matthew Bennett was assigned to it, and thereafter appointments con- tinued to be made to it until 1858, from which year it does not again show in the records until 1897, when it is coupled with Constable. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, and as the local church records show, it was associated with Constable throughout the entire period indicated, except for a short time when it was joined with Fort Covington, the two being served by one pastor. The local records begin only with 1861. The church edifice, which is at the Center, was erected in 1869, but incor- poration was not effected until 1874. It is interesting to note that the conference records give the membership of the church in 1837 as one hundred, but as only fifty in 1849. The figures for 1837 prove that Rev. Mr. Erwin's work and that of Malone circuit riders had not been without fruit. There was also a " class" at Briggs street in very early times. Barnabas Berry was its leader. During a good many years Charles Johnson, who made his home in Westville and had the status of a local preacher, officiated at Methodist services both at the Center and at the Corners when the Methodists had lacked a regular pastor or the regular pastor was absent or ill, and hardly a death occurred in the town in his later years that he was not called upon to preach the funeral sermon. His ministrations included also the work of a circuit rider, and his field extended from Malone well down into Canada.
CHAPTER XXIII THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION AND THE SAINT REGIS INDIANS
THE RESERVATION
The St. Regis Indian reservation in New York consisted originally of a tract equal to six miles square excepted out of the lands sold to Alexander Macomb and associates, to which, with the assent of the mem- bers of the syndicate in question, certain other lands were added, includ- ing the mile square now comprising the village of Fort Covington, a similar mile square at Massena, and the natural meadows along both banks of the Grass river between Massena and the St. Lawrence. Such additions were conceded because the Indians had built and owned mills at both Fort Covington and Massena, and were dependent upon the wild meadows for hay. Thus the reservation reached originally from the Grass river to the Salmon, though with breaks in it, and comprehended something like twenty-five thousand acres. It was set apart to the Indians by treaty concluded in 1796, and was. a compromise between what the State was at first disposed to concede and the claims advanced by the Indians. The latter had been clamorously seeking every year from 1792 to obtain adjustment of their demands upon the State, but without result other than the payment by the State of the expenses of the deputations which they sent to Albany, accompanied by petty presents and by State promises to give consideration to the matter as soon as practicable.
The case as presented by the Indians, those in Canada as well as those in this State being party to the negotiations, was that, by reason of primi- tive occupancy and the power to enforce jurisdiction, sovereignty of the soil of all Northern New York had been vested in the Mohawk tribe, even from prehistoric times, and that the then claimants were Mohawks, having removed from the vicinity of Schenectady to Caughnawaga, and never having bargained away their title. Such sovereignty, they insisted, had extended from the foot of Lake Champlain southerly to Lake George or beyond; thence westerly into Herkimer county; thence northerly to the St. Lawrence river; and thence easterly to the place of beginning. That the Mohawks had had power to enforce jurisdiction and dominion preceding the coming of the whites it was not necessary to prove, because
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it was admitted. The Mohawks were the fiercest, the cruelest and the bravest, as well as the mightiest, of any of the tribes of the League of the Iroquois, so that none of the other aborigines dared challenge col- lision or conflict with them. Such, indeed, were their ruthlessness and prowess at the zenith of their strength that the Indians of Massachusetts would flee in terror if a band of them approached, and often from even a single warrior, " as sheep from a wolf," and it is recounted that one of them could enter alone a Long Island Indian village, wantonly brain one of the assembled braves, and depart unmolested, so great was the fear that swift and awful retribution would be exacted for any act of resentment or reprisal. For almost a century the Caughnawagas, who were the progenitors of the St. Regis, maintained the old Mohawk repute and practices, and, marauding and massacring in mad savagery, were a scourge to New England settlements - impossible as the fact may seem if judged by the present inertia, indolence and sloth of their descendants.
While it is not essential to this story to follow with particularity the history of the Mohawks other than those who withdrew to Caughnawaga about 1667, as told in the first chapter, it will not be uninteresting to touch upon it briefly, for it will help to a better understanding of land claims and disputes which arose later. The French Jesuits, seeking to detach from the British colonies and locate in Canada or vicinity all Indians whom they succeeded in persuading to profess conversion to Christianity, established in 1749 a mission colony at what is now Ogdens- burg, consisting mainly of Mohawks, which grew eventually to number more than three thousand souls. They were admitted as one of the Seven Nations of Canada, but, becoming scattered and ceasing to be a distinct organization, were absorbed in part by the Caughnawagas and the St. Regis, and in the course of time their place in the family of the Seven Nations was given to the St. Regis, who, by the way, were admitted also, after the war of 1812, as one of the Iroquois Six Nations, in the place of the Brandt faction of the Mohawks, then established in Upper Canada as a consequence of having taken a bloody part for the king in the revolutionary war. The Canada reservation of those was west of Niagara, and comprised twelve hundred square miles, granted to them in 1784 as a reward for their services in the war.
It would be profitless, as well as impossible without a vast amount of research, to set forth fully the various agreements and cessions by which the Indians relinquished the great body of their lands in New York, always getting the worst of the bargain, For illustration, the
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THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION
Island of Manhattan, now the richest part of the city of New York, was estimated to comprise twenty-two thousand acres, and was bought for twenty-four dollars, or at the rate of about one cent for each ten acres. While few other such transactions reflect so strikingly the giving of much for little, it is impossible to cite a single similar conveyance where the Indians received anything even approximating real value. Nor was this fact due always to Indian ignorance or generosity, but, rather, to his recognition of his helplessness in dealing with the whites, and to his appreciation of the fact that he had no choice but to accept what was offered, or see his lands taken without any compensation what- ever, for where there is no appeal from might the weak can not compel justice, and seldom enjoy it.
As against the contention of the Indians known as the Seven Nations of Canada (which included the St. Regis and the Caughnawagas) that as Mohawks they were the true inheritors of all the lands that the tribe had ever possessed, and that title thereto remained vested in them because they had never in any way parted therewith, the State pleaded that it had in fact acquired title to the entire tract through treaties concluded with the Six Nations in 1787 (in which the British Mohawks resident in Upper Canada had joined), and with the latter separately in 1:95. The consideration paid by the State for the cession last stated was sixteen hundred dollars all told, which was to cover the expenses of the Mohawk deputies in attending the conference, and also for a distribution of pres- ents among members of the tribe. By the terms of this latter treaty the Upper Canada Mohawks ceded and released " to the people of the State of New York forever all the right or title of said nation to lands within the said State," and acknowledged that their claim thereto was " wholly and finally extinguished."
The St. Regis Indians and the other tribes or families of the Seven Nations of Canada stoutly disputed that the treaties in question vali- dated the claim of State ownership. Some of the "big talks" at the councils between the Indian deputies and the State's commissioners are interesting and illuminating. The latter having laid down the ulti- matum that the Seven Nations had nothing to sell, and that no negotia- tions would even be entertained upon any grounds except that the State was willing to pay something for the sake of establishing amicable rela- tions, and for the purpose of extending some measure of relief to the Indians in their condition of need, the Indians argued that if the Upper Canada Mohawks had indeed assumed to convey the lands which the St. Regis and the Caughnawagas were themselves then claiming, they
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had sold that which they did not own, to which the State's commission- ers responded that the Mohawks were too just a people to have sold that which did not belong to them, whereupon an Indian deputy retorted : " What makes them just in your eyes, we expect, is because they stole from us, and sold to you. This is what makes them a just people. Had we, several years ago, done as those have whom you call a just people - that is, had we sold off all our lands then ; underhandedly sold our broth- ers, and then fled our country, took up arms, came and killed men, women and children indiscriminately ; burnt houses and committed every other act of devastation ; and, in short, done everything we could against our once nearest friends- then, according to what you say of these Mohawks, you would have esteemed us a just people, and therefore would not have disputed our claim." This was, of course, a reference to the fact that the Upper Canada Mohawks had fought on the side of the British in the war of the revolution, whereas most of the St. Regis had remained passive, and the sympathies of a large part of the tribe had been with the colonists. Again, the spokesman of the Indian deputies said : " You who depend upon ink and paper, which ought never to fade, must recollect better than we, who can not write, and who depend only on memory, yet your promises are fresh in our minds."
In the course of the negotiations the Indians at length stated defini- tively what they would be willing to accept, viz .: A reservation to run east ten miles from St. Regis and thirty-five or forty miles up' the St. Lawrence, with an average width of twenty miles, together with an annuity of three thousand pounds, equivalent at that time to about seven thousand five hundred dollars. They proposed later to reduce their demand for reservation lands to one-third of the tract first suggested, but still very much larger than that finally allowed to them, and the annuity to four hundred and eighty pounds. In the end they accepted a cash payment of one thousand two hundred and thirty pounds, six shillings and eight pence, with an annuity of two hundred and thirteen pounds, six shillings and eight pence, with provision that the reservation should be as outlined in the first paragraph of this chapter.
Concerning the amount of the purchase price paid in cash and of the annuity, it is to be borne in mind that the value of the pound, varying in the different colonies, was rated in New York at about two dollars and a half, which made the cash payment $3,179.96, and the annuity $533.33, all of which was to be shared proportionately between the Caughnawagas and the St. Regis. After the war of 1812 the latter urged that inasmuch as the former had fought with the British in that con- flict, they should be cut off from further enjoyment of any part of the
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THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION
annuity, and that it should be apportioned to the American St. Regis Indians exclusively, but our State authorities held that this would be a breach of faith, and consequently payment was continued to the Caughnawagas until 1841, when they were given the amount of prin- cipal represented by their allotment of the annuity ($4,444.44), and since then payment has been to the American St. Regis alone. Subse- quent treaties, by which parts of the original reservation were surren- dered, were held with the American St. Regis alone.
In 1816 the mile square on the Salmon river, together with a separate and additional traet of five thousand acres abutting on the west, was surrendered by treaty in consideration of an annuity forever of thirteen hundred dollars, and in 1818 the Indians parted with two thousand acres adjoining and strips of four rods wide running north and south and cast and west across the reservation for highway purposes - the agreement providing that the two thousand acres should be cut into farms and lots and sold by the State. The price paid was an annuity of two hundred dollars. In 1824 the tribe conveyed to the people of the State of New York the mile square in the town of Massena and the mills thereon for one thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars in cash, and later in the same year one thousand acres commencing on the east- erly side of the St. Regis river for one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars down and an annuity of sixty dollars forever. They also ceded to the State for one dollar in cash and an annuity of three hundred and five dollars forever a tract that they had previously leased to Michael Hogan, and Mr. Hogan then bought the premises outright from the State. The next year they conveyed eight hundred and forty acres, com- prising a part of the present village of Hogansburgh, for two thousand one hundred dollars cash, and in 1845 bargained away the meadows along the Grass river, embracing two hundred and ten acres, at the price of three dollars per acre - which, however, is not all that they cost the State, as rental disputes and other claims on the part of white settlers had to be adjusted and satisfied by the State.
These cessions reduced the size of the reservation to 14,030 acres.
Capitalizing the annuities at a five per cent. rate and adding the cash payments, it is seen that the Indians received for their claims something like fifty-six thousand dollars, besides the reservation which they still hold.
Though of only theoretical consequence, it is nevertheless not inap- propriate to remark regarding this reservation, and others similar, that the whites are accustomed to insist that the "ultimate fee" is in the State, with only the right of perpetual occupancy in the Indians. This
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
view simply assumes the final extinction of the Indian race. I have before me a letter from a gentleman who has taken a deep interest in the Indian problem, and who is quite disposed to resent the arrogance with which our people have ever dealt with the red man, suggesting that it would be equally justifiable for the Indians to advance, upon a like assumption, a claim as to the lands held by the whites. But unless the State should vest the lands in the Indians individually it really matters not at all where the " ultimate fee " does lie, because fighting for pos- session of territory in this country, at least as between denizens therein, has passed forever. Individual ownership is not desired by any of the Indians, because they have a dread of taxation, and are far sighted enough to apprehend that if each for himself had the power to alienate his lands they would soon be stripped of them through the superior cupidity and cunning of the whites, and so become scattered and homeless.
The annuity paid regularly to the New York St. Regis Indians since 1825 has been $2,131.66, and until 1841 the amount distributed by this State to Canadian Indians was $266.67 additional. The money is divided per capita, after deduction of small tribal expenses (printing ballots, etc.), and in 1915 the amount paid to each buck, squaw and pappoose was $1.35. Payment is always made in coin, and originally was made at the mouth of the Chazy river to deputies representing the tribe, but in late years it has been made at St. Regis or Hogansburgh to the heads of families. Besides this contractual money distribution, the State is continually expending considerable sums for the maintenance of reservation schools and for building and repairing roads.
The St. Regis reservation in Canada, which is in part contiguous to the New York reservation, lies along the southern shore of the St. Lawrence in the province of Quebec, and includes also a number of islands in the St. Lawrence. In area it is but little more than half as large as the New York reservation, containing 7,125 acres. The quality of the land, however, averages better than in New York, for some sec- tions of the latter are very stony. In richness and fertility there is probably no better soil, except in the far West, in all Canada. Canada provides a fund about once in every five years for the purchase of a hundred and fifty to two hundred acres additional of reservation land, which is allotted to Indians not already provided with homesteads, but beneficial use is required as a condition of obtaining such allotments. In respect to land allotments and possession, the Canadian practice seems far better than that in New York. Land once apportioned to a Canadian
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THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION
Indian is held by him with practically the same security that is carried by a deed, and at death the holding descends to the children, while with us an Indian may take for himself any unoccupied part of the reserva- tion, and sometimes even "jumps" the farm of a neighbor; or allot- ments are made as the whim or judgment of the chiefs determines. The islands comprising a part of the Canadian reservation are among the most attractive in the St. Lawrence, and, indeed, it is true of both reser- vations that a finer location could hardly be imagined. In themselves they are ideal, and only the lack of Indian industry, enterprise and thrift, and the corrupting influence of the neighboring whites, stand in the way of their becoming, besides beauty spots, centers of fruitful productiveness and prosperity. With the splendid strides that have been made by these people in recent years, and which are believed to hold the promise of yet further great progress, the drawback first named is thought to be likely to be overcome and disappear.
Unhappily the timber which formerly abounded has been all but cut off or destroyed by fire, and not enough remains for a sufficient supply of fuel for the tribes. Of the New York reservation all except the lands that are acually under cultivation are held and used as commons, and formerly, if not now, any Indian had the right to cut timber as he chose, either for his own needs or to sell, and fifty or sixty years ago from four to five thousand cords of fire wood were thus cut annually, the greater part of it having been shipped to Montreal. If every Indian were now to obtain his fuel from the reservation, it is estimated that not a tree would remain after two or three years. The Canadian government dis- tributes eight hundred dollars every half year among its St. Regis Indians, and also grants annually to the aged and needy certain gifts of blankets. A half century ago it gave blankets to all, and also guns and ammunition, but, the Dominion policy being to stimulate these wards to become self-reliant and self-supporting, nothing additional to the annuities is now given except in cases where otherwise actual suffering would occur. A representative of the United States Indian commis- sioner visited every Canadian reservation in 1914, and also made an exhaustive study of the Canadian Indian policy and administration. He pronounced them superior in almost every respect to our own, commend- ing in particular Canada's judicial system as it bears upon the adminis- tration of both civil and criminal law in Indian affairs. There the Indian agents have the power and authority of justices of the peace, and there is a special Dominion constabulary for serving process and making arrests.
19
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
The Canadian St. Regis numbered 1,695 in 1915, which was a gain of one hundred and eighty from 1911.
THE INDIANS
Summarizing the story told in the first chapter of this book, relative to the settlement of St. Regis, the first comers (about 1,750) were the two Tarbells, who had been made captives at Groton, Mass., had mar- ried into the tribe at Caughnawaga, and had been practically forced to withdraw therefrom because of jealousy which their superiority pro- voked among their comrades. In this migration they were accom- panied by their families and by the parents of their wives. Something like ten years later they were joined at St. Regis by Father Anthony Gordon, attended by a considerable body of Caughnawagas whom he had induced to follow him in order that they might be withdrawn from the vicinity of Montreal, with its opportunities and temptations to intemperance and other debasing conditions. Though afterward a number of Caughnawagas who had participated on the side of the Ameri- cans in the war of the revolution (largely, no doubt, because their old friendship for the French made them antagonistic to everything British) sought refuge at St. Regis at the close of the war, and though other small additions have come in a similar way, some of them from the disrupted settlement at Ogdensburg, available records show that colonization other than that of Father Gordon has been only of a straggling sort; and thus the increase that has obtained in a century and a half has resulted, for the most part, from the excess of births over deaths, and to whites intermarrying with the Indians for the sake of acquiring the privilege of sharing the lands and annuities of the latter. (A white who marries a squaw gains the right to use of reservation land, but is not counted in apportioning the annuity.) More because of such inter- marrying than from any unchastity of Indian women is due the fact that there is not now a full-blooded Indian on the reservation. Such intermarrying, however, has been practised but little, if at all, in recent years. Formerly, when it was prevalent, the whites who were parties to it were almost all males. Instances of white women marrying Indian men have been extremely rare. It deserves to be said here that in the judgment of those best informed - priests, physicians, merchants and agents who mingle intimately among these people - the Indians as a whole are more virtuous than the average of whites living under similar conditions and with like advantages, or the lack of them.
Father Gordon arrived at St. Regis on June 16th, which is the festi-
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THE SAINT REGIS INDIAN RESERVATION
val of St. Regis. Hence the name that the place has since borne. St. Regis was a native of Savoy, France, and was born in 1597 and died in 1640. At the age of twenty he became a Jesuit novice, and, after serving as instructor in colleges of the order, passed the rest of his life in apostolic labors. He was beatified in 1716, and canonized in 1737. A biographer cites a letter from him requesting to be assigned to the Canada mission, but there is no record that the request was granted.
A church edifice of logs covered with bark, and with one end par- titioned off for the priest's residence, was erected almost at once, but was burned in 1462. Soon afterward a frame building, more pretentious, replaced it, and was used for thirty years. A stone church structure was erected in 1791 and 1792, after which the frame building was demol- ished. The entire interior and contents of the stone edifice were destroyed by fire in 1865, but the massive walls, said to be nearly four feet in thickness, were but little injured, and inclose the present church, which was finished in 1886. The first church is said to have had a bell, but where it came from or whither it went there is no authentic explana- tion. Legend declared it to have been brought from Deerfield, Mass., when that place was sacked by the French and Caughnawaga Indians, and to have been the same which the Indians at Caughnawaga had bought with furs in France, but which, captured by the British in tran- sit, had been taken as a prize of war to Massachusetts, and acquired by Deerfield. This story, though interesting, is improbable, for Deer- field was sacked a half century before there was a church at St. Regis; and it is far more likely, if a bell was in fact toted from there, it was established at Caughnawaga, which would hardly have transferred so precious a belonging to a smaller and weaker colony. It is known, however, that the St. Regis Indians bought a bell in 1802 with a part of their annuity moneys.
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