History of Cattaraugus County, New York, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 4

Author: Franklin Ellis and Eugene Arns Nash
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How long, then, did they last ? In the year 1657 two Jesuit priests, Fathers Joseph Chaumont and Claude Dablon, who were then on a mission in the country of the Onon- dagas, expressed their indignation at the treachery of the Iroquois (which had then become apparent), as follows : " But so soon as the captains and chiefs became masters of their enemies, having crushed all the nations who had at- tacked them, so soon as they believed that nothing could resist their arms, the glory of triumphing over Europeans as well as Americans caused them to take the resolution to revenge themselves on the one and destroy the other ; so that at the very moment they saw the dreaded Cat Nation subjugated by their arms and by the power of the Senecas, their allies, they would have massacred all the French at Onnontague, were it not that they pretended to make use of them as a decoy to attract some Hurons and to massacre them as they had already done." From this we know that the war had closed in the subjugation of the Eries before 1657. The date of their defeat and expulsion has generally been placed at the year 1655.

A tradition current among the Senecas located the scene of the final and decisive battle between the Erie and Iro- quois nations at the bend in the Genesee River, on ground which was afterwards the Caneadea reservation, in the present county of Allegany. Here the doomed Eries had mustered all their force to the last warrior, for they well understood that the result must be, for them, victory or an- nihilation. Against them were arrayed five thousand

* The name Gen-nis-hee-yo (meaning " the beautiful valley") was applied by the aborigines both to the valley of the Genesce and to the river which flows through it. The Iroquois name of the Allegany River was O-hee-yo. The French adventurers who first penetrated this region, and passed down the river to the present site of Pitts- burgh, rendered the name Ohio, in conformity with the orthography of their language. In the English the pronunciation only is changed. The French explorers very properly regarded the O-hec-yo as the main stream, and the Monongahela as merely a principal tributary. t Doc. Ilist. N. Y., vol. i., pp. 33 to 41.

# The Mohawks were not represented at the treaty.

¿ The holy father, like other French writers of that time, speaks of the Eries as the " Cat Nation." That it was not the Neutre Nation to which he intended to apply the term is shown by the fact that in another part of the same journal, under date of August 7, he says : "A good Christian, named Terese, a Huron captive, wishing to pour out her soul to me, away from noise, and in silence, invited me to visit her in a field cabin where she lived. This good Christian woman had with her a young captive of the Neutral Nation (de la Nation Neutre), whom she loved as her own daughter," etc.

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HISTORY OF CATTARAUGUS COUNTY, NEW YORK.

Iroquois braves, of whom one thousand were held in re- serve, and in concealment. The Eries were first to assault, and they did so with a fury which drove the confederates from their position ; but they soon rallied, and hurled the Eries back in greatest disorder. And so, with the alternate charge and recoil of each, the tide of battle ebbed and flowed seven times across the red field, which was thickly strown with the wounded warriors of Seneca and Erie, grappling at each other's scalp-locks even in the agony of death. At last, by a well-feigned retreat of their opponents, the impetuous Eries were drawn into the ambuscade of the Iroquois reserve; and then a thousand fresh warriors yelled the war-whoop and leaped upon them. The Eries wavered and gave way, and the fight became a rout and a massacre, for quarter was neither asked nor given. The victors pur- sued them to their villages, and there slaughtered all who came in their way, sparing neither age nor sex.

The remnant of Erie warriors who escaped the terrors of the field continued their flight towards the southwest, along the valley of their own beautiful O-hee-yo ; but even here they found no rest, for the conquerors still followed, bent on nothing short of their extermination. The flight and pursuit was continued, says the tradition, until the last Erie had crossed the Father of Waters, and five moons had passed before the Seneca braves returned to celebrate their victory in the villages of the Gen-nis-hee-yo.

THE SENECA OCCUPATION.

Though the defeat and expulsion of the Eries had been the work of the combined Iroquois tribes, and not of the Senecas alone, yet the latter nation became possessors of the domain of the vanquished. The war had been waged for the purpose of destroying a formidable enemy rather than for the acquisition of territory, of which the fierce Iroquois, who held other Indian nations under tribute, had no need. This was the case with the Senecas in particular. They became owners of the conquered territory because it adjoined their boundaries, but they already held a country teeming with fish and game, a land beautiful to the Indian eye as any under the sun, and ample for all the requirements of their people.

And so it came that for many years after the forced ex- odus of the almost exterminated Eries the lands which they had left were not occupied by the conquering nation, except as an occasional hunting-ground, and for the exercise of their primitive husbandry around the few permanent villages which they planted along the western side of the fertile vale of Gen-nis-hee-yo. Southwest of this to the valley of the Allegany, and even to the shore of the great lake, through all the wild woods which had before been lighted by the glare of the Erie council-fires, the birds and beasts, of game and of prey, held scarcely-disturbed pos- session. About twenty-five years after the destruction of the Eries (in the winter of 1680), the French explorer, La Salle, in passing with his party through the country lying to the southeast of Lake Erie, " encountered wolves in such numbers as to be in danger of being overpowered and devoured by them, notwithstanding that the party was well armed with guns, and had abundance of ammunition. The extraordinary multitude of game of all kinds upon the

south side of Lake Erie is spoken of by several of the early travelers from 1680 to 1724, and is by some attempted to be accounted for by the fact that, since the terrible war between the Eries and the Iroquois, no one resided there. It was not considered safe to even pass through the country."*

Concerning the Indian occupation of the country lying between the bend of the Genesee River and Chautauqua Lake, during the century and a quarter of time succeeding the dispossession of the Eries, very little can be told with any degree of certainty. It is known that the punishment inflicted on the Senecas by the French expedition under the Marquis Denonville, t in 1687, caused them to abandon their villages in dismay, and retire farther towards the in- terior for security in case of future invasion, and it is not improbable that at that time they may have extended their settlements westward into what is now Cattaraugus County. On Morgan's map, showing the condition of the Iroquois country in 1720, there are located four small Indian vil- lages within the limits of the county,¿ namely : Da-u-de- nok-to, situated on the north side of the Allegany, nearly opposite the mouth of Tunegawant Creek ; De-o-na-ga-no, also on the north side of the Allegany, west of Cold Spring Creek ; Jo-ne-a-din, on the south side of the same river, and near Red House Creek ; and Te-car-nohs, at the Oil Spring, nearly on the line between Cattaraugus and Alle- gany Counties. This was one of the most noted and most frequented points in all the country of the Senecas, on ac- count of the spring yielding small quantities of petroleum, which, in their superstition, they believed to possess mirac- ulous properties for the cure of almost every discase to which the human frame is subject.

But these Seneca hamlets were but their southwestern outposts, the principal part of their population being located in the valley of the Genesee. " Of great extent, boundless fertility, and easy cultivation, it became their favorite resi- dence, and fully deserved the appellation of 'the beautiful valley,' which they bestowed upon it. Its situation in the centre of their territories, and the easily-forded river which flowed through it, alike invited to its settlement. At the period of their highest prosperity it became the most thickly- peopled district in the country of the Iroquois."

But in 1779 this fertile region, this centre of Seneca population and wealth (if the term is applicable in an Indian community), felt the heavy hand of a just retribu- tion for the bloody part which the warriors of the tribe had taken in the massacres of the preceding year. The

* Ketchum's Buffalo and the Senecas.

t The expeditions of De la Barre and Denonville were undertaken by the French in Canada, in retribution for ravages committed by that tribe on the French posts on the Illinois River a short time be- fore. The expedition under De la Barre, in 1685, was unproductive of results, but that under Denonville, two years later, was more suc- cessful. A great battle was fought between the French and Indians near Boughton Hill, in Ontario County, in which the former gained the advantage. This battle struck terror to the hearts of the Senecas and resulted in the destruction of many of their villages.

# At the time of the exploration of this region (about 1780) there was found but one Indian village within the limits of Chautauqua County. This was on the Connewango, in the present town of Carroll. Eighteen years later (1789) the Quaker missionaries found the Indian village of Genesangohta on the Allegany, in the present town of South Valley, and also a new village then just established, at Cold Spring.

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HISTORY OF CATTARAUGUS COUNTY, NEW YORK.

avenging columns of Gen. Sullivan swept through the val- leys and over the rolling plateaus of the Seneca country like the angel of destruction, doing all that in them lay to cripple and distress the treacherous butchers of Wyom- ing and Cherry Valley. "The axe and the torch soon transformed the beautiful region from the character of a garden to a scene of sickening desolation. Forty Indian towns, the largest containing one hundred and twenty-eight houses, were destroyed ; corn, gathered and ungathered, to the amount of one hundred and sixty thousand bushels, shared the same fate. Mere fruit-trees were cut down, and the Indians were hunted like wild beasts, and neither house nor fruit-tree remained in the country."*

The Senecas fled before the invader in far greater terror than that which had been inspired by the irruption of Denonville nearly a century before. Their first place of refuge was the vicinity of the fort at Niagara, but the ultimate result of the destruction of their villages along the Genesee, and farther to the eastward, was a considerable migration to the valleys of the Allegany River and of Cat- taraugus and Connewango Creeks; and from this time until that of the advent of white settlers was the period · of the most numerous Seneca occupancy of the lands which now form the county of Cattaraugus. But even during this period the Indian population of these hills and vales and forests was sparse and scattered, and was never com- posed of what might be termed the chivalryt of the Seneca nation,-the warriors and chiefs and sagamores of that heroic age of the Iroquois when their power over- shadowed the country from the Connecticut to the Kaskas- kia, and their war-parties forayed from the Canadian lakes to the fording-place of the Tennessee at Muscle Shoals,- but of the scattered remnants of a cowed and ruined nation, seeking an asylum among the wilds to which they hoped the white man might never penetrate.

And here they made no history. On these hills, and along these valleys and streams, where perhaps their ances- tors had closed in the death-struggle with the fierce Eries, these dispirited descendants hunted and fished and prose- cuted their rude agriculture; but they projected no aggres- sive expeditions, held no memorable treaties, and displayed none of the qualities which in the ancient days made Indian nations or individuals famous.

The time had been when the numerous and warlike Senecas, posted on the western frontier of the confederacy, had proudly styled themselves the " Door-keepers of the Long House of the Iroquois;" but their numbers were now thinned, their martial spirit had decayed, the "Long House" had fallen down, and it was no longer red enemies from the West, but the pale-faced foe in the East, whose approach they dreaded. They recollected, with feelings of bitterness, the chastisement inflicted on their nation by the army of Sullivan, and many Senecas, burning for revenge, fought against General Anthony Wayne in his western campaign

of 1794; but after his decisive victory in that year all their hopes of revenge died out, and when the white pioneers came to this region they found the Indians mostly located in quiet upon the reservations assigned them, having laid aside the torch and the tomahawk forever.

CHAPTER IV.

LAND TITLES IN WESTERN NEW YORK.

The " Genesee Country"-Phelps and Gorham Tract-Morris' Reserve -The Holland Purchase.

IN the year 1663, Charles I., King of England, granted to the Duke of York and Albany the province of New York, then including the present State of New Jersey ; extending thence north to the French possessions in Canada, and westward indefinitely. The eastern boundary was not clearly described, but was claimed by New York to be at the Connecticut River.

As this grant covered a portion of the immense territory (extending from 42° 2' to 44° 15' of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean) which had many years before been granted by James I. of England to the Plymouth Company, under the general designation of New England, there very naturally followed disagreements and disputes between the two colonies, each of which laid claim to jurisdiction and the right of pre-emption over and in the same territory, embracing many millions of acres of the best portions of the present Empire State, though prior to the Revolution these disputes were confined to territory east of the Hudson River.

This conflict of jurisdiction remained unsettled for more than a century, and resulted in frequent acts of violence, armed collisions, and bloodshed, which occurred principally during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and within the present counties of Columbia, in New York, and Berkshire, in Massachusetts, in the immediate vicinity of the present boundary line between the two States.

In the year 1781 the State of New York ceded to the United States all its jurisdictional and proprietary rights and claims to the territory lying west of a meridian line running due south from the western bend of Lake Ontariot to the north line of Pennsylvania, this being identical with the present western boundary of Chautauqua County. All similar claims and rights to the same territory were ceded by Massachusetts to the United States, in 1785.

By these acts the controversy was narrowed to the limits of the two States ; and it was finally settled by a convention concluded at Hartford, Conn., Dec. 16, 1786, by ten com- missioners, four of whom were appointed by Massachusetts and six by New York, namely : James Duane, Robert R. Livingston, Robert Yates, John Haring, Melancthon Smith, and Egbert Benson on the part of New York, and John

* Stone's Life of Brant.

t It has been stated, however,-and with apparent correctness,- that the Seneca chief Cornplanter was born in the limits of this county, near the old mound at Olean, before mentioned. This state- ment was made by Gen. C. T. Chamberlain, to whom the information was imparted by the chief himself.

# This line was established by the United States Surveyor-General, Andrew Ellicott, in 1789. As the line agreed on was to start from the western end of the lake, there was at first some hesitation in deter- mining whether it should commence at the western extremity of Bur- lington Bay (West Canada), or at the peninsula which separates the bay from the lake. The point of departure was finally fixed at the peninsula.

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Lowell, James Sullivan, Theophilus Parsons, and Rufus King on the part of Massachusetts.

Agreeably to the decision of that convention, Massachu- setts relinquished and confirmed to New York all political jurisdiction over the limits of the State, and in all terri- tory lying to the westward of the boundary established between the States; and New York ceded to Massachu- setts " the right of pre-emption of the soil from the native Indians, and all other the estate, right, title, and property (the right and title of government, sovereignty, and juris- diction excepted) which the State of New York hath of and in or to the described lands ;" the said lands consisting of two hundred and thirty thousand four hundred acres between Chenango River and Owego Creek, in the present counties of Broome and Tioga, and all that part of the State of New York lying west of a line beginning at a point eighty-two miles west of the Delaware River, at the north- eastern corner of Pennsylvania, and on the northern bound- ary line of that State, and running thence due north through a part of Seneca Lake (passing about one mile east of the site of the village of Geneva) to Lake Ontario, excepting and reserving to New York a strip of land one mile wide,* extending along the whole length of Niagara River upon and adjoining its eastern bank, and the islands in that stream.

The pre-emption right-that is to say, the fee and owner- ship (subject to the aboriginal title) to the entire tract west of the line running north from the eighty-second mile-stone, comprehending nearly seven millions of acres-was, in April, 1788, sold by Massachusetts to Oliver Phelps, of Granville, Hampshire Co., and Nathaniel Gorham, of Charlestown, Middlesex Co., in that State, for the sum of one million dol- lars, to be paid in three equal annual installments. By the terms of the contract, however, certain outstanding scrip of the State, known as " Massachusetts consolidated securities," was to be received at par in payment; and, as those secu- rities were then selling in the market at eighty per cent. discount, it will be seen that the price thus contracted to be paid by Messrs. Phelps and Gorham was hardly equal to three cents, in cash, per acre, for all that fertile domain then known by the general appellation of THE GENE- SEE COUNTRY, comprehending the present counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Niagara, Orleans, Genesee, Wyoming, Allegany, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Yates, Steuben, and the greater part of Wayne, being largely made up of lands unexcelled in quality by any on the globe.

In the summer of 1788, Mr. Phelps, with the aid of the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, State Commissioner and Indian missionary, collected together the principal representatives of the Iroquois at Buffalo Creek, with intent to purchase from them their title to all the lands embraced in the Massachu- setts pre-emption claim. The Indians, however, were un-

* This strip was reserved for the location of a portage-road around the falls.

That part of it lying between Buffalo Creek and Stedman's Farm was ceded by the Indians by the treaty of Aug. 20, 1802, before John Tyler, U. S. Commissioner. For this they received two hundred dol- lars down, five thousand three hundred dollars payable at Albany, and five hundred dollars in chintz, calico, and other goods for women. They retained the right of passing the ferry at Black Rock free of toll, and stipulated the gift of one mile square each to Horatio .Jones and Jasper Parrish.

willing to sell any part of their domain west of the Genesee River, for the reason, as they said, that the Great Spirit had fixed that stream as the boundary between the pale-face and the red man ; and Mr. Phelps found them apparently deter- mined to insist that it should remain as such. He, how- ever, with great seeming fairness and friendship, represented to them that he was exceedingly desirous of erecting mills at the great falls (now Rochester), and that such mills would not only be of great utility and convenience to him and his partnerst and to the settlers coming into the coun- try, but also to the Indians themselves; but he explained to them that for this purpose it would be necessary for him to have a strip of land on the west side of the river as a mill-seat. The chiefs then inquired how much land would be necessary for such a purpose, and were informed by Mr. Phelps that, in his opinion, a strip twelve miles iu width, running up from the mouth of the river, on its west side, to Canawagus village (which was about twenty-eight miles) would be sufficient. They said, in reply, that this seemed to be a very large amount of land to be required for a mill- seat, but that white men were better judges of such matters than Indians; and so they consented to the proposition, and concluded the treaty and sale July 8, in the year named.

The result of this convention of the Indians was a treaty by which they sold to Phelps and Gorham, for the considera- tion of £2100 ($5250) and a promised annuityt of $5000, a territory embracing the entire eastern portion of the Mas- sachusetts tract, bounded on the east by the line before de- scribed as running from the eighty-second mile-stone in the Pennsylvania boundary due north to Lake Ontario, and thereafter known as " the pre-emption line ;" south by the south line of the State; west by a line commencing on the north boundary of Pennsylvania, at a point 4470% miles west of the eighty-second mile-stone, and running thence to an elm-tree standing on a point of land within the angle formed by the Genesee River and Canaseraga Creek at their confluence ; thence by the left bank of the Genesee River to a point two miles north of the Canawagus village (near Avon bridge) ; thence due west twelve miles (about one and one-half miles south of Le Roy village) ; thence parallel to the general course of the Genesee River-North 24° E .- to Lake Ontario, which lake formed the northern boundary of the conveyed territory. These limits comprehend about

t Phelps and Gorham had several associates in the great purchase, though they were themselves the only ones prominently known in it. # The Indians afterwards complained bitterly of this treaty. An idea of the grounds for their dissatisfaction may be had from the fol- lowing extract from a speech made by Red Jacket before Col. Timo- thy Pickering, Mr. Street, and others, at Tioga Point, Nov. 21, 1790. After having stated the preliminary negotiations of the treaty, he added, " And last summer a year ago we came to Canandaigua, ex- pecting to receive ten thousand dollars, but found we had but five thousand to receive. When we discovered the fraud we had a mind to apply to Congress, to see if the matter could not be rectified; for, when we took the money and shared it, every one here knows that we had but about one dollar apiece for all that country. Mr. Street, you very well know that all our land came to was but the price of a few hogsheads of tobacco ! Gentlemen who stand by (looking round and addressing the white people who were present), do not think hard of what has been said. At the time of the treaty twenty broaches would not buy a loaf of bread, so that when we returned home there was not a bright spot of silver about us."-Am. State Papers, Ind. Affairs, i. 24.

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two million two hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land, which then became known as the " Phelps and Gorham Purchase,"-a name which was never applied to the remain- der of the grant which they received from Massachusetts, for the reason that they soon after relinquished their claim to it without ever having extinguished the aboriginal title. The tract of twelve by twenty-eight miles in extent, on the west side of the Genesee, which Mr. Phelps persuaded the chiefs to sell him for a mill-yard, was known thereafter as " the Mill-Seat Tract," and included the site of the present city of Rochester.

When the treaty was concluded, the Indians told Mr. Phelps that it was customary among them to bestow on any person to whom they sold land an Indian name, by which he should ever after be known to them ; and accordingly they christened him Scaw-gun-se-ga, which, by interpreta- tion, signified " the great fall." They also reminded him that he was expected to " treat" them with rum, and to give them a walking-staff to help them on their way home, by which was meant a quantity of strong liquor to take with them on their return journey. These conditions being com- plied with, the conference was closed.

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History of Cattaraugus County, New York, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 4

Author: Franklin Ellis and Eugene Arns Nash Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Franklin Ellis and Eugene Arns Nash
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: