USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Cayuga County, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 2
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" Friends and Brothers-You are members of many tribes and nations. You have come here, many of you, a great distance from your homes ; you have convened for one common purpose, to promote one common interest, and that is to provide for our mutual safety and how it shall best be accomplished. To oppose these hordes of northern foes by tribes singly and alone, would prove our certain destruction ; we can make no progress in that way ; we must unite ourselves in one common band of brothers. Our warriors united, would surely repel these rude invaders and drive them from our borders. This must be done, and we shall be safe.
" You, the Mohawks, sitting under the shadow of ' the great tree,' whose roots sink deep into the earth, and whose branches spread over a vast country, shall be the first nation, because you are warlike and mighty.
" And you, Oneidas, who incline your bodies against 'the everlasting stone,' that cannot be moved, shall be the second nation, because you give wise counsels.
" And you, Onondagas, that have your habi- tation at 'the great mountain,' and are over- shadowed by its crags, shall be the third nation, because you are greatly gifted in speech and mighty in war.
" And you, Cayugas, a people whose habitation is 'the dark forest,' and whose home is every- where, shall be the fourth nation, because of your superior cunning in hunting.
" And you, Senecas, a people who live in ' the open country,' and possess much wisdom, shall be the fifth nation, because you understand better the art of raising corn and beans and of making cabins.
" You, five great and powerful nations, must unite and have but one common interest, and no foe shall be able to disturb or subdue you.
" And you, Manhattans, Nyacks, Metoacks and others, who are as 'the feeble bushes ;' and you, Narragansetts, Mohegans, Wampanoags and your neighbors, who are 'a fishing people,' may place yourselves under our protection. Be with us and we will defend you. You of the South and you of the West may do the same, and we will protect you. We earnestly desire your alliance and friendship.
" Brothers, if you unite in this bond, the Great Spirit will smile upon you, and we shall be free, prosperous and happy ; but if we remain as we are, we shall be subject to his frown ; we shall be enslaved, ruined, perhaps annihilated forever ; we shall perish, and our names be blotted out from among the nations of men.
" Brothers, these are the words of Hi-a-wat-ha. Let them sink deep into your hearts. I have said it."
The great Confederacy was immediately formed and it continued until. its power was broken by the war of the Revolution. Such is a summary of the tradition of their origin, current among the Onondagas, and given on the authority of two of their head chiefs.
But, however or when its origin, the success of the union was complete. Not only did it end the internal wars of the separate nations, but it enabled the Confederacy to exterminate, or effect- ually subdue, their troublesome neighbors. They assumed the title of the "People of the Long House," and started upon the war-path, to re- venge themselves upon their enemies, in which they were remarkably successful, becoming, in time, the dictators of the continent, holding practical sway over a territory estimated to be
II
EXTENT OF THE SWAY OF THE IROQUOIS.
twelve hundred miles long by eight hundred broad, embracing a large part of New England and reaching thence to the Mississippi; while the Cherokees and Catawbas in the far south were humbled by their power.
From the conquered nations they exacted tribute, and drew conscripts for their armies. They adopted the Tuscaroras, who resided in Carolina, into the Confederacy in 1713, and were thereafter known as the Six Nations. From the extent of their conquests, the number of their subject nations, and the tribute and military aid rendered to them by the latter, they have been called the " Romans of the New World."
This Confederacy, so widely controlling in its influence, held in actual possession a territory extending only from the Hudson to the Niagara, and from Lake Ontario to the Susquehanna ; and of their own warriors could bring into the fight barely two thousand braves.
The westernmost nations, the Cayugas and the Senecas, occupied the most inviting part of the Confederacy,-the beautiful " lake country," and the equally beautiful but more fertile valley of the Genesee. Here the greatest improvements had been made in the building of houses, and the cultivation of the soil. Their traditions credited the Senecas with a residence in "the open country," and as " best understanding the art of cultivating beans and corn," and of " build- ing cabins." The correctness of these traditions is fully verified by the account given by General Sullivan when passing over this region in the Fall of 1779, on his famous campaign, just one hundred years ago, and nearly fifty years before the settlement of the present people. Whether the improvements described by him were the result of early missionary instruction or made by an anterior race is an unsolved question. The trees had been removed from thousands of acres ; old orchards existed, and evidences of long cul- tivation abounded. General Sullivan reports that in 1779, " the Indian town of Genesee con- tained one hundred and twenty-eight houses, mostly large and elegant. It was beautifully situated, encircled by a clear flat extending a number of miles, over which fields of corn were waving, together with every kind of vegetable that could be conceived of." Similar towns were also found at other points of his march. The whole valley presented the appearance of having
been cultivated for generations, and the farms, orchards and gardens were cultivated with care. Apples, pears and peaches were among the fruits produced.
It is, perhaps, difficult for the generation of young readers to now fully credit the accounts of the degree of civilization to which the Senecas had attained at that early date; yet, Colonel Stone, in his life of Brant, says, "that they had several towns and many large villages laid out with considerable regularity. They had framed houses, some of them well finished, having chimneys and painted ; they had broad and productive fields." The " howling wilderness" and the " dark forest," usually associated with all Indian life, had here given place to cultivated fields, fruitful orchards and gardens, and comfort- able houses. The sources of the great power and influence of the Five Nations may be found in their habits and modes of life, and in the rare wisdom of their social and political systems. They were forest tribes, subsisting mainly by the chase.
Between the various Indian tribes of this country there were marked physical differences. The figure of the Iroquois was erect and com- manding ; he was reserved and hanghty ; cool, deliberate and cunning. The prairie Indians, with very different habits, were more nervous, social and excitable. Charles T. Hoffman, Esq., thus traces the cause of these differences : "The Pawnees, following the buffalo in his migrations, and having always plenty of animal food to sub- sist upon, are a much better fed and a larger race than those who find a precarious subsistence in the forest chase; while the woodland tribes, who, though not so plump in form, are of a more wiry and, perhaps, muscular make, have again a decided advantage in figure and gait over the fishing and trapping tribes of the North-west that pass most of their time in canoes. This differ- ence in character and physical appearance bc- tween the different Indian races, or rather be- tween those tribes which have such different methods of gaining a livelihood, has not been sufficiently attended to by modern authors, though it did not escape the early French writers on this country. And yet, if habit have any effect in forming the character and temper of a rude people, it must of course follow that the savage who lives in eternal sunshine upon flowery
L
I2
SOCIAL SYSTEMS OF THE IROQUOIS.
plains, and hunts on horseback with a troop of tribesmen around him, must be a different being from the solitary deer-stalker who wanders through the dim forest, depending upon his single arm for subsistence for his wife and children."
But the Iroquois differed more from the other nations in their civil, social and political systems. Their Confederacy was a very efficient though simple plan of union. The entire control of all civil matters affecting the common interest was vested in a national council of about fifty sachems,-though in some instances as many as eighty,-chosen at first from their wisest men in the several nations, and afterwards hereditary in their families. All the nations were represented. Each nation had a single vote in the council, and no measure could be adopted except by the concurrence of all the nations. To produce this unanimity, the persuasive powers of reason and eloquence were constantly employed, and here were trained their famous orators. *
In his own nation, each sachem was a local civil magistrate, and decided the differences be- tween his people, in public audiences of his tribe. In military matters he had no control; these were confided to chiefs of tribes. If he engaged in war, he held only the rank of a com- mon warrior. This national council met as often as their exigencies required, on the shore of Onondaga Lake, and discussed and decided all questions relating to peace or war; negotiations with other nations, and all matters of common interest relating to the internal affairs of the Confederacy. Every question was fully dis- cussed with dignity and courtesy.
Each nation was divided into eight clans or tribes, each having a specific device or totem. These devices were wolves, bears, beavers, tur- tles, deer, herons, snipes and hawks. The first four, in all the nations, were accounted brothers of each other ; the last four, though brothers of each other, were cousins only to the first four. Each tribe composed a family, but, while all its
members were accounted brothers and sisters of each other, they also were brothers and sisters of the members of all the other tribes having the same device.
Here was an ingenious linking of all the members of each tribe to all the others in the Confederacy. That bond of union was also further strengthened by the laws applicable to marriage. No one of the brothers,-that is, no one bearing either of the first four devices, wolf, bear, beaver or turtle,-could seek his bride from any tribe having those devices; but must take her from cousins,-that is, from one of the tribes bearing one or the other of the last four devices. The tribal brothers and sisters could not inter- marry.
It will thus be seen that in forming their social and political codes, the Iroquois displayed much shrewdness and wisdom. They bound their people together, not only by the strong ties of political interests, but of affection ; linking to- gether the separate parts of each tribe and nation, and also each nation to every other.
CHAPTER II.
NATIVE INHABITANTS, (CONTINUED.)
THE IROQUOIS AND EARLY COLONISTS-FRENCH, DUTCH AND ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS -THE VARIOUS WARS BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND THE IROQUOIS FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT TO THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION-FAILURE OF THE FRENCH-TRIUMPH OF THE ENGLISH.
F RANCE, Holland and Great Britain sup- plied the first colonists of Canada and New York. The first permanent French settle- ment in Canada was made in 1608, on the site of Quebec, by Governor Champlain. The Dutch built a fort on Manhattan Island in 1614, and one at Albany in 1615; but they had sent out ships to traffic with the natives as early as 1610. In 1664 the English supplanted the Dutch and rapidly colonized the eastern coast. These dates are important as showing the first opportunities of intercourse with the whites which the natives had enjoyed.
* The orators studied euphony in their words and in their arrange- ment. Their graceful attitudes and gestures and their flowing sentences rendered their discourses, if not always eloquent, at least highly impressive. An erect and commanding figure, with a blanket thrown loosely over the shoulder, his naked arm raised, and address- ing, in impassioned strains, a group of similar persons sitting upon the ground around him, would, to use the illustration of an early historian of this State, give no faint picture of Rome in her early days, -Smith's History of New York.
13
CHAMPLAIN'S INVASION.
The French maintained friendly relations with the Canadian and Western Indians for nearly one hundred and fifty years, with whom they carried on a large trade, supplying the natives with such merchandise and commodities as they needed, in return for furs and skins. But for nearly that entire period, the French were at war with the Iroquois, the Dutch or the English, always aided by their Indian allies.
When the French built their fort at Quebec in 1608, the Adirondacks-a very powerful band of Indians-had been defeated by the Iroquois after several severe contests, and were not only driven from their lands in northern New York, but were pursued into Canada and driven to the vicinity of the French settlements. Champlain supplied the Adirondacks with arms, and joined them in an expedition against the Iroquois, and here began that horrible series of barbarities which continued for more than a century and a half, from which the French in Canada and the colonists of New York suffered beyond descrip- tion. The former much more than the latter, a just punishment, as the originators of the horrid work.
The French justly expected to produce great terror among the Iroquois by their fire-arms, and to force them to easy terms of peace. They met and easily routed a few hundred of them on the shore of Lake Champlain, and then returned to Canada. But though greatly frightened at the noise and the destruction wrought by the French guns, the Iroquois were not induced to make ignoble terms of peace, but contented themselves for the time by hiding in the wilderness. This occurred in 1609, and was the first meeting of the Iroquois with the white men.
The next invasion was in 1615, when Governor Champlain led an expedition, consisting of a few Frenchmen and four hundred Huron allies, in an attack upon an Iroquois fort, situated in the country of the Onondagas. According to Champlain's account, the village was enclosed by four rows of interlaced palisades thirty feet high. It was near a body of unfailing water, and con- ductors had been so arranged along the palisades as to lead the water for extinguishing fires. Inside were galleries protected by ball - proof parapets.
At the first fire the Indians fled into the fort ; Champlain then constructed a movable tower of
sufficient height to overlook the palisades and moved it near to the fort, placing marksmen therein to fire over the palisades, while the men themselves were protected by the tower. Un- successful attempts were made to fire the palis- ades, but Champlain's forces, consisting mainly of undisciplined Hurons, could not be controlled and they suffered severely from the arrows of those in the fort. Champlain himself was severely wounded, and many of his allies were killed and wounded. The latter became so dis- orderly as to compel the abandonment of the expedition, which, after lying before the fort for six days, started on its return to Canada."
The Five Nations now artfully sued for peace. To this the French consented on the condition that they might send Jesuit priests among them, their object in this being to win over the Five Nations to French allegiance ; but on the arrival of the priests, the Indians held them as hostages to compel the neutrality of the French while they made war upon the Adirondacks. This
they did, and severely defeated them within a few miles of Quebec. So severe were the losses of the Adirondacks, and so terrified were the Indian allies of the French, that several of the tribes fled to the remote South-west beyond, as they believed, the reach of their terrible enemies. The Adirondacks, however, remained, and on them the Five Nations planned another raid. They gave out that they would pay the Governor of Canada a friendly visit, and set out upon it with a thousand warriors. Meeting on their way a leading chief of the Adirondacks, they com- pletely deceived him and secured his confidence. They learned from him that his people were scattered into hunting parties, whose precise localities they also ascertained. They then murdered the unsuspecting chief, and, dividing their own forces, fell upon the scattered parties
* The precise location of this fort has been for some time in controversy. It had been considered as located upon the shore of Onondaga Lake, yet General John S. Clark, of Auburn, N. Y., who has carefully examined the question, says : "That the east branch of the Limestone is the dividing line absolutely between the historic and pre-historic town sites of the Onondagas ; and that Champlain's narrative contains internal evidence, in statements of fact, unquestionably, that the fort was within a few miles at least, and south of Oneida Lake." General Clark designates " a well- known town site in Madison County on the farm of Rufus H. Nichols, on what is known as the Mile Strip, about three miles east of Perryville, as the home of the Onondagas at that period, and as being the identical position of the fort attacked by Champlain."
14
CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND IROQUOIS.
of the Adirondacks, who became their easy prey. That brave and powerful nation,-the only one that had hitherto successfully resisted them,- were thus annihilated by the strategy of the Iroquois.
In 1650 the Hurons and the Utawawas who had fled, as they supposed, beyond the reach of the Five Nations, were sought out by the latter ; but, being advised that their dreaded enemy was on their trail, they made their home with the Pottawatomies. Yet, even here, they were com- pelled to make peace with their old conquerors.
In 1665 the French colony at Quebec received a reinforcement of some fifteen hundred soldiers. The Governor, now feeling himself sufficiently strong, resolved to punish the perfidy of the Five Nations by an attack upon the Mohawks. This he attempted the ensuing Winter, but the ex- pedition failed for want of supplies, the troops suffering greatly. The following year, 1666, the effort was renewed with all the available force of the French with the view of breaking the power of the Five Nations ; but, with their usual sagacity, the Mohawks not being strong enough to suc- cessfully contend against so powerful a force, fled to the forest on its approach, and left the enemy to exhaust himself in a contest with priva- tion and hardship in the wilderness, which he soon did, abandoning the expedition after des- troying a few hamlets. The losses suffered in this expedition so humbled the pride of the French that they negotiated a peace in 1667.
Between the Dutch and English in New York and the French in Canada there was a constant rivalry for the Indian trade in furs and skins, which was very lucrative. The Dutch and English maintained a nearly unbroken friend- ship with the Five Nations, and the latter by their great prowess exercised such control over the Western Indians as greatly to interfere with the French trade with then. The frequent col- lisions of the colonists with each other, and with the Indians, grew out of the rivalry for this trade. In these contests for the Indian trade, the French were the most adventurous and suc- cessful, sending their traders far into the wilder- ness, and protecting them by forts and garrisons. But the Five Nations were a great hinderance to their success. They often interrupted supplies of goods and ammunition destined for their trading posts, as well as the furs and skins in
their transit to the East, and made them their own. The Senecas were the most prominent in these raids, and held the French in less respect than any other of the Five Nations. They were less controlled by the Jesuit priests, who had but little influence with them. From the English they received supplies of arms, ammunition and other goods, and their relations to the latter were intimate and friendly.
In 1685 the Marquis de Nonville succeeded as Governor of Canada, and, coming with strong reinforcements, he resolved to divert the Five Nations from their inroads among the river In- dians by giving them employment at home ; and especially to overawe and punish the Senecas. Accordingly, in 1687 he invaded them with a force of two thousand French and Indians.
The Five Nations were aware of the strong force sent against them, and made every possible arrangement for defense. In the first and only encounter with the Senecas, M. de Nonville's army was completely routed with severe loss, being unexpectedly attacked by the Senecas lying in ambush. The French did not risk an- other engagement, but contented themselves with destroying a few hamlets and corn-fields and left for home, disappointed and chagrined at their failure.
On their way they built a strong fort at Niagara, garrisoned it with one hundred men and provisioned it for eight months. This fort the Five Nations closely besieged, and the gar- rison nearly all perished by hunger. This bold inroad into the most powerful nation of the Con- federacy alarmed them, and they applied to the Governor of New York for protection, which was promised them. They were advised not to make peace with the French, and supplies of arms and ammunition were promised them.
But M. de Nonville called a meeting of the chiefs of the Five Nations at Montreal, with the object of arranging terms of peace, and they decided to send representatives for that purpose. Adario, chief of the Western Indians, having a distrust of the French and anxious to prevent the intended peace, ambushed the embassy and killed or made prisoners the whole body, pre- tending to be acting for the French Governor without a knowledge of the object of the mission ; when informed of its object by his prisoners, he manifested great indignation at the treachery
1 5
RETURN OF COUNT FRONTENAC.
and dismissed them with presents. They re- turned, burning with indignation, completely deceived by the crafty manner of Adario.
War followed. The French knew nothing of the cruel treachery of Adario, nor of the advance upon them of a strong Indian force. Twelve hundred warriors thirsting for revenge, on the 26th of July, 1688, landed stealthily on the island of Montreal and began their horrid work with nothing to impede them. They " burned, plundered, sacked and laid waste the country on all sides," slaughtered its inhabitants without mercy, to the estimated number of one thousand, and returned glutted with vengeance, with but insignificant loss. In October the Five Nations repeated their visit to this ill-fated island, and ravaged, murdered and burned the lower part of it, taking many prisoners.
These successes of the Five Nations were spread widely among all the Indian tribes, lessen- ing French influence with them, and inspiring still greater dread of the Iroquois. The French colony was in great disorder, and the Western Indians were seeking to ally their interests with the English. If that should be effected, the destruction of the colony appeared inevitable. They could not endure burdens much more oppressive than those under which they now suffered. They had lost several thousand of their people by stealthy savage inroads ; no one left his home without fear of a lurking foe, while the torch was liable at any moment to be applied to his cabin, and the tomahawk to fall upon the defenseless heads of his wife and children. Crops were planted and cultivated in constant fear, and when grown were often doomed to destruction. Provisions were, therefore, in short supply, and a threatened famine was added to the other horrors of the situation.
In 1689, Count Frontenac, whose management of the colony had been sagacious and much more successful than any of the other Governors, was again sent to arouse its flagging spirits. He sought to convene a council of the Five Nations and ne- gotiate a peace with them. This they declined. He then employed force to terrify and induce them to remain neutral in the war existing between the French and English. Accordingly, he sent out three separate parties to attack the English settlements, one of which attacked and desolated the village of Schenectady. The
purpose of these expeditions was to lessen the influence of the English with the Five Nations, but they failed of their object. This was in the Winter of 1689-'90.
Count Frontenac still continued his efforts to bring about a peace with the Five Nations, send- ing ambassadors to them for that purpose; but they made them run the gauntlet and then delivered them to the English. The Iroquois kept up their raids upon the French settlements, inflicting serious injury and producing constant alarmı.
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