USA > New York > Wayne County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 5
USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 5
USA > New York > Seneca County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 5
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 5
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The choice then fell to Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, 39 years of age. As a boy Sullivan had studied law, but when the Revo- lution broke out he early enlisted. Promotion came rapidly and he was in many engagements, including those of Brandywine, Germantown, Boston, Three Rivers, Trenton, Princeton, etc. Once he was captured. The bayonet charge by 6,000 men which he led at Butt's Hill was characterized by Lafayette as the best engagement of the war.
His expeditionary army was to number about 5,000 men, arrayed against a force totalling about 3,000 and made up of the Iroquois and Tories and Rangers under Johnson and Butler of the British. The invading army was to enter the Indian country in three divisions; one from the south up the Susquehanna; an- other from the east down the Susquehanna and the third from the west by way of the Alleghany. They were to form a junction at some convenient point and advance with irresistable might upon the Indian stronghold in Central New York. This was the plan outlined in Washington's instructions dated May 31, 1779.
Several states sent troops to make up the army and obstacles at once arose to delay the start of the expedition. On May 7, 1779,
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Sullivan reached Easton, Pennsylvania, headquarters of the main army, and wrote to Washington: "I will do everything in my power to set the wheels in motion and make the necessary prepa- rations for the army to move on." Some Jersey troops mutined because the authorities of that state had neglected to provide for the depreciation of the currency and had neglected to pay even the nominal sum in almost worthless Continental paper money, due them for services. Execution of ringleaders ended this trouble.
Through the influence of Quakers in Pennsylvania who opposed punishment of the Indians, that state failed to furnish its quota of men and supplies. Much of the salted meat for the soldiers was unfit to eat and many of the cattle to accompany the army for food were too poor to walk and some could not stand. By July 21, Sullivan wrote that a third of his army did not have a shirt to their backs. Authorities charged that Sul- livan's requisitions were extravagant and threatened to prefer charges against him before Congress, though there was scarcely a coat or blanket for every seventh man. Weeks dragged into months before the army at last started its march to the lakes. In the meantime, Indian runners were informing the Iroquois chieftains and the Tories of preparations and the Indian country was getting ready to withstand assault. Delays had been so numerous that by this time, if ever, the Indian defenders of the lake country were as prepared as well as they could be to meet the invaders.
The problem of reaching the heart of the Indian long house was of first concern. The only way to the Indian lands lay through dense forests, across mountains, through swamps and over gorges and was by the natural thoroughfares of rivers. With that idea in view, the plan of campaign was mapped out.
The left wing started from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, under Colonel Daniel Brodhead. With nearly 700 men, the commander reached nearly as far as Corning, New York, the soldiers driving their cattle before them and carrying their stores on pack horses. They destroyed several Indian towns and kept off the war path from hostilities against Sullivan's main army probably 500 Se-
WORLD WAR MEMORIAL LIBRARY, CORNING, N. Y.
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neca warriors, without losing a man. This force never became connected with the main army and so never actually invaded the lake country.
The right wing consisted of General Clinton's New York bri- gade, including the Third, Fourth and Fifth Regiments as well as an artillery detachment. After building 212 boats at Schenec- tady, it proceeded up the Mohawk to Canajoharie, where it arrived June 15. The loaded boats were carried twenty miles over mountains to Otsego Lake, arriving there the last of the month.
At Cooperstown, Clinton's forces built a dam, raising the waters of Otsego Lake two feet, in order to provide a copious flow into the Susquehanna for the flotilla of boats which was to go down the river and make junction with Poor's New Hampshire Brigade at the town of Union. On August 9, the dam was pierced and the onrush of water took the boats at full tide down the stream, capsizing several. Apparent flood conditions during a dry season terrorized the Indians downstream. ' The troops marched overland, generally near the river, crossing it several times, heading for Tioga Point, now Athens, Pennsylvania, and burning Indian settlements on the way.
In the meantime, Sullivan, with the main army from Easton, Pennsylvania, proceeded to Wyoming, where commissary and other troubles held him until the last day of July, when, with inadequate supplies, his force moved forward.
Sullivan had direct command in this main army of three bri- gades. The first consisted of the First, Second and Third New Jersey Regiments and Spencer's New Jersey Regiment. The second was composed of the First, Second and Third New Hamp- shire regiments and the Sixth Massachusetts. In the third were the Fourth and Eleventh Pennsylvania regiments, a German bat- talion, an artillery force, some of Morgan's riflemen, a few Wy- oming militia and two independent companies.
On August 11 he reached Tioga Point, after several regiments had chopped a way through the forest over the Pocono plateau. Before the main army plunged into the forest, where there were no roads, no hospitals, and no food supplies, except the ripening
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corn and grain of the Indians, they built Fort Sullivan at the point where the Chemung and Susquehanna come near each other before spreading out and making junction several miles below, at what is now the town of Athens, Pennsylvania.
The fort was a palisaded, diamond shaped structure, with a block house at each end. Several hundred boats from Sunbury, Pennsylvania, brought Proctor's cannon and regiment of artil- lery, besides 2,000 pack horses and nearly as many head of cattle. There were also in the organization 153 fifers and drummers, nearly 200 pioneers or axmen, nine geographers who measured every step of the way from Easton to the Genesee Valley, besides fifty troopers from Colonel Sheldon's Connecticut Calvary.
Fort Sullivan was used as a base of operations for the entire army and here Clinton's forces from the east, coming down the Susquehanna, arrived on August 22, with short rations of provi- sions left.
On August 26, 1779, from Fort Sullivan the actual expedition started into an unknown country through leagues of unbroken forests. Skirmishes and destruction of Indian settlements as the forces were mobilizing at Fort Sullivan were events only of the approach marches. Hence Sullivan's expedition may be consid- ered to have begun only with the union of the divisions for a concerted drive from Fort Sullivan.
The expedition there started was one scarcely without a parallel in the world's history for the boldness of its design and the courage with which it was undertaken. To transport an army with its equipment through an uncharted country, without supplies and communication; to be shut up from the world for weeks where to fail of success was to die by torture, is a cam- paign that rivals Sherman's march to the sea. Sullivan's drive into the lake country truly is deserving of first rank among the great military movements in the Nation's history.
Here all extremes were to meet-the whir of the arrow, the crack of the rifle and the roar of cannon. There could be no compromise. It was to be a struggle that could only end with the complete overthrow of one of the parties concerned. It was a struggle for possession of a country that was destined to form
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an important part of an infant nation, now the greatest in the world.
Vigilance never for a moment relaxed, as the long trek through the lake country began. Always the advancing columns were in defense formation, alert for an ambuscade.
The first encounter with the enemy in force was at Newtown, five miles below the present site of Elmira. Here, protected by a breastwork and shielded by a bend in the river, were waiting a few British regulars, two battalions of Royal Greens, Tories and Indians, with Colonel John Butler and the great Mohawk war- rior, Joseph Brant, commanding.
Here, on Sunday, August 29, Sullivan's army directed its artillery fire upon the fortification, while the brigades of Clinton and Poor gained the left flank of the enemy. This rendered the work untenable and the Indians and British fled, hotly pursued for a distance of two miles.
Sullivan estimated the loss of the enemy at 1,500, but cap- tured prisoners reported it as 800. The Americans lost four killed and forty to fifty wounded. Those who died on the field were buried separately and fires built upon their graves lest, later, their bodies be discovered and desecrated. The victory at Newtown opened the country to the invaders. The red men vanished before the roar of the cannon that had brought terror in that first combat. The torch of the white man was carried every- where through the forest and the vengeance of years was con- summated in weeks.
On August 31 the army headed westward, destroying eight houses in a village two miles away, and passing on to Kanawa- holla, a town four and a half miles past the Newtown battlefield. Marching five miles further, the soldiers encamped on the pres- ent site of Horseheads. At this point some thirty or forty worn- out horses were shot when the army passed through on its return trip and later Indians gathered the heads and arranged them at the sides of the trail. Hence, the name of the town today.
Striking camp at 8 the next morning, the Colonials marched northward, the advanced guard arriving at 7 o'clock that night and the last not until 10 p. m., exhausted and clinging to one
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another in groping their way through an inky black night and swamplands. Two horses broke their necks in the journey and others died on the trail.
Here thirty or forty houses were burned, grain and fruit trees destroyed and cows, horses, pigs and calves seized for food. An aged squaw, left by the fleeing Indians, told of the consternation among the enemy. The soldiers built the squaw a hut and left provisions for her.
The march was renewed September 3, the army covering twelve miles to Peach Orchard on the east side of Seneca Lake, where corn was found still roasting over a campfire of the re- treating Indians. Four miles, covered the next morning, brought the army to Con-daw-haw, now North Hector, with one large and eight smaller houses. Eight miles further the men encamped as the sun sank across Seneca.
September 5 the Americans moved three miles to Kendaia or Apple Town, where twenty log houses were leveled, along with the grain and orchards.
At this town on lot seventy-nine, Romulus, the Colonials were delighted to find Luke Swetland, who with Joseph Blanchard had been taken by the Indians, August 24 of the previous year from Nanticoke, below Wyoming. He had been held a prisoner throughout that time by the Indians, but managed to escape.
Showy, unusual tombs, gorgeously painted and placed over some of the chiefs, proved another interesting find at Kendaia.
The next day took the soldiers three miles further, the advance being slow, as every village and all grain, fruit and vegetables were carefully destroyed, sometimes as many as 2,000 men being engaged in this work.
September 7 took the army to the outlet at the north end of Seneca Lake and the following day soldiers rested at Kanadesaga, now Geneva, a large town of fifty houses, with thirty more adja- cent. The Indian name of the settlement meant Grand Village, socalled because here was the residence of the chief sachem of the Senecas and the capitol of that tribe. The soldiers found the re- mains of a stockade fort, built in 1756 by Sir William Johnson.
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Grahta or Old Smoke, the ruling sachem, had fled his home for Fort Niagara when the soldiers arrived.
A captured white boy, three years old, whose identity was never learned, was found here. Sullivan was now in a strange country with no guides to lead the way further. His own scouts were his sole reliance from Kanadesaga on. He sent Col. John Harper to destroy Skoi-yase, on the site of Waterloo, a town with eighteen log houses and the probable home of some sachems of the Cayugas. Major Parr, with a company of riflemen, was also sent seven miles up the west side of Seneca Lake to destroy Shenan- waga, with its twenty houses.
Both groups rejoined the army which, on September 9, headed toward the Genesee country, covering eight miles the first day. Next day Kanadaigua, the present Canandaigua, comprising twenty-three fine houses, was reached, the camp fires of the fugitive Indians again being found burning. September 11 the troops moved before daylight and a fourteen mile march brought them to the Indian town of Hanneyaye, near the present site of Honeoye at the foot of Honeoye Lake on the east side of its outlet. Here were twenty houses.
Sullivan decided it time to lighten the load carried by his army. All provisions except four days half rations, the baggage, cattle and horses, except a few of the strongest, were left at Honeoye in charge of Captain Cummings and fifty men. In addition were "the sick, lame and lazy," numbering about 300. The strongest blockhouse of the Indians was left standing, port holes were cut in its sides eight two three pounders placed in position inside, and the walls strengthened with kegs and bags of flour.
In leaving Honeoye, the lightened army forded the outlet near the lake headed west to a low ridge of hills, turned southwest, crossed the outlet of Hemlock Lake and continued to Kanaghsaws, also called Adjuton, on the Conesus Lake outlet about a mile northwest of the present Conesus Center. Near here was the home of Chief Big Tree, a friend of the Colonists whose influence was insufficient to turn the Senecas from their British alliance.
It was near here that the Indians, led by the British loyalist Butler, planned a last stand against the invaders. Reinforced
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by regulars from Niagara, Butler massed his Indians and Tories along a ravine for a deadly ambuscade when the Colonials should once more take the westward trail. Believing that the great Genesee Castle was not far distant, Sullivan at 11 o'clock at night, September 12, sent a detachment under Lieut. Thomas Boyd to reconnoitre. When daylight came the scouting party found them- selves within the fatal embrace of the enemy.
In all, fifteen of Boyd's party were slain and eight escaped. Boyd and his sergeant, Michael Parker, were captured. Boyd approached the notorious Indian Brant under the sign of a Free Mason, to which fraternity both belonged. The chief recognized the bond of brotherhood and promised safety. But he was called away and the Tory, Butler, gave the captives over to torture.
Boyd's body was opened, his nails torn out, his ears and tongue slit and he was scalped, partially skinned and beheaded. A less severe torture was imposed upon Parker. Sixty-two years later, in 1841, the remains of the two heroes who had been buried in the wilderness with military honors, were removed to Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester.
Sullivan's army on September 13 pushed on seven miles to Gathtsegwarohare, where Indians and Tories were lined up in battle formation. A flanking movement by Sullivan routed the enemy without a shot fired and camp was pitched. The next morning 2,000 men occupied six hours in destroying crops and houses. At noon the march was resumed and at sunset the ad- vancing forces had reached Little Beard's town or the great Gen- esee Castle, western door of the Long House, just between Cuyler- ville and the west bank of the Genesee. The castle comprises 128 houses. Nearby were found the mutilated bodies of Boyd and Parker.
On September 15 at 6 a. m. the whole army turned out for the work of destruction. Twenty thousand bushels of corn were piled in the houses and in heaps and all burned. It was 2 p. m. before the last heaps were fired and the last fruit tree hewn down.
One of the striking incidents of the campaign occurred here. A Mrs. Lester, with a child in her arms, came into the camp.
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November 7 of the previous year she had been captured by the Indians near Nanticoke, after her husband had been tomahawked. Her child died a few days later. In the army she met Capt. Ros- well Franklin, whose wife was slain in another Indian massacre, and later became his wife.
Sullivan met no further resistance. On September 16 he recrossed the Genesee, when his provisions became perilously low, and returned to Kanadesaga on September 19.
Fire and destruction among the Cayugas and Onondagas fol- lowed, now that the Senecas had been wiped out. On September 20 a small detachment went up the west side of Seneca Lake to complete the destruction of Kershong, partly effected Septem- ber 9.
Meanwhile, Sullivan detached Col. Peter Gansevoort, with a hundred men, to go to Albany, by way of Fort Schuyler and to bring forward the heavy luggage stored there previous to the start of the expedition. Hearing that a few of the Mohawks in the Mohawk Valley were acting as spies for the British, Sullivan also ordered Gansevoort to capture them and burn their town. Proof of the friendliness of the Mohawks, however, saved their homes from the torch, and the captives, whom the army took to Albany were released. Gansevoort passed through Cayuga, on the trail near the site of Auburn, to Owasco Lake and eastward through what is now Skaneateles.
The same day a division of 600 men under Lieut .- Col. Wil- liam Butler, headed east to lay waste the towns on the east side of Cayuga Lake. Part of the detachment included three compa- nies of Morgan's crack riflemen. By evening the troops reached Skoiyase, destroyed previously in the outward march. Early next morning, Butler continued to the Cayuga outlet, which the soldiers forded breast deep.
Here they struck Choharo, known to the Jesuit priests a cen- tury before as Tichero or St. Stephens. Eighteen miles were covered that day and at night camp was pitched at Gewawga on the site of Union Springs. In the morning the army reached the capital of the Cayuga. It consisted of fifteen large houses of squared logs, superior in construction to any yet seen. Two
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outlying villages included twenty-seven more houses. White scalps here found in Indian lodges proved the enmity of the Cayugas.
The castle was located at Big Gully, half way between Aurora and Union Springs. Some United States muskets and regimental coats were found in the town.
The next afternoon Butler's army marched to Chonodote, four and a half miles distant, where 1,500 peach trees, some apple trees and much corn were destroyed with the fourteen houses. The town was on the site of Aurora. Camp was made here for the night and the next day brought the Colonials to an encamp- ment just north of where Ludlowville now stands. September 25 the head of Cayuga Lake was reached and on the 26th and 27th the route mainly lay through a pathless wilderness where the sun and the surveyor's compass were the only guides. On the 27th the detachment rejoined the main army at Fort Reed, erected at Kanawaholla, and well provisioned for a celebration when all detachments should arrive there.
Meantime, while Butler's soldiers were covering the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, Sullivan's main army on September 20, crossed the outlet from Kanadesaga and encamped. On Septem- ber 21, Colonel Dearborn, with 200 men was dispatched to lay waste the western side of the lake and to intercept the Cayugas if they should escape Butler.
Enroute to the lake a hamlet of three houses in what is Fay- ette, four miles from the shore, was destroyed, together with a small town of ten houses on the west shore of the lake one mile north of Canoga Creek. Two more villages fell in ashes that same day-Skannayutenate of ten houses on the south bank of Cayuga Creek half a mile northeast of Canoga village, and New- town of nine houses a mile further south. At this latter place, after a day's march of seventeen miles, Dearborn encamped. Canoga was the birthplace of the famous Indian Chief Red Jacket.
Five miles covered the next day brought the soldiers to Swah- ya-wanah, near what is now East Varick. Five miles further, three squaws and a crippled Indian lad were found. Two of the
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women were taken captive and the rest left. Seventeen miles were covered that day. The next, over some of the roughest coun- try passed in the entire expedition, the soldiers marched a like distance and reached the head of Cayuga Lake.
On the 24th Co-re-or-go-nel, opposite Buttermilk Falls, a set- tlement of twenty-five houses, was reached. Early the next morning, Dearborn set out to join the main army, passing through Catherine's Town and encamping six miles further on. The next day Fort Reed was reached.
While the detachments of Butler and Dearborn were applying the torch to towns along Cayuga the main army left its camp at Rose Hill on the south side of the Seneca River and in a march of four days reached Fort Reed. Full rations were there resumed for all the soldiers and on September 25 a celebration of victory was staged, with five oxen barbecued and with plenty of rum flowing. In the evening a salute of thirteen cannon and a feu-de- joie were fired.
Parties of soldiers in sallies from the fort destroyed other hamlets and orchards and fields in a brief stay there and on Sep- tember 29 the entire army left the fort, which they demolished. Next day they were again at Fort Sullivan for feasting and jubi- lation to commemorate an expedition that left a once proud na- tion wandering pillagers, stripped of their homes, their food sup- ply gone and the tombs of their fathers overthrown.
The Indians fled to Fort Niagara and under the protection of the British, were housed in huts around the fort. But the winter was the coldest in years, the Indians could not go on their annual hunt, salted provisions only did they have and scurvy broke out, killing hundreds. All that was left of those who had been "the Romans of the West" were the names they gave the lakes they loved so well and the memory of valor undimmed by the passing of a vanishing race.
In order properly to appreciate the magnitude of Sullivan's achievement, it should be remembered that the foe he vanquished controlled a territory about 1,200 miles long and 600 wide; that is, more than ten times as large as the whole of New York, with
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its citadel of power among the Finger Lakes. This was the red man's stake in the Revolution and this he lost.
Central New York commemorated the sequi-centennial of the Sullivan campaign in a series of events in 1929 which were the most elaborate of their kind ever witnessed in the area. That year New York State by special appropriation, spent $70,000 to celebrate the anniversary and throughout the summer various towns held celebrations. These were climaxed in September by three gigantic pageants, in each of which some 2,000 actors, re- cruited from many towns, took part. The pageants depicted the story of the campaign, from the time Congress voted money for it until the final return of the soldiers.
These major pageants, which attracted an average of 50,000 to each, were at Leicester, near Geneseo on September 14; at Geneva, September 21 and at Elmira Septembr 28. The United States dirigible Los Angeles flew from Lakehurt, New Jersey, as a feature of the Geneva pageant. In all these spectacles United States troops took part with the civilians. Parking area for 10,000 cars and seats for 10,000 persons were provided in each case.
Of the smaller observances, the one at Auburn, September 24, was the most pretentious, thousands of school children and many organizations taking part in a gigantic parade. Exercises were also held throughout the region in connection with the dedicaton of state markers at historic spots along the Sullivan line of march.
CHAPTER IV EARLY SETTLEMENT.
AVENUES OF IMMIGRATION-SOME EARLIEST PIONEERS-TWO METHODS OF ACQUIRING LAND: PURCHASE AND BOUNTY-SUB-DIVISIONS OF DISTRICT- TURNPIKES AND TOLLS-WILD ANIMALS-CAYUGA BRIDGE-RESOURCEFUL- NESS OF PIONEERS-CUSTOMS AND HARDSHIPS.
When the guns of the Revolution were silenced, deer browsed unmolested on the sites of Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton and Elmira. All the intervening territory was a vast wilderness of forest, where rivers of relentless power ran unharnessed to the sea. Only at Buffalo a single log store for trade with the Indians nestled in a forest clearing. But scarcely had the war ended before immigration began to trickle into Central New York from three directions.
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