History of Chautauqua County, New York, Part 7

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1068

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Brabeuf, an early Jesuit, who resided for many years among the Hurons, has given a full account of their burial ceremonies and the manner of burial. Hle informs us that the Hurons first laid the dead bodies upon a scaffold, and sometimes buried them in the earth, but that was only a temporary dispo- sition. At intervals of ten or twelve years they gathered their dead, removed the flesh remaining upon the bones, and buried them with great ceremonies participated in by all the nation. He witnessed one of these great funerals in 1636 at the principal Huron town, Ossossane, on Nottawassaga bay. They gathered the bones and corpses and arranged them in order in the largest honses of their different villages amid weeping and howling mourners, who believed the souls of the dead resided with their bones until this general b :: rial. Brabeuf thus, described the funeral feast : "The march of the Indians from the different villages through the dark and tangled forest to the place of burial at Ossossane, bearing the bones of their kinsman in bundles on their shoulders and the corpses of their recent dead upon litters, Chanting wild dirges as they slowly filed along the forest trails." He described the great concourse that assembled from the different villages at this principal town to participate in the funeral games: It filled the houses to overflowing, and gathered around the countless camp fires that illuminated the surrounding woods. The place of burial was in a large pit dug in a field near Ossossane. Brabeuf describes the weird scene that occurred when the funeral gifts and the

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

bones of the departed were being suspended from the cross poles over the grave ; the frightful horror that followed when a bundle of bones happened to fall before its time into the pit hastening the ceremonies to a close ; the wild outcry as the actors frantically discharged the bones of their ancestors and kinsmen into the common grave to fall in a hideous shower around the men who were hastily arranging them with poles in their final restingplace ; and the covering of the bones with earth and stones and logs. These rites have also been described by Charlevoix and other Jesuits. The description by Lafitan is illustrated with engravings. Sixteen bone-pits have been examined in the Huron country, that contained from 600 to 1,200 skeletons of both sexes and all ages, all mingled promiscuously.

The Jesuits and all travellers and writers familiar with the subject agree that the customs of all the Huron-Iroquois nations closely resembled each other. Parkman says: "At intervals of ten or twelve years, the Hurons, the Neutrals, and other kindred tribes, were accustomed to collect the bones of their dead, and deposit them with great ceremony in a common place of burial. The whole nation was sometimes assembled at this solemnity ; and hundreds of corpses, brought from temporary restingplaces, were inhumed in a capacious pit. From this hour they believed that the immortality of their souls began. They took wing, as some affirmed, in the shape of pigeons ; while the greater number declared that they journeyed on foot and in their own likeness to the land of shades, bearing with them the ghosts of wampum- belts, beaver-skins, bows, arrows, pipes, kettles, beads and rings buried with them in a common grave." Bryant has idealized and expressed this belief of the Indians in the " Indian Girl's Lament for her Lover :"

" 'Twas I the broidered mocsen made, That shod thee for that distant land ; 'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid Beside thy still cold hand ; Thy bow in many a battle bent, Thy arrows never vainly sent.

" With wampum. belts I crossed thy breast, And wrapped thee in the bison's hide, And laid the food that pleased thee best, In plenty by thy side, And decked thee bravely, as became A warrior of illustrious name.

" Thou'rt happy now, for thou hast passed The long dark journey of the grave, And in the land of light, at last, Hast joined the good and brave ; Amid the flushed and balmy air, The bravest and the loveliest there.

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" Yet, oft to thine own Indian maid Even there thy thoughts will earthward stray,- To her who sits where thou wert laid, And weeps the hours away ; Yet almost can her grief forget, To think that thou dost love her yet."

Many Indians, we are told, held belief in a spirit world, or rather Land of Shades, which they supposed existed far beyond the setting sun, where, in their vague imaginations, perpetual summer reigned, and the music of sing- ing birds was always heard-a phantom world where only existed the appari- tions of mountains and valleys, forests and rivers. The deer, the antelope, the bear and the panther were its inhabitants, ghosts of departed and once living creatures. "This happy region," they believed, " was peopled with innumerable swarms of spirits who applied themselves to exercises and diver- sions according as their fancies led them. Some of them were pitching the figure of a quoit ; others were tossing the shadow of a ball; others were breaking the apparition of a horse ; and multitudes employed themselves upon ingenious handierafts with the souls of departed utensils." Not all their dead found the way to the spirit world. Brabeuf says : "As the spirits of the old and the children are too feeble for the march to the Land of Shades, they are forced to stay behind, lingering near their earthly villages, where the living often hear the shutting of their invisible cabin doors, and the weak voiees of the disembodied children driving birds from their corn fields."

The Eries undoubtedly observed the same burial rites observed by their kindred, the Hurons .* In their habits and language they resemble the Hurons. They were probably in the possession of our county at the advent of Europeans to the shores of this continent. Ragueneau, the Jesuit, says they were there in 1648 but the Jesuits never had a mission among them. Etienne Brule, Champlain's enterprising interpreter, is said to have visited them in 1615. Le Mercier and Ragueneau frequently refer to this nation. The latter informs us that its name is derived from the multitudes of wild- cats found within their territory. The Eries were noted warriors, fought with poisoned arrows, and were long a terror to the Iroquois. They were totally destroyed in 1656 in a great war with the Iroquois.

After the destruction of the Eries, no Indians inhabited Chautauqua county except small bands of Senecas, who at a few points on Chantauqna lake and on the Conewango near Pennsylvania cultivated small tracts of land. It is consequently quite probable that the burial places that we have described, the earthworks last constructed, and the more distinct remains seattered over the county were the works of the Eries. But as the remains exist in that part of the Eries' domains nearest to the Neutral nation, and near to the

*Ragueneau Relation des Hurona, 1648-46.

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

Andastes, who inhabited Pennsylvania east of the Allegany river, there remains a little doubt that they may not have been their work. But, as these nations were all members of the Huron-Iroquois family, there remains no doubt that they were the work of a Wyandot-speaking race, all of whom had common customs and spoke in nearly the same language. Three hundred years seems sufficient to measure the time during which the bones found near Sinclairville and in Sheridan had been resting in their sepulcher. In 1615, over 275 years ago, the French found the Eries established south of Lake Erie. A few years later the Jesuits in their letters and reports referred. to them as if they were permanent inhabitants there. It is not difficult to believe that the Eries had been planting themselves upon the soil where we find them for a century and more before Champlain reached Lake Huron in 1616.

The best anthorities regard the mounds of the west to be more ancient than those in Chautauqua county. The great mounds of the Mississippi Valley are believed to have been the work of Indians called Tallegwi or Allighewi (now the Cherokees)" a little further advanced out of barbarism than their kindred and not the work of a vanished race. Traditions and the few facts that throw light upon the subject indicate that between 1200 and 1300, these people were driven south by a union of Algonquin tribes (among them the Delawares) with the Huron-Iroquois; that after the overthrow of the Alleghewi the wide region south of the Great Lakes was thrown open to ocenpaney by the conquering nations; that the Huron-Iroquois, then one people, sent off families from the main stock to the east and south, and they, in turn, others that eventually became independent nations ; that the Hurons and the Mohawks were the oldest of these nations, and that the Fries, who had migrated south of Lake Erie, were offshoots of the Senecas, the Senecas being a younger branch of the Iroquois or Six Nations.

These events must have occurred long before the League of the Iroquois, which was formed, according to the best authorities, before Columbus dis- covered America, rendering it quite certain that the Eries, at least during all this time, were inhabitants of Lake Erie, and consequently the authors of the more modern of the earthworks, hearths and burialplaces that we find in the county. These remains that we have described may not have been the result of contemporaneous labor, although they may have been the work of the same race of people. Long intervals of time, a century or more, may have elapsed between their earliest labors and the works last constructed. The ashheaps and hearths may have been old sites of long occupied infor- tified villages, abandoned for palisaded entrenchments by reason of the encroachments and inroads of the Iroquois or other foe. The burialplaces naturally followed long after the construction of the earthworks, consequently

*"Discovery of America " by John Fiske, I Vol. pages ty and 145.

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these remains being the successive works of the same people may not rep- resent a community as large as it might at first seem.

There can be no doubt that in Chautauqua county once lived a immerons people. Should now the hand of labor be stayed and a forest be permitted to rise over our broad green fields, should the habitations that the people of this county have reared be allowed to fall into decay for 300 years, the rains to descend, the frosts and snows to assail, how dim would be the traces of even our industry, extensive and conspicuous as it now appears. The extent and character of these ancient remains, the utensils of war and peace that the plow reveals, the character of the burial grounds, and the strong light that history generally throws upon the subject, leads me to the belief that 300 years ago or more, upon the higher lands of this county were many rudely cultivated fields, numerous villages connected by footpaths or forest trails, inhabited by a vigorous and warlike people, with languages, manners, customs and burial rites strongly resembling their kindred the Hurons, as the Jesnits found them in the 15th century near Lake Huron.

Of the Huron-Iroquois Indians all the nations have become extinct except a few Hurons or Wyandots and the Iroquois proper or Six Nations. The lat- ter still remain in undiminished numbers upon the reservations situated in Chautauqua and Cattarangus counties, along the Allegany River, the reser- vations in Erie and Niagara counties, and along Grand river in Canada. Their history is so intimately connected with that of our state and county as to require a more particular description. They were the most formidable members of the Huron-Iroquois or Wyandot family. They excelled all others in courage and sagacity. They were the most intelligent and advanced, and also the most terrible and ferocious. Such was their eloquence and energy of character and the extent of their conquest, that Volney, the French histo- rian, called them "The Romans of the West." Parkham says: "The Iro- quois were the Indians of Indians-a thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage. He is perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter." The Iroquois were often called the Five Nations, and, after they were joined by the Tuscaroras in 1812, the Six Nations. They called themeselves Ho-de- no-san-nee, or People of the Long House. Their original home was wholly in New York. Their territory extended through the state from east to west . from the Hudson to the Genesee rivers in the following order : Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca. The fiercest and most numerous of these tribes was the Seneca. The Irognois were bound together by a remark- able league, which was the secret of their power and success. They consti- tned a confederacy, in some respects like our Federal Union, in which the nations represented states, to which were reserved general powers of control that the several nations exercised with great independence of each other,

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

while certain other powers were yielded to the confederacy as a whole, and were faithfully respected and preserved by all. Their Grand Councils were held in the Long House in the country of the Onondagas by a congress con- sisting of fifty sachems ; the Mohawks were entitled to nine representatives, the Oneidas nine, the Onondagas fourteen, the Cayugas ten, and the Senecas eight. They had some very curious customs respecting their methods of life and regulations in the administration of their affairs which seem to exhibit unusual wisdom, and contributed in a remarkable degree to perpetuate their union and make them powerful and formidable. It is not likely that this singular system was the invention of their wise men, but was a condition or natural growth resulting from the laws that govern a primitive people.

We cannot better illustrate their political and social system than to quote from a celebrated anthor : " In each nation there were eight tribes, which were arranged in two divisions, and named as follows : (Wolf, Bear, Beaver,. Turtle,) (Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk.) The division of the people of each nation into eight tribes, whether pre-existing, or perfected at the establish -. ment of the confederacy, did not terminate in its object with the nation itself. It became the means of effecting the most perfect union of separate nations ever devised by the wit of man. In effect the Wolf tribe was divided into. five parts, and one-fifth of it placed in each of the five nations. The remain -- ing tribes were subjected to the same division and distribution, thus giving to each nation the eight tribes, and making in their separate state forty tribes in the confederacy. Between those of the same name-or, in other words, between the separate parts of each tribe, there existed a tie of brother- hood which linked the nations together with indissoluble bonds. The Mohawk of the Beaver tribe recognized the Senecas of the Beaver tribe as his brother, and they were bound to each other by the ties of consanguinity .. In like manner the Oneida of the Turtle or other tribe received the Cayuga or Onondaga of the same tribe as a brother and with a fraternal welcome .. This cross-relationship between the tribes of the same name, and which was stronger if possible than the chain of brotherhood between the several tribes. of the same nation, is still preserved in all its original strength. It doubtless furnishes the chief reason of the tenactity with which the fragments of the old confederacy still cling together. If either of the Five Nations had wished to cast off the alliance, it must also have broken the bond of brotherhood. Had the nations fallen into collision it would have turned Hawk tribe against Hawk tribe, Heron against Heron, in a word brother against brother. The history of the Hodenosaunee exhibits the wisdom of these organic provisions ; for they never fell into anarchy during the long period which the league sub- sisted ; nor even approximated to a dissolution of the confederacy from internal disorders. The confederacy was in effect a league of tribes. With the tie of kindred as its principal union, the whole race was interwoven into

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one great family composed of tribes in its first sub-division (for the nations were counterparts of each other); and the tribes themselves, in their sub- divisions, composed parts of many households. Without those close inter- relations, resting as many of them do upon the strong impulses of nature, a mere alliance between the Iroquois nations would have been feeble and transi- tory. In this manner was constructed the Tribal League of the Hodeno- sanee : in itself, an extraordinary specimen of Indian legislation. Simple in its foundation upon the family relationship; effective in the lasting vigor inherent in the ties of kindred ; and perfect in its success in achieving a last- ing and harmonious union of the nations ; it forms an enduring momment to that proud and progressive race who reared under its protection a wide- spread Indian sovereignty. All the institutions of the Iroquois have regard to the division to the people into tribes. Originally, with reference to marriage, the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle tribes were brothers to each other and cousins to the remaining four. They were not allowed to inter- marry. The opposite four tribes were also brothers to each other, and cousins to the first four, and were also prohibited from intermarrying. Either of the first four tribes however could intermarry with either of the last four; thus Hawk could intermarry with Bear or Beaver, Heron with Turtle, but not Beaver and Turtle nor Deer and Deer. Whoever violated these laws of marriage incurred the deepest detestation and disgrace. In process of time however the rigor of the system was relaxed, until finally the prohibition was confined to the tribe of the individual, which among the residue of the Iroquois is still religiously observed. They can now marry into any tribe but their own. Under the original as well as modern regulation, the husband and wife were of different tribes. The children always followed the tribe of the mother."

The wisdom of this social and political organization of the Iroquois made them the strongest of Indian nations and the greatest conquerers. School- craft says : "At one period we hear the sound of their warcry along the Straits of St. Mary's and at the foot of Lake Superior. At another, under the walls of Quebec, where they finally defeated the Hurons under the eyes of the French. They put out the fires of the Kahkwas (Neutrals) and Eries. They eradicated the Snsquehannocks ( Andastes. ) They placed the Lenapes, the Nanticokes and the Minesces under the yoke of subjection. They put the Metoaks and Manhattans under tribute. They spread the terror of their arms over all New England. They traversed the whole length of the Appalachian chain, and decended like the enraged yagisho and megalonyx on the Cherokees and Catawbas. Smith encountered their warriors in the settlement of Virginia, and La Salle on the discovery of Illinois." Such was the prowess of the Iroquois.

When in 1634, the first mission was established by the Jesuits among the

HISTORY OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N. Y.

Hurons, they found them and their kinsmen, the Iroquois, implacable foes, and engaged in a fierce war that had then been waged between them for many years. This war continued during the residence of the Jesuits among the Hurons, with success oftenest, but not always, in favor of the Iroquois, until 1648, when a war party of the Iroquois surprised and burned two fortified Huron towns, taking prisoners or massacreing all their inhabi- tants. The next year one thousand Iroquois warriors entered the heart of the Huron country undiscovered, and inflicted a terrible blow upon the Hurons. They burned two more fortified towns, and massacred their inhabitants and the French missionaries residing there. They were finally driven back by the fierce valor of the Hurons, but not until they had inflicted a fatal blow upon them. The Hurons now abandoned their villages, scattered themselves in many directions, and thereafter ceased to exist as a nation .*

Although the Neutral nation waged a fierce war against the "Nation of Fire," who dwelt in Michigan in thirty villages, it maintained a strict neutrality between the Hurons and Iroquois during these wars.t This did not save it however from the fierce Iroquois. In 1650 the latter commenced a savage war upon the Neutrals and in the autumn of that year they took one of their chief towns, in which were sixteen hundred men, besides women and children. In 1651 they captured another town, butchering and leading into captivity great numbers of the Neutrals, and driving the remainder from their villages and cornfields into the forests where thousands perished. The destruction of the Neutrals was so great in this cruel war as to extirpate them as a nation. The scene of their final overthrow is believed to have been near Buffalo.

With the destruction of the Huron and Neutral nations the Iroquois did not rest. The Eries whose dominions extended along the south shore of Lake Erie including Chantauqua county next fell victims to their savage fury. The accounts of this war are thus given in the "Relations" of the Jesuits Le Moyne, Le Mercier, Du Quen, Chaumonot and Dablon. "The Eries had sent a deputation of thirty of their principal men to the Senecas to confirm a treaty of peace. A Seneca happened to be killed in a casual quarrel with one of the Eries, whereupon the Senecas rose up and murdered the thirty ambassadors. A war ensued. A famous Onondaga chief was captured by the Eries, who resolved to give him to the sister of one of the murdered ambassadors. The sister by the Indian law had it in her choice to receive him as her brother or to cause him to be put to death. She choose the latter against the remonstrances of her people who feared the conse-

*** Jesuit- in North America, " 361 to 402.

f"Last summer 2,000 warriors of the Venter nation attacked a town of the Nation of Fire, well fortified with a palisade and defended by go warriors. They took it after a seige of ten days ; killed many and made Som prisoners, men, women and children. After burning seventy of the best warriors, they put out the eyes of the old men, cut away their lips and left them to drag out a miserable existence. Behold the scourge that is depopulating all this country." Relation des Hurons. 1604. 95.

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quences. The chief was bound to the stake and burned. The whole Iro- quois confederacy prepared themselves for revenge.

In 1656 from 1, 200 to 1,800 Iroquois warriors moved into the territory of the Eries, who withdrew at their approach with their women and children. The whole of this fierce horde of Iroquois embarked in canoes upon Lake Erie and coasted along the shore of Chantanqua. A more wild and savage scene cannot well be imagined than this ferocious gathering of barbarians as they proceeded on this bloody expedition of revenge. They found the Eries gathered in a fortified position the location of which is now unknown. They approached the Erie fort, and two of their chiefs, dressed like Frenchmen, advanced and called on those within to surrender. One of them had lately been baptised by Le Moyne ; and he shouted to the Eries, that if they did not yield in time they were all dead men, for the Master of Life was on the side of the Iroquois. The Eries answered with yells of derision. "Who is this master of your lives?" they cried ; "our hatchets and our right arms are the masters of ours." The Iroquois rushed to the assault, but were first re- pelled by the poisoned arrows of the Eries. They renewed the assault with such savage fury as to enable them to carry the fort, using their canoes as shields and scaling ladders. A slaughter so terrible ensued as to wholly destroy the Eries. The Senecas have a tradition that the night after the battle the forest was lighted up by more than one thousand fires at each of which an Erie was burning at the stake alive. All accounts agree that the warriors of the Eries in this last desperate struggle were mostly slain, and the women and children driven from the villages into the forest where great multitudes perished. The Iroquois loss was also very great. This battle it is probable occurred somewhere in northern Ohio, northwestern Pennsyl- vania, possibly in western New York. In the latter case it would most likely have occurred in Chautauqua county at some point easily accessible from the lake. As this event took place in 1656, and as the fields and villages of the Eries in this county were nearest to the Iroquois, it may have happened that the possessions of the Eries in Chautauqua county were abandoned in that year, and that the principal remains we find so plentifully scattered over our county are the relics of their last occupation, and that upon the dissolution of the Eries the forest began to spread again its dark shadows above them.

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History of Chautauqua County, New York, Part 7

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson Number of Pages: 1068

Author: Edson, Obed, 1832-; Merrill, Georgia Drew, editor
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : W.A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1068