History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches, Part 4

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen
Number of Pages: 1422

USA > New York > Livingston County > History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches > Part 4

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Before setting out to beat off the invaders, the Seneca chieftain had despatched runners to the central fire at Onondaga, with an account of the situation, and the great battle chief of the League. Shorihowane, was soon on the war-path with a large force for support of the Senecas. Though learning the issue of the conflict, he yet

I. Cusick gives the orthography, Kau-nes-ats. The Indian fort was neat Bosley's mill ; the more modern Indian village was located half a mile south of Conesus lake, on the flat between the inlet and Henderson's creek.

2. Cusick, General Ely Parker, and other authorities agree in locating the hattle-ground at Geneseo. Colonel Hosmer thinks the battle occurred farther to the east.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

resolved further to punish the Kah-kwas by capturing their principal fort and extinguishing their council fire. 1 It is said that his united force numbered five thousand warriors. Flushed with recent victory. they marched rapidly toward the Genesee, crossed over and made for the fort, which they attacked with great energy. The enemy, fully prepared, delivered a cloud of arrows in return, one of which early in the siege struck the war chief, whose death soon followed. The body enfolded in panther skins was carried across the Genesee, and there buried with befitting honors. " The siege, meanwhile, was zealousły pressed, and the queen at length yielded and sued for peace, when hostilities ceased, and the Kah-kwas were left in possession of their country.

Just prior to the arrival of Columbus, the shock of an earthquake was felt, and comets and other omens of the heavens were observed. The meaning of these occurrences was not then divined, but a prophet soon appeared, who foretold the coming of a strange race from beyond the great waters. He announced that the expected strangers designed driving the Indians from their hunting grounds and wresting away their homes, and he threatened the Great Spirit's wrath upon any who should listen to the palefaces. To add to these perturba- tions, another war broke out between the tribes west of the Genesee and the Five Nations, the weight of which, as usual, fell heavily upon the Senecas. Long and bloody conflicts ensued, and while hostilities were yet in progress, the great event foretold by the prophet-that most pregnant fact of all Indian history, the arrival of Columbus- was heralded by the fleetest of foot along the myriad pathways of the continent. The imagination alone can picture the bewildering effect of the tidings. Wonder, awe, doubt and fear, each in turn, must have moved them, but, though hushed for a moment by this event. the decisive struggle between the warring tribes went forward. The cause of this contest was so slight that tradition says it originated in a breach of faith on the part of the Kah-kwas at a game of ball, to

1. The fort was called K'au-quat-kay, and was on Eighteen Mile creek, in Erie County.

2. Some years ago the remains of a giant Indian were found not far from Long Point on the Groveland side of Conesus lake. The head lay in a turtle shell, and by the side were found im- plements of war and other evidences of a noted burial. For some reason this grave has been as- sociated with the great war chieftain referred to in the text, though most likely without much reason.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

which they had challenged the Senecas. Careful writers, however, deriving their data from other sources than tradition, place this war at a much later period, and allege that it grew out of matters con- nected with the settlement of Canada by the French, which produced quarrels in the great Indian family. In these the Wyandots adhered to the French side, and the Five Nations to that of the Dutch and English. The Algonquins made common cause with the French and their allies, the Wyandots. The Kah-kwas had already formed an alliance with the Mississaugas, an Algonquin tribe residing west and north of lake Ontario. The Kah-kwas were related both to the Wyandots and Five Nations. Their country lay between that of the Canadian and western tribes and that of the Iroquois; hence, from choice not only, but from motives of prudence as well, they desired now to observe that policy of neutrality from practicing which, as a rule, they derived their designation of the Neutral Nation. The situation was one of extreme delicacy, and their state craft proved unequal to the occasion ; for, in attempting to please both belligerents, both became offended. The Iroquois, or, more properly, the Senecas, turned upon them in fury, but were met by a nation worthy their best courage. If we may credit tradition, the conflict lasted through twenty bloody moons, ending about the year 1651 in the decisive overthrow of the Kah-kwas, or, to give their Indian designation, the Attiouandaronk, whose name, as a separate people, now disappears from the roll of tribes.

According to the early Jesuits, the Kah-kwas excelled the Hurons in stature, strength and symmetry, and wore their dress with a superior grace. "They regarded their dead with peculiar veneration. Once in every ten years the survivors of each family gathered the remains of their deceased ancestors from the platforms on which they had been deposited, and buried them in heaps with many super- stitious ceremonies. This was called the 'feast of the dead.' Many of the mounds thus raised may still be seen. "1 This practice, it may be remarked, was anciently observed by other tribes also. The skeletons of a family were often preserved from generation to gener- ation in bark huts built beside the former cabin of the deceased. In seasons of public insecurity, the bones from many family depositories would be consigned to a common resting place.

1. Marshall's Niagara Frontier.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

In 1655 the Eries, who had often opposed the Senecas upon the hostile field, were also overthrown by the latter. The country west of the Genesee was now conquered. But "for more than a century this beautiful region was abandoned to the undisturbed dominion of nature, save when traversed by the warrior on his predatory errand or the hunter in pursuit of game. A dense and unexplored wilder- ness extended from the Genesee to the Niagara, with but here and there an interval, where the oak openings let in the sunlight, or the prairie lured the deer and the elk to crop its luxuriant herbage. " 1

We have thus briefly traced some of the leading features of Indian tradition bearing upon this locality. Our knowledge of the aborigines is still in part dependent upon tradition or the subject of conjecture only. But from stray threads of fact and story consistent theories have been framed, while research among tumuli and other traces of Indian occupancy, and the study of still living representa- tives of this strange people, serve to make their character better known, besides casting light upon their origin. Quitting the domain of tradition, we shall find that the veritable history of this region extends less than three hundred years into the abyss of the past. In 1614 the Dutch planted a trading post on the island immediately below the site of Albany. At this spot (now Kenwood), was the Indian "Vale of Tawasentha:"" and here in 1618 the Dutch under Jacob Eelkins negotiated a treaty with the Five Nations, which bound them and the Dutch in an alliance which was never broken. This alliance was always alluded to by the Iroquois as "the covenant chain," frequently as "the silver covenant chain, " and gradually all the Indian tribes from New Hampshire to South Carolina and from the Hudson to the Illinois bound themselves therein. When Brad- dock went upon his ill-fated expedition, the Iroquois notified him that they would bind themselves over again in "the covenant chain."

From the time of this conference at Kenwood, they acquired a knowledge of the Indians, and, for a period of nearly fifty years, the friendliest relations existed between the two races. The English at length succeeded both to the territory and to this good understand- ing, and, with singular fidelity, the covenant chain was mutually

1. Marshall's Niagara Frontier

2. Alluded to in the opening lines of Longfellow's Hiawatha. -

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

preserved down to the opening of the Revolution, upwards of a century and a half, a fact that went far toward predisposing the Iroquois to take the British side in that struggle, as we well know they did, with most bloody effect.

38 .

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

CHAPTER 111.

T HE INDIANS residing along the river were known to the Jesuits as the Senecas of the Chenussio, 1 and were noted for their thrift and good husbandry, as well as for their warlike deeds. The corn grown by them was of a superior quality. In de- stroying their crops General Sullivan's soldiers found ears of this grain full twenty-two inches in length; and the first sweet corn ever seen in New England was carried thither, it is said, in a soldier's knapsack from Beardstown in 1779. Squashes, beans and melons were also raised in great abundance. Orchards of apple and peach trees, produced from seeds or sprouts, grew near every village. Pears, too, had been introduced, and there was no lack of wild fruits, such as plums, grapes and cranberries. Tobacco was successfully raised by the Indians here. Indeed, the natives considered the quality of this article produced by our rich warm valley soit so fine that they gave it a name signifying "the only tobacco."" Indian cultivation, however, embraced but a very limited share of the territory, for beyond an occasional spot on the river flats, tilled by squaws, this region remained essentially a wilderness until the advent of the whites.

The Senecas were not only the most populous nation of the league, but were foremost on the warpath and first in warlike deeds. They gloried in their national title of Ho-nan-ne-ho-ont, or "the doorkeep- ers, " for, as guardians of the upper entrance, they stood interposed as a living barrier between the hostile nations of the west and the eastern tribes of the confederacy. And in later times they proved a safeguard to the whites from incursions of the French and allies of the latter. The Senecas not only defended the western door, but often, on their own account, carried their arms into the country of the southern and western nations, while "other tribes sat smoking in quiet on their

I. See Appendix No. 3 for the varied etymology of the word and an early account of the Gene- see River and Canaseraga Creek.

2. Morgan mentions a similar fact. Experiments in tobacco raising were also made in this county by the pioneers, about the year 1795. The soil of our fertile bottoms and sandy uplands seems well adapted to the production of this great narcotic.

Middle Falls of Genesee River from Portage Bluff.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

mats." The League held that any warrior was at liberty to form a party, place himself at the head and make war on his own account against foreign tribes, west or south.

A band of braves on the war path presented nothing of display. Moving silently, in single file, they threaded the all but limitless forests. Each carried a little sack of parched corn, and usually a pouch of smoked venison. In expeditions of danger, at a distance from home, if this supply gave out, a tightening of the waist belt would often serve instead of the scanty supper. In later times the flint and steel, with a handful of dried leaves, would produce a fire in some well hidden spot, where, for a night, with feet to the smouldering embers, unwatched by sentinel, the party would commit themselves to brief slumber. In 1680, the Senecas with six hundred warriors, invaded the country of the Illinois on the Mississippi.1 Schoolcraft says of the Senecas and other members of the League, that they roved at will from Lake Cham- plain to the Illinois, and extended their conquests along the Ohio into the region of Kentucky. At different periods they made inroads into the Carolinas and elsewhere at the south, their courage and skill secur- ing success in all quarters. The chronicles of no age afford examples excelling the fortitude with which these Iroquois braves suffered the tortures inflicted by their captors. "When taken in battle they asked nothing and expected nothing. The whole history of martyrdom may be challenged for a parallel to the almost superhuman courage and constancy exhibited by the Iroquois captain put to the torture at Fort Frontenac. "2 The captive warrior would often sing his song of deti- ance on being led with blackened face from the "cabin of death, "3 __ as the dark hut was called where the doomed were kept while prepara- tions for torture were proceeding-and boast, in the very teeth of his remorseless captors, while the fatal flames were crisping his flesh, of

1. Street thus refers to this expedition (the Tortoise, the Wolf and the Bear being used figura- tively for clans of the Iroquois):

"By the far Mississippi the Illini shank, When the trail of the tortoise was seen at the hank. On the hills of New England the Pequot turned pale, When the howl of the wolf swelled at night on the gale, And the Cherokee shook in his green smiling bowers,

When the foot of the brar stamped his carpet of flowers."

2. lle was a Seneca. The account is given by Charlevoix.

3. By some tribe called the "lodge of judgment."

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

how many of their numbers he had slain, and how many scalps had been scored to him on the warpost.

Mary Jemison said that to commemorate great events and to preserve the chronology of them, the war chief in each tribe kept a warpost, a peeled stick of timber ten or twelve feet high erected in the town. For a campaign the chief made a perpendicular red mark about three inches long and half an inch wide; on the opposite side of this, for a scalp, they make a red cross thus X ; on another side, for a prisoner taken alive, they make a red cross, in this manner, x, with a head or dot."1 These hieroglyphics enabled them to represent with no little certainty the facts they wished to record.

The Senecas shared fully in the superstitions common to their race. Belief in witchcraft prevailed, and omens had no little influence in shaping their action both in peace and war. On the gravest occasion a dream would secure listeners and its teachings seldom went unheeded. At a New Year's festival on Squakie Hill, after the sacrificial dog was killed, an old Indian who lived on the flats below told the following dream at the council house, the whole village giving their undivided attention : "I had got ready with my two sons the previous evening." said he, "to attend the festival, but before starting I fell asleep and dreamed that we had set out. Everything appeared strange along the path. Squakie Hill seemed thrice its usual height, and looked as if covered with a deep snow, although there was very little. I stopped a moment, when two winged men flew by us, one of whom alighted on a trec near by. I was frightened and asked 'What means this?' . We are devils' said they, 'and are come because Indians are bad men and get drunk.' They told me that unless I stopped whiskey and became good, they would have me. The figure in the tree changed to a great negro, and taking his seat upon a limb, turned toward me with a hor- rible grin, thrusting at me a pole six feet long, on which was bung a dead Indian by the feet The face of the corpse was very ghastly and its mouth widely stretched. The devil remarked that all who quarreled or got drunk would be treated in the like horrid manner. The body of the dead Indian was then whirled at me. The shock awoke me." Instead of a lecture on intemperance, a vice to which the tribe were greatly addicted, the old Indian wisely chose to enforce the moral by

1. See Mary Jemison's Life. Her husband, Hiakatoo, had a warpost on which were recorded his militay and other exploits.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

availing himself of the regard held by his race for the supernatural. The dream seemed strongly to impress his audience.

To form a correct notion of the every day life of the Seneca, we must penetrate into his domestic condition. We shall find him hospit- able at his home, however relentless he proved on the warpath. His hut was always open, and if a family or company of several strangers came from a distance, it was not unusual to give up to them the best lodge in the village during their stay. In times of scarcity-and owing to their improvidence such times often came-they shared with each other even to the last morsel. Indeed, individual starvation was un- known, and, save where a whole tribe was brought to famine, none suffered for want of food.

Their lodges in ancient days were of poles covered with bark or skins in form of the cone shaped wigwam, but when the axe came into use they built of poles or small logs in the style of a square or oblong hut. In general the size was ten feet by twelve within the walls, and about seven feet high at the sides. The door was invariably at the end. The roof was steep and covered with chestnut tree, hemlock or cucum- berwood bark, in broad folds, tied to the roof poles with strands of the inner bark of the hickory. Two courses thus laid on would cover the one side of the roof, and a broad piece placed lengthwise at the ridge made all tight there. The fire was built on the ground, in the center, for there were no floors, the smoke finding vent through an opening in the roof. Neither tables nor chairs were provided within, but along each side, and across the end opposite the door, a rude wood- en bunk, raised a foot or more, and about three feet in width, covered with bark and skins, served instead of stools and beds. Four or five feet higher was a shelf, on which were thrown provisions and domestic utensils. A village comprised from five to fifty huts, seldom more than the latter number, and, as the Indian dug no wells, were located near copious springs, or in later times on the banks of considerable streams.

The simple culinary art required a kettle for meats and vegetables, one or more wooden platters and three or four hunting knives to a household. Wild game was often spitted on a stick before the fire and the loaf of pounded corn and beans was roasted in the ashes under the embers. The Indian woman's cookery offered few temptations to the white man's palate. Her loaf was kneaded with unwashed hands, in a

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

bark tray none too tidy, and her meats were prepared without atten- tion to the care which civilization demands. The Indian trail over Groveland hill ran near the foot of a long meadow of John Harrison's, where a fine spring of water often beguiled the natives to stop and cook their game. On one occasion they made a feast there of corn and venison boiled together. The deer was skinned, cut up and cast into the brass kettle, flesh, bones, entrails and all. Mr. Harrison, who was at work near by, was urged by the Indians to partake of their pottage, but as he had seen it prepared, his appetite rebelled, and he declined with thanks. A pioneer on another occasion was invited to eat hominy with a strolling band of Senecas, who had already been some time at their meal. There was but one spoon to the party. and that had been used by each in turn. The chief took the spoon and, after wiping it upon the sole of his moccasin, passed it to the guest, who, though welcome, feasted with long teeth.

To us the Indian's home would not have been a place of comfort. Its single room, noxious with smoke, and the members of the house- hold lounging here and there upon the ground, admitted neither of neatness or privacy nor of delicacy. On poles well varnished with soot. in the upper portion of the hut, if indeed the dusky atmosphere had permitted that part to be seen, might be noticed a motley collec- tion of clothing, corn, skins of animals and dried pumpkins and squashes, intermingled with weapons and ornaments. The huts were without windows, for the Indian knew little of the thousand nameless comforts which make our homes so grateful. but, being unknown, were unmissed by him. The Seneca here passed his winters in contentment. His wants were few, his food was ample in quantity and, to him, pala- table in kind; and if his hut was uncleanly, it may yet have been pref- erable to the abodes of squalor, in which many of the vicious and wretched of our great cities pass their lives. The squaw, who had planted, hoed and harvested the corn, prepared it for the winter's meal and cheerfully served it to her not exacting husband. And he was a happy man. Though taciturn in public, he was not unsocial within his own domicile, where his neighbors often met to smoke his tobacco, laugh at his jest, not the most refined, and listen to his stories of war and the chase.

The Senecas were willing to have schools established for the educa- tion of their children. Accordingly, in December, 1815, the Presby-

4.3

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

terian Synod of Geneva located one at Squakie Hill, in a building pro- vided through the efforts of the Reverend Daniel Butrick, and placed Jerediah Horsford in charge. The class averaged about twenty pupils, who proved attentive to rules and learned readily. The parents took kindly to the Ga-ya'-dos-hah sha-go'-yas-da-ni-meaning "he teaches them books" -- as they called the schoolmaster, and passed many hours in the class room, curious spectators of proceedings so novel to them.

Indian sports consisted of foot races, ball playing, pitching of quoits, and shooting with the bow and arrow. Dancing, too, was greatly en- joyed by both sexes. Foot racing was also a favorite pastime. and some of the Indian runners boasted that they could outtravel the horse in a long journey. Horatio Jones was heard to say that he had- known an Indian to strike a deer's trail in the morning and run the animal down before night. Morgan says that "in preparing to carry messages, they denuded themselves entirely, with the exception of the breech-cloth and belt. They were usually sent out in pairs, and took their way through the forest, one behind the other, in perfect silence." "A trained runner would traverse a hundred miles a day. But three days were necessary, it is said, to convey intelligence from Buffalo to Albany. During the war of 1812, a runner left Tonawanda at daylight in the summer season, for Avon, a distance of forty miles, upon the trail, delivered his message, and returned to Tonawanda again about noon the same day."

Ball was usually played by a dozen or more quickfooted Indians. The ball once tossed up was to be kept up with bats, the longer the period the more successful the game. In the fall of 1799, a number of gentlemen from the city of New York, while spending a few days in Geneseo, subscribed a small fund and invited the Indians of one of the neighboring villages to come over and play a game of ball. About three hundred responded, from whom a party of the more skillful was selected. The sport proved exciting both to players and spectators, and became so spirited that the most athletic batsmen were obliged to lie down now and then for short respites.

In autumn, after the crops were secured, the Indian's season of hunting began. Men, women and children prepared for these occasions with alacrity. A stick leaned against the door from the outside, was sufficient to secure their homes from intrusion during their absence.

HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY

Camping from place to place in chosen spots, for a week or more at a time, the hunters would follow the game during the day, and the evening would be spent in dancing and eating, and in drink- ing, too, when spirits were procurable. A grassy plot near William Magee's distillery, in Sparta, was a station to which they were partial. Here, after a day's chase, the Indians would dispatch a brass kettle of whiskey, and then form a ring for dancing. Both sexes and all ages joined in singing, as, hand in hand, they moved around in a circle, one of their number keeping time with a stick upon the emptied brass kettle. A dry bladder, containing a few kernels of corn or beans, or a gourd rattle, would also be shaken by one of the dancers as an accom- paniment. White persons were always welcome spectators of these merrymakings.

The inlet of Hemlock lake on the Springwater side, about the season of the falling leaves, was a favorite haunt of the natives for trout fishing ; and hither with her tribe, from year to year, came a female known as the handsome squaw, whose grace of person and freedom of motion were long recollected. Indeed, we were accustomed not many years ago, to hear old persons speak of the sprightly ways and gentle wildness of Indian girls; and, were we seeking incidents of a romantic nature in this connection, enough might be gathered for an entertaining chapter. Near Scottsburg, also, under a clump of wild plum trees, growing hard by the old grist mill, the Indians were in the habit of encamping, to hunt and fish in the neighborhood; while at Caledonia spring the whole tribe annually gathered, to renew their friendships and to enjoy the fine fishing afforded by its noted waters. A spot near the head of Conesus lake and many other hunting seats were also used.

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History of Livingston County, New York, from its earliest traditions to the present together with early town sketches, Part 4

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen Number of Pages: 1422

Author: Doty, Lockwood R., 1858- [from old catalog] ed; Van Deusen, W. J., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Jackson, Mich., W. J. Van Deusen
Number of Pages: 1422