USA > New York > Livingston County > History of Livingston County, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 13
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. Life and Times of Red Jacket, 111. Col. Hit , VIII, 506. Doc. Hist., 1, 21. It is also designated Sinondoweanne, (Col. Ilist., I!'., 905,) and Souendaouannen, Lol. Hist .. [!]., 125.) the former meaning "the great hill" and the latter " the great mountain."
+ Life and Times of Red Jacket, 111- 113. Seaver's Life of Mary Jemison.
. Charlevoix ; Colden's Six Nations ; Moulton's New York ; Life and Times of Ked Jacket.
Marshall's Niagara Frontier.
1 Col. Hist., V'., 800 ; 1'11., 488.
§ Col. ITist., VII., 382.
61
GREENHALGH'S JOURNEY AMONG THE SENECAS.
consideration of the united council, the messengers charged with it were sent forward to the Onondaga Valley, where the grand council fire was kindled and it was discussed by the national congress." *
The earliest location of the Senecas of which we have any authentic record is the one in which they were found by M. de Denonville in 1687 : and though these were their principal villages, they had others quite remote from them. Father Hennepin, in 1678, refers to an Iroquois (Seneca) village,t named Tai-ai-a-gon, in the locality of Toronto, and to a small village of Senecas on the west bank and near the mouth of Niagara River.# In 1677, ten years previous to M. de Denonville's invasion, this country was visited by Wentworth Greenhalgh, whose Journal of that journey is of peculiar interest in this connection. We quote :-
" The Senecques have four towns, vizt. Cana- gora. Tiotohatton, Canoenada and Keint-he ; Ca- nagorah and Tiotohatton lye within 30 miles of ye lake ffrontenacque, and ye other two ly about four or five miles apiece to ye southward of these, they have aboundance of corne; none of their towns are stockadoed.
" Canagorah lyes on the top of a great hill, and in that as well as the bignesse much like Onondago, containing 150 houses ; north-westward of Caiougo 72 miles. *
" Tiotehatton lyes on the brink or edge of a hill, has nott much cleared ground, is neare the river Tiotehatton which signifies bending, itt lyes to the westward of Canagorah about 30 miles, contains about 120 houses being ye largest of all ye houses wee saw, ye ordinary being about 50 or 60 foott long, with 13 or 14 fires in one house, they have a good store of corne growing about a mile to ye northward of the towne.
"Being at this place the 17th of June, there came 50 prisoners from the South west-ward, ** *; this day of them was burnt two women and a man, and a child killed with a stone, att night we heard a greatt noyse, as if ye houses had all fallen butt itt was only ye Inhabitants driving away ye Ghosts of ye murthered.
" The 18th, goeing to Canagaroh wee overtook ye prisoners, when ye souldiers saw us they stopped each his prisoner and made him sing, and cutt off their fingers, and slasht their bodys with a knife, and when they had sung each man confessed how many men in his time hee had killed ; thatt day att Canagaroh there were most cruelly burned four men, four women and one boy, the cruelty lasted about seven hours, when they were almost dead,
letting them loose to ye mercy of ye boys, and tak- ing the hearts of such as were dead to feast on.
"Canoenada lyes about four miles to ye South- ward of Canagorah, conteyns about 30 houses, well furnished with Corne.
" Keint-he lyes aboutt four or five miles to ye Southward of Tiotehatton, contayns about 24 houses well furnished with corne.
" The Senecques are counted to bee in all aboutt 1,000 fighting men." *
Canagorah was visited in the winter of 1678, by Sieur de la Motte, a lieutenant of the adventurous La Salle, and Father Louis Hennepin, a devoted attache of that celebrated and daring explorer. Af- ter a five days' weary journey by Indian trail through the frost-bound wilderness from Niagara, sleeping at night in the open air without other shel- ter than chance afforded, they arrived on the last day of December at the principal village of the Sene- cas-Tagarondies-which occupied the site of Boughton Hill, in Victor, Ontario county, where they found the Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Julien Garnier and Peter Raffeix. The object of their visit was to placate the Senecas and gain their ac- quiescence to the ambitious project of La Salle in extending his western explorations in which interest La Salle himself visited them the following year, having visited the same village in company with the Sulpitians, Dollier and Gollinée, ten years be- fore. La Salle succeeded in gaining what La Motte and Hennepin had failed to obtain-the full assent of the Senecas to the execution of his enterprises, notwithstanding they subsequently proved then- selves inimical thereto.t
Three of the villages described by Greenhalgh are in the county of Ontario; the fourth, Keint-he, corresponds with the village which Denonville calls Gannounata and was known in the Seneca dialect as Dyndoosot (pronounced De-o-dou-sote) and meaning " at the spring." It was situated near the modern village of East Avon, and the plow, which has nearly obliterated all trace of its existence, has from time to time disclosed many relics of its former occu- pants. The location of these villages corresponds with their designation on Clark's Map of the Iro- quois Five Nations and Mission Sites, 1656-1684:$ and, though less specifically with that of a map pub- lished by the Jesuits in 1664. § A map of North America, drawn in 1688 by Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin, Hydrographer to Louis XIV., and pre- served in the archives of the Ministere de la Ma-
* Col. Hist. III., 251, 252.
t l'he Building and Voyage of the Griffon, in 1679, by O. HE. Marsball.
- Early Chapters of Cayuga History.
§ Kip's Jesuits.
* Life and Times of Red Facket, 107.
+ This village is also known as Gandatsiagon, and was located where Whitby now stands, thirty miles north-east of Toronto. Early Chapters of Cayuga History.
# Probably the village of Chenondoanah, which Pownall's Map of the Middle British Colonies locates on the west bank of the Genesce, about fifteen miles from its mouth. Col. Hist., I'I,, 899.
62
HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY,
rine, in Paris, represents two Seneca villages on the east bank of the Genesee, ( Toinnontchianagon, ) apparently near the confluence of Honeoye out- let, and two others upon the west bank and near the head waters of a stream corresponding with Irondequoit creek, emptying into the bay of the same name ( Ganniatarontaquat. )*
After the destruction of the Seneca villages by Denonville in 1687, several others sprang into ex- istence, some to the westward and others to the eastward of them. In 1720 they had two villages, which were distinguished as great and little village; but their exact location is left to conjecture. In 1718, the court of France ordered the establish- ment of a trade for the benefit of the king in the circuit of Lake Ontario and the building of maga-
· zines upon the north and south sides thereof. In 1719, "in the beginning of harvest," the Sieur de Joncaire, lieutenant of a detachment of marines, with an interpreter, was sent in obedience to this order by Marquis de Vaudreuil and Monsieur Begon, to try the minds of the Senecas and see if they could engage them to consent to the building of a house upon their land, and to maintain that settlement in case the English opposed it. This message was accompanied with some belts of wam- pum and other presents, consisting of powder, lead, brandy and "other small merchandizes." "Sieur de Joncaire wintered partly at the great, and partly at the little village of the Senecas, and departed thence at the breaking up of the ice for the fort of the Cataracouy, where he had orders to take pro- visions and merchandizes for the trade at Niagara in case he could dispose of the Senecas to his inter- est." He arrived at the fort about the beginning of May, 1720, and reported to a council of French and Indians that the Senecas had favorably re- ceived the message "and produced several of Pel- letrie by which the said Indians answered, Father Onontio, (M. de Vandreuel) and their uncle Son- onchiez (Sieur de Joncaire) were the masters of their land and that the Indians consented not only to the building of the house of Niagara but also engaged themselves to maintain it, and if the Eng- lish should undertake to demolish it they must first take up the hatchet against the Cabanes of the two villages of the Senecas." After ten or twelve days spent at Fort Cataracouy, Jon- caire returned to Niagara with Sieur de la Corne, son of Mons. de la Corne, Captain and Major of Montreal, and eight soldiers, with a canoe of mer- chandise. Sieur de la Corne was commissioned
by M. Begon to winter at that post, and there Joncaire left him in July, after having "built in haste a kind of cabin of Bark, where they displayed the King's colors, and honored it with the name of Magazine Royal." Joncaire received orders to return to Niagara with the title of commandant, and about the middle of October, 1720, he left Montreal to winter at Niagara, taking with him two canoes laden with merchandise and twelve soldiers, six of whom he detached on his arrival at Catara- couy. He pursued his voyage, but was stopped by the ice thirty-five leagues from the mouth of the Niagara, and was obliged to put into the Gen- esee, ( Gasionchiagon or Gasconchiagon, ) where he passed the winter .* Sieur de Joncaire was cap- tured and adopted at an early day by the Senecas, by whom he was greatly beloved.t From his long residence with them he acquired a great influence over them and incidentally over the other Iroquois nations. He thus became a useful emissary of the French in winning over to that interest the gen- erally recalcitrant Iroquois, and much of his life was spent in this service as mediator, interpreter or conciliator. At the opening of the eighteenth cen- tury we find him officiating at a conference be- tween the French and Iroquois ; # and previous to 1711, Governor Hunter testifies that he, in con- junction with M. de Longeuil had built a block- house and projected a fort in the chief village of the Senecas.§ About 1730, he obtained permis- sion of the Senecas to establish a trading post at Irondequoit. | His sons, Chabert de Joncaire, Jr., and Philip Thomas de Joncaire Clauzonne, were also active public servants and residents in the Seneca county.
Sir Jeffrey Amherst's letter to Sir William John- son, September 30, 1763, refers to Kanadaseagy and Canadaraggo, (the former occupying the site of Geneva and the latter to the westward of it,) as two Seneca castles which were in the English interest and to be exempted from molestation in offensive operations which might be carried on against the Senecas. " Sir William Johnson's Enumeration of Indians within the Northern De- partment, November 18, 1763, states the number of Senecas to be 1,050 men, who "have several villages beginning about fifty miles from Cayuga,
* Col. Hist. V., 559.
1 Col. 1list., 1X., 747.
# Col. Ilist., IX., 709.
§ Col. Hist., V., 253.
| Col, Ilist., V., 911.
1 Col. Hist .. VII., 568. See also Sir William Johnson's letter to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, Sept. 14, 1761, in which Kanadessegy and Canada- saggo are referred to as being in the English interest and east of Chenus- sio.
* The Building and Voyage of the Griffon, in 1679.
63
FIRST JESUIT MISSIONS.
and from thence to Chenussio, the largest, about seventy miles from Niagara, with others thence to Ohio."* In the Journal of Sir William Johnson's Proceedings with the Indians, at Fort Johnson in 1757, Chinosia is referred to as the " farthest Sen- eca castle;"t and from the Proceedings of Sir Wil- liam Johnson with the Indians, September 7, 1763, it appears that the Senecas had two castles at Che- nussio,¿ which is designated on Guy Johnson's map as Geneseo, ( Cenosio. )$ The Seneca villages of Kanuskago or Ganuskago, is located in the town of Dansville on Guy Johnson's Map of the Country of the Six Nations, | and was also called " the door of the Six Nations," at a meeting of certain of the Six Nations and their allies at Fort John- son, February 18, 1756.7 But it is not our pur- pose to pursue here a subject which will be more specifically treated in respect to this country in connection with the several towns ; for the county throughout almost its entire extent is dotted over with the sites of these ancient villages which ex- isted before the avenging hand of Sullivan's army laid waste the fair country of the Senecas, or which subsequently sprang into being. The principal of these, however, prior to that epoch, have been noticed in connection with that expedition.
The advent of the Jesuit missionaries among the Iroquois was a marked event in the history of the latter, as from the Jesuit Relations we obtain the earliest, most exact and most authentic informa- tion regarding them. The Jesuits were men of culture and intelligence, who forsook homes of luxury in Europe and submitted with a wonderful patience and heroism to the most menial offices, the utmost hardships and privations, and cheer- fully accepted missions attended with the most in- conceivable danger in the zealous pursuit of their calling. Whatever estimate we put upon them as men, we must admit their great devotion and self- sacrifice.
The first Jesuit missionaries arrived in Canada in 1625, and from that period exerted a vast in- fluence upon the interests of the French colony in that province. The mission was interrupted during the English occupancy of Quebec, from 1629 to 1632, and was resumed the latter year. They were instrumental in securing and holding the friendly aid of the northern and western Indians to the French arms in Canada. Had their influence been the first directed towards the Iroquois, it is probable their friendship, possibly their aid, might
* Col. Hist., VII , 582.
$ Ibid, VII., 254.
+ Ibid, VII., 264.
[| Ibid, VII., 57.
# 1bid, VII., 55+.
1. Ibid, VII., 57.
have been secured, and then American coloniza- tion might have presented a vastly different phase. But while their beneficent policy attracted, that inaugurated by Champlain and pursued by his suc- cessors repelled them and provoked a deadly hatred.
Failing in their efforts to coerce the Iroquois to terms which they presumed to dictate, the French colonists, chagrined and deeply humiliated, sought to gain their friendship by the aid of the mission- aries of a religion whose precepts they had so wan- tonly violated, and in 1646, Father Isaac Jogues was sent in the double capacity of ambassador and missionary to the Mohawks, who were the first of the Iroquois nations to be outraged by the French lust for dominance, and by whom, three years pre- viously, he had been captured, subjected to the most horrid torture, and threatened with death, which he escaped through the friendly interven- tion of the Dutch settlers at Albany, ( Fort Orange.) His mission, like his office, was of a double nature. He was commissioned by his Father Superior to establish on the scenes of his torture a mission which was given in advance the prophetic name, the Mission of the Martyrs ; and by Charles Huault de Montmagny, who succeeded Champlain as Governor of Canada, to use his influence with the Mohawks in perpetuating a peace which had been concluded the previous year, through the instrumentality of the Jesuit Guillaume Couture, who was captured by the Mohawks at the same time as Jogues, and adopted into one of their families in place of a dead relative. Jogues, suffering under a keen recollection of his recent tortures, apprehen- sive also of his reception, and having, as he wrote a friend, a presentiment of death, at first revolted at the thought ; but it was only a temporary weak- ness. Exchanging the uniform of Loyola for a civilian's suit, by advice of an Algonquin convert, he sat out on his mission about the middle of May. His appearance in that character created no little amazement in the Mohawk village ; but he was respectfully received, and he delivered the gifts and wampum belts, with the message of peace, of which he was the bearer from the Governor, his speech being "echoed by a unanimous grunt of applause from the attentive concourse," and eliciting con- firmations of peace in return. Two Algonquins accompanied him as deputies, but their overtures of peace were rejected.
" The business of the Embassy was scarcely fin- ished," says Parkman, "when the Mohawks coun- selled Jogues and his companions to go home with
64
HISTORY OF LIVINGSTON COUNTY.
all dispatch, saying, that, if they waited longer, they might meet on the way warriors of the four upper nations, who would inevitably kill the two Algonquin deputies, if not the French also. Jogues, therefore, set out on his return, but not until, despite the advice of the Indian convert, he had made the round of the houses, confessed and instructed a few Christian prisoners still remaining there, and baptized several dying Mohawks."
Jogues returned to his mission the following August, but only to meet his death, which occurred on the 18th of October following.
Eight years later, the first successful mission among the Iroquois (St. Marie) was established at Onondaga, by Father Simon Le Moine, who left Quebec on the second of July, 1654, and arrived at the principal Onondaga village on the fifth of August .*
The Onondagas having "for a long time and earnestly demanded that some priests be sent to them, Father Joseph Chaumonot, an experienced Huron missionary, and Father Claude Dablon, then recently from France, embarked on the 19th of September, 1655, and arrived at Onnontague, November 5th of that year. They were received, like Le Moine, with distinguished honor, and wel- comed at a council of the nations held on the 15th, with the most profuse demonstrations of joy. Be- ing listened to with approbation and kindness, Dab- lon returned the following March to Quebec for additional help.
In the latter part of August, 1656, Fathers Chau- monot and Menard left the Onondaga mission to extend their labors to the western Iroquois nations. Proceeding to the Cayugas, where they arrived after a journey of two days, they established the Mission of St. Joseph on the site of Goiogouen, which was situated three miles south of Union Springs, on the east shore of Cayuga Lake. Leaving Menard in charge of that mission, Father Chaumonot, after a brief sojourn, proceeded to the country of the Sen- ecas and established at the village of Gannegarre or Gandougarac, situated near the site of East Bloomfield, the Mission of St. Michael. On his arrival at the village a council was convened by the sachems, to whom he delivered his presents and communicated his designs, which met their appro- bation. He thus addressed them says Marshall : " I offer myself as a guarantee of the truths which I utter, and if my life is deemed insufficient, I offer you in addition, the lives of all the French I have left at Onondaga. Do you distrust these living presents ? Will you be so simple as to believe that
we have left our native country, the finest in the world, to come so far, and to suffer so much in or- der to bring you a lie?" Father Chaumonot vis- ited the other Seneca villages, where he was equally well received, and converted Garonheaguerha, a distinguished Seneca chief and orator, then pros- trate with disease, but who, after his recovery, be- came a firm friend of the French and Jesuits.
In 1657, "the harvest appearing plentiful in all the villages of the upper Iroquois, the common people listened to the words of the gospel with im- plicity and the chiefs with a well disguised dissim- ulation,"* Fathers Paul Ragueneau and Francois Du Peron, some Frenchmen and several Hurons came to the aid of the missions.
These were the first missionary labors among the Senecas. La Carnon, an ambitious Franciscan priest, had, indeed, in 1616, passed through their country on his way to that of the Hurons, on the borders of the lake which bears their name, but did not attempt to acquaint them with the princi- ples of his faith. These first missions among the Iroquois were however of short duration.
The apparent desire for peace on the part of the Iroquois immediately after M. de Tracy's expedi- tion in 1666, seemed to be a favorable opportunity to re-establish missions among them, and in that and the one or two succeeding years, missions were established in each of the Five Nations.
The Senecas, (Isonnontouans,) says Bishop Kip, were the fourth of the Iroquois cantons to have the mission restored.t Father Jacques Fremin, who knew the language of the Iroquois, was assigned to this station. He is supposed to have arrived in Canada in 1655. He accompanied Dablon the year following to Onondaga, where he remained till 1658, after which his labors were confined to Canada until 1667, when he was sent as mission- ary to the Mohawks, where he was made Superior of the Iroquois missions. In October, 1668, he transferred his labors to the Senecas, with whom he remained till 1671. He revived the Mission of St. Michael at the village of Gannogarae, which was composed of refugees from the Neutral and Huron nations, and extended his ministrations to the other Seneca villages, in each of which a mis- sion was established. His knowledge of medi-
· Relation, 1657-58, Doc. Hist., 1., 45. t Early Jesuit Missions, 85.
$ Early Chapters of Cayuga History, 41. Note. The Seneca Mis- sions were St. Michael, at Ganogare, near the site of East Bloomfield : St. James, at Gannagaro or Canagorah, on Boughton Hill, in the town of Victor ; La Conception, at Totiakion or Sonnontouan, near the vil- lage of Honeoye Falls ; and St. John, at Gannounata or Gandachir- agon, near the site of East Avon.
* Relation, 1654, Chap. VI.
65
EARLY MISSIONS AMONG THE SENECAS.
cine-a knowledge possessed in common .by most of the Jesuits-made his services peculiarly accept- able to the afflicted Senecas, among whom, soon after his arrival among them, a contagious fever which proved very fatal, broke out. The skill he displayed in its treatment won for him the confi- dence and esteem of the savages ; and the care and treatment demanded of him in the different villages engrossed much of his time during the earlier part of his mission. The simple life of the Jesuit mis- sionary is illustrated by Father Fremin, who says: "I neither see, nor hear, nor speak to any but the Indians. My food is very simple and light. I have never been able to conform my taste to the meal or the smoked fish of the savages, and my nourishment is only composed of corn which they pound, and of which I make each day a kind of hominy, which I boil in water." Father Fremin was soon joined by Father Pierre Raffeix, who was chaplain of the French expedition against the Mohawks in 1666. Father Raffeix continued his labors with the Senecas till 1701, when he supplied the Cayuga mission of St. Joseph, which Father Stephen de Carheil was obliged to relinquish on account of ill health. After a year's respite, during which he obtained relief from the nervous disorder which afflicted him, Father de Carheil resumed the Cayuga mission, and Father Raffeix, thus relieved, returned to his duties among the Senecas, which he continued until 1680. His brief stay in the coun- try of the Cayugas gave him a highly favorable opinion of it. In a letter dated June 24, 1672,* he writes: "Cayuga is the most beautiful country I have seen in America." He was familiar with all the Iroquois cantons. Agnie, (Mohawk,) he says, is a very contracted valley ; for the most part stony, and always covered with fogs; the hills that enclose it appear to me very bad land. Oneida and Onon- daga, he adds, appear too rough and little adapted to the chase, as well as Seneca.
In 1669, Father Julien Garnier, brother of the celebrated Benedictine, joined the Seneca mission, and was assigned to the Mission of St. John, at Gan- nounata, (East Avon,) while Fremin took charge of that of St. Michael .; In 1671, Fremin was called to take charge of the Indians at Laprairie.#
This mission was removed to the Sault St. Louis in 1676, and in 1679, Father Fremin visited France to solicit aid for it .* He was again in Canada in 1682, and died in Quebec, July 2, 1691.1
Father Garnier was born at Connerai, in the dio- cese of Mans, about 1643. In 1662 he came to Canada, where he completed his studies, and re- ceived Holy Orders in April, 1666, being the first Jesuit ordained in that country. He was sent to Oneida in 1667, and in 1668, visited Onondaga and Cayuga .¿ His Seneca mission was interrupted in 1673. by M. de la Barre's threatened invasion .. In July, 1672, in addressing Father Dablon, he says of the Senecas: " Their minds being ill-dis- posed, the devil uses every occasion to make them speak against the faith and those who preach it."
Father Dablon, in a letter to the Provincial Father Pinette, in referring to Father de Carheil and the Cayuga mission, says : "This holy man is of an apostolic zeal which does not find that the Indians correspond to his care ; but I think that he asks from them too much virtue for beginnings. If he does not sanctify as many of them as he would, it is certain that he sanctifies himself in a good degree as do Fathers Garnier and Raffeix in the towns of Sonnontonans," [Senecas. ]| In the Relation of 1676-7," printed by James Lenox, Esq., of New York, from the original manuscript, we find the following: "The upper Iroquois, that is to say those who are most remote from us, as the Son- nontonans and Oioguens, [Senecas and Cayugas] are the most haughty and the most insolent, run- ning after the missionaries with axe in hand, chas- ing and pelting them with stones, throwing down their chapels and their little cabins, and in a thou- sand other ways treating them with indignity. The Fathers suffer all and are ready for all, knowing well the apostles did not plant the faith in the world otherwise than by persecution and suffering. What consoles them in the pitiable state they are in, is to see the fruit which God derives for His glory and for the salvation of these very Indians by whom they are so maltreated. For within a year since these violences begun, they have bap- tized more than three hundred and fifty Iroquois, of whom, besides twenty-seven adults, there were
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