USA > New York > Onondaga County > History of Onondaga County, New York > Part 5
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From these straits the French sought to relieve themselves by the missionaries of a religion whose precepts they had so wantonly violated, and in 1642, " Father Jogues, commissioned as an envoy, was hospitably received by the Mohawks and gained an opportunity of offering the friendship of France to the Onondagas." Thus the first Frenchman came with the sword, the second with the cross.
The history of the action of the Jesuit mission- aries among these tribes is but a constant repetition of enobling examples of self-sacrificing devotion to the great cause of converting the savages to Chris- tianity. No hardship was too, great, no sufferings too severe, martyrdom itself was welcomed, and when one missionary was consumed by the fires of the savages, another stood ready to take his place. Father Jogues was murdered by the Mohawks at Caughnawaga," in Montgomery county, but he was followed by more than a score of others during the next fifty years.
Taking advantage of a temporary peace between the Iroquois and the French, Father Simon Le Moyne appeared as a missionary to the Onondagas in 1654. Hle says in his Relation : " On the 17th day of July, 1654, I set out from Montreal and em- barked for a land as yet but little known, accom- panied by a young man of piety and fortitude who had long been a resident of that country." On the 5th of August he had nearly finished his journey,
"Included now in the corporation of the village of Fonda.
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HISTORY OF ONONDAGA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
and says : " We traveled four leagues before reach- ing the principal Onondaga village. I passed many persons on the way who kindly saluted me, one calling me brother, another uncle, and another cousin. I never had so many relations. At a quarter of a league from the village I began a harangue in a solemn and commanding tone, which gained me great credit. I named all their chiefs, families and distinguished persons. I told them that peace and joy were my companions, and that I scattered war among the distant nations. Two chiefs addressed me as I entered the village with a welcome, the like of which I had never before experienced among savages." At the grand council assembled by the chiefs in the cabin of Ondessonk, he says, " I opened the council by a public prayer on my knees, in a loud voice in the Huron tongue. I astonished them exceedingly by mentioning them all by nations, tribes, families and individuals, which amount to no small number. This I was enabled to do from my notes, and to them it was as aston- ishing as it was novel." On the 16th, returning, Father Le Moyne discovered the salt springs and manufactured the first Onondaga salt ever made by a European, "as natural," he says, "as from the sea, some of which we shall carry to Quebec." This first sample of salt was made two hundred and twenty-three years ago. In the Relation of Father Le Moyne, seventh of August, 1654, he says : " I baptized a young captive taken from the Neuter nation, fifteen or sixteen years old, who had been instructed in the mysteries of our faith by a Huron convert. This was the first adult baptism made at Onondaga. The joy I experienced was ample com- pensation for all past fatigues."
Fathers Joseph Chaumonot and Claude Dablon became missionaries to the Onondagas in 1655, and " were received with the strongest proofs of friend- ship." The account of their journey and experience is given in the Jesuit Relation of Father Francis Le Mercier, the Superior of the Mission of Que- bec. "On the 5th of November," says the narra- tive, "as we continued our route, a chieftain of note called Gonateragon met us a league from his cabin, welcomed our arrival, and kindly invited us to remain with his people. He placed himself at the head of our little company and conducted us in state to within a quarter of a league of Onondaga, where the "Amiens" of the country awaited us. Having seated ourselves beside them, they set be- fore us their best provisions, especially pumpkins baked in the ashes." Then a speech of welcome was made by an aged chief, who deprecated war, and said that even the young men were for peace.
It was only the Mohawks, he said, who wished to darken the sun, rendered glorious by our approach, and to fill the sky with clouds.
The mission founded this year by Chaumonot and Dablon was the original mission of St. John the Baptist, and according to the topography of Gen. John S. Clark, was located on " Indian Hill," two miles south of the village of Manlius, which was then the chief town of the Onondagas. The mis- sionaries several times refer to their "chapel," but they probably mean by this their place of worship, fitted up in one of the principal cabins of the In- dians. It does not appear that they had any regu- lar chapel at this period. The first sacrament of Holy Mass was celebrated by Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon upon an altar in an oratory made in the cabin of Teotonharason, one of the women who came from Quebec with the missionaries, on Sun- day, November 14, 1655. She was a woman of the Onondagas, highly esteemed for her nobleness and wealth. She made a public profession of re- ligion, instructed all connected with her household, and eagerly demanded baptism for herself, her mother and daughter. She taught the prayers of the Roman Catholic Church to her people, and was a sort of deaconess of the primitive church of the Onondagas. (Relation, 1655.) On the 28th of November, being the first Sunday in Advent, was held the first celebration of Catechism in one of the principal cabins, probably the one above referred to.
It appears from the Relations that the first re- quest for a French missionary settlement on the banks of Onondaga Lake came from Ondessonk, the great chief of the Onondagas, who said to Father Le Moyne : "We request you to select on the banks of our great lake a convenient place for a French habitation. Place yourself in the heart of our country, since you have possessed our inmost affections. There we can go for instruction, and from thence you can spread yourselves everywhere." The location of St. Mary's of Ganentaha was selected the year following by Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon. Says the Relation. under date of No- vember 9, 1655 : " This day for the first time, we visited the salt spring, which is only two leagues from here, near the lake Ganentaha, and the place chosen for the French settlement, because it is in the center of the Iroquois nations, and because we can from thence visit in canoes various localities upon the rivers and lakes, which renders commerce free and commodious. Fishing and hunting in- crease the importance of this place, for besides the various kinds of fish that are taken there at different seasons of the year, the eel is so abundant that a
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HISTORY OF ONONDAGA COUNTY, NEW YORK
thousand are sometimes speared by a single fisher- man in a night, and as for the game which does not fail through the winter, the pigeons gather in the spring in such numbers that they are taken in nets in great abundance. The fountain from which very Food salt is made, intersects a meadow surrounded by a wood of superior growth. From eighty to a hundred paces from this salt spring is another of fresh water, and both flow from the same hill "
The Mission of St. John the Baptist prospered for several months ; proselytes were continually added to the faith ; and the anticipations of the missionaries were raised to the highest pitch. At length doubts and dissentions crept into the minds of some of the principal individuals of the canton, and it was resolved that Dablon should proceed to Quebec for a reenforcement to strengthen the hearts and hands of the missionaries. The Onondagas carnestly desired that the French should come and make their settlement on the site selected for St. Mary's of Ganentaba. "Why do you not come at once," said they. " since you see all our village ap- prove it ? We have not ceased all this winter to go in crowds to the chapel to pray and be instructed. You have been cordially welcomed in all our cabins when you have visited them to teach. You cannot cloubt our dispositions since we have made you such a solemn present, with protestations so public, that we are believers "
On account of the season of hunting, and the preference of all the young men for the chase, Dab- lon found it difficult to obtain guides to conduct him back to Quebec. "At last," he says, "we deter- mined upon saying nine masses to St. John the Baptist, the patron of this mission, in order to ob- tam light in a business where all was dark to us Beholl how contrary to our expectations, and to all human appearances, without knowing how it was done or by whom, immediately after the ninth mass, I set out from Onondaga, accompanied by two of the principal young men of the village and by several others, whom doubtless St. John inspired to en- gage in this enterprise and journey Thus the chief of the escort was named Ste. Jean Baptiste. he being the first adult of the Iroquois baptized in full health."
Dablon and his guides crossed Oneida Lake on the ice on the 6th of March, 1656, and proceeded by the usual northern trail to the mouth of Salmon River, whence he reached Montreal on the 30th Father Chaumonot remained at Onondaga, and the following summer was joined by Father Claude Dablon, Father Le Mercier, the Superior, Father Renè Mesnard, Father Jacques Fremin, Brother
Ambrose Broar, and Brother Bourgier, to found the Mission of St. Mary's of Ganentaha. On the 7th of May. 1656, these missionaries with a force com- posed of four nations, French, Onondagas, Senecas, and a few Hurons, embarked in shallops and canoes for Onondaga. On their departure from port they were cheered by the acclamations of a great multitude who had gathered on the shore, all regarding them with compassionate and trembling hearts as so many victims destined to the flames or to the fierce rage and torture of the Iroquois. They arrived at Three Rivers on the 20th of May, and on the 31st at Montreal : on the 8th of June, hav- ing abandoned their shallops on account of the rapids of La Chine, they embarked in twenty canoes : on their flag of beautiful white cloth was painted in large letters the name " Jest's," which a band of Mohawks on the rapids recognized and accosted the voyagers. The Onondagas received the Mohawks with curses, reproached them with treason and robbery, seized their canoes and arms and whatever was best of their equipments, in retalia- tion for having been robbed by the same party a few days before. Without other incident of im- portance, they pursued their journey, and on the 11th of July, at 3 o'clock, arrived on the shore of Lake Onondaga, at the spot which had been selected for their mission house by Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon. Here many of the old men and chiefs of the Onondagas awaited them. The Te Deum was chanted and holy mass celebrated in gratitude for their friendly reception. On the 17th they com- menced the erection of their dwellings and a fort for their soldiers.
The location of this fort and mission house was on the east shore of Onondaga lake, on lot 106 in the town of Salina, where the embankment and outlines of the fort were plainly to be seen by the early settlers. The well in that vicinity out of which they drew their water still bears the name of the " Jesuits's Well."
For a while the mission was quite prosperous ; other missions branched out from it among the Cayugas and Senecas ; the second year the increas- ing interest required the enlargement of the chapel ; the missionaries entertained hopes of the speedy conversion of multitudes of the Indians. But while they were indulging these fond anticipations, the renewal of border wars excited the slumbering ven. geance of the Mohawks, who induced the Ononda- gas to enter into a conspiracy for the destruction of the French mission. The plot was revealed by a friendly Indian, and the French escaped by the fol- lowing ingenious method :
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HISTORY OF ONONDAGA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
Being forewarned of the intended massacre, they had prepared to escape in the night, if they could avoid exciting the suspicions of the Indians, by means of several light boats which they had secretly constructed in the storehouse of the mission. The opportunity was furnished them by the ingenuity of a young man, very much a favorite with the head chief, who feigned to have a dream that the chief must provide a general feast, after the custom of the Indian nation. The rule of politeness required that they should eat all that was set before them, and the consequence was that they often became gorged and stupefied. So it was on this occasion. The feast was prepared ; all had eaten to surfeiting ; the young man played on his guitar to soothe them into the profound slumber that was soon to follow. In a lit- tle while they were all asleep, and before they awoke the Frenchmen had shipped their boats and were far away beyond their reach. In the morning they supposed the French had been sleeping as pro- foundly as themselves, and it was not until they had examined the premises that they discovered that their intended victims had fled. If the missionaries had been alone in the work in which they were en- gaged, they would at all times have been safe in the hands of the savages, but the rival governments of France and England continually thwarted their en- deavors and rendered the lives of all at times inse- cure.
When the Mohawk conspiracy had died away and the Onondagas becoming sorry for having given the French reason to doubt their sincerity, and feel- ing the loss they had sustained in driving them away, the principal chief sent an invitation to them again to establish themselves among them. In 1665, a number of French families returned, under the guidance of the missionaries, and settled near the Indian fort and village which stood in the vicin- ity of the present village of Jamesville. The mission here established was that of Ste. Jean Baptiste. The chapel was built in 1666 by the famous chief, Gar-a-kon-tie, who was a converted and truly Chris- tian Indian. Father Le Mercier, in Relation 1667, says of him : " As he, [Father Julian Garnier,] had declared to them [the Onondagas,] that he could not remain alone and without a chapel, Gar-a-kon-tie, that famous captain of whom we have spoken before in preceding relations, resolved to gratify him to the utmost of his wishes. In fact, in a few days he built a chapel, and immediately after undertook a voyage to Quebec to visit the Governor of Canada, who had long desired to see this great and good man, so obliging towards the French. One princi- pal object of his visit was to take away with him
some of the Fathers, whom he wished to conduct into his own country."*
In 1669 the French and the Iroquois were again at war. "The harvests of New France could not be gathered in safety, the convents were insecure, and many of the inhabitants prepared to return to France. In moments of gloom it seemed as if all must be abandoned. True, religious zeal was still active. Le Moyne, who had been driven from among the Mohawks, once more appeared and was received with affection by the Onondagas. Peace ensued. England came into possession of the New Netherlands. In 1684, the Five Nations met the governors of New York and Virginia at Albany, and the sachems returned to nail the arms of the Duke of York over their castle, a protection as they thought against the French, an acknowledgment, as the English deemed, of British sovereignty." The Governor of Canada, meantime, with six hundred French soldiers, four hundred Indian allies, four hundred canoes, and three hundred men for a gar- rison, started for Onondaga. But the army suffered from sickness, and after arriving on the soil of the Onondagas, he was constrained to sue for peace. The English desired the Five Nations to take ad- vantage of this situation and exterminate the French. But such was not their policy ; they desired to play one party off against the other, while they them- selves held the balance of power. An Onondaga chief proudly said to the Convoy of New York : " Yonnondio (the French Governor) has for ten years been our father ; Corlear (the English Gover- nor) has long been our brother, but it is because we have willed it so ; neither the one nor the other is our master. He who made the world gave us the land on which we dwell ; we are free ; you call us subjects ; we say we are brethren ; we must take care of ourselves. I will go to my father, for he has come to my gate and desires to speak words of reason. We will embrace peace, instead of war ; the ax shall be thrown into a deep water." To De la Barre, the French commander, the chief said : " It is well for you that you have left under ground the hatchet which has so often been dyed with the blood of the French ; our children and old men had carried their bows and arrows into the heart of your camp, if our braves had not kept them back ; our old men are not afraid of war ; we will guide the English to our lakes ; we are born free ; we depend neither on Vonnondio nor Corlear." Dis- mayed, the proud Governor of Canada accepted a disgraceful peace, leaving his Indian allies to the tender mercies of the Iroquois.
* Clark's Onondaga: p. 190.
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HISTORY OF ONONDAGA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
After the establishment ot Fort Niagara by the French, Louis XIV wrote to the Governor of New France to capture as many of the able bodied Iroquois as he could and send them to France to work in the galleys as slaves, saying, "Do what you can to capture a large number of them as pris- oners of war, and ship them to France " By open hostilities no captures could be made, and Lamber- ville, the missionary among the Onondagas, was unconsciously employed to decoy them into the fort on Ontario. Accordingly, being invited to nego- tiate a treaty, they assembled without distrust, and were seized, put in irons, hurried to Quebec and thence to France, where the warrior hunters of the Five Nations who used to roam from Hudson's Bay to Carolina, were chained to the oar in the galleys of Marseilles." This was in 1687. What did the outraged Iroquois do with this missionary, the un- witting tool of tyrants ? Bancroft says : " Mean- while the old men of the Onondagas summoned Lamberville to their presence. 'We have much reason,' said an aged chief, 'to treat thee as an ene. my, but we know thee too well : thou hast betrayed us, but treason was not in thine heart ; fly, there- fore, for when our young braves shall have sung their war song, they will listen to no voice but the swelling voice of their anger.'" Trusty guides con- ducted the missionary through by-paths into a place of security. This noble forbearance was due to the counsel of Gar-a kon-tie, the same chief who built the second Onondaga chapel for the mission of St. John the Baptist. "Generous barbarian ! exclaims Bancroft ; your honor shall endure, if words of mine can preserve the memory of your deeds." The Onondaga Chief, Has-kou-Aux, at once appeared at Montreal at the head of twelve hundred warriors, demanding as a satisfaction the restoration of the chiefs and spoils and the abandonment of the fort at Niagara. Four days were given the French to decide. Said the haughty chief, "Our warriors pro- pose to come and burn your forts, your houses, your granges, and your corn, to weaken you by famine, and then to overwhelm you." The terms were accepted by the French, the restoration of the imprisoned chicks conceded, and the whole country south of the lakes rescued from the domin- ion of Canada. In the course of events New York owes its present northern boundary to this exhibi- tion of the power and valor of the Five Nations." All but a little corner of the County of Onondaga is drained into the St. Lawrence, and but for these Indians must have formed a part of Canada t
In 1604. the great chief, DE-KAN-IS-SO-RA, visited Montreal to make terms of peace with the French. The Count de Frontenac, then Governor, refused to treat with the Five Nations, except on conditions that they would exclude the English entirely from trading in their territory. This the Onondagas re- fused to consent to, whereupon Frontenac resolved to put the whole power of the French in requisition and by one decisive blow bring them to terms. In 1696, he mustered the whole force that France could furnish and the province could raise, together with such Indian allies as he could enlist, and after two months spent in the trip, arrived with his flotilla on Onondaga Lake, the second of August. The paraphernalia of the army made a grand display. " Banners were there," says Hoffman, "which had been unfurled at Steenkerk and Landen, and rustled above the troops that Luxemburg's trumpets had guided to glory when Prince Waldeck's legions were borne down beneath his furious charge. Nor was the enemy that this gallant host was seeking, unworthy those whose swords had been tried in some of the hardest fought fields of Europe. They had bearded a European army under the walls of Quebec, shut up another for weeks within the defences of Mon- treal, with the same courage which half a century after vanquished the battalions of Dieskau on the shores of Lake George."
The French, with their allies, passed up Onon- daga Lake in two divisions, skirting both shores, and finally landing at the east end, sword in hand. On the third of August, they constructed a fort and left a garrison of 140 men to guard their batteaux and baggage. This fort was probably at the place now called Green Point, or at the site of St. Mary's of Ganentaha. The cannon and artillery equipments were hauled across the marshes, and they encamped at the Salt Springs. Their movements had been discovered by scouts and were fully known at the Onondaga villages. No assistance could be obtained from the English, and resistance to such a vast army was idle. The Onondagas, therefore, resolved to bend before the storm they could not face. On the night of the 2d of August, 1696, the French army saw the light of immense fires in the south. The Indians, adopting the tactics of Moscow, were des- troying their own property, preferring this mode of defence to direct resistance. When the French ar- rived on the ground, Frontenac says they found " the cabins of the Indians and the triple palisades which circled the fort entirely burnt." It has since been learned that it was in a sufficiently strong state of defence. It was an oblong flanked by four regu- lar bastions. The two rows of pickets which
* : Ban r ft. | 432
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HISTORY OF ONONDAGA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
touched each other were of the thickness of an ordi- nary mast, and at six feet distance outside stood an- other palisade of much smaller dimensions, but from forty to fifty feet high. The corn of the Ononda- gas, in their fields, stretching " from a league and a half to two leagues from the fort," was completely cut up by the soldiers. " Not a single head re- mained," and " the destruction was complete."
The Onondagas, of course, could not brook this wanton destruction long. In accordance with their custom they must give the enemy due notice that vengeance would not be delayed. A brave old war- rior volunteered for this honorable duty, and died without a groan amidst the tortures of the savage allies of the French. "When a savage. weary of his harangues, gave him some cuts of a knife," " I thank thee," he cried, " But thou oughtest to com- plete my death by fire. Learn, French dogs and ye savages, their allies, that ye are dogs of dogs ; remember what ye ought to do when ye will be in the same position that I am." " It was," says Charle- voix, " a strange and curious spectacle, to see many hundred men surrounding a decrepit old warrior, striving in vain, by tortures, to draw a groan from him."
The barren victory of Frontenac resulted in great injury to the French, for by taking away the militia of Canada, the fields were left uncultivated, and a famine ensued that pinched quite as hard as the lack of provisions in Onondaga.
CHAPTER VI.
THE IROQUOIS AND THE ENGLISH - POLICY OF THE ENGLISH TOWARDS THE FIVE NATIONS -THE ONONDAGAS IN THE FRENCH WAR- -THEIR STATUS IN THE REVOLUTION AND THE WAR OF 1812-ENGLISH AND GERMAN MISSIONS AMONG THE ONONDAGAS - LATER MISSIONS- SCHOOLS-TREATIES.
T HE treaty of Ryswick, which made peace be- tween the English and the French, was signed September 10, 1697. Soon after this, French com- missioners appeared before the Onondaga Castle. Peace was made, to the great satisfaction of the French. " Nothing could be more terrible than this last war ; the French ate their bread in con- tinual fear. No man was sure, when out of his house, of ever returning to it again. All business and trade were often suspended, while fear, despair and misery blanched the countenances of the wretched inhabitants .* The Commissioners took
with them to Montreal several of the Onondaga chiefs. They were received with every mark of re- spect, and were treated with that consideration which brave men always command.
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