USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > History of Rochester and Monroe county, New York, from the earliest historic times to the beginning of 1907 > Part 2
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THE MOUND BUILDERS.
Of no country, of no locality in the world, can it be said with any degree of confidence who were the first human inhabitants. As the Israelites wandered from place to place they always found that some one had been there before them, in some cases with an advanced civilization that could have been the result only of ages of slow development; when the Aryan raees pushed out from the an- cestral fields of Central Asia and spread over the plains of India they forced their pre-historic pre- decessors out of the way; when another section passed over into Greece the Pelasgians were al- ready the ancient inhabitants : when others of the same family penetrated into Italy there were the Etruscans and many other well-settled national- ities, and when, in more recent times, the Romans undertook the subjugation of the western world they encountered populous communities with di-
vergent languages that have been found, almost in our own day, to be cognate with their own. No- where was there solitude; that came after the conqnest, not before. In every case the earliest known occupants of a region had some traditions, more or less vague, of a race that had been there previously in some remote period.
Of these legends of prior occupation this con- tinent, this country and this state form as good an example as any other portion of the world. For a long time after the discovery of Columbus and the belated settlement, more than a century later, of the northern part of the mainland, it was gener- ally supposed that the American Indians were the only as well as the immediate predecessors of the Caucasians. But of late years the belief has become general, so much so as to have become practically a conviction, that the red men were not the real aborigines but that long before them. perhaps x" long before that they did not come into physical contact with them, was a race that we call by the general name of the mound-builders, from the pe- culiar elevations, in many cases quite symmetrical, that are found in different parts of the country and that bear no resemblance to what we know of any habitations or any other structures designed by the Indians, No intimation whatever has come down to us regarding the habits, the language, the social organization of these people, and the only suggestion regarding their religion lies in the shape of many, though not all, of these mounds, which extend irregularly and at wide intervals through the Ohio valley, along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, reaching out to the Pacific ocean
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
and dotting the shore of the gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida.
By far the most noteworthy of these, both from it- size and from the excellent preservation of its outlines, is in Adams county, Ohio, upon an ele- vated plateau formed by the confluence of three small streams. Upon this ridge, conspicuous from a great distance, is distinctly traced the figure of a huge serpent, not in a straight line but with many graceful coils, and in front of its distended jaws is an oval which may be taken to represent an egg, possibly as showing the supposed manner of reproduction and perpetuation of the species The entire length of the monster, following its sin- uosities, is about a quarter of a mile, and more than a third as much in an air line from end to end; its greatest width is twenty feet; its ut- most height six feet. It was only sixty years ago that this remarkable creation was discovered and, as scientific interest and idle curiosity in the mat- ter steadily increased, the danger of its gradual destruction became evident, to guard against which catastrophe the whole bluff and many acres sur- rounding it were purchased for the Peabody mu- seum of Cambridge, Massachusetts, transferred by that body to Harvard university and finally turned over to the Ohio State Archeological and Histor- ical society, the last conveyance providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of the property. This great relic of the past and lesser structures ef a similar character also were undoubtedly connect- ed with the prevailing religion of the people who constructed them, and they go to show in a most interesting manner the kinship of the world, for serpent worship, if not the first form of religion, was at least the second, coming immediately after tree worship, which it seems to have soon supplant- ed everywhere. Traces of it are found in all lands, and even after it had disappeared as a formal cuit it continued to affect the Inter creeds, so that it ap- pears in the sacred books of the Hindoos, all my- thology is affected by it and the most ancient sculpture preserves its memory.
The eastern states do not contain any sure evi- dences of the mound-builders, although here and there in New York state are to be seen mounds which may be the work of nature or which may have been formed by the hand of man. There are a few of these in Monroe county, most of them in the neighborhood of Irondequoit creek, but even if
they are artificial there is nothing so distinctive about them as to preclude the possibility of their having been raised by our Indians within historic times for some unknown purpose. The only thing that would seem to point to a more remote origin is the occasional disclosure in these mounds, even at the present day, of tobacco-pipes (one of which is now in the possession of the Rochester Historical society) that are more elaborately formed, more highly polished than those dispensers of comfort with which we are familiar as the known produc- tions of our immediate predecessors. But this does not count for much, and may easily be offert by the supposition that artistic skill had become less prized than the development of warlike in- dustry. So that, as far as we know, and probably ever can know, the Seneca nation of the Iroquois confederaey were the first people who inhabited this region.
THE IROQUOIS.
The absence of anything like written records renders it impossible to even guess as to the time of the Indian settlement, and their earliest tradi- tions gave no clue to that. They were not interest- ed in statistics, and their legends related only to spectacular events. One of these stories was to the effect that those who were here before them-for, of course, like all other nations, they had tales to tell of the real or imaginary people who preceded them-were all devoured by a great serpent that dwelt near Canandaigua lake. This introduction of the serpent is very interesting, for that reptile plays no part in the religion of the Iroquois, 40 that it would seem that the myth could not have originated among them. At any rate, when those people, whoever they were, had all disappeared down the throat of their revengeful deity, the Sen- ecas entered and took possession of the desolate land, not springing up out of the ground, as might be supposed, but issuing in a body from the side of some unknown mountain. which obligingly opened for that purpose.
Their real advent was probably not very long ago. When Jacques Cartier made his voyage of discovery up the St. Lawrence river, in 1535, he found at Hochelaga, which is now Montreal, a populous and thriving village, the inhabitants of which spoke the Iroquois language. When, in
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THE LAND OF THE IROQUOIS.
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
the early part of the next century, Champlain penetrated that region, the Iroquois' village and ite people had disappeared, and in its place were a few scattered dwellings of much ruder construction, filled with red men much lower in savagery, who spoke an Algonquian language known as the Adi- rondack. These people had pushed the former settlers out of their abodes and occupied their places until they were in turn displaced by the Hurons, who spread over Canada and formed s close alliance with the Adirondacks and other Al- gonquin tribes in fighting their common enemy, which had become, from their point of view, a world power, certainly the great conquering power of the western world. These Iroquois, in their forced migration in the middle of the six- teenth century, probably went up the St. Law- rence and crossed Lake Ontario to the mouth of the Oswego river. They found there many of their own kindred, who like themselves were of the populous Dakota stock from the western plains and who had gone through a similar experience in Canada long before, for the white men, in their first intercourse with them, found a well settled tradition among them that their ancestors had once lived on the St. Lawrence in the neighborhood of Montreal, and that could hardly have applied to so recent an occurrence as the exodus after Jacques. Cartier visited them.
Even before this new influx a great expansion of the community had taken place; they had broken up into three distinct nations or tribes, the On- ondagas, the Mohawks and the Senecas. The first- named, who might be considered the parent stock, remained in the central portion of what is now New York state, the Mohawks went to the east and the Senecas spread over the western part, as far as the Niagara river. A little later the Onon- dagas threw off another section of the community, which became the Cayugas, who settled near the lake whose name they adopted as their own, while from the Mohawks the Oneidas became detached and occupied the region between them and the On- ondagas. The name Iroquois has been used in speaking of these people, but it must not be sup- posed that is the name by which they called them- selves. It is simply the name by which the French designated them and it has been the one gener- ally employed of late years on account of its enphony. It is supposed to be derived from the
Indian word "hiro," equivalent to "diri," "I have spoken," a term with which they were wont to close their long discourses in council. The English set- tlers always spoke of them as the Five Nations, until after the Tuscaroras had come up from North Carolina in 1:15 and, having proven their kin- ship by the similarity of language, had been ad- mitted into the national society and had been wedged in between the Mohawks and the Oneidas, having lands assigned to them from the territory of the latter tribe, so that from that time they were known as the Six Nations and were always calle l so in any treaties between them and the English Their own name for themselves was Ho-de-no-sau- nee, meaning "children of the long house."
THE GREAT CONFEDERACY.
This appellation brings us to the consideration of the formation of this great confederacy, to- gether with the constitution, oral of course but just as definite, just as binding, as though it had been written and printed, which bound together the component parts and welded them into one nationality. This instrument or compact is one of the most remarkable ever produced by the human race, and it is the more wonderful that it was the work, not, like the constitution of the United States, of the assembled wisdom of a number of men who had the advantage of previous legisla- tion, but of one man, who thought it all ont and gave it to his people. Some time, perhaps less than half a century, before Columbus came to this part of the world, there arose among the Iroquois -probably among the Onondagas, though that is uncertain-a consummate statesman named Hz- yo-went-ha, or Hiawatha, as Longfellow has fixe:l it and immortalized it, though the poet has for some reason placed his hero among the Ojibways, an entirely different stock, with which the Iro- quois had no kinship whatever. Perceiving that the weakness of his people lay in their being brok- en up into tribes or nations, often indifferent if not unfriendly toward each other, Hiawatha con- ceived the idea of binding them together in a per- manent league, which should make them as far as possible one nation, as they were originally. It was both a civil and a military union, preserving the integrity of each tribe, limiting the local territory of each and specifying the number of sachems that
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
each should have at the great council held in the "long house," whence the national name was de- rived. This council or congress, as we should call it, was held, naturally, about the center of the line, at a spot near the present city of Syracuse, and occasionally, even at the present day, it comes together, the fire is lighted, and the delegates sit around it, the mere ghosts of their predecessors, shorn of all power, with no ability to do anything but talk and even that with less effectiveness than might be possessed by the members of a city cau- ens or a town meeting. There were to be fifty sachems, of whom fourteen were allotted to the Onondagas, as being the most populous tribe, ten to the Cayugas, nine each to the Mohawks and the Oneidas, eight to the Senecas. When the Tuscar- oras joined the confederaey no place was given to them in the council, because the constitution was unchangeable and the veneration for its in- spired author would not permit the alteration of a single clause.
HIAWATHA AT THE COUNCIL.
At the head of this gathering sat Hiawatha, with his chief counsellor-or secretary of state, as we might call him-at his right hand. When Hiawa- tha's time for departure from this earth had come he went out on the bosom of the lake in 'a canoe, whereupon a large white bird, descending from the sky, carried him and his bont into the upper re- gions of the air, so that he was seen no more. His adviser died soon afterward, but the vacancies thus left in the council were never filled. There have always been, since that day, fifty places about the fire, but only forty-eight of them have ever been occupied by living men; in the other two are the invisible spirits, present though unseen. When it was desired to hold a couneil to determine sonie important question, which was almost always that of war or peace, runners were despatched from one end of the line to the other, who ran with almost incredible swiftness until they sank exhausted, when the message was taken up and carried on by others, like the fiery cross in the Scottish high- lands. Any one of the fifty could veto any propo- sition : but there was little danger or hope of that right being exerted pertinaciously, for each tribe voted as a unit and anyone who attempted to stand out against the opinion of his colleagues would he
sure to get into very serious trouble, either then or after he returned to his wigwam. The sachems were different from the war chiefs; one who held either office could not possibly hold the other Thus, to instance some persons of distinction, Joseph Brant, the Mohawk, and Red Jacket, the Seneca, were war chiefs but not sachems, while Ely S. Parker, who resided in Rochester for some time, was a sachem but not a chief. The chiefs had control only over the members of their own respective tribes, but in addition to them there were two principal war chiefs whose command em- braced the whole confederacy, and these were al- ways chosen from among the Senecas, the "keep- ers of the western door of the long house," as that was the side on which was thought to be the only danger of attack.
CONQUESTS OF THE IROQUOIS.
This was the famous League of the Iroquois. without which, or something of a similar nature, that confederation of tribes would never have be- come the irresistible force that terrorized the great- er portion of what are now the United States and Canada. Other Indians were just as ferocious, perhaps just as courageous, but no others had that peculiar combination of bravery, of endurance, of duplicity and of cruelty that enabled them to sub- due and to overawe all with whom they came in contact. The defense of their own territory against invasion occupied but little of their thought and time in more recent years, for long before that they had so completely intimidated their neighbors that they had small dread of at- tack. Their ancient enemies, the Algonquins, by whom they were surrounded on the south and the east-for that family embraced the Powhatan tribes of Virginia, as well as the Pequots, the Narragansetts and other tribes of New England -- had yielded complete submission to them, so that the Mohawk heralds had only to cross the Hudson river to receive the tribute that was always cheer- fully paid. Their hatred against the Hurons, though of their own lineage, seems to have been more intense than that toward any other tribe, and by frequent ineursions into Canada, generally crossing the lake where it narrowed into the St. Lawrence, they practically destroyed the nation- ality of that unfortunate people.
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
Oftentimes their very appearance would fill their foes with such consternation that a sanguinary conflict was not necessary, as was the case with the Delawares, who were so easily reduced to subjec- tion that petticoats were placed upon them to show that they were nothing but women. The wars in which the Iroquois were so incessantly en- gaged were not wars of conquest any more than of defense, for they wisely abstained from any ex- tension of their territory except as they made a few settlements in Canada on the shore of Lake On- tario and in Ohio on that of Lake Erie, but these were intended as outlying posts, to guard the frontier, rather than as any addition to their do- mam. They were inspired by a thirst for blood, a love of slaughter for its own sake, and when they had been seized with this insensate fury they would start ont upon their devastating course, to which all obstacles would be opposed in vain. h was nath- ing to them to rush westward to the Mississippi, with such speed that there could be no possible precursor of their approach, to attack the lowas anul the Ilinois with such force that those tribes were almost annihilated and to return homeward before any combination could be formed against them that should overwhelm them. South as well as west they would go; they struck the Cherokees upon the Tennessee, the Catawbas in South Caro- lina, and in every case the result would be the same: back they would come with long lines of reeking scalps about their necks and with trains of prisoners to be devoted to adoption, to slavery or to lingering death. This last was that in which they most delighted, for a fiendish cruelty was their predominant characteristic and their vast torture chamber extended through the length of the state. But not all of their captives went to the fire; many of them were adopted into the di !- ferent tribes, where they became at once full cit- izens, and it is remarkable that in very few in- stanres, practically none, did they waver in their fidelity to their new government, and in all sub- sequent forays they could be relied upon to be just as merciless in the assaults upon their real kin- dred as though they had never known them before.
THE NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE.
This system of adoption. constantly practised and often on a large scale, was necessary to keep
up the numbers of the Iroquois, for the natural in- crease of population would not have gone far to repair the Jossey caused by their incessant fighting and by the epidemics of disease that sometimes raged among them, so that without this artificial growth the nation would have become extinct long ago. Even with that the number of the Iroquois was always surprisingly, almost incredibly small when one considers the widespread ruin that they wrought. The exact number is, of course, un- knowable, but it is extremely improbable that it ever amounted to as much as 20,000, and it often fell far below that." This would give a force of not more than 3,000 capable of fighting, and of these it would not do to send more than half far away from home at any one time, for a consider- able number must be retained to guard the long line of wigwams with their female and juvenile occupants; otherwise some wily foe, knowing of their unprotected condition, would pounce down upon them and all would be lost. What they sent into the field was generally no more than what we should consider an advanced guard, and it Is known that in that expedition in which they broke the power of the Illinois there were only six hun- dred warriors, as opposed to many times that num- ber of the western Indians. Their matchless du- plicity forestalled all preparations against them, the celerity of their movements anticipated sus- picion, and the impetuosity of their onset, usually at night, bore down all resistance.
GENTILE RELATIONSHIP.
Their unbroken succession of victories was rend- ered possible only by the cordial co-operation of
"This estimate of their numbers is made upon careful com parium of different authors. With the exception of that of La Hontan, the Frenchman, who lived among them at an early day and whose estimate of 70.000 is nothing but a wild guess. the highest number given is that by Morgan, who thinks that there were at one time 23.000, in which reckoning he is fol- lowest by Fiske. but without any consideration of the evidence. Morgan probably relied upon the information of his Indian friends, who would not hesitate to exaggerate and who cer. tainly were not exact. Greenhalgh, an Englishman, who trav eled alone through this region in the seventeenth century, thought there were about 95,000, basing bis calculation upon the number of tepees and fres that he saw at Tottakton (now Honeoye Falls, in this county), but he destroys the value of this supposition by the explicit statement that there were only 2.150 warriors in the confederacy, of whom one thousand were Senecas. Bancroft thinks that there were 17,000 after the Tun- caroray joined the league. The lowest estimate is that of Sur William Johnson, the superinten lent of Indian affairs for the British government. who calculated that there were 10,000 of them in 1763, which was probably rather low, though they had greatly declined in population at that time. Parkman, who is the best authority of all, makes the number between 10,000 and 12,000, which computation he arrives at from the statemen's in the New York Colonial Documents, edited by ['r. O'Callaghan, and the frequent assertions on the subject in the "Jesuit Rela. tions."
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
all the tribes, without regard to which one would be most benefited or which had received some provocation, real or imaginary. But that impreg- nable solidarity could not have existed were it not for the singular custom of gentile relationship which existed among them, Our distinguished townsman, the late Lewis HI. Morgan, who became one of the most eminent ethnologists of his time, was interested at an early age in Indian matters and spent a great deal of his time among them, so that at last he became thoroughly versed in their history, their language and their mode of life. He noticed that there was a well recognized relation- ship among them that was not apparent from or- dinary observation, that those were considered brothers of each other, or brothers and sisters, where there was no kinship whatever from our point of view. Patient and persistent inquiry re- vealed the fact that this idea was not a whim and was not confined to any one tribe but that it was a sociological system extending through the whole confederacy, so that these lines of imaginary rela- tionship stretched transversely across the tribal lines. For instance, there was the clan (or, as Morgan preferred to call it, the gens) of the Wolf, that of the Bear and that of the Turtle, which were found in every tribe; that of the Beaver and that of the Snipe, which were in four tribes; that of the Deer and that of the Eel, which were in three tribes; of the Hawk, in two tribes, of the Heron and of the Ball, in one tribe each. No per- son could by any possibility marry or mate with one of the same gens; if it were attempted deat'ı was meted out at once to the offending couple. Thus, while those not thus related could freely in- termarry in the same tribe as well as in different tribes, a Seneca Bear, for instance, could not mar- ry a Mobawk Bear from the other end of the line, hundreds of miles away, even though the ancestors, near and remote, of the one had never seen those of the other. They were brother and sister be- cause they were Bears; that was enough. This law of consanguinity welded the confederation to- gether as nothing else could have done, for it made it impossible for one tribe to war against another. since in that case brother would have had to fight against brother. It might be supposed that this gentile subdivision was made after the division in- to tribes; on the contrary. it long antedated that. The theory was that all the members of any one
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