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 3
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gens were descended from a common ancestor, who lived in the distant past, but whether it was really believed that that progenitor was the beast or bird whose name was thus perpetuated, or whether the appellation was recognized as only symbolic, was never elearly made out, for the Indians were al. ways reticent on that point. This remarkable system, so foreign to all our ideas, was thoroughly elaborated and brought out by Morgan in his cel- ebrated work entitled "The League of the Iro- quois," which at once excited the greatest interest among the educated people of the world.
FEMALE INHERITANCE.
Another point that Morgan brought out in that book was that inheritance was in the female line. The Iroquois were not the first people to adopt that rule; semi-civilized nations, like the Turks, have always recognized the fact that paternity was a matter of belief, while maternity was a matter of certainty, and it remained for civilized races to assume that parentage on one side was as well Fettled as that on the other, But the Iroquois car- ried the principle to its very furthest conceivable limit. A man was not only the son of his mother and not of his father, but on that very account he belonged to the gens of his mother, not to that of his father. This led to the strangest conclusions. For instance, all the sacheinships in the council were hereditary, but that very rule, so far from causing a son to succeed his father, made it int- possible for him to do so. Inheritance was un- derstood to be gentile, not personal, in its nature, and it was only necessary that the new sachen should belong to the same gens with the deceased. While he could never succeed his father he might easily follow his grandfather. for the son (as we should consider him), belonging, as he did, to the gens of his mother, say that of the Heron, might marry into the gens of the Bear, to which his father belonged, so that the person of the third generation would be a Bear and might without dif- ficulty step into the office of his grandfather os the mother's side. That frequently happened.
A more amusing illustration of the workings of the system was in the matter of adoption into the tribe. In the case of captives it would usually be the females who would adopt the male prisoners; but in some instances it might be that a man,
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
perhaps childish himself. wished to become a putative father, but it would not be into his gens that the new citizen would enter. After Morgan had won the confidence and esteem of the Senecas, Jim- my Johnson, a chief, the grandson of Red Jacket, wished to adopt him, and so, at a grand council of the confederacy, held in the "long house" in 1847, the white man was with much ceremony received into the tribe and became a Hawk, because that was the gens of Johnson's squaw, while Johnson himself was a Wolf. To the new-comer was given an appropriate Indian name signifying "one lying across," indicating that he would be the means of communication between the two races, an expecta- tion which he well fulfilled in later years.
CONDITION OF WOMEN.
The status of women among the Iroquois was peculiar. In some ways they had more power than the men. Being considered the sole parents of the family, so that all their property passed at death to the children, while the belongings of the father all went to his gentile kindred, the mothers were the ones who naturally had to do with what little training of the young there was and they ex- erted through life a preponderating influence over their offspring. They possessed the elective fran- chise and voted on equal terms with the men for sachems and war chiefs. But their supreme power lay in the disposition of prisoners. There their will was absolute, and they meted out death or slavery or adoption according to their arbitrary caprice. In neighboring tribes the same rule prevailed, and one instance will serve to show the extent to which that power could be carried. The Eries, who dwelt near the lake of their naine, had in some way taken prisoner a young chief of the Onondagas, and it was determined that he should] be held at the disposal of a girl of his own age who had recently lost a brother. No one doubted that she would adopt him, which was usual in such cases, but when she returned from a tempor- ary absence she insisted that he should be put to death ; the Iroquois had killed her brother, now let one of that nation pay for it with his life. In vain did the old chiefs, who foresaw the doom that was impending, entreat her to forego her pur- pose ; nothing but blood and torture could appease her thirst for revenge. Relentless custom held its
course, the victim was slowly burned to death, an.] a few weeks later the blow fell, when the infuriat- ed Iroquois hurled themselves upon the Eries and exterminated the whole nation, men, women and children. As an offset to all that authority the women were constantly subjected to the most brut- al treatment on the part of their husbands, who were their masters, the lords of life and death. All the hard work except the fighting was done by them, they were liable to be abandoned without warning. to be beaten unmercifully at any mo- ment, even to be killed in a fit of passion, after which suitable gifts could be made to the rela- tions of the murdered woman and that would end the matter.
IROQUOIS NOMENCLATURE.
The Indian names of places so thickly scattered over this county and elsewhere in the state have excited much interest and one naturally asks as to the meaning to each term, it being assumed, cor- rectly enough, that each name has a distinct ang- nification and is not arbitrary, as with us. But the trouble is that the name, while usually descriptive, is only vaguely so and might apply to a great number of localities or features of the landscape with equal propriety. It was unquestionably often used in that indiscriminate way, but the confusion that might result from the frequent repetition of names has been avoided by the fact that the same word would be differently pronounced by different tribes, and the Dutch, in the eastern part, would reproduce those various sounds in their own way, while the French would understand them in a dif- ferent way and the English in still another, and again, if, as frequently happened, the English re- ceived them through the medium of one of the other European languages, they would be per- verted from that form and a further variety would be created, and all out of one original word. The name of our river, which means, in a general way, "a beautiful open valley." has been spelled in many different styles, from Chin-u-shio, which 14 its proper form, to Genesee, This applied only to the upper part of the stream, above the rapids; from there down to its mouth it was called Cas- ronchiagon, to which several different meanings have been attached, of which Morgan's* "under
*My friend Howard L, Orgood, who is well versed in Indian antiquities, contributes the following note, indicating that the
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
the falls" is as good as any. No one name has had so many conformations as that of the bay near the mouth of the river. The late George H. Harris found thirty-one varieties, all of which he gave several years ago. The most cacophonous of these is Gerundegut, which was quite commonly used even within the lifetime of the present writer, but which has happily given way entirely to Irondequoit, the best though by no means the oldest of the shapes.
The name used by themselves for the tribe that occupied this region was never employed by the whites. The earliest appearance of our word is on a Duteh map of 1614, where it is printed Sennecas. For some reason the English generally altered that to Sinnekees, but for the last hundred years it has had its present form of Senecas. The ancient word Tsonnontouans was commonly ap- plied to them by the French, and by no others. Our great lake was mentioned by the pioneer Fa- ther Hennepin more than two centuries ago as Ontario, though he says that it was also "called in the Iroquois language Skanadario (evidently the same word), meaning 'a very pretty lake.'" The English frequently in official documents, like treaties, called it Cadaracqui, but after the Revo- lution the name went back to the beautiful form of the missionary.
THEIR HOUSES AND THEIR ROADS.
Although the Senecas became the most popu- lous of all the tribes there were never more than a few thousand of them, so that they had not many villages. There was only one in what is now Monroe county, and that, which was the second in size, was called Totiakton, being on the site of the present Honeoye Falls. Like other villages, it consisted of a number of houses one story in height, made of upright poles with others fastened to them transversely by means of withes, the whole structure, sides and roof, being covered with bark, fastened by strings or splints. There
dwellings, the forerunners of our modern apart- ment houses, contained several families, each of which occupied only one room, no matter how many members there might be. Between the two ' rows of these rooms or bunking-places ran a pass- age-way in which fires for warmth and for cook- ing by were kept burning, usually one fire for four families, the smoke escaping through holes in the roof. The nearest approach to a census would be by counting the number of fires and computing accordingly; in that way Greenhalgh, the traveler, estimated, in 1677, that the population of Totiak- ton was a little over a thousand.
Among the Romans a publie road was always in # straight line, among the Iroquois always in a crooked line. The trail was never more than fifteen inches wide, often only a foot. Any nat- ural obstacle, like a tree, a rock or a stream, would cause it to diverge, while any large open space would completely divert the course, the tangles of the forest being better than exposure. The main trail of the confederacy was from Black Rock, on the Niagara river, to a point on the Hudson a little below Albany, erossing the Genesee near Avon, so that it did not enter Monroe county at all. This path, which was the principal line of communication for the successors of the Iroquois till it was paralleled by eanal and railroad, is stiil traveled and is known as the "old state road." There were many subordinate trails in this imme- diate vicinity, most of them leading to the river. One Jine came from the east over what is now the Pittsford road, one branch reaching the river at the foot of the Ridge road and another being perpet- uated by East avenue and Franklin street. An- other trail went from the ford of the river near Elmwood avenue, over Mt. Hope, where its mem- ory, is preserved by the name of Indian Trail ave- nue .* On the west side a much-traveled path came to the river by the way of Scottsville and Chili, reaching the stream in the Genesee Valley park, and another came down through Plymouth avenne to arrive at the spring back of where the First Presbyterian church now stands, the natural fountain giving its name to the street till the present day.
name was applied also to the land in the vicinity of the falls: "La Salle and two companions were the first white men to navigate the south shore of Lake Ontario. In 1669 they found the Inwer Genesee desgnated Goskounchiskons. As with nearly all Indian names, this word specified a peculiarity of the place whereby a traveler could recognize it. Pouchot, one hundred years later, calls the locality "Cosconchacon, Les Trois Chantes." The Senecas still give the same name to Rochester. John Maude relates in 1800 that he went behind the sheet of falling water of the highest Genesee fall Early residents said that the river could nearly be crossed behind the lower fall. Gaskonsagon (with French pronunciation) means 'where one can go behind the waterfall.''
"Some authorities maintain that this is only a myth. Invented In account for the name of that path, holding that the portage must have been by way of llsghland avenue. after leaving Etinwood, and so down to Irondequoit creek, the reason given for that theory being that the Indians never went over a hill if they could find level ground to take them to their destina- tion. no matter how ci-"wtous might be the route.
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THE LOWER FALLS OF THE GENESEE.
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
THEIR RELIGION.
The religion of the Iroquois was primitive an l yet more elaborate than might be expected. It was based on a fundamental belief in the immor- tality of the soul, with future rewards and pun- ishments. It was extremely polytheistic, for they had deities for all the forces of nature and for the various products of the earth, a spirit of tobacco, a spirit of the maize and a spirit of the squash. Over all these was the mighty Manitou, to whom they looked up in awe and fear and hope for all the blessings that might come upon them. These they endeavored to obtain by ceremonial observ- ances, by prolonged feasts and sometimes by sol- emn sacrifices, more notably that of a white dog, the last of which rituals among the Senecas took place in Rochester in 1813 on the elevation of ground at the corner of Caledonia avenue and Troup street. On all these occasions the dance formed a prominent feature in the ceremony. It was never rapid, usually very slow and always rhythmic in its movement. It had nothing joyous
about it, for it was purely a religious ceremony an.l never in the nature of recreation, their pastimes consisting of ball games, the game of javelins the game of deer buttons and the peach stone game, to all of which they were much addicted. They had a certain code of morality, but they had many vices and after they had acquired the love of drink- ing their degradation was very deep.
This habit threatened their utter ruin, from which they were saved by a remarkable reforma- tion or revival that spread among them, at least among the Senecas, about 1800. In that year there arose among them a prophet, named Ga-ne-o-di-yo, or Handsome Lake, a sachem of great influence and of wonderful oratorical power. He preached of righteousness and of judgment to come, de- nouncing their wickedness, urging upon them the practice of what we call the golden rule and ex- horting them above all things to abstain entirely from the use of liquor. This teaching was pro- ductive of the highest good, then and for long afterward, so that, while the hopes of the great rc- former were never fully realized, his people are better to-day for his having lived among them.
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CHAPTER II
THE WHITE MEN COME IN.
The Early Explorers-Jacques Cartier, Champlain and LaSalle-The Jesuit Missionaries-Inva- sion by Denonville-The English Get Control- Sullivan's Campaign-Burial of Patriotic Re- mains-Phelps and Gorham's Purchase from Massachusetts-And from the Indians-Sale to the Holland Land Company-Claim of the Og- den Land Company-Present Condition of the Senecas.
THE EXPLORERS.
We have seen, in the preceding pages, that the first contact of the Iroquois with the white men may have been when Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1535 and met them at what is now called Montreal, then Hochelaga. That is how- ever, only a matter of probability ; what is a matter of certainty is that if that was the first meeting of the races the next contact was far less friendly. Seventy-four years later, Samuel de Cham- plain, who had come over to be the founder of Canada, fearing, rightly enough, that his little colony at Quebec would be menaced by his warlike neighbors on this side of the lake, gathered to- gether a considerable body of Hurons and Algon- quins and crossed into New York. The Mohawks met the invaders with determined courage, on the shore of the lake which still bears the name of the Canadian governor. The conflict was not long in doubt and our Indians had to retreat, not van- quished by their savage foes of their own color, but terrified by the explosive weapons of the white
men, the destructive effect of which they then ex- perienced for the first time. Although the victory was with the French they had reason to regret it in later years, for it engendered a feeling of vin- dictive animosity in the hearts of the Mohawky through succeeding generations. Champlain's in- terpreter was Etienne Brulé, who seems to have been a natural explorer, for after this battle he made his way alone down the Susquehanna river from its source to its month. On his return he was held as a prisoner by the Iroquois for two years but finally got away from them and made his way into Canada. It is extremely probable that he passed through this region, as that lay directly in his way, and, if so, he was the first white man who ever set foot within the limits of Monrue county.
A more agreeable visit was that of another Frenchman, in 1669, when Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, landed at Irondequoit bay. He, too, was bound on a peaceful and fascinating mission of exploration, for he was determined to find a way to China by journeying in the direction of the setting sun. He was detained in this neighborhood for a month by the lack of guides and it would have heen as well if he had not had them at all, for his expedition ended disastrously. Nine years later he tried it again, and though he never found the Celestial empire he opened up to the world the great West before he laid down his life in the dis- tant South. On that second visit here he was ac- compained by Father Hennepin, that acute ob- server who gave us the first description of Niagara falls ever written.
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
THE MISSIONARIES.
Between these two explorers, Brulé and La Salle, the soldiers of the eross had penetrated to this portion of the state. The Franciscan and Recollet friars had been a little west of here in the early part of the century, but they were peri- patetie and made no settled location. It was in 1656 that the Jesuits established a mission among the Onondagas. and a few months later they plant- ed a sub-station among the Senecas in Ontario county. At the head of this was Father Chau- monot, a devoted priest of great oratorical powers, who traversed this section, coming undoubtedly in- to this immediate region, for he met with much success wherever he went. While many of the Indians felt the utmost good will toward the strangers, others were so bitter against them that a conspiracy was formed for the simultaneous massacre of all of them, in consequence of which they were suddenly recalled to Canada and were fortunate in escaping with their lives.
For the next ten years, as there was incessant warfare during that time, there were no more of the evangelists, but in 1668 Father Fremin, the superior of the Jesuits, came here and established a mission at what he called Tsonnontouan, though whether he meant that appellation to apply to some particular village, like Totiakton, or to the whole country of the Senecas, as the name was often used by the French, is uncertain. He was much beloved and of great influence, for, during his year's stay, he baptized one hundred and twenty converts, mostly adults, besides strengthening the faith of the numerous Huron captives, who had been previously converted in Canada. Before he left he summoned to his assistance Father Garnier who after the departure of his superior was left in charge of the four Seneca villages, inelnding, besides Totiskton, one where Lima and one where East Bloomfield are now located. Father Raffeix and Father Pierrou also came, the former To- maining for ten years, after which Father Garnier remained alone till 1684, when he was recalled and the sheep were again left without a shepherd. The last one may be called emphatically the missionary to the Senecas, while Father Raffeix belongs more peculiarly to Monroe county, as he was stationed at Totiakton, now Honeoye Falls. Soon after that the colonial legislature at Albany passed a law ex.
cluding Catholic priests from the state, and in 1708 the last of the missionaries of that faith de- parted. For our knowledge of their labors, of their patient endurance and of the heroje death of many of them, as well as for a thousand valuable details of the life and customs of the Indians, both in this state and in Canada, we are indebted to the "Jesuit Relations," a series of voluminous re- ports, written and sent over, during a period of sixty years, to the general of the society in Eu- rope and fully translated into English only a few years ago.
DENONVILLE'S EXPEDITION.
We have noted the deep resentment inspired among the Iroquois by Champlain's victory over them in 1609, and this was reinforced by the grow- ing conviction that in the struggle for supremacy over the northern part of this continent, which was constantly going on between France and Eng- land, the latter would eventually succeed. Self- interest prompted their inclinations, with the re- sult that there was always hostility, with mutual invasions of territory, between the powers on dif- ferent sides of the St. Lawrence and Lake On- tario. De le Barre, one of the governors of Can- ada, had made a somewhat humiliating peace with the Iroquois, and with a view to retrieve that dis- grace, as well as to provide seenrity for the fu- ture, his successor, the Marquis de Denonville,* in vaded the Seneca country in 1687. For that pur- pose he collected a force of nearly three thousand men, most of them being Canadian militia, with more than eight hundred French regulars, together with a large number of redskins-Huron, Al- gonquin, Ottawa, Sioux and Illinois-and some two hundred coureurs des bois ("runners of the woods"), French by birth, but Indian in their habits, their dress, their independence of all au- thority, and really the most effective fighters in a campaign of this sort.
Landing at Irondequoit bay on the 10th of July, Denonville erected some palisades to protect a small rear guard with the boats and armny supplies.
"This name has been so often given incorrectly by American authors, who have persisted in calling it De Nonville, that the present writer feels justified in directing attention to its trise form, which is as given above and as used by Parkman, one of the few who have had it right. In the archives still preserved in Paris the governor always signs his name in that manner, and Louis XIV, invariably addresses him as Monsieur de De- nunville or Marquis de Denonville.
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HISTORY OF ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY.
Pushing on into the interior, he found only sol- itude, which ought to have warned him though it did not, and when he had got to what is now Boughton's Hill, near the village of Victor, On- tario county, the army fell into an ambush of three hundred Senecas. The blood-curdling yells of the savages threw the European veterans into a panic and it was mainly the courage of the Hurons in resisting the attack that prevented a disastrous rout. The Senecas were finally driven back, car- rying their wounded and many of their dead, after which Denonville spent ten days in killing the animals and destroying the growing crops of the Indians; then he read aloud at Totiakton a proc- lamation hy which he took possession of the whole country in the name of France, and after that per- formance he went back to Canada the way he came. The losses of the two sides, by death, were abont equal, but to avenge the insult the Iroquois crossed the lake a year later, slaughtered a thousand of the French and brought the whole colony to the very brink of ruin.
THE BRITISH SUPREMACY.
For some time the English colonial governors were content with assuming, though not exercising, jurisdiction as far west as Irondequoit bay. On the west side of that inlet the French had erected a structure which they called Fort des Sables (Fort of the Sands), a name still borne in part by the sand-bar of the present day. It was little more than a trading-post, for the reception of goods on the one side and furs on the other. for it was occupied, in the winter season at least, by only two soldiers and a trader. It was the name, rather than the thing itself, that excited resent- ment among the English authorities, by whom a message was sent to the French fort at. Niagara, protesting against encroachiments on the lands of the Senceas, who were then considered as being under British protection. Little attention was paid to this, and things went on as before. As an offset to this building a fort was erected on the east side of Irondequoit erek, which was occu- pied for a time by Captain Peter Schuyler and a company of volunteers. Various inter-racial coun- cils were held at Albany, with treaties drawn up and signed by many Indians of the three western- most tribes, but they were so vague in their terma
as to be of little value. The only one worth any- thing was the latest, in 1741, signed by three Sen- eca sachems, by which, in consideration of the payment of one hundred pounds, a grant of land was conveyed to King George the Second, begin- ning six miles east of "Tierondequat," running thirty miles along the lake shore and then extend- ing thirty miles inland, so that it included the greater part of what is now Monroe county.
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