History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 5

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826

USA > New York > Steuben County > History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 5

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Tioga ( present Athens, Pa.) was made the southern en- trance to the confederacy, at which a sachem was stationed, without whose consent no one, neither Indian nor white man, was allowed to enter the territory of the Iroquois. At Shamokin (present Sunbury) the great council had a viceroy, a Cayuga sachem, who ruled their dependencies in the South.

Along the Delaware River, and extending across New Jersey, were the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, divided into three tribes, -the Turtles, or Unamis, on the south, the Tur- keys, or Unalachtgos, in the centre, and the Wolves, or Min- sis, on the north. The latter had their villages in the Minisink country, on the head-waters of the Delaware, and were generally called by the English Monseys. By conquest, as was claimed by the Iroquois, by treachery, as was alleged by the Delawares, the former had reduced the latter to the condition of vassals, deprived them of the right of warriors, and compelled them to bear the taunt and assume the garh of women. They were allowed neither to sell lands, engage in war, nor make treaties, unless by the consent of their domineering masters. Mr. Craft, with his usual discrimi- nation, has pointed out the fact that it was owing quite as much to this condition of complete subjugation of his In- dian neighbors as to the peaceable character of his Quaker policy, that the province of Penn was so long exempt from the bloody wars and massacres which form so dark a page in our colonial history .*

The Indians instinctively withdraw from the presence of civilization. This peculiarity of Indian character completely frustrated the benevolent plan of William Penn, in which he designed that his white and red brethren should dwell together in the same community and be governed by the same laws. It was found to be equally necessary in the

* History of Bradford County, p. 11.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

province, as it had been in the other colonics, that the In- dian must retire beyond the white settlements, to whose laws and customs he could not conform and whose restraints he could not endure. As the Iroquois from time to time sold the land of their dependencies to the whites, they opened the valley of the Susquehanna as an asylum to which the people whom they had deprived of their ancestral homes, and over whom they exercised the right of protection as well as command, might resort. By this policy families of different nationalities were brought into the same village and not unfrequently were occupants of the same wigwam, so that it was no uncommon thing to find Nanticokes, Mo- hieans, Monseys, and Wampanoags living together, without any tribal distinction whatever. This gave rise to the term " vagabond Indians," so appropriately applied to mixed and transient settlements of the fragments of different disinte- grated tribes in the Susquehanna valley, and particularly within the limits of the county of Steuben. Says Rev. Mr. Craft : "Tioga, or, as it is more frequently written in the Pennsylvania records, 'Diahoga,' from its important situation in the Iroquois territory, was probably occupied as a town immediately after the conquest ; but from there to Shamokin the country was almost entirely unoccupied for a hundred years, when it was colonized by the refugees whose possessions had been sold to the whites."

The Iroquois and Delawares have each a tradition of an early eastward emigration from regions west of the Missis- sippi to the places where they were found by the Europeans. The period of our later Indian history finds that wave re- turning towards the setting sun. It is, therefore, a period of commotion among tribes easily excited, of removal and change among a people who, in the most quiet times, abandoned the places of their habitation for the most trivial reasons.

Mohicans and Wampanoags from Southeastern New York and New England, Delawares from New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, Nanticokes, Tuscaroras, and Shaw- nees from the South, pushed from their ancient homes by the rapacity of the white man, were seeking new homes and fresh hunting-grounds, where they would henceforth be free from encroachment. To the Iroquois the native fugitives looked for defense from the grasping policy of the whites, and for counsel and permission as to where they should fix their future seats. It happened, therefore, that during this period this tide of western emigration was pushing up both branches of the Susquehanna, in order to pour itself' upon the great plains between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, only to be forced still farther West by the advancing tide of civilization. During the later por- tion of this period the " vagabond Indians" probably occu- pied the few town sites which have been discovered within the limits of Steuben County. It will throw some light upon this subject to consider some of the Indian settle- ments which are well known to have existed in the adjacent valleys near the period of settlement by the whites.

In the spring of 1750, Cammerhoff, a bishop of the Moravian Church, in company with the intrepid Zeis- berger, passed up the Susquehanna from Wyoming to Tioga, en route for Onondaga, in order to negotiate with the Great Council for the establishment of missions among

the Iroquois. They were accompanied by a Cayuga chief and his family. When they reached the vicinity of Wyah- sing, the remains of an old town were still visible, which the Cayuga said was called " Go-hon-to-to," inhabited by a tribe speaking a strange language, neither Delaware nor Iroquois, called by the latter "Te-ho-toch-se" ( Andastes), upon whom the Five Nations made war and wholly exter- minated them. For nearly a century this " blood-stained field" seems to have been abandoned as a habitation ; although being at the junction of two important trails, it may have been the temporary residence of wandering parties.

In 1752,* Papunhauk, a Monsey chief of some note, from the Minisink country, with a number of families, emigrated to Wyalusing, and built a new town a little below the site of the old Gohontoto. It was probably abandoned during the French war.+ On the Wysaukin plains a party of Shawanes stopped for a time, built their huts and planted their corn, but the number of the party and the time of their settlement and removal are unknown. The settlement was located nearly opposite the mouth of Towanda Creek. Cammerhoff and Zeisberger encamped here, after a fa- tiguing journey of fifteen miles up the rapid current of the Susquehanna, swollen by recent rains, and named the spot the " Garden of Roses," on account of the profusion of wild roses which loaded the air with their fragrance. On the evening of Sept. 30, 1767, Zeisberger spent the night here in an empty Delaware hut, but, he adds, " no one lives here now." He calls the place the " Wisach."

In August, 1748, the Nanticokes (tide-water people), almost the entire nation, abandoned their ancestral home on the eastern shore of Maryland, and moved northward, fol- lowing the course of the Susquehanna. They settled prin- cipally at "Shamunk" (Chemung) and " Zemuge" (Che- nango). In the course of this migration a party of them stopped for a time on the Towanda Flats. Opposite Tioga Point, on the west side of the river, was Queen Esther's town, which was probably built not far from 1770. It at- tracted attention during the Revolutionary war, because of the prominence acquired by the notorious woman whose name it bears.

At the junction of the Chemung and Susquehanna Rivers was " Diahoga" (Tioga), the oldest, most populous and important Indian town in this whole region of country. It was the door into the territory proper of the Iroquois Confederacy. To it all the great trails centered. All persons who entered this territory except by this door or the Mohawk, were considered and treated as spies and enemies. Here was stationed a Cayuga sachem, who, in the figurative lan- guage of the nation, guarded this door of their Long House, and whoever entered their country must first ob- tain permission. It was the place of rendezvous for war- parties going out on their expeditions, and to this point prisoners were brought to be disposed of according to the customs of the League, either to be put to death with the most cruel tortures, or adopted into the family of some slain warrior, thenceforth to forget former home and kindred, and be received in all respects into the place of his former

# Pennsylvania Archives, iii. 736.

t Journal of Moses Tatemy and Isaac Hill.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

enemy. The population of this town was predominantly Iroquois, although in later times the inhabitants were con- siderably mixed. Weiser reached this town March 29, 1737. In his journal he says : " There are many Indians living here, partly Gaiukers (Cayugas), partly Mahikanders (Mohicans). We went into several huts to get meat, but they had nothing, as they said, for themselves. The men were mostly absent hunting ; some of the old mothers asked us for bread. We returned to our quarters with a Mahik- ander, who directed his old gray-headed mother to cook a soup of Indian corn. She hung a large kettle of it over the fire, and also a smaller one with potash, and made them both boil briskly. What she was to do with the potash was a mystery to me, for I soon saw it was not for the pur- pose of washing, as some of the Indians are in the prac- tice of doing, by making a lye and washing their foul and dirty clothes. For the skin of her body was not unlike the bark of a tree, from the dirt which had not been washed off for a long time, and was quite dried in and cracked, and her finger-nails were like eagle's claws. She finally took the ash-kettle off the fire and put it aside until it had settled, and left a clear liquor on top, which she carefully poured into the kettle of corn. I inquired of my companions why this was done, and they told me it was the practice of these and the Shawanos, when they had neither meat nor grease, to mix their food with lye prepared in this manner, which made it slippery and pleasant to eat. When the soup was thus prepared, the larger portion was given to us, and out of hunger I quietly eat a portion which was not of bad taste. The dirty cook and unclean vessels were more re- pulsive. . . . The Indians eat so much of this soup that they became sick."

In 1743, this Indian settlement was visited by John Bartram, the celebrated English botanist, in company with Lewis Evans, Conrad Weiser, and Indian guides. They were on their way from Philadelphia to Onondaga and Os- wego. The Indian house, or house of the viceroy, at which they were welcomed by the beating of drums, after the manner of the English, is described " as about thirty feet long, and the finest of any among them." The Indians cut long grass and spread it on the floor for their guests to sit upon. Several of themu sat down and smoked their pipes, " one of' which was six feet long, the head of stone, and the stem of a reed." After this they brought victuals in the usual manner .*

The town of " Diaboga" continued, until the French war, inhabited partly by Mohicans and partly by Cayugas. During the French war, in which both the Delawares and the Iroquois were involved, it was the place of rendezvous for the forces which laid waste the whole northern frontier of Pennsylvania. Here Tee-dy-as-eung plotted and planned those expeditions by which he exacted the price in blood for the land on the forks of the Delaware, from which he had been so haughtily driven a few years before. For a time the town was temporarily abandoned. In 1758 it is reported, "All the houses in this town are in ruins; no Indian lives there." After the treaty of Easton it was re- built, and in 1760 is spoken of as a flourishing town.

CHAPTER IV.

INDIAN OCCUPANCY OF STEUBEN COUNTY.

Ponehot's Map of 1758-Indian Trails and Villages -- The Senecas- The Canisteo Castle-Expedition of Sir William Johnson-Mon- tour and Brant-Treaty with the King of Canisteo-Battle be- tween the Canisteos and Senceas.

THE French explored this region from the west, prob- ably from Fort Niagara, a post which, throughout the border wars which raged occasionally till the close of the Revolu- tion, was the headquarters in the West. Near the close of the French war, the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers were first made known to geographers in a map known as Pouchot's map, found in the " Paris Documents," a collec- tion of reports, etc., made by the French officers and others during colonial times in this country. Capt. Pouehot was a veteran engineer officer of the French army, stationed at Fort Niagara. He prepared, in 1758, from information re- ceived chiefly from the Indians, a map of the English and French possessions in North America, aud transmitted it to the war minister at Paris. In doing so he warned the latter, that " the outlets which the English possess by way of the Mohawk River and Canisteo, will tempt them always to come and settle on the south shore of Lake Ontario. The country being very fine and fit for cultivation, they will make large settlements. Placing the Five Nations and the Delawares in their rear, they would be masters of them, and would attract other nations by their commerce."

The Canisteo on this map is made to extend clear to the Susquehanna, the true outlet of which is given in the Chesapeake Bay. The map shows a pretty good idea of the country, and how wide and generally accurate was the geographical knowledge of the Indians. The French, too, had a special reason for studying the geography of the country thoroughly, and seizing upon all its most import- ant strategical points in order to circumvent the plans of the English colonists, and confine them to a narrow strip of country on the Atlantic coast. All the principal rivers leading into the interior and opening an avenue into the rich valleys south of the lakes, were looked upon as avenues for their rivals, and their situations were well understood and jealously guarded in the establishment of most of their military and trading posts.

The Kanestio was well known at Fort Niagara, and is frequently alluded to in official correspondence. One of the great trails which traversed the Iroquois Confederacy led from the Genesee River to the head of the Canisteo, thence down that valley to the Susquehanna and to the head of Seneca Lake. The map indicates an Indian village on the site of the present white settlement of Canisteo, and an- other where Painted Post now stands. . . . At that time the Conhocton flowed through a trackless wilderness. One solitary Indian trail passed along its banks, and was inter- sected by a north and south trail from the head of Crooked Lake. The chief Indian paths at that time ran from Oneida through Onondaga to the Seneca River, at Cayuga, thence to Canandaigua, Geneseo, and to Fort Schlosser, on the Niagara River. From Geneseo a path ran south to the Allegany River, and thence north to the Canisteo, at the confluence of Bennett's Creek. At that time the territory

* Observations, etc , by John Bartram, London, 1751.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

west of Crooked Lake was unexplored by the white man. In a map drawn by Guy Johnson, in 1771, it is written, " There are more lakes hereabouts, but they cannot be laid down with certainty."

The Senecas were the original owners of these lands. They were looked upon in the confederacy as the " Western Door," through which all communications from the West must be made to the nation. Hence we find Sir William Johnson addressing them as follows : " You have always been looked upon as the door of the Six Nations, where all news, especially from the westward and southward, must enter aud go out." The principal village of the Senecas was near the Genesee River, about twenty miles from Iron- dequoit Bay. In 1770 the Senecas were the most numer- ous of the Six Nations; they could number about one thousand fighting men. For a long time they resisted every application of the provincial governors for permission to build a fort at Irondequoit, in their country, but finally consented. In another chapter will be found the history of Gen. Sullivan's expedition into their country, in 1779, their disastrous defeat, and the destruction of their chief town, Little Beardstown, consisting of one hundred and fifty houses. This town was situated on the eastern side of the Genesee River, in a beautiful valley, which was covered with extensive corn-fields, which were all destroyed by the invading army.

During the colonial period there was a noted settlement of Indians on the Canisteo, near the site of the present village of that name. At what time they settled there is uncertain, but it was many years before our Revolution and some time after the conquest of the Delawares by the Iroquois. The clan of Indians which lived there at the time when written history first alludes to them was of Delaware extraction, reduced to a low state of degradation. To them had joined themselves a few deserters from the British army, with a sprinkling of fugitive slaves, escaped conviets, and refugees from various Indian tribes, making altogether a class fitly designated by the great council at Onondaga as " stragglers from all nations."

In 1762 two of these Canisteo brigands murdered, some- where in the Seneca country, two British subjects, Dutch traders from Albany, whose goods were confiscated by them, and probably carried to their village at Canisteo. Sir Wil- liam Johnson, the English governor on the Mohawk, made prompt requisition of the head men of the Iroquois league to have the murderers brought to justice. The chiefs made fair promises, but the murderers managed to escape. Ne- gotiations on the subject continued through many months. Lieut. Gny Johnson, the aide to the English governor, who made formal complaint to the council at Onondaga, reported to his commander that, after stating the facts to the chiefs in solemn session, the chief sachem went through the cere- mony of plucking the thorn from their feet, and clearing their sight by wiping away the tears which must have been shed on the late melancholy occasion, which he declared gave their nation the utmost concern. The matter was held under consideration for several days, Lieut. Johnson pressing his demand for the surrender of the murderers energetically. Finally, on the seventh day, an answer of the council was given by Teyawarunte, chief speaker of

the Onondagas, to the effect that the confederacy ought not to be charged with a breach of friendly relations with the English on account of the acts of a pair of misereants from a village like -Canisteo, composed of stragglers from all nations. But as the murderers were under the jurisdic- tion of the Senecas he requested that Sir William Johnson should wait till they were heard from; and if the Senecas, on due requisition, did not deliver up the offenders the other tribes would apprehend them.

Lieut. Johnson accepted this reasonable answer, and the next day a Seneea Indian, then at Onondaga, was sent to convey to his nation the demand of the council for the sur- render of the murderers. We quote here the words of Judge McMaster, in his Centennial Address, delivered at Bath : " The upper nations received the summons of the chiefs and paid due outward respect to their demand, but after all the necks of our late fellow-citizens of the Second Assembly District did not with sufficient alacrity present themselves for the halter. The truth perhaps was, that the 'Genesee uncles' thought it a superfluity of justice to send two healthy warriors to the gallows as an equivalent for a firm of Dutch peddlers from Albany. But there was, fur- ther, a political question of no little consequence involved. While the Six Nations, as a people, maintained for a long time preceding the final overthrow of the French a stead- fast allegiance with the English, the western clans of the Senecas, on account of the proximity of Fort Niagara and the means thus afforded for French agents to intrigue with them, were strongly inclined to favor the latter; and it was with no little exertion on the part of their brethren that they were prevented from openly taking up arms against the English. The fall of Quebec in 1759 of course put an end to all fears on that score. But the Genesee Senecas, with sympathizing regret for their vanquished friends, felt but a languid interest in the search for the Canisteo cul- prits. A more serious matter at that time was the pro- jected hostilities of the Western Ottawas and other distant nations against the English, which resulted in the great enterprise of Pontiac, the attempt of a master mind to com- bine whatever there was of savage force in the shattered tribes of the forest for the outpouring of one overwhelm- ing vial of destruction upon the English posts. The loy- alty of the Senecas to their treaty obligations was trembling in the scale under these new influences, at the time when the murder of the traders occurred, and their dependents, the Delawares of the Susquehanna and the Canisteo, were violently dissatisfied. The latter did, finally, quite gener- ally give adhesion to the enemy with many of the Senecas .*

" Two years went by after the summons of the old people (the council) went forth, and we may be sure it was the sub- jeet of much talk at the Canisteo Castle (as the ancient wilderness village over the hills was called), and perhaps was canvassed in some hunting-party on this very ground. In the mean time the conspiracy of Pontiac came to a head, and a fierce conflict raged along the Western lakes. The agitation of that contest was felt even upon the upper Sus- quehanna, though that region was removed far from the seat of war.

* Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac.

HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK.

" In 1764, Sir William Johnson determined to be trifled with no longer in the matter of the two murderers and other causes of complaint against the Genesee Senecas, and, accordingly, with the full approval of the other nations, fitted out a military expedition against the Canisteo Castle. A party of one hundred and forty Indians, with a few white men, under the command of Captain Montour, a half-breed war-chief, was dispatched to break up the nest. This ex- pedition started in April, 1764, from Oquago, a village on the Susquehanna, above Binghamton, and in a fortnight made thorough work. The inhabitants fled at Montour's approach, but he destroyed their villages and property. Kanhangton,* or Tioga Point, now Athens, Pennsylvania, was the first place destroyed. It consisted of thirty-six good houses, built of square logs and having stone ehim- neys. The next point was a village on the Cayuga Brancht (the Chemung). Ilere thirty houses of the same kind were found and destroyed. Thence the party marched to Canisteo, which the report in the colonial records describes as ' the largest of the Delaware towns, consisting of sixty good houses with three or four fireplaces in each.' It ap- pears from this that the outlaws deserve at least the praise of introducing great improvements in architecture among the savages. Probably the white and black members of the colony were less inured to the intense severity of the weather than the red men, and had been accustomed to better lodgings. Ilence these luxurious barraeks of hewed logs and stone fireplaces. But the emissaries of justice spared nothing. The village was burned and the miscella- neous inhabitants plundered. They even found in the se- cluded retreat horses, horned eattle, and swine, which, however, were in such a poor condition after the winter, that few were fit to be driven away. It appears that no effort was made by the Canisteos to defend their town, although the defile, several leagues in length, through which the invading party passed before reaching the fine valley where, in an open meadow of several hundred acres, the village stood, offered ample opportunity for a ruinous attaek upon them.'

The early settlers discovered here two forts, which, upon careful examination, exhibited considerable engineering skill. One was situated near the bank of the river, just in the neck of the defile as it opens into the valley on the east. It occupied about an acre of ground, with four square corners, and was inclosed by palisades or pickets. The embankment remaining when the early settlers came to the place was about two feet high. At the mouth of a similar opening into the valley from the south, on Col. Bill's

Creek, was another fort of about the same size and con- struction, which seems to have been designed as a place of retreat in case the first fort was taken by an enemy. The works were evidently constructed with reference to an attack from the east, and if we suppose them to have been built by the Canisteos at the time of their occupaney of the valley, there would be a manifest fitness in this, as the only invasion from white settlements at that time must necessarily come up the river from an eastern direction. The engineering skill, too, would be easily accounted for by the presence of the deserters from the British army and other Europeans who formed part of the mixed settlement. The word " eastle" as applied to the ancient Canisteo town would seem to imply some sort of stronghold or fortifica- tion. Although no mention is made of a fort in the brief record of the expedition, and it is stated, or at least implied, that the Canisteos made no resistance, yet the forts or the main fort below the town may not have been garrisoned at the time of the invasion, and may have been passed by un- noticed, as it stood about fifteen rods from the bank of the river. At all events, these forts were here when the early settlers came to the country, and the most reasonable sup- position is that they were built by the band of outlaws de- stroyed by Sir William Johnson's expedition in the spring of 1764.

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History of Steuben county, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 5

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co. Number of Pages: 826

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Lewis, Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 826