USA > New York > Ulster County > History of Ulster County, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers. Vol. I > Part 4
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Also from the Freeman, a few days later : "INVESTIGATING HUSSEY HILL.
" A. R. Phyfe, the refiner who made the assay of Hussey Hill gold reek, audl Thomas Finns, the inventor of the process under which the assay was made, were in town to-day, and accompanied John C. Brodhead and Simon S. Westbrook across the creek to Hussey Hill. It is said that an examination of the mine convinces them that there does exist gold at that point in paying quantities, and it is further declared probable that the result of their visit will be the enlistment of New York capitalists in the enterprise uf energy tically working this mine at an early date."
20
HISTORY OF ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
These two items from the Freenam relate to an enter- prise which is in the hands of men of judgment and superior business capacity. The mine allided to is at the north end of Hussey Hill, town of. Esopus, about three-fourths of a mile from South Rondout.
Samples of the rock have been submitted for assay to the following responsible authorities: John A. Waters' Sons, No. 11 John Street, New York ; William C. Waters, No. 9 John Street ; Fife & Waters, No. 17 John Street; William Il. Dedrick, 21 William Street ; Walter Hamilton, 120 Wil- linin Street ; l'ier & Roberts, Brooklyn ; Walker & Brothers, Philadelphia. The average result of all these assayers yields thirty-four dollars gold and silver from a ton of ernde rock as taken from the mines. Small veins have been opened, yielding as high as five hundred and twenty-two dollars to the ton, under the tests of Messrs. Fife & Waters. So much confidence in this enterprise have the men who are in charge of it that they have erected a five-stamp mill, to be run by steam-power, and have three thousand tons of rock upon the " dumps" ready for working. The vein to be worked is so exposed and so easy of access that one hun- dred tons of rock may be got ont daily. The property is now in charge of Simon S. Westbrook and John C. Brod- head, who are now making arrangements to organize a com- pany with capital sufficient to thoroughly test the feasibility of gold-miuing in Ulster County.
CHAPTER V.
INDIAN OCCUPANCY.
ULSTER COUNTY was the original home of several bands of Lenni-Lenape who had migrated from the valley of the Delaware before the coming of the white man and settled in the fertile valleys of the Esopus Kill, the Ron- dout Kill, the Wall Kill, and other streams of the county. Several Indiau trails from the northwest and southwest converged and united at what is now the city of Kingston, at the month of the Rondont Kill. From the northwest, up the Scoharic Kill and down the Esopus Kill, came the Mohumnieks of the Iroquois confederacy, called by the English the Five Nations. Up the Roudont Kill and the Wall Kill ran the old trails to the valley of the Delaware.
I .- TWO FAMILIES OF NATIONS.
When the Europeans first landed on the continent of America, the Indians who inhabited the Atlantic Slope and dwelt in the fertile valleys of the Appalachian ranges of mountains, in the basin of the great lakes, and the valley of the St. Lawrence, were divided into two great families of nations. These were soon known and distinguished by the whites as the Iroquois and Algonquin families, so named by the French. They differed radically both in language and Rineage, in the manner of building their wigwams, as well as in many of their manners and customs.
THE IROQUOIS.
The Iroquois proper, the best types and leading people of this family, were the Five Nations of Central New York,
called by themselves the Ho-de-no-san-nee. To the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna, were the Andastes, and to the westward of them, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, were the Eries. To the northward of Lake Erie lay the Neutral Nation, and near them the Tobacco Nation, while the Hurons, another tribe of the Iroquois, dwelt along the eastern shore of the lake that still bears their name. There was also a branch of the Iroquois family in the Carolinas, -the Tuscaroras, who came north and united with the Five Nations in 1715, after which the confederacy was known as the Six Nations.
On every side these few kindred bands of Iroquois were surrounded by the much more numerous tribes of the greater Algonquin family.
Among all the aboriginal inhabitants of the New World there were none so politie and intelligent, none so fierce and brave, none with so many germas of heroic virtues min- gled with their savage vices, as the truc Iroquois, the people of the Five Nations of Central New York. They were a terror to all the surrounding tribes, whether of their own or of Algonquin speech and lineage. In the spring of 1628 they made war upon the Mohicans, who dwelt on ter- ritory now comprising the county of Rensselaer, and drove them beyond the Connecticut River ; in 1650 they overran the country of the Hurons ; in 1651 they destroyed the Neutral Nation ; in 1652 they exterminated the Eries ; in 1663 they ravaged the country of the Pa-comp-tucks and Squak-hengs in the valley of the Connecticut; in 1CT2 they conquered the Audastes and reduced them to the most abjeet submission, calling them, in derision, the women of their tribe.
They followed the war-path, and their war-ery was heard westward to the Mississippi, southward to the great gulf, and castward to the Massachusetts Bay. The New England nations mostly, as well as the river tribes along the Hudson, whose warriors trembled at the name of Mohawk, all paid them tribute. The Montagnais, on the far-off Saguenay. whom the French called the paupers of the wilderness, would start from their midnight sleep and run terror-stricken from their wigwams into the forest when but dreaming of the dreadful Iroquois. They were truly in their day the conquerors of the New World, and were justly styled " The Romans of the West." " My pen," wrote the Jesuit father, Ragueneau, in the year 1650, in his " Revelations des Hurons,"-" My pen has no ink black enough to paiut the fury of the Iroquois."
The Iroquois dwelt iu palisaded villages upon the fertile banks of the lakes and streams which watered their country. The houses of all the Iroquois families were built long and narrow. They were not more than twelve or fifteen feet in width, but often exceeded one hundred and fifty feet in length. Within they built their fires at intervals along the eentre of the earth floor, the smoke passing out through openings in the top, which likewise served to let in the light. In every house were many fires and many families, each family having its own fire within its allotted space.
From this custom of having many fires and many families strung through a long and narrow house comes the signifi- cation of the Indian name the league of the Five Nations called themselves by. This Indian name was Ho-de-no-sau-
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21
INDIAN OCCUPANCY.
nee, " the people of the long house." They likened their confederacy of five nations or tribes stretched along a narrow valley for more than two hundred miles through Central New York to one of their long wigwams containing many families. The Motruks guarded the eastern door of this typical long house, while the Senecas kept watch at the western door. Between these doors of their country dwelt the Oneidas, the Onondagas, and the Cayugas, each nation around its own family fire, while the great central council- fire was always kept brightly burning in the land of the Onondagas.
The nation of the Iroquois to whom the Indians of the Connectieut Valley paid unwilling tribute was the Mohawk.
In the Algonquin speech of the Connecticut River In- dians the Mohawks were called Mau-qua-wogs or Maquas, -that is to say, " Man-eaters."*
The Mohawk country proper, called by themselves Gu- ven-que-o-no-ja, all hy on and beyond the westerly bank of the Hudson, but by right of conquest they claimed all the territory lying between the Hudson and the sources of the casterly branches of the Connecticut. By virtue of this claim all the Indians in the valley of the Connecticut paid annual tribute to the Mohawks. Every year two old Mohawk chiefs would leave their castles on the Mohawk River, in their elm-bark canoes, and, erossing the Hudson, ascend the Has-sicke ( Iloosae) to its head, and, carrying thein over the mountain range, re-eribark in the head-waters of the Ag a-wam (Westfield River) and the Deerfield River, come down to the villages of the Wo.ro-noaks, the Ag-a.wams, the No-no-tucks, the Pu-comp.tucks, the Squak-heags, in the valley, and to the Nip-mucks at the head of the Chicopee, and gather the wampum in which tribute was paid. When all these tiver tribes joined King Philip in his attempt to exterminate the whites in New England the Mokarls sided with the English and did material service against Philip.t
THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY.
Surrounding the few tribes of the Iroquois on every hand dwelt the much more numerous tribes of the Algon- juin family, to which belonged all the New England tribes, as well as the Mohicans, Horicons, and other New York Indians who dwelt cast of the Hudson and were known as river Indians.
Northward of the Iroquois were the Vipissings, La Petite Nation, and La Nation de T Iste, and other tribes in the valley of the Ottawa River. Along the valley of the St. Lawrence dwelt the Algonquins proper, the Abcnaquis, the Montagnais, and other roving bands below the mouth of the Saguenay.
The Ajonquins and Montagnais and the other wild rov- ers of the country of the Saguenay, who subsisted mostly by the chase, were often. during the long Canadian winters, when game grew scarce, driven by hunger to subsist for many weeks together upon the buds and boik, and some- there upon the young wood, of forest-trees. Hence their hereditary enemies, the more favored Mohawks, called them, in mockery of their condition, Ad-i-run-dolex,-that
is to say, tree-eaters. This name, thus borne in derision, was given by Prof. Emmonds to the principal mountain chain of Northern New York, and has since been applied to its whole region, now so famous as a summer resort.t
The New England tribes of the Algonquin family dwelt mostly along the sea-coast and on the banks of larger streams. In Maine the Et.it-che-mins dwelt farther east, at the mouth of the St. Croix River. The Abenaquis, with their kindred tribe the Taratines, had their hunting- grounds in the valley of the Penobscot and as far west as the river Saco and the Piscataqua. In the southeast corner of New Hampshire and over the Massachusetts border dwelt the Penobscot or Pawtucket tribe. The Mas- sachusetts nation had their home along the bay of that name and the contiguous islands. It was a tradition of this tribe that they formerly dwelt farther to the southwest, near the Blue Mountains, and hence their name Mass-ad- chu-sit, " near the great mountains."
The Wampanoags or Pokanokets dwelt along the cast- erly shore of Narragansett Bay, in Southeastern Rhode Island, and in the contiguous part of Massachusetts adjoin- ing these, being near neighbors of the Plymouth Pilgrims. The Nanscts along Cape Cod were a family of the Wam- panougs, and paid them tribute. Next in line were the Narragansetts and their sister-tribe, the Nyanties, along the westerly shore of Narragansett Bay, in Western Rhode Island. Between the Narragansetts and the river Thames, in Southeastern Connecticut, then called the Pequot River, dwelt the Pequot nation ; and between the Pequots and the cast bank of the Connecticut River was the adopted home of Uncas and his Mohicans, whose ancestral home was in the valley of the Hudson, in Rensselaer County.
On the west side of the Connecticut the territory of the Mohawks was supposed to begin ; and in Western Massa- chusetts, and in what is now the State of Vermont, no In- dian tribes had permanent homes. This large territory was a beaver-hunting country of the Iroquois.
II .- THE RIVER INDIANS.
Upon the arrival of the Europeans in the valley of the Hudson, or Shat-e-muc, two races of Algonquin lineage dwelt on its banks. On the east side were the Mohicans, and on the west side the Min-cees. These races were hered- itary enemies of each other, and united only in their hatred of the Iroquois, to the westward of them.
Long Island, or Sewan-hacky, was occupied by the va- rious clans of the Met-o-wracks. Staten Island, or Mo-nack- nong, was held by the Mon-u-tons. Inland to the west lived the Rar-i-tans and the Hack-in-sacks. In the region of the Highlands were the Nav i-sinks. To the south and west, covering the centre of New Jersey, were the A-que- ma-chukes and the Stun-ke kans, and in the valley of the Delaware River were the Lenni-Lenape, known to the Dutch as the Min-quas. The island of the Man-hat-tans was so called from its Indian owners. Above the Nav-i-sinks, on the west side of the river, were the San-hi-caus, and in the region of Portland and Orange Counties were the Tap-puns.
t See Historical Sketches of Northern New York, by N. B. Sylver- ter, pp. 39 and 40.
$ Brief History, by Increase Mather.
+ Conn. His. Col. Hec., vol. i. p. 461, etc.
,
HISTORY OF ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
THE TRIPES IN ULSTER COUNTY.
Farther north on the west side of the river, in the counties of Ulster and Greene, were the Minqua elans of the Min- ni-sinks, Nun-ti-cokes, Min-ceux, and Delucares. These had ragated from the upper valley of the Delaware River.
In the unpublished history of Ulster County, by the late Jonathan W. Hasbrouck, is the following description of the Indians of the county :
" Those living in this county were called the Esopus Indiuns, and their hunting grounds embraced the territory between the Highlands on the south, the Sawyers Kill, Tendeyaekemeck, on the north, the Hudson on the cast, and hend-waters of the Delaware River on the west. They were, however, divided into clans, who generally took the name of the place where they live.l. Thus those ou the east side of the Shawangunk Mountains were called Waronaicankongs, while those on the west were called Wawcarxings, Neversinks, and Mamakating. Originally they were a portion of the Mingne or Delmicares, who al- ways claitued a protectorate over them, and with whom they merged when driven westward by the settlements of the whites. On the east side of the Hudson, in Dutchess County, the Warumecks and Wap- pingere resiled, the latter having their chict village near Fishkill. It is proper to remember all these tribes were intimately related and made a common cause of their war with other savage tribes. Br way of distinction, those on the cast shore were called Mankikani, and those on the west, Sakikimi.
"The grand council-house of the Esopus savages stood near the junetion of the Vernooy Kill and the Rondout, at Wawarsing, where they usually convened prior to taking any important steps affecting thio whole tribe. In consequence of this fact there were several paths converging there, one leading to Shawangunk over the mountains of the same name, another to AAshokan by way of Cripplebush, while yet others branched off for the Neversinek, Minnesinek, and mouth of the Hondout. Some of these trails are yet followed by woodliuen, but their winding are in the wiwin lost. When the whites first passel up the river, the Esopus savages frequently held dances, or, as the Dutch expressed it, Kintekoys, in a cuve now in the northern part of the town of Newburgh, Orange Co. This core has in consequence been called Dans Kamer, which, rendered in English, is ' dance-chamber.' Some writers huve asserted this was their place of departure on all great undertakings; but it seems to be a mistake, the ceremonies there having been of a religious rature. Chroniclers have neglected to inform us whether it was the Good or Evil Spirit which was wor- shipcd there.
" The Esopus tribes were naturally warlike, although they, with the rest of the Loanpe tribes, ha l been so effectually flogged by the Five Nations that they were afraid when they were around. The sight of a Moknick cossel an Exopus chief. This, however, did not keep them out of the war with the Dutch ouder Governor Kieft, when they, with their associates, were roughly hamiled. One old author asserts they bung the heads of their enemies in front of their vigwars, but there is no conter:[ oraneous record of the fact. The leadls were doubt less the sealys of the slain. Judging from the manner in which they treated the white prisoners, they were not as bloodthirsty as other tribes. The great drawback to interes urse with them was their ex- cessive fondness for rum and filthy, lascivious habits. Warrior and squaw get drunk as certainly as they got liquor, and were then mad. Both were also nasty in their habits,-so much so that their presence was offensive to the nostrils. Then, to make the matter worse. there was hnt little virtue among the wotuen, who debauched the sons of the hoors with harlotry. These facts should be kept in wind, when we read of the Expque wars, in palliation of the wrongs done by the fathers. Sentiment sounds well when the Indian is far away, but it disappears when iu contact with him. Here, though not in place in point of time, I must tell that a clergymau said ( 167S) that a squaw living in Mariaetown would go out immediately after delivery and bring in a lundi of sticks: The young Indian maidens were fond of George Davis, the interpreter, and Fissel him, which made his wife wruth."
TRIBES ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE HUDSON.
Ou the eastern bank of the river, north of the Man-hot- tons, were the tribe of Weck-quaes-gecks. Above them, as
far as Croton, dwelt the Sint-Sings, whose chief village was called Osia-Sing, or " the place of stones."
The highlands above were occupied by the Waor-au-acks, and north of these, in Dutchess County, lived the tribe of Wap-pin-gers.
Above the Wap-pin-gers, and occupying the whole of the counties of Columbia and Rensselaer, were the Mo-hi-cans. Such was the condition of things when Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson in the autumn of 1609, as deseribed in the following chapter.
III .- SOCIAL LIFE.
Forts .- The Algonquin Indians of the valley of the Hud- son built their forts on high bluffs, near springs of water, and usually on or not far from the bank of some river. The forts were circular in form, inclosing about one acre of ground, and construeted of palisades set close together in the ground, and some twelve or fifteen feet in height. Within they built rows of wigwams along both sides of well-defined streets ..
Wigwams .- The Indians of the Algonquin family of na- tions built their wigwams small and circular, and for one or two families only, unlike the Iroquois nations, who built theirs long and narrow, each for the use of many families. The Algonquin-shaped wigwam of the valley tribes was made of poles set up around a eirele, from ten to twelve feet across. The poles met togetlier at the top, thus form- ing a conical frame-work, which was covered with bark mats or skins ; in the eeutre was their fireplace, the smoke escaping through a hole in the top. In these wigwams men, women, children, and dogs crowded promiscuously together in distressing violation of all our rules of modern housekeeping.
Corn-Planting Fields .-- The low meadows of the streams in and around Ulster County were famous in Indian annals for their corn-fields. Every autunm, after the fall of the leaf, came the Indian summer, in which they set fire to the woods and fields, and thus burned over the whole country, both uplaud and meadow, once a year. This burning de- stroyed all the underbrush and mostly all the timber on the uplands, save that growing in swales and on wet land's. Their eorn-fields on the meadows usually contained from fifteen to twenty aeres of ground. One tool for planting was all they had. This was a hoe, made of the shoulder- blade of a deer or a moose, or a clam-shell fastened into a wooden handle. For manure they covered over a fish in each hill of eorn at planting-time. Their planting-time was about the 10th of May, or as soon as the butternut leaves were as large as squirrels' ears. Some idea may be formed of the large extent of their planting-fields when it is stated that the Pa-comp-tucks alone planted in the valley of the Deerfield River, in the spring of 1676, the second year of Philip's war, about three hundred acres. Perhaps this was an exaggerated story, and that one hundred acres wouk! have been nearer the truth. But Philip was killed in the summer following, and the Pa-comp-tucks abandoned their unharvested corn-fields for the new home on the east bank of the Hudson, at the month of the Hoosac. They took what is now the " Tunnel Route" for the West. The women did all the corn-planting and raising, but the men
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EARLY NAVIGATORS.
Rene planted and took care of the tobacco. It was too sacred a plant for women to handle or smoke, and no young brave was allowed to use it until he had made himself a name in the chase or of the war-path.
Fred .- The Indians bad fish and game, outs, roots, berries, acorns, corn, squashes, a kind of bean now called reiva-bran, and a species of sunflower (whose tuberous ruot was like the artichoke). Fish were taken with lines or nets made of the sinews of the deer or of the fibres of the dogbane. Their fish-hooks were made of the bones of Eshes and birds.
They caught the moose, the deer, and the bear in the winter season by shooting with bows and arrows, by sharing, or in pitfalls. In the summer they took a variety of birds,
They cooked their fish by roasting before the fire on the point of a long stick, or by boiling in stone or wooden vessels. They made water boil, not by hanging over the fire, but by the innersion in it of heated stones. Their core boiled alone they called hominy; when mixed with beans, it was succotash. They made a cake of meal, pounded fine by a stone pestle in a wooden mortar, which they called rookhik, corrupted by the English into " no cake."
Social Condition .- Their government was entirely patri- archał. Each Indian was in his solitary cabin the head of his family. His wife was treated as a slave, and did all the drulgery. The only law that bound the Indian was the custom of his tribe. Subject to that only, he was as free as the air he breathed, following the bent of his own wild will. Over tribes were principal chiefs called sochems, and inferior ones called sogamores. The succession was always in the female line. Their war-chiefs were not necessarily sachems in time of peace; they won their distinction only by prowess on the war-path.
The language of the Indian, in the terms of modern comparative philology, was neither monosyllabic, like the Chinese, nor infleeting, like that of the civilized Caucasian stock, but was agglutinating, like that of the northwestern Asiatic tribes and those of southeastern Europe. They ex- pressed ideas by stringing words together in one compound vorable. The Algonquin languages were not euphonious, like the Iroquois dialects, but were harsh and full of con- sonants. Contrast the Iroquois names Ta-wa-sen-ta, Hi- a-wat-ha, or O-no-a-la-go-Da with the Algonquin names Synak-heag, Qua-Boag, or Wam-pan-vag.
RELIGION.
The Indian had but the crudest possible ideas, if any at all, of an abstraet religion. He had no priests, bo altars, no sacrifice. His medicine-men were mere ouijurers, yet he was superstitions to the last degree, and spiritualized everything in nature. In a word, he Lourd "acry tongues on sands and shores and desert wil- Jernesses," he saw " calling shapes and beckoning shadows lire" on every hand. The mysterious realm about him he did not attempt to nurave!, but bowed submissively before it with what crude ideas he had of religion and worship. The flight or cry of a bird, the humming of a bee, the crawling of an insect, the turning of a leaf, the whisper of a
breeze, were to him mystic signals of good or evil import, by which he was guided in the most important relations of life.
In dreams the Indian placed the most implicit con- ficence; they seemed to him to be revelations from the spirit-world, guiding him to the places where his gime lurked and to the haunts of his enemies. He invoked their aid on all occasions ; they taught him how to cure the sick and revealed to him his guardian spirit, as well as all the secrets of his good or evil destiny.
Although the Indian has been for three centuries in more or less contact with the civilized life of the white man, he is still the untamed child of nature. " He will not," says Parkman, " learn the arts of civilization, and he and his forest must perish together. The stern, -unchang- ing features of his mind excite our admiration from their immutability, and we look with deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother."
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY NAVIGATORS.
As the early Dutch and French settlers of Ulster County and the valleys of the Hudson and Delaware were them- selves comparatively among the carly voyagers to the New World, and in coming braved the dangers of the deep inci- dent to carly exploration, it appears necessary, in order properly to understand their history and properly to com- prehend the boldness of their adventure, briefly to consider the voyagers who preceded them,-their explorations and attempts at settlement.
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