History of Wyoming County, N.Y., with Illustrations, Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Some Pioneers and Prominent Residents, Part 13

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Publication date: 1880
Publisher: F.W. Beers & Co.
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MARY JEMISON'S GRAVE-HER FAMILY-"INDIAN ALLEN."

The coffin, containing everything that was found in her grave, was taken to the council-house grounds at Genesee Falls, where, after brief and appropriate religious services in the old council-house, it was placed in a stone sarcophagus, sealed with cement, and interred. A black walnut tree was planted near the foot of the grave by her grandson Thomas Jemison, son of the babe she brought on her back from Ohio. The seed was borne by the tree that shaded her grave at Buffalo. The grave is curbed with stones that were once used as rude headstones in the Indian cemetery at Gardeau. They had been plowed up and afterwards used to construct a road culvert. Mr. Letchworth and Dr. Shongo were permitted to remove them from this culvert and bring them here. to place around the grave of her who had perhaps assisted to plant them at the heads of the des- ecrated graves of her kindred. The grave within this curb- ing is covered with flowers, the seeds of which were fur- nished by Dr. Shongo. What is left of the old headstone is planted at the head of the grave. Near this stands a mar- ble monument-a square block some six feet in height-on one face of which is copied the inscription which was origi- nally engraved on her tombstone. Upon this pedestal is to be placed a bronze statue of Mary Jemison, in her Indian costume, bearing on her back a babe, just as she came to the Genesee valley. Here, on the banks of the Genesee, to the murmur of which she listened during seventy-two years of her eventful life, repose her honored remains.

It is proper here to state on the authority of the well-in- formed investigator of Indian history William C. Bryant, Esq., of Buffalo, that the generally accepted orthography and signification of "the name conferred upon the captive by the two gentle Indian women who adopted her as their sister " is.incorrect. He says: " The name should be writ- ten Deh-ge-wa-nus, and means, literally, the two falling voices. The Indians in pronouncing the name make a cir- cular or undulating sweep of the hand downwards, to em- phasize the idea of a prolonged or dying cadence."

The tragical death of her three sons has been spoken of. The fourth wife of the oldest, Thomas, was the daughter of Sally, a Seneca squaw, by an Engush trapper and fur-trader. Sally was afterward one of the wives of " Indian Allen." His son Thomas, or Buffalo Tom, as he was familiarly called, who died in 1878, was an influential man in the Seneca na- tion, and was highly esteemed for his many virtues by all who knew him.

Of her daughters, Mary married an Indian named Billy Green, Betsey married John Green, and Polly, the youngest, married George Shongo. All lived with or near her while she remained at Gardeau, and had large families of chil- dren. Her descendants on the different reservations are numerous.

Her second husband, Hiokatoo, to whom she was married about 1763, and who was the father of six of her children, was born on the banks of the Susquehanna in 1708. His mother was sister to the mother of the worthy chief Farm- er's Brother. From his youth he was a warrior, and though kind in his domestic relations, he was endowed with all the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of a savage, and always boasted exultingly of the many barbarities and cruel tortures he had inflicted on captive foes. From his youth down to the close of the Revolution he was engaged in all the wars of the Sen- ecas, often leading hostile expeditions. He was second in

command in an expedition that went against Cherry Valley and other frontier settlements, and was said to have been engaged in the massacre of Wyoming. It is said that after the commencement of the Revolutionary war he was en- gaged in seventeen campaigns, and during the French and Indian war he was in every battle that was fought on the Susquehanna and Ohio. Of his martial pride, which he en- tertained to the last, his wife said:

"I have frequently heard him repeat the history of his life from his childhood, and when he came to that part which related to his actions, his bravery, and war; when he spoke of the ambush, the combat, the spoiling of his enemies, and the sacrifice of his victims, his nerves seemed strung with youthful ardor, the warmth of the able warrior seemed to ani- mate his frame, and to produce the heated gestures which he had practiced in middle age. He was a man of tender feel- ings to his friends, ready and willing to assist them in dis- tress; yet as a warrior, his cruelties to his enemies were per- haps unparalleled, and will not admit of a word of pallia- tion."

CHAPTER IV.

THE NOTORIOUS "INDIAN ALLEN "-PROMINENT CHARACTERS AMONG THE SENECAS.

BENEZER ALLAN, commonly called Allen, or oftener Indian Allen, first came to Gardeau Flats toward the close of the Revolutionary war, and made his home at Mary Jemison's house, hunting with her son Thomas. He remained and worked her land till- after the peace of 1783. His first noteworthy exploit here was to arouse the jealousy of a white man, whose wife was a Nanticoke squaw. He next took a belt of wampum to an American officer at a military post as a token of a desire for peace on the part of the Indians-which he was not authorized to do, and which did not correctly represent them. The Indians were exas- perated at this and resolved to punish him, and for that purpose pursued him. He fled, but afterward returned, and was fed and secreted by the kind hearted Mary during some days at several times. He was watched for and tracked like a wild beast, and was once taken, but made his escape and returned. He kept hid during two weeks at one time in a small cave or hole in the rocks in a gulf near the flats, whence he emerged at night to find the food which she left for him at a place agreed on, and to milk a cow and drink the milk from his hat.

He afterward engaged in business at Mt. Morris, built a grist-mill and a saw-mill at Genesee Falls (now Rochester), and engaged in many schemes of speculation. He resided for a time at the mouth of Oatka creek, which was first named from him Allen's creek.

History rarely records a blacker character than his. He was a swindler, a polygamist, an adulterer and a foul mur- derer. He was a tory in the Revolution; and Mary Jemison said she had often heard him relate this transaction: "At one time, when he was scouting with the Indians, he entered a house very early in the morning, where he found a man, his wife and one child in bed. The man instantly sprang on the floor, for the purpose of defending himself

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and little family; but Allen dispatched him with one blow. He then cut off his head and threw it, bleeding, into the bed with the terrified woman; took the little infant from its mother's breast, dashed its head against the jamb, and left the unhappy widow and mother to mourn alone over her murdered family. It has been said by some, that, after he had killed the child, he opened the fire, and buried it under the coals and embers; but of that I am not certain. I have often heard him speak of that transaction with a great de- gree of sorrow, and as the foulest crime he ever committed, one for which I have no doubt he repented."

Some years since Mr. J. S. Minard, of Hume, Allegany county, published some reminiscences of Caneadea reser- vation and the Indians who lived there. This reservation was but a short distance from this county, and many of the Indians spoken of were well known to old settlers here. For that reason a few extracts are given:

"Prominent among the Caneadea Indians was the old chief and warrior Shongo, who lived near the residence of the late George Parker. Mr. Parker's flats were called 'Shongo flats,' and a brook which makes into the river near by still retains his name. He it was whom Major Van Campen wounded at the battle of Newtown, now Elmira, if I remember rightly; and with whom he had an interesting interview many years after, at Angelica, when, by mutual relation of the events, personal encounters, etc., in that memorable action, they renewed an old acquaintance begun under quite different circumstances. Shongo is remem- bered by many of the early settlers as a man of advanced age, sound judgment, good personal appearance and exten- sive influence with his people.

"A son of his-George Shongo-married a daughter of Mary Jemison (De-he-wa-mis), and afterward lived at Gar- deau. Mrs. Sarah Ingham says Shongo used frequently to call at their house, and when inclined to conversation, which was generally the case after imbibing a few drinks of snick-e-i, would relate his war exploits, tell of being in the battle of Saratoga under Burgoyne, show the various wounds received in battle-four ball holes in one arm, and various sword cuts, etc.

"Shongo was one of the last to remove from the reserva. tion. He was very loth to go, claiming that he never con- sented to the sale, that the whole transaction on the part of the whites was a fraud; and it was only after repeated im- portunities on the part of the whites, through Dr. Dwight. of Moscow, who was agent for several of the proprietors of the reservation, and a deposit in the hands of M. W. Miner, Esq., to be paid to him when he should be prepared to go, that he was induced to leave.

" Hudson was another very influential Indian. He was gifted with rare oratorical powers, and was a sort of preacher or exhorter among them. Mr. Charles M. Mills informs me that he has heard him address the assembled Indians upon the occasion of the annual ceremony of burning the dog and remission of sins, when scarcely a dry eye could be seen in the whole assembly. Various others of the early settlers corroborate Mr. Mills's account of the remarkable effect of Hudson's eloquence.

" Hudson at one time lived upon the site of the residence of Andrew S. Bennet, Esq. I have been informed that he was educated at Dartmouth College, and there is good rea- son for believing it. It is certain that quite a number of

young Indians were educated there under the presidency of Dr. Wheelock. Joseph Brant was one of them, and I pre- sume Hudson was another."

[Turner says of Hudson : " He had been a leading 'brave' in the southern Indian wars waged by the Senecas, and afterward in the English and French wars. Hon. George Woods, a prominent citizen of Bedford, Pennsyl- vania, became a prisoner with the Indians, on the Ohio or the Allegheny. Hudson procured his release after he had been condemned and tied to a stake. In after years they met, and the judge treated him with much kindness, making him a present of a fine house and lot at Bedford, which he never occupied, but he used to pride himself upon its pos- session and the manner in which he came by it."]

"Washington was the name of another Indian family of some note and influence. 'Old Wayne Washington,' alias John Mohawk, the father, died at something over a hundred years of age, and was buried on the farm of Delos Benja- min, only a few rods to the rear of his dwelling. I saw the sunken grave only last summer.

" He it was to whom Van Campen on a certain occasion 'lent his hatchet '-in other words, having dispatched all the rest of his captors, sent him away with a tomahawk sticking in the back of his neck; many with whom I have conversed remember seeing the scar.

"He had sons, Jim and 'Young Wayne Washington,' as he was called, and a daughter, Polly, still remembered by the early settlers as quite a character in those days. One of the boys was said to be the best runner on the reserva- tion. Loren Houghton remembers his running a race on a bet of fifty or sixty dollars, some four miles and turn around the sign post at Radley's tavern and back, coming out victor.

"Long Beard, named in contradistinction to Little Beard. of greater note as a warrior and chieftain (both names, I suppose, having a literal significance and personal applica- tion), from whom the rapids in the Genesee river known as 'Long Beard's Riff ' take their name, lived upon the farm of James C. Smith, and was quite a farmer for an Indian, raising some grain and keeping cattle, horses and sheep. Ska- no-boy lived with him, and was quite a notorious character. Sku. no in Indian signifies gift-gift boy, or given boy. He was given to the Caneadea Indians by some other tribe, and adopted. He lived with Long Beard, who, I have been told, was at one time a chief; and perhaps was at the time Ska-no was given. Ska-no-boy was well built, tall. stout, athletic-physically perfection itself, but morally destitute of principle and honor, and as a result incurred the enmity of most of the Indians as well as the whites of the reservation. "A little incident of Ska-no-boy: He, like most of the Indi- ans, loved the 'fire water' of the white man, and had a charge of twenty shillings scored up against him on one of the beams in Ingham's log tavern. One day he presented himself with an otter skin, the finest specimen ever seen in these parts, which Mr. Ingham took and canceled the debt. But poor Ska-no had .better paid the debt in some other way. He had stolen the otter skin from the trap of another Indian, was detected, and shortly after apprehended by a party of two or three of them and very severely punished. .

"He was at one time lodged in jail at Angelica, for insult- ing a woman somewhere in the neighborhood of ' Oak Hill,' near Colonel Williams's, which was then a part of this county. I mention this for the reason that I have seen it

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stated that Indians were peculiarly exempt from such conduct. "Copperhead, a very old Indian, who died a few years since in Careadea, John Shanks, who still occasionally re- turns to the 'scenes of his childhood,' Sun-ge-wa, or Big Kettle, the Trimsharps, Sharpshins, Bear Hunter, Kingee, Elk Hunter, Chickens (so called from his diminutive stat- ure), Joe Daw, Jackson, Powderhorn, George Jakes, and Chick-mit were Indians of lesser note remembered by our pioneers.

"The marriage contract they regarded with the utmost solemnity. I have been. told that divorces were very unu- sual. There were some exceptions, however, to this general rule. I have been told of two instances where the marital obligations were not respected on the part of the wife, or squaw, and in each case the husband poisoned himself. Young Elk Hunter was one, and was found dead, having eaten of the cicuta, or poison hemlock, and repaired to the woods. He lived near where Reynolds's tavern is located, on the Wiscoy. The other was one of the Kingees.

"One of the Trimsharps-Tom, I believe-was once at the house of Mr. Joel Cooper, one of the early settlers on the reservation, where, among other things thought of and talked of, the subject of marriage came up. Mr. Cooper had several sons, none of them as yet married. Turning to one of them, the Indian said, 'You young, me no young; why you no get you squaw?' and endeavored to persuade him to marry, promising, in case he would agree to it, to bring him a squaw next time he should come out. To this young Cooper assented, of course, and thought no more of it. But judge of his surprise when, in a few days, 'Old Tom' reappeared with a charming young squaw by his side, whom he had brought all the way from Tonawanda to be- come his bride. This was a stumper for the young man; when he was joking the Indian had been in earnest, and he was reduced to the alternative of marrying the squaw or backing out of his bargain. He chose to repudiate.

" An anecdote is related of an Indian, who, in 1823 or 1824, was frozen to death on the road from Cold Creek to Caneadea, while in a state of beastly intoxication. When found the Indians gathered around him in considerable numbers, and held a sort of impromptu coroner's inquest over the body, discussing the cause of death. After due deliberation they came to the unanimous conclusion that he came to his death by reason of the water that was in the whisky that he drank having frozen in him."

CHAPTER V.

THE TITLE TO THE SOIL OF WESTERN NEW YORK-PHELPS AND GORHAM'S PURCHASE-MORRIS'S RESERVE.

O topic better deserves a chapter of local history than the ownership of the soil at early periods, on which the present titles rest; and this is the proper point for a statement on this subject with relation to Wyoming county.

"A memorial prepared by the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations in 1697, relating to the right of the crown of Great Britain to sovereignty over the Five

Nations of Indians bordering upon the province of New York," recites that those nations had "by many ac- knowledgments, submissions, leagues and agreements been united to or depended on that colony;" that they, " being the most warlike in those parts of the world, held all their neighboring Indians in a manner of tributary subjection;" that in prospect of an invasion of their territory in 1684 by De la Barre, governor of Canada, Governor Dongan of New York warned that French official " that those Indians are the King of England's subjects, and also sent the then Duke of York's [to whom the province had been granted by the crown] arms to be set up in every one of the Indians' castles, as far as Oneygra [Niagara], which was accordingly done and Mons. De la Barre retired."

Governor Tryon, in 1774, in a "report on the province of New York," said:

" The boundaries of the province of New York are de- rived from two sources :- first, the grants from King Charles the Second to his brother James, Duke of York; secondly, from the submission and subjection of the Five Nations to the crown of England. It is uncertain to this day to what extent the Five Nations carried their claim to the westward and northward, but there is no doubt that it went to the north beyond the 45th degree of latitude, and westward to Lake Huron, their beaver hunting country being bounded to the west by that lake; which country the Five Nations, by treaty with the governor of this province at Albany, in 1701, surrendered to the crown, to be pro- tected and defended for them."

Such was the foundation of the English claim to sove. reignty over the territory of the Iroquois. They themselves never recognized the claim in the sense in which it was put forth, and the French always denied and scoffed at it; but the British government had the power to maintain it, and up to the Revolution continued to assert it.

The encroachment of the whites upon the territory of the Iroquois gave the latter great uneasiness, to allay which a very numerously attended council was held with them at Fort Stanwix (Rome) in 1768, to agree on a line beyond which settlements should not be permitted. The line de- cided upon in the State of New York " ran along the east- ern border of Broome and Chenango counties, and thence northwestward to a point seven miles west of Rome."

The close of the Revolution left the hostile Iroquois un- provided for by their British employers and at the mercy of the United States. Conquered - after waging a long, bloody and destructive warfare against the patriots of New York, they had forfeited their territory and would have had little cause of complaint had they been dispossessed. The gov- ernment, however, thought it wise to deal generously with them; and in a council held on the site of Rome in 1784 recognized their continued ownership of the land between the line agreed on at the same place sixteen years before, and one beginning at Lake Ontario four miles east of the Niagara river, running southward parallel with the river to Buffalo creek, thence still southward to the Pennsylvania line and following that to the Ohio river. All of New York west of this second line seems also to have been sub- sequently conceded to the Indians except a mile strip along the Niagara.

Every reader of English colonial history knows how igno- rantly or carelessly grants of American territory were made

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HISTORY OF WYOMING COUNTY, NEW YORK.

by the crown to individuals and companies, the same tracts being in some instances given at different times to different parties, laying the foundation of conflicting claims. Thus the province of New York, when granted to the Duke of York in 1664, covered part of Massachusetts as defined by the charter given to the Plymouth Company in 1620. The territory of both provinces under their charters also extend- ed indefinitely westward; but New York, in 1781, and Mas- sachusetts, four years later, relinquished to the United States their claims beyond the present western boundary of this State, and Massachusetts contented herself with claim- ing that portion of New York west of the meridian which now forms the eastern line of Ontario and Steuben coun- ties-some 19,000 square miles, New York of course also asserted jurisdiction and ownership of this vast tract.

The dispute was compromised by a convention of com- missioners from the two States, held at Hartford in Decem- ber, 1786. It was agreed that the sovereignty of the dis- puted region should remain with New York, and the owner- ship with Massachusetts, subject to the Indian proprietor- ship, which had been recognized by the general government. "That is to say, the Indians could hold the land as long as they pleased, but were only allowed to sell to the State of Massachusetts or her assigns." The meridian bounding the Massachusetts claim on the east was called the "pre-emption line," because it was decided to allow that State the right of pre-emption, or first purchase, of the land west of it. There was one exception: New York retained the owner- ship as well as the sovereignty of a strip a mile wide along the Niagara river.

In 1788 the State of Massachusetts sold to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, two of its citizens, and to others for whom they acted, its pre-emption right to western New York for $1,000,000, to be paid in three annual installments, in certain securities of the State, which were then worth about one-fifth of their face. The next thing with these gentlemen was to complete the title by buying the Indian interest. For this purpose Phelps held a council with the Iroquois at Buffalo early in July, 1788, and bought, for $5,000 down and a perpetual annuity of $500, about 2,600,000 acres, bounded on the east by the pre-emption line. Part of the western boundary was a meridian from Pennsylvania to the junction of Canaseraga creek with the Genesee river (being the line forming the western boundary of the eastern tier of towns in Allegany county). Thence northward the line followed the course of the Genesee "to a point two miles north of Canawagus village; thence running due west twelve miles; thence running northwardly so as to be twelve miles distant from the western bounds of said river, to the shores of Lake Ontario." The tract thus defined constitu- ted the famous " Phelps and Gorham's Purchase."

In securing their vast estate Phelps, Gorham and com- pany encountered the opposition of a set of land sharks who also had a covetous eye upon this magnificent domain. These were the capitalists forming the New York and Gen- esee Land Company, engineered by one John Livingston; and its branch the Niagara-Genesee Company, headed by Colonel John Butler, and consisting almost entirely of Cana- dians. As we have seen, the Indians were barred from sell- ing their lands except to Massachusetts or her assigns.

Butler, Livingston and their associates proposed to get pos- session of them by a long lease; hence they are spoken of as the " lessee companies." Chiefly through the influence of Butler they obtained from part of the Iroquois chiefs and sachems a nine hundred-and-ninety-nine years' lease of most of their territory for $20,000, and an annual rent of $2,000. Their scheme fell through, the Legislatures of New York and Massachusetts declaring a lease of that length equivalent to a purchase, and as such null and void. Butler, however, profited by the purchase of Phelps and Gorham. He was one of the three to whom the Indians referred the question of the price they should charge those gentlemen, and is said to have had 20,000 acres placed at his disposal by the purchasers in consideration of the advice he gave the confiding red men. The "lessees " continued their intrigues until they succeeded, in 1793, in getting from the Leg- Islature a grant of one hundred square miles east of the pre-emption line, instead of obtaining twenty thousand miles and founding a new State, as there is reason to suppose the Niagara-Genesee Company, at least, intended, with the co- operation of the Senecas, whom Butler and other Canadian officials were always embittering against the people of New York.

Before Phelps and Gorham had half paid for the entire pre-emption right they had bought from Massachusetts, the securities of that State, in consequence of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, had risen nearly to par: and find- ing that they should be unable to fulfill their contract they induced the State to resume its right to the portion of its original New York claim which they had not yet bought of the Indians, and release them from their contract as to that part, leaving on their hands the tract since called Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, and bounded as above described. This agreement was reached on the 10th of March, 1791.

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History of Wyoming County, N.Y., with Illustrations, Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Some Pioneers and Prominent Residents, Part 13

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: F.W. Beers & Co. Number of Pages:

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: F.W. Beers & Co.
Number of Pages: