USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the Genesee country (western New York) comprising the counties of Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Erie, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates, Volume I > Part 21
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At the end of the second day's march, they passed Learned's log cabin, the last house on the frontier. In the following weeks they encountered the greatest difficulties, traveling through ex- tensive swamps, dense forests and rocky barrens. After thirty- six days of this arduous struggle, having covered only 65 miles, they arrived in the beautiful Wyoming Valley, where Brigadier- General Hand awaited them.
The army was obliged to remain here to collect fresh supplies, as the disheartening discovery was made that all salted meat had soured and was unfit for food, owing to its being packed in casks made of unseasoned oak. To provide meat for his troops, Sullivan was forced to send to lower Pennsylvania for live cattle, to be driven along with the army on its advance up the Susquehanna. Likewise, the supply of clothing and shoes had failed; on the 21st of July, Sullivan wrote that "more than a third of his soldiers had not a shirt to their backs."
When the movements of General Sullivan became known to the enemy, bold and desperate measures were undertaken to divert him from his course. On July 28th, Captain McDonald, with 100 British and 200 Indians, attacked Freeland's Fort on the west branch of the Susquehanna. The same week, Brant, with a large party of warriors, fell upon the Minisink settlements in Orange County, New York. Sullivan knew full well the futility of divid- ing his forces to go in pursuit, and only hastened his departure from Wyoming for the country of the Iroquois.
In preparation for the advance, the artillery and heavy sup- plies were loaded into 214 boats to be poled up-stream to Tioga Point; also the 1,200 pack horses were made ready. On July 31st, the army broke camp and began its forward march. It followed the age-worn Indian trail along the river, forming a line approxi-
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mately six miles in length with 700 beef cattle bringing up the. rear.
Colonel Zebulon Butler, with 100 troops, was left in garrison at Wyoming, to forward such supplies as might be collected later.
The army arrived at Tioga Point on August 11th, having made the eighty-mile march without serious incident. To accom- plish this, the entire army was obliged to ford the Susquehanna. on this occasion, owing to the peculiar topography of the Susque- hanna Valley. A few Indians were seen now and then, evidently scouts, but no open engagement occurred.
Sullivan began to erect a fort at Tioga, which was named in his honor. This fort extended from the bank of the Chemung to. that of the Susquehanna, at about a mile above the point where these two streams meet. His plan was to remain here until the arrival of Clinton.
General Clinton, who, since the middle of June, had been transporting his brigade and stores from the Mohawk by way of Canajoharie and Springfield, encamped at Lake Otsego on the. third of July, where, awaiting orders from General Sullivan, he remained until the ninth of August. He had thrown a dam across. the outlet of the lake to provide sufficient water in the upper Sus- quehanna River to float his 250 boats, which were to carry his. stores to Tioga. On his descent of the North Branch he destroyed. several Indian villages.
On August 18th two messengers came to Clinton with word that General Sullivan had reached Tioga and that General Poor was marching with a thousand men to meet Clinton. This meet- ing occurred at a place ever since called Union, Broome County,. New York, which village has recently been absorbed in the larger community of Endicott.
Sullivan had sent General Poor to escort Clinton on account. of rumors that a large body of Indians was hovering about. Clinton's army and planning an attack. Clinton and Poor ar- rived at Tioga on August 22nd.
While waiting at Tioga, Sullivan availed himself of the excel- lent pasturage on Queen Esther's flats for his horses and cattle. His men guarding these were subjected to frequent attacks by lurking Indians, who killed two of them and wounded several others.
On the arrival of General Clinton's brigade, preparations:
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for the onward movement of the army began at once. All cum- bersome and unnecessary baggage was ordered stored with the garrison of 250 men at Fort Sullivan, under the command of Colonel Israel Shreve. The invalids and wounded were left here in an improvised hospital. The wives of several of the boat- men, who had accompanied the expedition to this point, served as nurses.
On the 26th of August the army resumed its march into the unknown country. It was known that the Indians were assembled in force somewhere on the Chemung River and not far distant from Tioga. The following day Sullivan reached the site of Old Chemung, where, on August 12th, a small detachment on a reconnoitre had been attacked from ambush with a loss of six men and the wounding of several others.
Late at night on the 27th a scout came in with the informa- tion that the enemy had been discovered at work building forti- fications a few miles above.
Early on Sunday, the 29th of August, the army advanced with great caution, and had gone scarcely two miles when the advance guard discovered Indian scouts slightly ahead, who upon being observed, ran off at full speed. A small force was also seen on the opposite side of the river, which kept nearly abreast of General Hand's troops, but out of rifle range. After advancing four miles farther, the fortifications of the enemy were discovered in the vicinity of an Indian village, then called Newtown, where now is located the village of Lowman, New York.
The Indian warriors, variously estimated at 700 to 1,500, were commanded by Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), probably the most remarkable Indian then living on the western conti- nent. The Indians had gathered here with the Royal Greens and a few British regulars, to make a determined stand against the further advance of Sullivan into the Iroquois country.
Brant had selected with consummate skill a rise of ground, where he had dug rifle pits and thrown up breast-works for a distance of half a mile, and concealed them by freshly cut sap- lings and brush. Immediately in front there flowed a consider- able stream, Baldwin's Creek, which would necessarily impede the progress of an attacking party. On Brant's left flank was an extensive swamp overgrown with bushes, at his rear was a
MONUMENT ERECTED IN GROVELAND NEAR POINT OF AMBUSCADE OF BOYD AND PARKER SCOUTING PARTY
BURIAL MOUND OF BOYD AND PARKER AT CUYLERVILLE
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high hill, while at his right passed the old Indian trail, over which Sullivan would advance. Some 200 yards beyond this trail and parallel to it, lay a wooded ridge, where 500 British under command of Sir John Johnson, Guy Johnson, Colonel John Butler and his son Walter and Captain MacDonald were hidden. In case Sullivan made a frontal attack, the British would guard Brant's right flank, but if, as the enemy hoped, Sullivan should advance far enough on the trail, he would discover too late that the enemy was on either side of his advancing column. Sulli- van's advance scouts brought back sufficient information to save him from this fatal trap.
Sullivan sent Colonel Ogden far to the left, and Clinton's and Poor's brigades by a circuitous route to the right, to gain Brant's left flank and rear. The artillery was sent forward to within 300 yards of Brant's entrenchments, supported by General Hand's brigade. Maxwell's brigade was held at the rear in reserve. By a prearrangement these three divisions were to attack in force and simultaneously, at the first volley from the artillery as a signal.
General Hand advanced a portion of his light troops near the breast-work, to divert the enemy's attention from the movements on the flanks. An hour had been allowed as sufficient time for Poor's troops to be in a position to turn the enemy's left, at which time the attack should be made in force on the front, particu- larly by the artillery. Poor was delayed beyond this reckoning, on account of the swampy ground, and was still floundering in the morass, overgrown with alders and bushes, and his troops well-nigh overcome with the heat and exertion, when the signal for attack boomed forth from the artillery.
Proctor's battery consisted of six three-pounders, a light cohorn and two howitzers, carrying five and one-half inch shells. These opened with a sharp, severe fire of solid shot. Eventually Clinton and Poor emerged from the swamp and gained higher ground, and were in active combat with the left of Brant's forces.
For a time, at this point, the Americans were threatened with defeat and destruction, notwithstanding Hand's efforts to divert the enemy by his activity on the front. A vigorous artil- lery fire now began, which no doubt saved the day. The con- tinuous roar of cannon was telling on the morale of the Indians.
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Brant realized his lines were wavering and that his right flank and especially his rear were threatened by Ogden, so the signal for retreat was sounded. The Indians and British beat a hasty retreat up the valley, many crossing the river and taking to the high hills. This escape was so precipitous that several of their dead were abandoned on the field, a circumstance seldom observed in Indian warfare.
The engagement lasted three hours preceded by four hours of manoeuvering, during which there were exchanges of shots at some points on the two square miles of battlefield. The mor- tality on both sides was surprisingly low; Sullivan lost eight men and about forty wounded; these were transported in boats to Fort Sullivan hospital that night. The casualties of the Indians and British were never accurately learned, though in- quiries of captured Indians revealed at least thirty dead and a large number wounded; twelve were found dead on the battle- field. A pursuit of the fleeing Indians toward Kanawaholla (Elmira) resulted in a brief skirmish about three miles from Newtown without result to either side.
Sullivan's men, exhausted by the events of the day, encamped that night on the battlefield. This place is suitably marked by a granite rock at Lowman, New York, erected by the Newtown Battle Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution. On the crest of the hill back of the battlefield, the State of New York has created a park and erected a tall shaft commemorating this battle.
Sullivan now began a systematic destruction of the villages and fields in the vicinity, after which he moved his army north- ward towards Seneca Lake, destroying all in his path. The In- dians and Tories kept up their retreat, always far ahead of Sulli- van, picking up the women and children as they went. On the present site of Montour there stood at that time a substantial town called Chequaga or Queen Catherine's Town. It contained about forty well built houses, some of framed timbers with glazed windows and chimneys. This was burned and the crops de- stroyed. The soldiers found several horses, cows, calves and hogs which were taken to camp.
The army now marched along the east bank of Seneca Lake, burning several villages and felling the peach and apple orchards. At the end of the lake, a detachment was sent down the Seneca River to destroy Skoiyase (Waterloo) while the main army
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turned west and destroyed Kanadesaga (Geneva), a large village of fifty houses with unusually abundant crops. The route now led to Kanandaiqua, which was reached September 9th. De- stroying everything at this place, the army continued on towards the Genesee Valley with the immediate objective of attacking Genesee Castle, the capital of the Confederation, known as Che- nandoanes (Dyu-non-dah-ga-eeh), or Little Beard's Town, and here the expedition ended. At nightfall on September 12th, Gen- eral Hand's light corps, which had left the main body of the army far to the rear, arrived within half a mile of the Indian town of Kanaghsaws, at the head of Conesus Lake, and encamped on what is now the McMillan farm in the town of Conesus. Brant and Butler had their forces near here, determined to make an- other stand against the invaders.
We have the words of the commander-in-chief as to his utter lack of competent guides: "We had," he says, "not a single per- son who was sufficiently acquainted with the country to conduct a party out of the Indian path by day, or scarcely in it by night, though they were the best I could possibly procure." His maps were also misleading and pronounced by him "erroneous and cal- culated to perplex rather than to enlighten." He at once sought by a reconnoissance to ascertain the location of the Genesee Castle and the best course by which it might be reached; and ordered Lieutenant Thomas Boyd to undertake this mission and discover the arrangement of the enemy's forces ahead, with the injunction to report at sunrise the next morning. Boyd's party included twenty-nine men, instead of the three or four riflemen which his instructions contemplated, and in this respect a fatal mistake was made.
During the night they passed Butler's right flank unobserved and without themselves knowing the near proximity of the en- emy. At dawn they saw four Indians on horseback entering a small village. These were fired upon and one Indian fell dead; the others escaped and no doubt rushed to Butler to inform him of the incident. Boyd now turned back towards camp, and, after going a distance of four or five miles, paused to rest, sending two scouts on to report to Sullivan. They soon returned to Boyd re- porting having seen five Indians on the path. Boyd then pushed on and overtook the Indians who started to run. He was advised by Hanyerry, an Oneida guide, not to pursue them, as he sus-
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pected a familiar ruse. Boyd disregarded this warning, and was lured by the fleeing redskins into the enemy's lines, where he and his men were surrounded and attacked. In the face of such fear- ful odds, the little band sold their lives dearly, as they stood back to back against the encircling horde of howling savages. Fifteen of Boyd's men fell; eight escaped, including Tim Murphy, the famous scout, while Boyd and his sergeant, Michael Parker, were captured. It is supposed they were promised their freedom if they would divulge Sullivan's plans and military strength, which they steadfastly refused to do, so they were horribly tortured and mutilated before being put to death. Upon the arrival of the army they were buried nearby with military honors. This tragic episode is known in history as the Groveland Ambuscade. In 1841 the remains of Boyd and his men who had slept so long in unmarked graves, were removed, with elaborate ceremonies to Rochester, where they now rest under a suitable monument in Mount Hope cemetery, provided by the Daughters of the Ameri- can Revolution of that city. On this occasion, three of Sullivan's men were present, including Paul Sanborn, who was the first to discover the mutilated bodies where they fell sixty-two years before.
General Sullivan now pushed forward on the trail taken by Boyd, and at sundown of September 13th, he found a strong force of Indians at the Indian town of Gathtseqwarohare, the site of the "Hermitage," the ancestral home of the Carrolls. Sullivan immediately brought up his troops in position for action, where- upon the Indians, no doubt recalling Newtown, fled without firing a shot. On the next day the army arrived at the Genesee River, which it crossed and at sunset of the 14th entered Genesee Castle, a settlement of 128 large houses, which the entire army set about demolishing along with extensive fields and gardens just ripen- ing for the harvest.
Owing to the lateness of the season, the rapidly dwindling supplies and Brodhead's failure to arrive, Sullivan decided to abandon further pursuit and to retrace his steps to Pennsylvania. This announcement was received with great joy by the tired and worn soldiers. A detachment of one hundred picked men was sent under command of Peter Gansevoort to go directly east to destroy some Mohawk villages and continue on to Albany. Dear- born was sent with a considerable force to clean up the country
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about Cayuga Lake and to rejoin the army at Fort Reed (El- mira).
Sullivan arrived at Fort Reed just one month after his en- counter at Newtown. Boats and fresh supplies had been brought up from Tioga. Before embarking for the south, there was held a huge barbecue and celebration by the troops, with plenty to eat and liberal portions of spirits for all. The army now pro- ceeded to Tioga Point and later, taking boats, dispersed into mili- tary camps in lower Pennsylvania.
This expedition had marched 280 miles from Easton through an unbroken wilderness until it arrived in central New York. The total loss of men from all causes was only forty-one, a most extraordinary outcome under the circumstances. Sullivan ac- complished substantially all that he set out to do, except the de- struction of Fort Niagara; no doubt this was highly desirable, but not vital, and it would appear that he exercised excellent judgment under the conditions of approaching cold weather, de- pleted supplies, and an army worn and weary from three months of strenuous campaigning.
He had destroyed all discoverable habitations, some forty towns, quantities of stored foods, including about 160,000 bushels of corn, countless orchards and all growing crops. The Iroquois occupation was a desolate, smoking ruin, and its people were forced, as unwelcome refugees, upon the British, who were obliged to quarter them in barracks at Fort Niagara that winter, an exceptionally severe one, and a great many died before spring from exposure and scurvy.
Not the least important result of this campaign was that Sul- livan had rendered useless and impracticable a very natural and easy path of approach to the colonies from Canada, should such an invasion, once interrupted at Saratoga, be attempted again.
While it is true that in the following years the Indians re- newed their attacks upon the border country, they never again gathered in force, but appeared as small roving bands without definite organization or leadership.
When peace with England was finally declared, in 1783, there began a migration of settlers to western New York. Many of Sullivan's men were given grants of land for their services, in many instances the only pay they ever received. In consequence, a very considerable number of the pioneer families trace their
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descent from these patriots, the very bone and sinew of the newly rising empire. Richly endowed by nature and disciplined in the hard school of military service, they brought to the Genesee Coun- try the sterling qualities of industrious living; independent thinking, and prodigious bodily vigor. They have left as an her- itage their indelible mark upon the character of our people and institutions to this day.
LOWER PORTAGE FALLS
CHAPTER XI. THE GENESEE COUNTRY.
BY CHARLES F. MILLIKEN.
Western New York is a term applied to that part of the state of New York lying west of the preemption line, the line which the Hartford Convention of 1786 arbitrarily established as the east- ern boundary of the tract the preemptive right to which New York relinquished to Massachusetts in settlement of a long stand- ing controversy between the two states. The preemption line ex- tended from the eighty-second mile stone on the New York-Penn- sylvania boundary due north to the imaginary line which, under the peace treaty of 1783 between the United States and Great Britain, extended through the middle of Lake Ontario and de- limited at the north the territory whose independence of the mother country had just been established. All the land west of the preemption line, while still recognized as under the sovereign- ty of New York, was given to Massachusetts to sell, and, in the negotiations to that end, in which various speculators engaged in the last years of the eighteenth and the first years of the nine- teenth century, was exploited as "The Genesee Country." It is the same tract that upon the division of Montgomery County and the organization of the fifteenth county of the state, in 1789, was given the name "Ontario," after the lake of that name which lay along its northern boundary.
The territory to which these various appellations attach has an area of 640 square miles and embraces luxuriant forests, val- leys of unsurpassed fertility, lake and river systems that com- mand means of easy access to remote parts of the continent north and south, east and west, together with scenery inspiring alike to writer and artist.
For nearly three hundred years following the discovery of America, western New York was terra incognita to white men. From time immemorial it had been the habitat of savages, arch-
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aeologists tell us, of Esquimaux, Mound Builders, Algonkians, un- til at the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy, about the time of the landing of Columbus, it became the home of one of the Five Nations that united in what has been inaptly termed a "league of peace."
The first of the alien brood of palefaces to penetrate its forests and visit its natives were either French adventurers or French missionaries. Representative of the former was Etienne Brule, Champlain's interpreter, who in company with his great leader is known to have penetrated the Iroquois country as far as Onon- daga Lake in 1615, and is believed to have extended his adven- turous journeyings into the western part of the state. But how- ever this may be, the record is indisputable that a number of the "Black Robes," as the Jesuit missionaries were called, visited the Senecas in the early years of the seventeenth century in obedience to orders that they should set up a Christian empire in the wilder- ness. At least we have the authority of the Jesuit Relations in stating that Father Chaumonot visited the Seneca towns as early as 1657, and that in 1668 Father Fremin took up his residence among them, built a chapel at Gandougarae (Mud Creek, in what is now the town of East Bloomfield, Ontario County), and labored with small success to instruct them in the truths of the Christian religion and show them the way to heaven. Then in 1669 came the intrepid explorer, La Salle, accompanied by the Sulpitian Fathers Galinee and Dollier, who crossed the Lake of St. Louis, as Lake Ontario was then called, in frail birch canoes, and landing at Irondequoit Bay, on the south shore, proceeded into the heart of the Seneca country in a quest for guides who would show them the way for a projected expedition to the Ohio. La Salle and his companions penetrated as far as Boughton Hill, in the present town of Victor, and perhaps visited the burning spring in the Bristol Valley, a few miles farther south.
It was nine years later, in 1678, after receiving royal license "to endeavor to discover the western part of New France," that La Salle built Fort Niagara, at the western door of the Iroquois "long house," and having made portage of the necessary materials proceeded to construct on the east bank of the river the "Griffon," the first white man's vessel to enter the upper lakes.
After another nine years, in 1687, the Marquis Denonville, then governor of New France, with a force of two thousand
HISTORY OF THE GENESEE COUNTRY
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THE EXPEDITION OF THE MARQUIS DE DENONVILLE 1687
FORT JULY 10 - 25
1
CAMP JULY 12 TH FIRST DEFILE
ROCHESTER
PITTSFORD
CAMP 23
SECOND DEFILE BUSHNELL BASIN
VICTOR
CAMP 13 BATTLE
TOTIAKTON 19 23 FORT 18 LA CONCEPTION
STJAMES 14-16 GANNAGARO
STJEAN 21 22 GANNOUNATA
ST MICHAEL GANNOGARAE 17
ROUTE OF DE DENONVILLE'S EXPEDITION IN 1687
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French and Indians, engaged in a serious attempt to compel the Senecas to respect the lilies of France, which they had previously seemed to hold in light esteem. Landing at Irondequoit Bay on the tenth of July, the invaders marched into the very heart of the region of which we write. Though repelling attacks by the Indians, who, sensing perhaps the fate that the incoming of the strangers presaged, rallied in a desperate attempt to protect their home land, and accomplishing the destruction of several of the Indian villages and large stores of their grain, the Frenchmen gained for themselves only a deepening of the hatred already felt for them by the red men and widened the breach that the English were soon to take advantage of, as they did in 1756, when Sir William Johnson, in an effort to attach the Iroquois to the British cause, erected a palisade fort at Kanadesaga, near the foot of Seneca Lake.
In the meantime the Great Western Wilderness, as the seem- ingly impenetrable region had come to be known, had been visited by traders, who bought the peltries the Indians had to sell, and by Jesuits, who, with unquenchable ardor, suffered ignominy and torture, even burning and death, that they might establish mis- sions in the homes of the heathen. These devoted missionaries, who had set up the cross in the villages destroyed by Denonville, had previously accompanied La Salle in his travels through the Seneca country. The cross and the sword had an important part in these first attempts to convert or conquer the red denizens of the western New York forests, and often the cross pioneered the way.
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