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 8
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by the Eskimo of the north today. Sometimes broad chert points are found on sites yielding semi-lunar choppers, or ulas. Steatite pottery and effigies made of soapstone or other soft stone are also sometimes found. In general, however, this culture blends into the archaic Algonkian, just as the higher Algonkian blends with the mound culture in certain particulars. The Iroquoian alone seems unique.
We must understand thoroughly that only the beginning has been made in the scientific study of archeology. What we know of the antiquities of western New York is the result of only twenty years of systematic study. Differences in culture were not appre- ciated until recently. It was Dr. William M. Beauchamp, of Syracuse, who blazed the way, and he was followed by such men as M. Raymond Harrington, Alanson Skinner, Frederick Hough- ton, Alvin H. Dewey and the archeologists of the State Museum at Albany, directed by Dr. John M. Clarke, whose natal home was Canandaigua. Thus, students of archeology found the Genesee Country a mine of buried history, but the discovery has been made almost too late. Hundreds of sites of vast importance have been ruined by careless relic hunters-men who cared more for relics than for the facts about them. This appalling fact led to the organization of the State Archeological Association, whose Gene- see Country chapter (Lewis H. Morgan chapter) has done so much to promote systematic research. Out of hidden graves, dusty re- fuse pits and the blackened soil of Indian village sites, members of Morgan chapter have drawn forth a vital story of the life of aboriginal man. So well has this work been done that the atten- tion of scientists the world over has been called to the researches and results of this remarkable group of men and women because of the light that has been shed by the active workers in the society and by the backing given by those who find satisfaction in sup- porting worthy effort. This light is that of archeology. It has required work and sacrifice to bring this torch to the fore, and it is so dazzling and strange that men are not yet accustomed to it, and fear its revelations. We use the term archeology in its broad meaning, including with it anthropology and ethnology- all that belongs to the science of man. In this sense we have a basic science, shedding light on man's physical, mental, cultural and moral evolution. Archeology presents material evidence of human thought, in the early ages of man's evolution. This is
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tremendously important; for thoughts lead us on. The masses of mankind are followers, and thoughts once emphatically stated, by dynamic suggestion find a ready acceptance. The mass mind is too indolent to examine evidences, accepting what is apparently so, and believing it. It is more convenient to believe than to think exhaustively, for thinking constructively is the most exacting effort of which man is capable.
For the salvation of humanity, in a cultural sense, it is provi- dential that here and there in the world's history there have been thinkers. One of the greatest inventors the world ever knew, and soon forgot, was he who out of the lash of necessity discovered how to chip sharp flakes from flint and other hard stones. This was the beginning of industry and through this discovery it was possible to hew, to cut, to engrave, in fact, to produce a change of form. The discovery of the method of producing fire was an- other fundamental factor in man's development. Without it he would still be only an ingenious beast. Thus, in examining an archeological specimen, found perchance in our own garden, we catch a glimpse of the thought processes that molded man and stimulated him to progress. Out of a knowledge of the artifacts, we discover what promoted and what retarded true progress ; we see what was right and what was wrong, what was useful and what was obstructive. Through these basic things we are enabled to draw conclusions regarding the trend of modern things.
A faithful study of our subject in its widest application throws the light upon the causes of man's physical development; it ex- plains the beginning of industry ; it reveals the origin of tribalism and the rise of nations; it traces the causes of migrations and group movements; it illuminates the dark arcana of that mass murder we call war; it discloses the causes of international jeal- ousies and competition; it explains the problems of sex, society and inter-group relations ; it solves the problem of caste, of capital and labor ; it pours a flood of light upon religion itself and depicts its origin, its evolution and its age-long search for a consciousness. of Deity. Through the light of archeology the world, if it wishes, may discover the erroneous premises upon which it has built up faulty systems of thought; it may trace back its mistaken con- clusions, and it may set itself aright-if it dare. I say, if it dare, for the chains of precedent and inbred error, sanctified by long usage, that have imported falsehood into the finer fabric of our
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institutions, have changed our picture of reality. Archeology bids us seek the truth that underlies history, and the facts concerning man's development, and, indeed, archeology points out these truths. Let mankind face them as realities and real progress will ensue in an age of enlightenment: let mankind turn away, and the statue that we build will be as far from reality as the distorted images of Egypt or Babylon, and we shall worship them even as their votaries did-as gods.
CHAPTER IV. ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
BY ARTHUR CASWELL PARKER, M. S.
One thinks of the Genesee Country as the land of the Senecas, and indeed, the Senecas still hold small, shrunken areas that they call their own in the valleys of the Tonawanda, the Cattaraugus and the Allegany. They have given up forever all the land in the valley of the Genesee and the country to the east of it. So deeply impressed upon the region is the former presence of these ancient lords of the soil that the names they left behind for creek, river, lake and village are still retained to enrich our stock of place names and make our region distinctive. This domain of the Genesee was a land they loved, and deep was the heartache when they left it and retreated to sheltered spots farther west. To them it was a holy land where the bones of their ancestors were buried and where they dwelt in their greatest glory. Even to this day, the Senecas wander back over these sacred places and dream of the good old days when their nation was a power with which to reckon. Alas, now, when they come in their automobiles to camp on our hillsides and in our glens we know them not. Yet the Senecas were not the first to roam this region. Other tribes had their camps and villages here, and even mighty nations had their council fires along the streams and upon the hills.
It is difficult to say what people first lived here, whether the archaic Algonkian or the Eskimo-like people. It is certain that the Algonkian tribes came very early, and it is equally true that some northern people with implements like the Eskimo roamed the hills and upper terraces. Then came the second period or intermediate Algonkian tribes. These people began to use crude pottery which they made from local clays, although they still used to some extent steatite or soapstone dishes, as did their prede- cessors. The third period Algonkian tribes spread in every direc-
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tion throughout the Genesee Country, for they seem to have been a numerous people. They were bold and busy hunters and well acquainted with the arts of the forest. While they roamed afar, they also had settled villages and fields of corn and beans. Their flint workers were expert, and many of the finest specimens of chipped flint, jasper and chalcedony must be credited to them. They were makers of grooved axes, roller pestles, notched chop- pers and hoes, gouges, gorgets, bird-stones, banner stones, bone implements (as harpoons and awls), and a well developed type of pottery decorated over its entire surface with the impression of cords or imitations of cord markings.
These people were culturally rich but were frugal. They did not waste their artifacts like the later Iroquois, and thus they did not write their history so deeply in the soil. Nevertheless, they present ample evidence of having lived here for an extended period of time. It is quite likely that the various Algonkian occupations of western New York cover an era of more than five thousand years and perhaps nearly twice as long. The Algonkian tribes of various periods and cultures did not hold this region undis- puted, for again and again other stocks intruded and gained foot- holds for periods of time, greater or less. Among the strange people who came were those who in certain phases of culture resembled the Eskimo. They made broad, crudely chipped arrow points, semi-lunar choppers and double edged, rubbed slate knives or spears. We do not know when they came, but we can place them somewhere between the advent of the archaic Algonkians and the second Algonkian period.
At some stage in the third Algonkian period a new cultural influence began to manifest itself. It apparently came from the west or southwest. The people who brought it were builders of mounds and they brought with them a new appreciation of finely made articles of stone. They brought copper implements, monitor pipes and polished implements and articles of Huronian slate. They made large shell beads and cut disks from iridescent shells and they used the banner stone, the bird stone and gorget. Ap- parently they did not build stockaded fortifications or, if they did, very few were set in walled bases of earth. Who these people were we do not know. They may have been an Ohioan Algonkian people and they may have been of other stocks. Their methods of interment were various. When they buried in mounds they some-
ALGONKIAN POT
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times walled up the burial with slabs of stone, as at Napoli, Poland Center and Squawkie Hill. In some of the stoned up graves have been found finely made stone tubes, some of them filled with a curious black powder. Again, not all the walled graves are in mounds. Where individual graves are found or groups of them, the same sort of artifacts are present. At Vine valley on Lake Canandaigua, in 1922, were discovered more than thirty graves of this culture and careful notes were made de- scribing them. Among the implements from this site are awls of bone and antler, copper celts and nails or rivets, shell beads, bird stones, a bone bird stone, bola stones, and several gorgets. One of these shows plain evidence of having been made with precision, the ends being arcs of circles the centers of which are the holes in the gorget.
From the evidence furnished by the sites of the Genesee coun- try alone, not to mention the testimony of other localities, we are warranted in stating positively that the so-called Mound Builders were no more than energetic Indian tribes, who during a period of peace were able to develop their native arts. There is no evi- dence whatsoever of any mysterious race of higher civilization that has been blotted out by the later Indians, at least in the sense that the mound building tribes were not Indians themselves. There is nothing that the Mound Builders had or did that the Indians did not have and do, for, indeed, all were Indians. If we wish to pursue the subject further, we will find accounts of French and Spanish explorers who actually saw Indians building mounds. Our earlier antiquarians, lacking information, built up strange theories that later investigations proved erroneous. In the popu- lar mind the Mound Builders remain an entertaining myth, but American anthropoligists long ago branded it as a fable, shelving it along with the story of tempered copper, the Israelitish origin of the Indians, Atlantis and the making of arrowheads by heating flint and dropping on water. The light of science may be cruel in spoiling our fairy tales, but facts are not entirely devoid of ro- mance, and in truth we find real satisfaction.
At some point during the height of the third Algonkian period, and at a time when the mound culture still prevailed, another peo- ple began to enter this region. They were a distinctive people with habits, tastes and prejudices all their own. More than this, they were a people of greater mental energy than had heretofore
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occupied the region. It may be that they were less skilled in some of the material arts, but their skill took other directions. They were a persistent people of great ingenuity and possessed the racial vigor to persevere in their desires until they conquered. They were the Iroquois. Some historians, basing their state- ments on an early account of the shifting of the Mohawks, have tried to make us believe that the Iroquoian tribes came out of the north from the region about the mouth of the St. Lawrence, but when we examine the discoveries of both archeology and eth- nology we will find all the evidence against this. The Iroquoian people came from the west and southwest, and not from the north. When we speak of the Iroquois we mean the group of tribes that afterward became the Five Nations Confederacy, sometimes called the League of the Iroquois. But the Iroquoian stock itself included a much larger group of linguistically related people. In the north, between Georgian Bay and the St. Lawrence, and southward along the northern shores of Lake Ontario were the Huron tribes; in the Niagara peninsulas on both sides of the river were the tribes and allies of the Neutrals or Attiwendaronks; southward of Lake Erie and extending down the Allegheny and between it and the terri- tory of the Conestoga tribes was the land of the Eries, a populous tribe; along the Susquehanna to its mouth were the several tribes of the Conestogas, and Susquehannocks; in the south, in the hills of the Carolinas and westward into Tennessee, were the tribes of the Cherokees, and farther east in North Carolina were the Tus- caroras, the Nottaways and the Meherrins. All these tribes were surrounded by other stocks; in the north by the Algonkian, in the south by the Muskhogean and Siouan. The Iroquoian linguistic stock was not widespread, and everywhere it was hemmed in by hostile and alien peoples. It was distributed in three great geo- graphical groups, and the alliances of its constituent tribes were frequently to the great disadvantage of its own blood kinsmen. But for the innate genius of the Iroquois, they would have been destroyed either by themselves through internal strife or by their unrelenting outside foes.
Archeological evidence points out the movement of the Iro- quoian tribes from some mid-Mississippi valley point, perhaps be- yond the mouth of the Ohio in Arkansas. Here they were in con- tact with the Caddo tribes and at the mercy of the Sioux. We know not what started the migration, but groups of Iroquoian
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tribes began to push up the Ohio, and others farther up the Mis- sissippi, perhaps to the mouth of the Missouri, then overland through Illinois, where they began a northeastward journey along the Great Lakes. One or two large groups pushed southward again and crossed the Alleghenies, to occupy its foothills and the valleys to the east, forming the Cherokee division. Others pushed on south of Lake Erie, and still others crossed the Detroit River and occupied the region between Lake Huron on the west, lakes Erie and Ontario on the south, and then along the St. Lawrence Valley nearly to the mouth of the river. The tribes that pushed across the Detroit later drew together and formed the Huron- Wyandot group, the Neutral group, and the Mohawk-Onondaga group. Those who chose to push along the south side of Lake Erie and move across Ohio became the Eries, the Conestogas and the Senecas. One of the northern groups pushed across the Alle- ghenies or down the Susquehanna to form the Tuscarora tribes. Other smaller divisions split off as time went on. There was a spirit of race pride among these people and they called themselves the Ongweh Howeh, meaning Surpassing Men, Real Men, and the Most Truly Human Race. They believed themselves the "chosen people" and acted accordingly.
Among the groups of tribes along the lakes was one, already mentioned, called the Attiwendaronk or Neutral Nation, so named because it would not wage war upon any of its kinsfolk. Just why this was so we have no sure means of knowing, but we may con- jecture that it was because within the Neutral Nation, and ruling at least a part of it, was a woman known as "the Mother of Na- tions", sometimes called "the peace queen." According to Iroquois tradition, the original Mother of Nations was a woman called Djikonsaseh, the first woman born on earth. Her eldest daughter was her successor, so that the line came down in perpetuity. She was the arbiter of peace, and the nation in which she dwelt must preserve peace with all the brother nations that had grown from the great mother's brood. Thus the Neutral Nation occupied both the western and eastern peninsulas of the Niagara, having many towns on the west side of the Niagara and four large villages on the east side, one of which was the capital of the nation, wherein dwelt the great mother. This capital in early historic times was at Ga-yen-no-gah, on the Niagara escarpment above Lewiston and the boundary of the present Tuscarora reservation. It was
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America's first Peace Court and the first Hague. The Neutrals were sedentary village dwellers and had large fields of corn, beans, squashes, melons and other garden produce. There is little doubt that the earthworks in northern Erie County and in Genesee, Or- leans and Wyoming counties were built by them, but by far the greater number of their works are across the Niagara in the Province of Ontario. The Neutral Nation has a tragic history and one of great interest to those who look for romance in the annals of races. The French missionaries pushing their way down the St. Lawrence heard of the Neutrals, and as early as 1626 the Franciscan friar, La Roche Dallion, visited their villages and be- gan to make converts. He was followed by Fathers Brebeuf and Chaumonot, who established missions among them. For a con- siderable time they were the concern of the valiant Catholic priests, who braved the forests for the sake of saving the souls of men. Eventually, as we shall see, the Neutral Nation was de- stroyed. The year 1651 saw the end of these people as a distinct nation, and just why, we shall discover later when we trace the rise of the Iroquois League.
The Jesuits in their Relations tell of another tribe, and lingered to see its downfall and to describe it. This tribe was the Erie or the Cat. It was a powerful group of people with the common Iroquoian features in its organization. Its territory extended from the region of the Neutrals and south of it, along the Catta- raugus to the Allegheny, thence along the creeks and valleys far inland from Lake Erie and covering western Pennsylvania and northern Ohio. The Hurons of the north, from whom they prob- ably separated, called them Yeñresh, and from this the name Erie is derived. It means "long tailed" and probably alludes to the robes of panther skin worn over their heads and shoulders by these people. The Senecas called them Jigonsasehonoh, or the People of the Fat Face, this term referring to the wild cat. The Jesuits hearing this term frequently called them Nation du Chat. The Eries occupied a portion of the land once held by the mound build- ing tribes, and indeed, with the Senecas, may have absorbed some of these extirpated people. We know from archeological research that Erie pottery sometimes resembled that of the Ohio mounds and that their pipes of stone frequently were identical. Their villages and camps, their fortifications and fields covered nearly every part of Chautauqua County, extended through Cattaraugus,
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Allegany and Wyoming and even into Erie, Warren, Mckean and Potter counties in Pennsylvania, thence westward through north- ern Ohio.
It has been the privilege of the writer to examine scores of Erie village sites and fortifications throughout this region and to dig deep into the graves after their hidden records. The earthworks along Clear Creek in Chautauqua County are theirs, the wonderful site at Ripley excavated in 1906 was a stronghold of the Eries; the hilltop defences in Cattaraugus County are the result of their efforts, as perhaps are some of the forts along the Genesee in Allegany County. Like the Neutrals they had a tragic history and it was brought to a close by the Iroquois, who lived east of them across the Genesee. The faithful Jesuit record of their passing is as vivid a chapter as we can find in the entire Jesuit Relations (1655-'56). As we record the history of the Senecas we shall review this story, for it reveals much of interest.
Before we proceed we should gain a better understanding of the Hurons to the north, for their alliances have much to do with the flow of history. The fate of the Genesee Country hinges upon their action. The Iroquoian people whom Cartier found along the St. Lawrence in 1534-43, were the northeastern Hurons, or Wyan- dots (Wendat). He learned that these people were engaged in combat with another people living south of them, whom they de- scribed as cruel and warlike, and called Trudamani and Agoui- onda, meaning "they who attack us." Later Champlain mentions these enemies of the Hurons, and Loscarbot, in 1603, in his Nova Francia, writes of the destruction of the Huron people along the St. Lawrence by the Iroquois, who, he says, appeared " * * to the number of 8,000 men, and discomfited all their enemies whom they surprised in their enclosures." Thus, at this early date, we have an account of the Huron-Iroquois war, a war of great significance in history. The Hurons were a confederated group of four independent tribes and several smaller bands. The Relations of 1636 give us the names of these tribes as the Attig- naountan or Bear People, the Attigneenongnahac or Cord People, the Arendahronon, Rock People, and the Tohontaenrat or White Eared or Deer People. The independent tribes were the Bowl People, Ataronchronon, and the later Wenroe People, refugees from Iroquois wrath. The Bear and the Cord People were the oldest and most influential, and they gave refuge to the Rock and
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Deer People in the latter part of the 16th century, about 1590 to 1600. For political reasons and for protection, a confederation seems to have been formed, an organization to which Huron gov- ernment was particularly adapted. The amalgamation of the Rock and Deer People, and their migration from the St. Lawrence to the region between Lake Huron and the Bay of Quinte, seems to be one of the reasons why some early historians believed that all the Iroquois people came down from the north, as if they might not have gone north and then moved south and westward again, which is precisely what happened. The Hurons consolidated, and the Mohawk-Onondagas crossed the St. Lawrence and occupied the lands to the south.
All the Huron people were sedentary and agricultural. Their villages and palisaded towns were numerous and populous. The fortified villages were surrounded by triple palisades from sixteen to thirty-five feet high, and a fighting platform ran entirely around the inside. Upon this were piled stones, arms and buckets of water with which to extinguish fire should it break out from the enemy's fire arrows. The tribes were governed by the general Iroquois system of clans, and women had a large share in the government, possessing the sole right to nominate the civil chiefs. With the coming of the French, missions were established and many converts were made, though not without much opposition from the native priesthood. Nevertheless, the Huron chiefs, see- ing the advantage of having a point of contact with the French and fearing their enmity, frequently encouraged and even invited the ministrations of the self sacrificing Fathers. The reason is quite apparent: the advantages of trade and the desire to enlist. powerful allies against the Iroquois to the south. At the very be- ginning of the contact the Hurons poured into the ears of Champ- lain the story of Iroquois aggression and enlisted his aid. Thus. on July 30, 1609, Champlain with two French soldiers armed with guns and sixty Indians attacked two hundred Mohawks. This. was the first Iroquois experience with guns, and awed by their power they gave way and were defeated. This was the encounter at Ticonderoga. The next year there was another battle, in which. the Iroquois resisted valiantly but in the end nearly one hundred. of them perished. Five years later came the expedition against. the Onondagas, but Champlain only reached one of the large
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