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 9
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Oneida strongholds. This he could not take and returned wounded and disgusted.
Now let us consider just what the French were doing in attack- ing the Iroquois. True, they were punishing the people who harassed them at every turn, but through Iroquois eyes the French were doing more than fighting them. They were espousing the cause of the Hurons and joining with them as allies. Thereafter the fate of France in the new world hung upon the outcome of the Huron-Iroquois war, though the French supposed all along that it was a French-Iroquois war in which the Hurons had lent their support. But the Iroquois could woo allies as well as the Hurons, and the Iroquois chose to court the enemies of France, the Dutch and the English. Thus, it was not long before the balance began to shift and Huron power commenced to wane, and with it all the hopes of New France. Of this we shall speak later, and show that with the breakup of the Huron tribes, after a frightful and bloody war, the Huron people were scattered like chaff and the Iroquois with their English allies became supreme. It may be wondered why two races speaking the same general tongue did not consoli- date and form a great alliance, thus resisting European invasion and domination. We cannot always divine the direction that groups of men will take or say why they act as they do, but we may venture to say that the Hurons were jealous of the rising power of the Iroquois, whom they considered a subordinate or inferior people. The Hurons were willing, however, to ally them- selves with outer nations, as groups of the Algonkians, and use them in fighting their own kinsfolk. To the Iroquois this was a fatal and inexcusable transgression. The Iroquois wanted a far flung confederacy of all the people who spoke the mother tongue, but to this the Hurons and their allies, the Neutrals, the Eries and Andastes (Conestogas) would not agree. Friction arose and one act of aggression followed another. We shall not pursue the tale further ; all these people have gone and with them the dreams of France. Today we speak English and the Iroquois are still with us. The Hurons became fugitives, their land devastated, and refuge failed them at every turn. A stubborn pride had killed them, when surrender might have meant life and a new home, as it did to the Arendahronon villagers, who yielded and were taken to the land of the Senecas and settled at Gandougarae, in Ontario County.
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The Hurons were not the only members of the great Huron- Iroquoian family that looked upon the confederated Iroquois with bitter hatred. Another branch of the family in the Susquehanna Valley feared and warred upon them as well. This was the Susque- hannock-Andaste group of tribes, who, like the Hurons, had Al- gonkian allies. The Susquehannocks or Conestogas dwelt along the Susquehanna River, and, if there were two great divisions of this people, we should say that the Andastes or Conestogas dwelt in the upper valley and the Susquehannocks in the lower, as far as the mouth of the river. Indeed, it was probably the lower river people that Capt. John Smith met in 1608. Smith was much im- pressed with their physical vigor and the style of their costumes, and described these and their weapons in detail. The Conestogas or Andastes were mortal enemies of the Senecas and their con- federates and thus formed valuable allies of the Hurons to the north. In 1615, when the Hurons persuaded Champlain to attack the Iroquois villages, they relied upon the Andastes to come with a force of five hundred warriors and assist in the grand raid. These Andastes were to come from the great town of Carantouan situated just below the present site of Waverly village, at the junc- tion of the Chemung and Susquehanna. Champlain, with high hopes and eight hundred Hurons and Ottawas, reached the land of the Oneidas, began his attack, struggled for several days, looked in vain for the arrival of the forces from Carantouan, and then fled in defeat, wounded and divested of all the glamour and awe which he had formerly inspired. After he had gone the Andastes came, but the victorious Oneidas made the country unsafe for them and they retired as stealthily as they had come. Thus, the millstones of the north and of the south failed to catch the Iroquois and grind them to extinction. The Iroquois were not without some apprehension in the matter, however, for they saw their league and their existence threatened. They, therefore, resolved to have no enemies in the living world, and each Iroquois nation made the common resolve. This meant that every enemy should be destroyed. What followed is an amazing story, without parallel in history.
We cannot conclude an account of the enemies of the Iroquois without mentioning the Algonkian tribes to the east and southeast. These were the Mahicans, or Hudson River tribes, and the Dela- wares of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These hated the
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confederated Iroquois as bitterly as did the Hurons, and with the New England Algonkian tribes and their allies and kinsfolk of the north, the Ottawas, the Abenakis, and others to the farther west, they made common cause against the people whom they called the Nation of Snakes-the Iroquois. The Mahicans hemmed the Mohawks from the Hudson and their Delaware allies con- trolled the upper waters of the Susquehanna and Delaware. Pic- ture, if you will, the Iroquois as they were situated. The Senecas of the Genesee Country were faced by powerful enemies who were watchful of the Genesee frontier, and ever ready to make war. It took all their ingenuity to preserve peace and avoid complications. Indeed, they endeavored to establish friendly relations with the Eries, the Neutrals and the Hurons, and for a time all was well, though great jealousy was plainly evident. To the south were the Andastes, to the east the Mahicans, to the north along the St. Lawrence were the northern Hurons and their allies. Here was a group of twenty thousand people surrounded by another group of a hundred thousand willing upon any pretext to become ene- mies. A gloomier outlook no people ever faced !
The five confederated tribes of the Iroquois are so well known to history, that no detailed description is here necessary, but for the sake of giving them a proper setting and to review their situa- tion, we shall recount some of the salient features of this remark- able confederacy. We have shown that all the Iroquois tribes were once separated and that each had a more or less independent posi- tion. The social organization of the stock, however, tended to induce closer unity of the larger branches, since by their clan sys- tem, all clansmen, of whatever tribe or nation, were called brothers. Thus when the pressure of enemies made it necessary for brothers to unite to fight a common enemy, the idea of the confederation began to grow. Tradition tells us that it was De- kanawida who proposed a union with the Mohawks, and that later Hiawatha came from Onondaga with a similar plan in mind. In order to consummate their project, they persuaded Jikonsaseh, the Mother of Nations, the chieftainess of the Attiwendaronks, to accompany them in their tour in behalf of the scheme to combine the brother nations. An invitation was sent to all the nations to assemble about a symbolical tree of peace, but though there was much discussion, in the end only the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas and the two divisions of the Senecas
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came. The story is a long though interesting one, but the League was established.1
Astonishing as it may seem, this League of the Five Nations, which might as well have been the league of twenty nations, was dedicated to the purpose of establishing and enforcing universal peace. In the code which was drawn up the relations of the brother nations were defined and the laws of peace plainly set forth. The laws of warfare were also laid down and the causes of war given. In this league, as established, the Onondagas were to be the fire keepers, that is, they should preside over the council; the Mohawks should guard the east gate, and the Senecas should guard the west gate, provide the two war captains and control the entrance of other tribes from the west. Each nation of the League was to have a certain number of civil chiefs as members of the League council, but, as the action of this council must be unanimous, an unequal distribution of civil chiefs did not affect the rights of the nations. For example, the Onondagas had 14 representatives, while the two branches of the Senecas had only 8. In all the nations these officers were nominated by the women, and the men simply ratified the choice of the female nominators. Candidates were chosen from a group of young men who had been in training and who belonged to certain royaneh, or noble fam- ilies. It was forbidden that any civil chief become a war captain or warrior while holding office as a "Protector of the Great Peace."
The Iroquois, therefore, had a real government, vested in a council of 50 wise men, but it had no actual president, this office being filled at each session by the election of a moderator. The great Fire Keeper, Adodarhoh, was only the nominal head, for ceremonial purposes, but he had no power to command or to rule. All the acts of the confederated council were ratified by unani- mous vote. This was brought about by an ingenious method of voting by nations, each reporting to the Onondaga Fire Keepers the will of their body. In case of a tie the Onondagas had the cast- ing vote, and immediately all the civil chiefs ratified the action and the vote was singly for or against the measure proposed. A strong government meant powerful support when war was de- clared or when it became necessary to resist invasion. It meant that the armies of five nations would act as a unit. This united
1 See the Constitution of the Five Nations, N. Y. State Museum Bulletin, 186, by A. C. Parker.
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action was especially dreaded, and thus enemies, taking advantage of the independent rights of each constituent to make individual peace, sought at times to estrange certain tribes one from the other in order to weaken the confederacy. It was a well known fact that the Senecas never had any great love for the Mohawks, and that the smaller interior nations, the Cayuga, the Onondaga and the Oneida, were a bit jealous of the military power of the Senecas and Mohawks. The astute leaders of the confederacy were clever enough to use this seeming weakness to great advan- tage by allowing one of its nations to make peace with the enemy, and then inviting its warriors to enlist under the leadership of one of the warring nations, which left a place of refuge when fighting became too warm for them.
The Iroquois were sedentary, village dwellers and pursued agriculture to an amazing extent. Their first towns were upon well protected hills, having steep precipitous sides and bounded by streams. Upon such locations they generally built strong stockades with fighting tops well stored with missiles and water to extinguish the fires that the enemy might set. Their houses were of bark and poles, and often were from fifty to one hundred fifty feet in length. In the long lodges dwelt families of sisters, or women all of one clan. Their husbands were always of different clans, for under the custom or law of exogamy no Iroquois might marry within his or her own clan. Descent followed the mother line, so that the clan of which a person was a member was that of his mother. They had many homely virtues, notwithstanding their rugged culture. They were loyal to their friends and jeal- ously guarded their personal honor. Visitors and strangers were cared for with every regard for their comfort. They loved their children and sought to train them in the lore of the forest, the mothers and the older women instructing them in the way they should go; and when a boy became ten or twelve years of age he was placed in a group of youngsters, similar to a Boy Scout troop, and trained in the useful arts. Their form of education was in- tensely practical and fitted them to live the life that environment commanded. It seems anomalous to state that their government was founded upon the desire to establish universal peace and that it was called "The Great Peace." Nevertheless, they did desire to firmly establish peace, but, as brave and adventurous men, they were jealous of their national honor and not afraid to fight. As
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Iroquois government was one of social pressure, resting upon the opinions of the populace, rather than upon the will of over-lords, the young men frequently seized upon a popular complaint as a pretext for war, and, though their nation had not declared war, they went off on aggressive expeditions against hereditary ene- mies. For these acts the whole nation was sometimes punished, and most of the smaller Iroquois wars were such unauthorized raids. There is something within civilized as well as savage men that makes warfare an inviting pursuit, and these Indians simply followed the common human urge to fight and kill members of the outer groups.
Thus lived the five brother nations, stretching across the heart of the Empire State from the mouth of the Schoharie on the Mohawk, through the region of the Finger Lakes to the banks of the pleasant Genesee. Each nation had its own territory and well known boundaries, each had its villages and principal town, and each had its own hunting range. Their domain was pleasant and fertile and protected by natural barriers. The Genesee Coun- try was primarily the land of the Senecas, or, as they called it, "Land of the People of the Great Hill." Its eastern boundary went down the western slopes of the hills east of Seneca Lake, tak- ing in most of Schuyler County, and skimming the northern boun- daries of Tioga and Chemung, though later, as they overcame their enemies, they dipped their line far down into Pennsylvania. The Seneca country first occupied only the highlands of southern and western Ontario County, for the Senecas seem to have come from some locality west of the Genesee, perhaps by way of the Allegheny and thence through the Dansville district. Gradually it spread to the north and to the east, taking in Canandaigua, Keuka, and Seneca lakes. Expansion westward gave them posses- sion of Honeoye, Canadice, Hemlock and Conesus lakes, and finally their towns boldly flourished along the Genesee. Then they were open villages with no stockades to protect them, for the Senecas had slain or adopted their foes, and the might of Seneca arms was enough of a wall to keep at bay the small raids of distant enemies. Such was the setting of the most populous of all the Iroquois. Here they dwelt in as fair a paradise as might be found in all the new world. Their people equalled in number all the other people of the Five Nations, and their warriors were unmatched in endur- ance and in the extent of their conquests. In another chapter we
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will trace the rise of the Seneca Nation and touch upon their wars with surrounding tribes and nations, tell of the coming of the French, the missions of the Jesuits and of the final war with New France, which left the Senecas still a power with wide-flung in- fluence.
CHAPTER V. THE RISE OF THE SENECA NATION, 1535 TO 1699.
BY ARTHUR CASWELL PARKER, M. S.
The Senecas were the "People of the Hill." Both history and tradition emphasize this, and the Seneca people always speak of themselves in connection with a certain great hill. It is possible that this may have been Bare Hill on the east shore of Canan- daigua Lake, but, though many authorities have assumed that this is the one, it is by no means certain that the hill of all their tradi- tions is not the great South Hill that runs along the lake from the valley south of Bare Hill to the flat lands that border the inlet of that body of water, as stated in an earlier chapter.1 All archeolo- gists who have examined the region in detail and who have studied the situation, feel that Bare Hill is not the hill of the Sen- eca tradition. However, the Senecas are the "People of the Hill," for their designation is Djiionondo-wanen-aka, with the meaning given above. In every language of the aborigines about them they were so called; and Cartier (1534-35), the first great explorer who ever saw the Iroquois, heard of them under the name Tru- damini. Champlain knew of them as Entouhonorons and Chou- ontouarouon (Chonontoua-ronon), and the earliest of the Jesuit fathers recorded the name as Tsonontouan and Sonontouan, leav- ing off the ronon, which means people or tribe. The French obtained their name from Iroquoian speaking people, but the Dutch and English received their knowledge of the Senecas through Algonkian sources. The Mohawk name was of Algon- kian origin, for their own name for themselves was Kanienge- haga, meaning "People of the Flint-rock," but their enemies called them Mohowauuck or Maghgwak, meaning "man eaters." These same Algonkians called the people beyond the Mohawks the Sinne- kens, because the Oneidas who lived to the west were known as the
1 Chapter II, page 111.
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"People of the Standing Stone;" thus the Algonkians called them a'sinni (rock) aki (place), hence Sinnekens, but, as each west- ward tribe in turn denied the name, by process of elimination it was attached to the one farthest west by the Dutch and English.
From the very beginning of the contact period the Senecas were regarded with some degree of mystery and dread. They were known far and wide among the tribes of the middle Atlantic region, and their hostility to European encroachment was some- thing to be reckoned with. As knowledge of them seeped out through occasional explorers and Indian informants, it was dis- covered that they were a sedentary, village-dwelling and agricul- tural people, having four principal towns and several smaller set- tlements. Their early towns were stockaded, but, as they grew in military power through the acquisition of European fire arms, they boldly abandoned their palisades and made open settlements. We have located some of their early towns in a former chapter, but to understand Seneca history we must have a still more de- tailed description of their settlements, for they are constantly mentioned in all documentary accounts.
Tradition informs us that there were two groups of the Seneca people, and that it required great persuasive powers on the part of the founders of the Iroquois Confederacy to pacify and con- vince the westernmost division that it should unite with the east- ern branch as a member of the League. If we examine historical accounts and maps, we shall see that the Senecas were, indeed, in two groups, one occupying the valley of the Honeoye and its tribu- taries, and ranging their settlements westward to the Genesee, upon which, when history opens, they had no major towns; and the other division, the valley of the Ganarqua, or Mud Creek, and extending eastward in the territory south of Canandaigua outlet as far as Seneca Lake, and having smaller settlements and hunting ground even beyond. As time went on we shall see how one group pushed east and the other west, until conditions threw them to- gether. The Honeoye-Genesee group had two large towns, the largest of which was Totiakton, at the bend of the Honeoye on the west side of the creek. The smaller town was Gannounta and was situated on or near the present site of Lima. Totiakton was sometimes called Sonnontouan because of its importance, but when the Jesuit missionaries established a chapel there they gave it the name LaConception. Where the earlier town was we do not know,
(Courtesy of Ontario County Historical Society)
BARE HILL ON CANANDAIGUA, REPUTED PLACE OF ORIGIN OF THE SENECA INDIANS
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though there are many possible sites in the general region; the later Totiakton seems to have been about three miles to the south on Spring brook. This is the site known to archeologists, on the Dann farm, near Honeoye Falls.
The Ganarqua-Canandaigua group had its principal village on what is now known as Boughton hill, south of the present village of Victor. It seems to have been established here about 1650, probably having moved from some locality at the south, either in the East Bloomfield or Bristol region. The Boughton Hill village received the name Ga-o-sa-eh-ga-aah, but the French took the Mohawk word, and the name has come down to us as Gannagaro, meaning "There the basswood bark lies." This re- ferred to the bark trough through which the water from the great spring flowed, according to O. H. Marshall, who quotes John Blacksmith, an aged Tonawanda chief. The name may have had another signification, however, for Gannagaro was erected as the principal town of the eastern Seneca people. In the metaphorical language of the Iroquois the door of the Confederacy was guarded by sheets of slippery bark upon which the enemy would slip if he sought unwarranted and uninvited admittance. This town was known far and wide among the Iroquois as the capital of the Sen- eca people, and many important emissaries visited it. When the Catholic missionaries established their chapel there they called it St. James. To the south about three miles from Gannagaro was the village of Gandougarae, as the French spelled it, though the Senecas called it Chi-nos-hah-geh.2 It was a village in which Huron, Neutral, Erie and other captives were being instructed in the lore of the Seneca. It was an experiment in Iroquoization, and a part of the policy that kept the Iroquois numerically powerful, since by it they recruited their losses.
In this forest paradise, teeming with game, fish and birds, lived the Seneca people, secure in the feeling that their vast fields of produce, the natural supplies of wild foods, and forest beasts would afford sustenance; and, after they had expelled the earlier Algonkian people, they lived in comparative safety. Though their government was based upon principles of peace, and their civil chiefs were pledged to strive to secure and preserve it, the forays of their ancient enemies reminded them of their old time griev- ances, nor is it to be believed that unauthorized parties of young
2 Vide Marshall's Writings, p. 139.
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Seneca braves did not intensify troubles that might have been avoided. Slumbering in the young was the love of war, and no amount of preaching by their elders could quench the desire to hunt down and kill their enemies. War was in the blood; it was a tradition which the "Great Binding Law of Peace" could not. easily overcome. Thus, adventurous young men proclaimed them- selves war chiefs and organized expeditions against their heredi- tary foes. This invited counter-attack, and soon the whole Con- federacy found itself involved in wars with many tribes and bands. It must not be imagined, however, that all these wars were brought. upon them by their own seeking; certain enemies, as the Hurons, had long assailed them and sought their ruin. It will be recalled. that when Champlain first heard of the Iroquois he knew of them as a race against which his Huron friends fought. So the great. events of Iroquois history cluster about the episodes of the Huron- Iroquois war, a war in which the French espoused the cause of the Hurons. This war the Senecas probably did not start, it being very likely a feud in the beginning between the Mohawks and lower Hurons; but, for many years, the Senecas bore the brunt of the fray, and in the end they finished it and absorbed the Hurons.
The French, naturally sympathetic with the convert Hurons. among whom they dwelt, kept up a desultory war against the Iro- quois, killing them wherever they found them. In 1633 the Iro- quois turned the tables and began seriously to harass the French, even boarding a French shallop. The next year the Senecas sent. out an expedition against the Hurons and defeated them so de- cisively that the Huron Confederacy made overtures for peace. This was welcomed officially by the Iroquois, who really desired. to unite all the nations of the mother tongue, provided they would acknowledge the supremacy of that same "Great Binding Law of Peace" and become constituent nations of the Iroquois Confeder- acy. This was the entire aim of the Iroquois war, though it was. complicated by revenge and by raids of young warriors, who merely wanted adventure where legitimate prey could be found.
Peace negotiations were proceeding during 1635 and the Senecas declared a truce. A young Seneca warrior, being dissatis- fied, went to the Onondagas, where he married a young woman of that nation. Here he argued against the Hurons and sought op- portunity to take the field against them. Upon a certain occasion. he was fishing in Lake Ontario, when he was captured by a Huron.
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