USA > New York > Erie County > Sardinia > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 2
USA > New York > Erie County > Collins > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 2
USA > New York > Erie County > Concord > History of the original town of Concord : being the present towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia, Erie County, New York > Part 2
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All European nations at that time claimed title to lands in America by the right of discovery, and they granted them away to individuals and companies in small and large tracts, as they saw fit, when, as a matter of right and justice, their title was no better than was the title of that character we read of, to all the kingdoms of the world, which he offered to give Christ if he would fall down and worship him.
In 1623, permanent Dutch emigration for agricultural pur- poses first began upon the Hudson river.
In 1625, a few Catholic missionaries arrived on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
About 1620, the first white men visited the country about the lower end of Lake Erie and the Niagara river ; they were French fur traders in search of furs.
In 1626, Father De La Roche Daillon, a French missionary, visited the Neuter Nation and passed the winter preaching the gospel among them. The Neuter Nation occupied the country about the east end of Lake Erie and on both sides of the Niagara River. They had their villages in Canada and in Erie
5
THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES.
county ; there was one at or near the mouth of Eighteen-Mile creek, and perhaps others further west. But the south shore of Lake Erie was occupied principally by a tribe called the Eries. The French called the tribe occupying the country hereabouts the Neuter Nation, because they dwelt in peace with surround- ing tribes, but they were known among the other tribes as the Kahquahs.
The Jesuit missionaries, fired with unbounded zeal and unsur- passed valor, traversed the wilderness, holding up the cross before the bewildered pagans. They soon had flourishing sta- tions as far west as Lake Huron. One of these stations was St. Marie, near the eastern extremity of the lake, and it was from St. Marie that Fathers Brebœuf and Chaumonot set forth in November, 1640, to visit the Neuter Nation. They returned in the Spring, having visited eighteen Kahquah villages, but hav- ing met with very little encouragement among them. They reported the Neuter Indians to be stronger and finer looking than the Hurons, and that their food and clothing were but little different ; that they had corn, beans and some other vegetables, and plenty of fish ; that they were much employed in hunting deer, bears, buffalo, beavers, wolves, wild-cats and other animals ; that there was also an abundance of wild turkeys. They esti- mated the whole number of villages of the Neuter Nation at forty, and that the most eastern was but one day's journey from the country of the Senecas. The Senecas, when first visited by the whites, had their villages east of the Genesce river.
Up to this time, the Kahquahs had succeeded in maintaining their neutrality between the fierce belligerents on either side. What the cause of quarrel, if any, arose between the peaceful possessors of Erie county and the powerful confederates to the eastward, is entirely unknown; but sometime during the next fifteen years, the Iroquois fell upon both the Kahquahs and the Eries and exterminated them, as nations, from the face of the earth.
The precise years in which these events occurred are uncer- tain, and it is not known whether the Kahquahs or the Eries were first destroyed. French accounts go to show that the Neuter Nation were first destroyed ; while, according to Seneca tradition, the Kahquahs still dwelt here when the Iroquois
6
THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.
annihilated the Eries; but it is certain that, somewhere between 1643 and 1655, the fierce confederates of Central New York "put out the fires" of both the Kahquahs and the Eries.
From the destruction of the Kahquahs down to the time the Iroquois sold to the Holland Land company (or, rather, to Robert Morris), they were, by right of conquest, the actual possessors of the territory composing the present County of Erie, and, a few years before the sale, the largest nation of the confederacy made their principal residence within the county. Within its borders, too, are still to be seen the largest united body of their descendants. For two hundred and thirty years, the Iroquois have been closely identified with the history of Erie county, and it is proper to give a short account of the interior structure of that remarkable confederacy.
The name Iroquois was never applied by the confederates to themselves ; it was first used by the French. The men of the five nations called themselves He-do-no-saunee, which means literally "They form a cabin," describing in this expressive manner the close union existing between them. The Indian name just quoted is more liberally and more commonly ren- dered "The People of the Long House," which is more fully descriptive of the confederacy.
The feature that distinguished the people of the Long House from all the world beside, and which, at the same time, bound together all these ferocious warriors as with a living chain was the system of clans extending through all the different tribes.
Many readers doubtless have often heard of the warlike suc- cess and outward greatness of the Iroquois confederacy, but one unacquainted with the inner league, which was its distinguish- ing characteristic, and without which in all probability have met at an early day with the fate of numerous similar alliances.
The people of the Iroquois confederacy were divided into eight clans, or families, the names of which were as follows : Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk.
Each clan formed a large artificial family modeled on the natural family. All the members of the clan, no matter how widely separated among the tribes were considered as brothers and sisters to each other, and forbidden to intermarry. This prohibition was strictly enforced by public opinion.
7
SACHEMS AND WAR-CHIEFS.
The clan, being thus taught from earliest infancy that they belonged to the same family, a bond of the strongest kind was created throughout the confederacy. The Oneida of the Wolf clan had no sooner appeared among the Cayugas than those of the same clan claimed him as their special guest, and admitted him to the most confidential intimacy. The Sencca of the Turtle clan might wander to the country of the Mohawks at the further extremity of the Long House, and he had a claim upon his brother Turtles which they would not dream of repudiating.
Thus the whole confederacy was linked together. If at any time there appeared a tendency toward conflict between the different tribes, it was instantly checked by the thought that if persisted in the hand of the Heron would be turned against Heron, and the hatchet of the Bear would be raised against his brother Bear, and the bow of the Beaver would be drawn against his brother Beaver. And so potent was the feeling that until the power of the confederacy was broken by over- whelming outside force. there was no serious dissension between the tribes of the Iroquois. Aside from the clan-system just described, which was an artificial invention expressly invented to prevent dissension among the confederates, the Iroquois league had some resemblance to the great American Union which succeeded it. The central authority was supreme on questions of peace and war, and on all others relating to the general welfare of the confederacy, while the tribes, like the states, reserved to themselves the management of their ordin- ary affairs. In peace, all power was confided to "Sachems," in war, to "Chiefs." The Sachems of each tribe acted as its rulers in matters which required the exercise of civil authority. The same rulers also met in congress to direct the affairs of the confederacy. There was, in each tribe, the same number of War-chiefs as Sachems, and these had absolute authority in time of war. But in a war-party the War-chiefs commanded and the Sachem took his place in the ranks.
The congress always met at the council-fire of the Onon- dagas. The Senecas were unquestionably the most powerful of all the tribes, and as they, were located at the western extremity of the confederacy, they had to bear the brunt of war when it was assailed by its most formidable foes, who dwelt
8
FAMILY RELATIONS.
in that quarter. It would naturally follow that the principal War-chief of the league should be of the Seneca Nation, and such is said to have been the case.
As among many other savage tribes the right of heirship was in the female line. Titles, as far as they were hereditary at all, followed the same law of descent. The child also followed the clan and tribe of the mother. Notwithstanding the modi- fied system of hereditary power in vogue, the constitution of every tribe was essentially republican. Warriors, old men, and even women, attended the council and made their influence felt. Neither in the government of the confederacy nor in the tribes, was there any such thing as tyranny over the people.
9
ENGLAND CONQUERS NEW AMSTERDAM.
CHAPTER II.
FROM 1655 TO 1679.
The Iroquois Triumphant-Obliteration of Dutch Power-French Progress - La Salle Visits the Senecas-Greenhalph's Estimates-La Salle on the Niagara-Building of the Griffin-It Enters Lake Erie-La Salle's Subse- quent Career-The Prospect in 1679.
From the time of the destruction of the Kahquahs and Eries, the Iroquois went forth conquering and to conquer. This was probably the day of their greatest glory. They stayed the progress of the French into their territories; they negotiated on equal terms with the Dutch and English, and having supplied themselves with the terrible arms of the pale- faces, they smote with direst vengeance whomsoever of their own race were unfortunate enough to provoke their wrath.
At one period, the sound of their war cry was heard along the Straits of St. Marys and at the foot of Lake Superior. At another, under the walls of Quebec, where they defeated the Hurons under the eyes of the French. They spread the terror of their arms over New England-Smith encountered their warriors in the settlement of Virginia, and La Salle on the discovery of Illinois. They bore their conquering arms along the Susquehanna, the Allegheny and the Ohio, and farther south. In short, they triumphed on every side, save only where the white men came, and even the white man was for a time held at bay by their fierce confederates.
In 1664 the English conquered New Amsterdam, and in 1670 their conquest was made permanent.
Charles the Second, then King of England, granted the conquered province to his brother James, Duke of York, from whom it was called New York. This grant comprised all the lands along the Hudson, with an indefinite amount westward, thus overlapping the previous grant of James the First, to the Plymouth company, and the boundaries of Massachusetts by the charter of Charles the First, and laying the foundation for a conflict of jurisdiction, which was afterward to have import- ant effects on the destinies of Western New York.
10
LA SALLE'S ARRIVAL.
By 1665, trading posts had been established by the French at Mackinaw, Green Bay, Chicago and St. Joseph. In 1669 La Salle, whose name was soon to be indissolubly united to the annals of Erie county, visited the Senecas with only two com- panions, finding their four principal villages from ten to twenty miles southerly from Rochester, scattered over portions of the present Counties of Monroe, Livingston and Ontario.
In 1673, the Missionaries Marquette and Joliet, pushed on beyond the farthest French post and erected the emblems of Christianity on the shore of the Father of Waters.
In 1677, Wentworth Greenhalph, an Englishman, visited all the Five Nations, finding the same four towns of the Senecas described by the companions of La Salle. Greenhalph made very minute observations counting the houses of the Indians and reported the Mohawk as having three hundred warriors, the Oneidas two hundred, the Onondagas three hundred and fifty, the Cayugas three hundred and the Senecas a thousand. It will be seen that the Senecas, the Guardians of the western door of the Long House, numbered, according to Greenhalph's computation, nearly as many as all of the other tribes of the confederacy combined, and other accounts show that he was not far from correct.
In the month of January, 1679, a Frenchman of good family, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, arrived at the mouth of Niagara. He was one of the most gallant, devoted and ad- venturous of all the bold explorers, who under many different banners, opened the new world to the knowledge of the old. In 1678 he had received from King Louis a commission to discover the western part of New France. He made some preparations the same year and in the Fall sent the Seuer de La Motte and Father Hennepin (the priest and historian of the expedition) in advance to the mouth of the Niagara. As soon as La Salle arrived he went two leagues above the Falls, built a rude dock at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, in Niagara county and laid the keel of a vessel with which to navigate the Lakes. Hennepin distinctly mentions a small village of Sene- cas at the mouth of the Niagara, and it is plain from his whole narrative that the Iroquois were in possession of the country along the river.
THE FIRST VESSEL IS BUILT.
The work was carried on through the Winter, and in the Spring the vessel was launched. It was a small vessel of sixty tons burthen, completely furnished with anchors, and other equipments, and armed with seven small cannon, all of which had been transported by hand around the cataract. The vessel was named the "Griffin," and there were thirty-four men on board, all Frenchmen with a single exception.
For several months the Griffin remained in the Niagara, between the place where it was built and the rapids at the head of the river. When all was ready, the attempt was made and several times repeated, to ascend the rapids above Black Rock. At length on the 7th day of August, 1679, a favorable wind sprung up from the Northeast ; all the Griffin's sails were set, and again it approached the rapids. A dozen stout sailors were sent ashore . with a tow-line, and aided with all their strength the breeze that blew from the North. Those efforts were soon successful; by the aid of sails and tow-line, the Griffin surmounted the rapids, and the pioneer vessel of these waters swept out on to the bosom of Lake Erie. As it did so, the priests led in singing a joyous Te Deum, and all the cannon were fired in a grand salute. On board that vessel was the intrepid La Salle, a man fitted to grace the salons of Paris, yet now eagerly pressing forward to dare the hardships of unknown seas and savage lands.
A born leader of men, a heroic subduer of nature, the gallant Frenchman for a brief time passes along the border of our county and then disappears in the far West, where he was eventually to find a grave.
There was Tonti, the solitary alien, amid the Gallic band exiled by revolution from his native Italy, who had been chosen by La Salle as second in command, and who justified the choice by his unswerving courage and devoted loyalty. There, too, was Father Hennepin, the earliest historian of these regions, one of the most zealous of all the zealous band of Catholic priests who at that period undauntedly bore the cross amid the fiercest pagans of America.
This was the beginning of the commerce of the upper lakes and like many another first venture it resulted only in disaster to its projectors, though the harbinger of unbounded success by
12
LA SALLE RETURNS TO FRANCE.
others. The Griffin went to Green Bay where La Salle and Hennepin left it, and started on its return with a cargo of furs, and was never heard of more. It is supposed that it sank in a storm and all on board perished.
After the Griffin had sailed, La Salle and Hennepin went in canoes to the head of Lake Michigan. Then, after building a trading post and waiting many weary months for the return of his vessel, he went, with thirty followers, to Lake Peoria, on the Illinois, where he built a fort and gave it the expressive name of "Creve Cœur," Broken Heart. But notwithstanding this expression of despair, his courage was far from exhausted, and after sending Hennepin to explore the Mississippi, he, with three comrades, performed the remarkable feat of returning to Fort Frontenac on foot, depending on their guns for support.
From Fort Frontenac he returned to Creve Cœur, the garri- son of which had in the meantime been driven away by the Indians. Again the indomitable La Salle gathered his follow- , ers, and in the fore part of 1682 descended the Mississippi to the sea, being the first European to explore any considerable portion of that mighty stream. He took possession of the country in the name of King Louis the Fourteenth, and called it Louisiana.
Returning to France, he astonished and gratified the Court with the story of his discoveries, and in 1684 was furnished with a fleet and several hundred men to colonize the new domain. Then everything went wrong; the fleet, through the blunders of its naval commander, went to Mattagorda bay, in Texas; the store ship was wrecked ; the fleet returned ; La Salle failed to find the mouth of the Mississippi ; his colony dwindled away, through desertion and death, to forty men, and at length he started with sixteen of these on foot to return to Canada for assistance. Ere he reached the Sabine he was murdered by two of his followers and left unburied on the prairie. France knows him as the man who added Louisiana to her empire: the Mis- sissippi valley reveres him as the first explorer of its great river, but by the citizens of this county he will best be remembered as the pioneer navigator of Lake Erie.
13
THE ERECTION OF FORT NIAGARA.
CHAPTER IN.
FRENCH DOMINION.
De Nonville's Assault-Origin of Fort Niagara-La Hontan's Expedition-The Peace of Ryswyck-Queen Anne's War-The Iroquois Neutral-The Tuscaroras-Joncaire-Fort Niagara Rebuilt-French Power Increas- ing-Successive Wars-The Line of Posts-The Final Struggle-The Expedition of D'Aubrey-The Result-The Surrender of Canada
For the next forty-five years after the adventures of La Salle, the French voyageurs traded and the missionaries labored, and their soldiers sometimes made incursions, but they had no permanent fortress this side of Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Canada).
In 1687, the Marquis de Nonville, Governor of New France, came with an army and attacked the Senecas at their village near Avon and Victor, and after giving battle the Senecas fled. De Nonville destroyed their stores of corn and retired to Lake Ontario, and then sailed to the mouth of the Niagara, where he erected a small fort on the east side of the river. This was the origin of Fort Niagara, one of the most celebrated strongholds in America, and which, though a while abandoned, was after- wards for a long time considered the key of Western New York.
Detroit was founded by the French in 1701 ; other posts were established far and wide.
About 1712, an important event occurred in the history of the Iroquois.
The Five Nations become Six Nations. The Tuscaroras, a powerful tribe of North Carolina, had become involved in a war with the whites, originating, as usual, in a dispute about land. The colonists being aided by several other tribes, the Tuscaroras were soon defeated, many of them killed, and many others captured and sold as slaves. The greater part of the remainder fled northward to the Iroquois, who immediately adopted them as one of the tribes of the confederacy.
Not long after this, one Chabert Joncaire, a Frenchman, who had been captured in youth by the Senecas, who had been
14
WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.
adopted into their tribe, and had married a Seneca wife, but who had been released, was employed by the French authorities to promote their interests among the Iroquois. Pleading his claims as an adopted child of the nation, he was allowed by the Seneca Chiefs to build a cabin on the site of Lewiston, which soon became a center of French influence.
About 1725, the French began re-building Fort Niagara on the site where De Nonville had erected his fortress ; this was their stronghold for many years. To this, and forts that were already built, they added Presque Isle (now Erie), Venango (Franklin, Pa.), and Fort Du Quesne, on the site of Pittsburgh, designing to establish a line of forts from the Lakes to the Ohio, and thence down that river to the Mississippi.
Frequent detachments of troops passed through along this line. Their course was up Niagara to Buffalo, thence either by bateaux up the lake or on foot along the shore to Erie, and thence to Venango and Du Quesne. Gaily-dressed French officers went to and fro ; dark-gowned Jesuits traveled back and forth receiving the respect of the red men even when their creed was rejected.
In 1756, war was again declared between England and France, being their last great struggle for supremacy in the New World. More frequently sped the gay officers and soldiers of King Louis from Quebec, and Frontenac, and Niagara-now in bateaux, now on foot, along the western border of our county.
At first the French were everywhere victorious. Braddock, almost at the gates of Fort Du Quesne, was slain, and his army cut in pieces.
Montcalm captured Oswego. The French line up the lakes and across to the Ohio was stronger than ever; but, in 1758, William Pitt became Prime Minister, and then England flung herself in dead earnest into the contest ; that year Fort Du Quesne was captured by an English and provincial army. Fort Frontenac was seized by Colonel Bradstreet. The cordon was broken, but Fort Niagara still held out for France. In 1759, still heavier blows were struck. Wolfe assailed Quebec, the strongest of all the French strongholds.
Almost at the same time General Prideaux, with two thous- and British and Provincials, accompanied by Sir William Johnson
15
SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON AND D'AUBREY.
with his faithful Iroquois, sailed up Lake Ontario and laid siege to Fort Niagara. Defended by only six hundred men, its capture was certain unless relief could be obtained. Its commander was not idle. Once again along the Niagara and up Lake Erie, and away through the forest, sped his lithe red- skinned messenger, to summon the sons and the allies of France. D'Aubrey at Venango heard the call and responded with his most zealous endeavours. Gathering all the troops he could from far and near, stripping bare with desperate energy the little French forts at the west, and mustering every red man he could persuade to follow his banner to set forth to relieve Niagara.
Thus it was about the 20th of July, 1759, that the largest European force which had yet been seen in this region at any one time, came coasting down the lake from Presque Isle, past the mouth of the Cattaraugus and along the shores of Brant and Evens, and Hamburgh, to the foot of the lake. Fifty or sixty batteaux bore near a thousand Frenchmen on their mission of relief, while a long line of canoes were freighted with four hundred of the dusky warriors of the west.
History has preserved but aslight record of this last struggle of the French for dominion in these regions, but it has rescued from oblivion the names of D'Aubrey, the commander, De Lignery, his second, of Monsieur Marini, the leader of the Indians, and of Captains De Villie, Pepentine, Martini and Basonc.
The Seneca warriors, snuffing the battle from their homes on the Genesee and beyond, were roaming restlessly through Erie and Niagara counties and along the shores of the river, uncertain how to act, more friendly to the French than the English, and yet unwilling to engage in conflict with their brethren of the Six Nations.
D'Aubrey led his flotilla past the site of Buffalo and past Grand island and only halted on reaching the shores of Navy island. After staying there a day or two, to communicate with the fort, he passed over to the main land and marched forward to battle. But Sir William Johnson, who had succeeded to the command on the death of Prideaux, was not the kind of man likely to meet with the fate of Braddock. Apprised of
16
THE FRENCH DEFEATED.
the approach of the French, he retained men enough before the fort to prevent an outbreak of the garrison, and stationed the rest in an advantageous position on the east side of the Niagara, just below the whirlpool. After a battle an hour long the French were utterly routed, several hundred being slain on the field, and a large part of the remainder being cap- tured, including the wounded D'Aubrey.
On the receipt of this disastrous news, the garrison at once surrendered. The control of the Niagara river, which had been in the hands of the French for over a hundred years, passed into those of the English. For a little while the French held possession of the fort at Schlosser, and even repulsed an English force sent against it. Becoming satisfied, however, that they could not withstand their powerful foe, they determined to destroy their two armed vessels laden with military stores. They accordingly took them into an arm of the river separating Buckhorn from Grand island, at the very northwesternmost limit of Erie county, burned them to the waters' edge and sunk the hulls.
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