USA > New York > Monroe County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Allegany County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming > Part 15
USA > New York > Livingston County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Yates County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Wyoming County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Wayne County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
USA > New York > Orleans County > History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham's purchase, and Morris' reserve; embracing the counties of Monroe, Ontario, Livingston, Yates, Steuben, most of Wayne and Allegany, and parts of Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming. To which is added, a Supplement, or Extension of the pioneer history of Monroe county > Part 15
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* Such would seem to have been the arrangement, though a misunderstanding and litigation ensued. Soon after Mr. Phelps' large sale to Robert Morris, "Samuel Street and others," (the Niagara Lessee Company,) filed a bill in chancery, setting forth that they were entitled to the proceeds of sales of "fifteen one hundred and twentieth parts " of all of Phelps' and Gorham's Purchase, by virtue of an agreement made by Mr. Phelps at the treaty of Buffalo Creek. Upon the bill of complaint, an injunction was issued against Phelps and Gorham, their associates in interest, and their grantees ; but how the matter was arranged, the author is unable to state. An interminable quarrel arose between the two lessee companies; and the Canada company had but little, if any, of the avails of the four townships. Some of their correspondence re- minds one of the anecdote of the gambler, who, after pocketing cards, and practicing the arts of his profession for a whole evening, very gravely complained that there " was cheating about the board."
t Kanadesaga (Geneva) excepted. Mr. Phelps' intentions of founding a settlement at Geneva, which the reader will have noticed, was of course changed, when he found that according to the original survey of the pre-emption line, the locality was off from his purchase. Canandaigua was his next choice.
NOTE. - There has been a very common mistake as to where Mr. Phelps held his Indian treaty ; and this work will, probably, fall into the hands of those who will in- sist that it was at Canandaigua, pointing out the very spot upon which it was held. The error has been perpetutated by historians and essayists, who have added a fancy sketch of a scene at the treaty ground :- Red Jacket eloquently invoking the war cry, the tomahawk and scalping knife, and Farmer's Brother opposing him. The whole story is spoiled by Red Jacket's own assertion, that he and "Billy, and the Heap of Dogs," led Mr. Phelps from Kanadesaga to the treaty at Buffalo Creek. There was no opposition to the Phelps' treaty at the time ; but one afterwards appeared. The idea of a land treaty of Mr. Phelps with the Indians, at Canandaigua, must have come from a gathering which was had there in 1789, when Mr. Phelps' payments be- came due.
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hands of Phelps and Gorham and a few associates. The most of the early sales of townships, was to those who held shares. *
Early in the spring of 1789, under the general auspicies of Mr. Phelps, arrangements were made, and a pretty formidable expedition started out to the new Genesee country to commence a settlement, the general details of which will be found in another connection. Mr. Phelps was during that and succeeding years, alternating be- tween Canandaigua and his home in New England. Before the close of 1789, he had jointly, with John Taylor, an agent of the State, contracted with Ephraim Blackmer, who has before been named, for the cutting out of a road, two rods wide from Fort Stan- wix to Seneca Lake. While in the Genesee country this year, in the absence of any local laws, he entered into a written compact with some Seneca chiefs, of a reciprocal character, each party promising to punish offences committed by their own people.
After all this had transpired, at the session of the Massachusetts legislature in 1789, Messrs. Phelps and Gorham, and their associates, found themselves unable to fulfil the engagements they had made for the payment of the purchase money. They had predicated payment upon the supposition, that they could purchase the public paper of Massachusetts, at its then market value, which was but about fifty cents on the dollar. In the interval, before pay day ar- rived, the prospect of success in the formation of a Federal govern- ment, and a consequent funding of the debts of the States, the paper they had stipulated to make payment in, had nearly a par value in market. Thus situated, and having failed to extinguish the native right to the whole, they memorialized the legislature and got released from their obligations in reference to what remained, paying only for what was included in their Indian treaty. The legislature, the more readily perhaps, acceded to their request, inas- much as they were pretty sure of finding a purchaser for what re- mained, in the person of Robert Morris.
New difficulties however, soon presented themselves. The Indi- ans who had seemed almost universally satisfied with the sale to Mr. Phelps, became divided upon the subject; the mischievous
* The low prices named in connection with some of the early sales, is explained by this. The purchasers were shareholders; the price paid, about what it had cost the association. For instance, Robinson and Hathaway were original shareholders; and the price they paid for Jerusalem, was fixed upon the basis named.
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traders and some interpreters among them, promoted the trouble, and in that then retreat of disturbed spirits, and haters of every thing that was American - the refugees of the Revolution, and British officers and agents - Fort Niagara and its precincts - there were disturbers other than those that had been compromised with. The Indian chief Cornplanter, was the principal representative of the malcontents.
In August, 1790, Mr. Phelps being in the Genesee country, wrote to the elder Mr. Gorham in Boston, and after giving a somewhat dis- couraging account of the almost universal prevalence of disease among the new settlers,* informs him that the Indians had been at Canandaigua, and refused to receive any farther payments, alledg- ing that the amount of purchase money, aside from the annuity, was to have been ten, instead of five thousand dollars. He adds, that some recent murders of Indians committed at Tioga, by whites, had helped to exasperate them ; that he was about to set out to visit their principal villages to appease them ; and that if he did not suc- ceed, he feared they would retaliate by a general attack upon the whites.
At an Indian council by Mr. Pickering at Tioga, in November, Red Jacket and Farmer's Brother made speeches, in which they both claimed that the sum to be paid by Mr. Phelps, was ten instead of five thousand dollars; alledged that they had been cheated ; that their "heads had been confused " by treaties with the "thirteen Fires," with "Fires kindled by the Governor of New York," and by " Livingston." Speaking of the payment from Mr. Phelps, Red Jacket said :- " When we went to Canandaigua to meet Mr. Phelps, expecting to receive ten thousand dollars, we were to have but five thousand. When we discovered the fraud, we had a mind to apply to Congress, to see if the matter could not be rectified. For when we took the money and shared it, every one here knows, that we had but about one dollar a piece. All our lands came to, was but the worth of a few hogsheads of tobacco. Gentlemen who stand by, do not think hard of us for what has been said. At the time of the treaty, twenty broaches would not buy half a loaf of bread ;
* He says :- "We have suffered much for the want of a physician ; Atwater has not yet arrived ; we have now a gentleman from Pennsylvania attending on .the sick, who seems to understand his business. The two Wadsworths, who came from Dur- ham, have been very sick, are now recovering, but are low spirited ; they like the country but their sickness has discouraged them."
.
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so that when we returned home, there was not a bright spot of silver about us."
In December, Cornplanter, attended by other Seneca chiefs, met President Washington at Philadelphia, and delivered to him a speech, in which he represented that the treaty at Buffalo creek, had been fraudulently conducted; that Mr. Phelps represented himself as the agent of the " thirteen Fires," that he told them that the coun- try had been ceded to the thirteen Fires by the British King; that if he could not make a bargain with the Indians, he could take their lands by force ; and that generally, it was by threats and de- ceptions he had obtained the Indian lands. He added that Mr. Street, whom they supposed their friend, "until they saw him whispering with Phelps," had been bribed by the promise of a large tract of land. The President heard the complaints, promised an investigation of the matter, and to see the Indians redressed if they had suffered wrong.
Soon after all this, Mr. Phelps addressed the President, giving a detailed history of the treaty, denying the allegations of Cornplan- ter, and asserting that he caused the Indians at the treaty, to be well informed of his errand, their rights to their lands ; that he used no threats, or coercion to accomplish his object, and that the sum he was to advance to the Indians, was but five thousand dollars. He accompanied his statement, by depositions from the Rev. Mr. Kirkland, James Dean, Judge Hollenbeck, and others, who were present at the treaty, in substance, to the effect that the treaty was conducted honorably, and fairly, and that Cornplanter was mista- ken as to the amount of the purchase money.
In February, '91, Joseph Brant addressed a long letter to the su- perintendent of Indian affairs for the northern district of the United
NOTE .- It is to be inferred from what followed, that Cornplanter was more eloquent than honest in his speech to the President. Speaking of the consequences of the President turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the Senecas, he said :- "You have said that we were in your hand, and that by closing it you could crush us to nothing. Are you determined to crush us ? If you are, tell us so, that those of our nation who have become your children, and have determined to die so, may know what to do. In this case one chief has said he would ask you to put him out of pain. Another, who will not think of dying by the hand of his father, has said he will retire to Chautau- que, eat of the fatal root, and sleep with his fathers in peace." This was an allusion to the beautiful Seneca tradition, that a young squaw once eat of a root she dug on the banks of the Chautauque Lake, which created thirst ; to slake it, she stooped down to drink 'of the waters of the Lake, and disappeared forever. Thence the name of the Lake ; - "Ja-da-qua," or the place of easy death,- where one disappears, and is seen no more.
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States, in which he attacks Cornplanter with severity ; alleging that "influenced by bribes and other selfish views, he prevailed on the chiefs who were sent to cover up the council fire at Kanadesaga, kindled by John Livingston, to lease the whole of the Five Nation's country, for a consideration of twenty thousand dollars, and an an- nual rent of two thousand; and it was with the utmost difficulty, that the Five Nations were able to move that lease, from off a por- tion of the country." He recapitulates the bargain made by Mr. Phelps, agreeing with other witnesses. He says that the Lessees were only released from the payment of five thousand of the twenty thousand they had agreed to pay for the whole country, and a pro rata amount of their stipulated annual rent .* This was to show, that the bargain with Mr. Phelps, was a better one even than Corn- planter had promoted with the Lessees.
When Mr. Pickering held his council at Newtown, in July, '91, he examined several Cayuga and Onondaga chiefs, who stated that Cornplanter's allegations were untrue ; and some of the principal Seneca chiefs, stated to him that all was fair on Mr. Phelps' part, in reference to the treaty.
But all this did not entirely quell the dissatisfaction, and the al- ledged wrong was mixed up with other elements, to render the earliest relations of Pioneers of the Genesee country and the Indi- ans, equivocal ; in a condition to keep up alarm and apprehensions of evil. If the Senecas themselves were mainly disposed to be friendly, their jealousies and resentments were kept alive, by the western Indians, and their British prompters, and British agents at Niagara. D See Mr. Phelps' speech to the Indians. Appendix, No. 6.
The whole history of the early Indian treaties in this State, is a complex one ; there was a disjointed state of things existing among our own people ; the treaties began without any clear and definite understanding, of what were the respective rights of the State and the general government. The Indians, after they had heard of " one big fire being lighted for all the thirteen States," could not un- derstand why they should be invited to attend "so many little fires,"
* The reader need hardly be told, that the poor Indians never realized the sum promised by the Lessees, except in the form of bribes to some of their chiefs ; and in that form but a small portion of it. And yet the Lessees in one form and another, realized a large amount for their illegal "long lease."
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or councils. The almost interminable mischief, the Lessee move- ment, was thrust in to add to embarrassment. The close of the Revolution had left them with distracted councils, cut up into fac- tions themselves. No wonder that when they were pulled and hauled about from one treaty to another, beset by State commis- sioners, Lessee companies, speculators and "their old friends at Niagara," they should on several occasions have complained that their "heads were confused."
But the crowning curse, the source of nearly all other evils that beset them, and nearly all that embarrassed our early relations and intercourse with their race, was the use of spirituous liquors. In the absence of them, the advent of our race to this continent, would have been a blessing to theirs, instead of what it has proved to be, the cause of their ruin, and gradual extermination. No where in a long career of discovery, of enterprize and extension of empire, have Europeans found natives of the soil, with as many of the noblest attributes of humanity ; moral and physical elements, which, if they could not have been blended with ours, could have main- tained a separate existence, and been fostered by the proximity of civilization and the arts. Every where, when first approached by our race, they welcomed it, and made demonstrations of friendship and peace. Savage, as they were called, savage as they may have been in their assaults and wars upon each other, there is no act of theirs recorded in our histories, of early colonization, of wrong or outrage, that was not provoked by assaults, treachery or deception - breaches of the hospitalities they had extended to the strangers. Whatever of savage character they may have possessed, so far as our race was concerned, it was dormant until aroused to action by assaults or treachery of intruders upon their soil, whom they had met and treated as friends.
This was the beginning of trouble; the cupidity of our race perpetuated it by the introduction of "fire water," which, vitiating their appetites, cost them their native independence of character, made them dependents upon the trader and the agents of rival governments ; mixed them up with factious and contending aspir- ants to dominion; and from time to time, impelled them to the fields of blood and slaughter, or to the stealthy assault with the tom- ahawk and scalping knife. For the ruin of his race, the red man has a fearful account against us, since we assumed the responsibility
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of intercourse with it, as a separate and independent people ; but as in another instance, where another race is concerned, we may plead with truth and justice, that we were inheritors of the curse ; and that our predecessors are chargeable with having fixed the plague spot and stain upon us, indelibly, long before the responsibility de- volved upon us.
From the hour that Henry Hudson toled the Indians on board of his vessel, on the river that bears his name, and gave them the first taste of spirituous liquors, the whole history of British intercourse with them is marked by the use of this accursed agent as a princi- pal means of success. The example of Hudson was followed up by all the Dutch and English traders upon the Mohawk, and when Sir William Johnson had settled as a British agent in the Mohawk valley, he had unfortunately learned the potent influence of spirit- uous liquors in Indian traffic and negotiation. He is probably the first that made use of them at Indian councils ; thus setting a vicious example that has been perpetuated. The early French traders upon the St. Lawrence, and in all this region, commenced the traffic not until after they had ascertained that they could in no way compete with the English traders than by using the same means. The early Jesuit Missionaries checked them in their work of evil, but the English trader was left unrestrained, even encouraged by English colonial authority. The Senecas, especially, naturally inclined to the French. There was something in the French character that was congenial to their natural preferences ; the two races met and flowed into each other, (if the expression is admissable,) like kindred, or easily assimilating elements ; with the English it was different ; there was a natural repugnance, it may almost be said ; the blowze, turgid Englishman, and the Seneca who possessed generous and even romantic and poetic elements, were in caste and inclination, anti- podes. It was with his keg of rum, that the Englishman could alone succeed ; and with a morbid, sordid perseverance, he plied it in trade as well as diplomacy. It was rum that first enabled the Englishman
NOTE. - From the first advent of the French Franciscan and Jesuit Missionaries in this region, they were the determined opposers of the introduction of spirituous liquors among the Indians. They would suppress it in the trading houses of their own countrymen, and at the risk of their lives, knock out the heads of English rum casks. They became, in some instances, martyrs in endeavoing to suppress the traffic. The first temperance essay the world eversaw other than the precepts of the Bible, was written in this region by a Jesuit Missionary, and published in Paris.
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to get a foothold upon the Hudson, upon the Mohawk, along the shores of Lake Ontario; in the absence of its use, bold as the asser- tion may appear, he would not have succeeded in putting an end to French dominion in America.
At a later period, when the storm of the Revolution was gather- ing, the English resorted to the old weapon they had used against the French, to use against the colonies. The Indians had undoubt- edly resolved upon neutrality ; unsophisticated, unlearned in all the grievances of oppressed colonies, in the intricacies of taxation, representation, and the immunities under other structures of gov- ernment than their own, they could not understand why the bonds of kindred should be sundered; why those they had just seen fight- ing side by side against the French should be arrayed against each other so suddenly. The aspect of the quarrel was not suited to their tastes or inclinations, and they resolved upon standing aloof ; the Senecas at least. Invited to Oswego, by the English refugees from the Mohawk, kept intoxicated for days and weeks, promised there that the accursed "fire water " of England's King, should be as free to them " as the waters of Lake Ontario," their good inten- tions were changed, and their tomahawks and scalping knives were turned against the border settlers; a series of events ensued, the review of which creates a shudder, and a wonder that the offences were so easily forgiven; that we had not taken their country after subduing it with our arms, instead of treating for it. But well and humanely did the Father of his Country consider how they had been wiled to the unfortunate choice of friends which they made. Eng- lish rum was not only freely dealt out at Oswego, during the Revo- lution, but at Fort Niagara, where it paid for the reeking scalp, and helped to arouse the fiercest passions of Indian allies, and send them back upon their bloody track.
When peace came, and our State authorities began to cultivate an acquaintance with the Indians, they found them deserted by their late British employers, with nothing to show for the sanguine aid they had given them, but appetites vitiated by the English rum cask, and a moral and physical degeneracy, the progress of which could not have been arrested ; and lingering yet among them, in all their principal localities, was the English or tory trader, prolonging his destructive traffic. It was American, New York legislation, that made the first statutes against the traffic of spirituous liquors
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among the Indians. It was American legislation, after the incubus of British dominion was shaken off, that first checked the slave trade. Two enormous offences have been committed against two races, both of which had been alike perpetuated under English do- minion.
Mr. Phelps, although his residence in all the earliest years of set- tlement, was still in Massachusetts, spent most of his time in Can- andaigua, and was the active and liberal patron and helper in all the public enterprises of the region where he had been the pioneer. Of ardent temperament, ambitious in all that related to the pros- perity of the new country, the Pioneer settlers found in him a friend ; and when disease, privation, Indian alarms, created despondency, he had for them words of encouragement, and prophecies of a " bet- ter time." He was useful to a degree that no one can realize who has not seen how much one man can do in helping to smooth the always rugged paths of backwoods life.
A considerable shareholder in the original purchase of Massa- chusetts and the Indians, he eventually became a principal owner, by purchase of shares, reversions and other means. In a few years after the settlement of the Genesee country was fairly under way, he was regarded as one of the most successful and wealthy of all the many founders of new settlements of that period. In 1795, he regarded himself as worth a million of dollars. There are no busi- ness enterprises which, if successful, are better calculated to lead to excess and rash venture, than that of speculation in lands. A mania of land speculation, as will be seen in another connection, commenced along in '95 and '6, and extended through all the then settled parts of the Union. Philadelphia was the principal focus, its leading capitalists, among whom was Mr. Morris, were the prin- cipal operators. Among the devices of the times, was a gigantic " American Land Company." Elected to Congress, Mr. Phelps, elated with his success in the Genesee country, was thrown into the vortex of rash adventure, and became deeply involved, as all were who made any considerable ventures at that unfortunate period. One of his ventures was in connection with the "Georgia Land Company ;" with the fate of which, most readers will be familiar. Liabilities abroad made him a large borrower, and obliged
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him to execute mortgages upon his Genesee lands. In all this, the titles of purchasers under him became involved, which created dis- trust and excitement among a portion of the settlers, and brought upon him a good deal of censure. His reverses, and the appre- hensions, perhaps, that others were to be involved in them, preying upon a sensitive mind, his health gradually declined, and he died in 1809, aged 60 years. In 1802, he had removed to Canandaigua ; and from the commencement of his reverses up to the period of his death, had been struggling to extricate himself, and others involved with him, from embarrassment. In allusion to all this, an inscrip- tion upon his tomb-stone contains the following sentence : ---
" Enterprise, Industry and Temperance, can not always secure success; but the fruits of those virtues, will be felt by society."
The State of Connecticut having been a principal creditor of Mr. Phelps, and holding a large mortgage upon his lands, the Hon. Gideon Granger became its agent, and ultimately the settlement of the estate devolved upon him. When he entered upon the task, he was assisted in some of its preliminary investigations by the late Jessee Hawley, Esq., who, in a memorandum which the author has in his possession, remarks that the estate was involved in "com- plexity, perplexity and confusion." The superior business facul- ties of Mr. Granger, however, made "crooked things straight ;" debts werc cancelled, land titles cleared from incumbrances ; no purchasers under Mr. Phelps, it is believed, ultimately suffered loss ; and a considerable estate was saved to his heirs. Among the sur- viving early Pioneers, it is common now to hear expressions of re- spect for the memory of Oliver Phelps, and regrets, that the last years of his active and enterprising life was so clouded by misfor- fortune. Jesse Hawley wrote that he was "the Cecrops of the Genesee country. Its inhabitants owe a mausoleum to his memo- ry, in gratitude for his having pioneered for them the wilderness of this Canaan of the west."
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