USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the settlement of Steuben County, N.Y. including notices of the old pioneer settlers and their adventures, 1853 > Part 16
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During the first few years of the settlement, many of the inhabitants were uneasy at the presence of the Indians. Some prepared to leave the county, and a few actually did leave it from apprehension of an at- tack. After the defeat of Harmar and St. Clair, in the Northwestern territory, the savages were often insolent and abusive, but Wayne's victory on the Mi- ami, in 1794, put an end to their plots, and they af- terwards conducted themselves with civility. Some of the settlers, however, were not entirely assured for several years. The wives of many of the emigrants from the East, unused to wild life, and familiar with the terrible fame of the Six Nations, lived in constant alarm-not an inexcusable fear when a score or two of barbarians came whooping to the cabin door, or rais- ed the midnight yell in their camp by the creek-side, till even the wolves were ashamed of them.
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The intercourse between the settlers and Indians, were generally friendly and social. The latter, how- ever, had occasion sometimes to complain of lodges de- stroyed and furs stolen, and of other annoyances to be expected from civilized men. A hunter living at the Eight Mile Tree, (Avoca,) wished to drive the Indians from a certain hunting ground. These Native Ameri- cans were singularly reluctant to labor, and rather than chop down a tree for fuel, would walk half a mile to pick up an armful of scattered sticks. Founding his scheme upon this trait of character, the hunter cut a great many branches from the trees in the vicinity of their camps, bored augur-holes into them, filled the orifices with gunpowder, plugged them carefully, and strewed these treacherous engines through the woods. The Indians knew not what good spirit to thank for this miraculous shower of fire-wood, and gathered a great supply for their lodges. The disasters that fol- lowed were unaccountable. Now a loud explosion blew a quart of coals into the face of some mighty chief- then another hidden magazine being kindled, filled the eyes of the presiding squaw with dust and ashes, and another hoisted the pot off the fire, or hurled the roast- ing venison into the basket where the papoose was sleeping. The wood was plainly bewitched. Timber with such fiery sap was not to be endured. The Indi- ans abandoned the neighborhood with precipitation, and left the hunter in quiet enjoyment of his forest- rights.
There were some occasions when the Indian was seen in his glory, arrayed in flaming blankets, adorn-
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ed with plumes and medals, girt with curious belts, from which glittered the knife and tomahawk. Thus shone the warriors on their return from the Con- vention at Newtown, in the winter of 1791 .* But after a few years of familarity with civilized men, the savage was seldom seen abroad in ancient style. The braves were inclined to become utter vagabonds, and gradually adopted that mixture of civilized and savage. dress, which it is not going too far to pronounce shocking. Romance was horrified. The "dark-eyed forest-belles," so dear to poetry, looked like stage- drivers.
The traffic in liquors here, as elsewhere, proved ruinous to the unfortuate Indians. A large portion of their game was bartered for spirits. A favorite place for their carouses at Bath was in the bushes at the edge of the village, opposite the present jail. Here, floundering in the under-bush, howling, singing and screaming all night, they suggested vivid and singular dreams to the sleeping villagers. On such occasions the squaws, like considerate wives, stole the knives of their lords, and retired to the woods, till the fainter and less frequent yells from the bushes announced that the " Romans" were becoming overpowered by sleep. The townsmen were sometimes amused at their fishing. A half-a-dozen Indians wading up the river, and push-
Mr. David Cook, a settler of Painted Post, met, while moving up, 300 Indians on the Chimney Narrows, who were going to the Treaty. On their return they were detained for a long time at Painted Post by a great snow-storm, till they could make snow- shoes, greatly to the annoyance of the settlers.
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ing a canoe before them, would spear their boat half- full of fish in an incredibly short time, and sell their cargo for a mere trifle. The spear was but a pole with a nail in the end of it.
About thirty 'years ago, Mr. Joshua Stephens, a young man of Canisteo, was found dead in the woods, having been shot by two rifle balls. The murder had been evidently committed by Indians. Two of these, named Curly-eye and Sundown, were arrested on sus- picion of having committed the deed, and were after- wards tried at Bath. The affair created a great sen- sation, and the trial was attended by a large concourse of people. Red Jacket and other prominent chiefs were present. The evidence against the prisoners was of a strong character, but they were acquitted. After this event the Indians became shy and evacuated the county, and never again returned except in strag- gling bands.
We have been told, on pretty good authority, of an " Indian-hater" living near the mouth of Mud Creek, in the town of Bath, many years ago. A settler in that neighborhood was requested one morning by one of his neighbors to go out to the woods and help him bring in a large buck which he had shot. On com- ing at the designated place, the hunter opened a pile of brush, and showed his companion the dead body of an Indian. He said that his father's family had been massacred by the savages in the Revolution, and since that event he had killed every Indian he could meet in a convenient place. This was nearly the twentieth.
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INDIAN NAMES, ETC.
The Indians and their institutions can, upon the whole, be spared from our social system, though there are not wanting those who find it in their hearts to de- plore the decay of both-a melancholy thing to think of, truly. Yet, when it is considered how many of their practices were irreconcilable with the maxims of distinguished jurists, the most enthusiastic admirer of barbarism must admit that the preservation of the statutes and ceremonies of the Long House would be attended, at least, with inconvenience. The tomahawk, the scalping knife and the javelin, are properly, we think, excluded from the accoutrements of a well- dressed,“ civilized man, and we are quite sure that an enlightened public opinion would frown upon that grave and respectable citizen, who, out of respect for the earliest inhabitants of the county, should appear at "town-meeting, at church, or at any other public as- semblage, painted with red paint and black, decorated with porcupine quills, and arrayed in a crimson blan- ket. A cultivated community will always entertain sentiments of reverence for ancient fashions, and for "the customs of former generations; yet, would not such a spectacle as that of the elderly gentlemen and clergy of the county, shrieking, howling, and dancing the grand War-Dance around a post in the Public Square of the shire town, fill the mind of a judicious man with melancholy forebodings with regard to the sanity of such elderly gentlemen and divines ? There are yet certain vestiges of the ancient tribes for which
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men of taste and learning earnestly plead-the names which they attached to their lakes, rivers, towns and castles. Whether deep and sonorous as Otsego, Ni- agara, Cayuga, Tioga, Onondagua, or light and musical as Unadilla, Wyalusing, Canisteo, Susquehanna, or abrupt and warlike as Mohawk, Conhocton, Shemokin, Tunkhannock, the names given by the Six Nations, were sweet or heroic of sound. The barbarous dialects which give us Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, or the still more atrocious Chattahoochie, Okechobee, Tom- bigby, Withlacoochie and other frightful words which prick the Southern ear, (though atoned for by the noble Alabama, Catawba, Savannah,) and the utterly heathenish Michilimacinac, Pottawottamie, Oshkosh, Kaskaskia and Winnipeg, of the North West, are fit for Ghouls, and " men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
A lecture may profitably be read on the subject of names to people of our own and adjoining counties, and in doing so we do but echo what has been frequently proclaimed through other trumpets. The American map looks like a geographical joke. We name our towns after all heroes, from Hector to General Lopez- after all patriots, from Maccabeus to Daniel Shays- after all beasts, birds, fishes, and creeping things-to which there is certainly no objection, but one may plead that when we have exhausted Plutarch's Lives, and the Pension Roll, a few of the fine old Indian names may be recovered. In our own county, the musical and forest-like Tuscarora, was changed first to Middletown, which caused confusion in the mails, (that
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popular name having been fairly grabbed by other towns which were so lucky as to stand half way be- tween two places,) and afterwards to Addison, in honor, probably, of the essayist, who never saw a stump, a raft, or a saw-mill. The post-office of Tobe- hanna was lately changed to Altai, which is a moun- tain range in the antipodes, and would lead strangers to suppose that Tyrone was settled by Siberians. Our neighbors of Chemung became disgusted at the odd, but significant and historical name of Horse-heads, (being the place where Gen. Sullivan killed his horses,) and elegantly changed it to Fair-port, indicating, we suppose, that scows on the Chemung Canal are there secure from tempests. It is unfortunate that the schoolmaster was out of town when the change was made, for the offending Saxon might have been dis- guised under the magnificent syllables of Hippocephali. At the head of Seneca Lake lived for many years a famous Indian Queen, Catharine Montour, a half- breed, and surmised to have been a daughter of Count Frontenac. Her village was known far and wide as Catharine's Town. They now call it Jefferson-an act of "proscription" which the great republican would have scowled at .* Painted Post will probably have to go next under the reign of refinement-a capi- tal name, suggestive, historical and picturesque. If it is desirable to be known abroad, citizens of that vil- lage will do well to let the name stand as it is, for
* The actual village may have been a little out of town-but that makes no difference. .
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while Painted Post will arrest the stranger's eye more quickly perhaps than any other name on the map of Western New York, if this is changed to Siam or Senegambia, Ajax or Coriolanus, or any other title which the fashion of the day requires, the Painted Posters cannot hope to be distinguished from the mob of citizens who dwell in villages bearing the names of foreign kingdoms, and heroes of the "Silurian epoch."
Similar advice is ready for our neighbors at the foot of Crooked Lake whenever it may be called for. Penn-Yan is undoubtedly a very queer word-rather Chinese at least-and when pronounced with the favorite twang of our ancients, Pang Yang, the sound is as clearly " celestial" as Yang-Kiang, and the stranger would expect to find the village adorned by Mandarins and Joshes, and to see the populace, from the seniors down, diverting themselves with kites, fire-crackers and lanterns. For the relief of puzzled philologists, however, it may be explained that the word was not imported in a tea-chest, but was made from the first syllables of the words Pennsylvanian and Yankee, and indicates the races of the first settlers. It should by no means be disturbed.
It is a pity that so many fine villages of Western New York are saddled with names absurdly borrowed from the Old World. It would seem as if Congress had granted bounty lands to heroes of the Trojan and Punic wars ; at all events, the names of those old veterans are affixed to more townships than there were sons of Priam Buffalo, Oswego, Canandaigua and
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Genesee, are almost the only towns of importance which have escaped the Greeks and Romans.
Our own country must confess itself to be destitute of European or classical townships, but can yet boast of very illustrious neighbors. We have but to step over our Northern boundary to " see Naples and die." The distance from Naples to Italy, though greater here than it is in Europe, is yet but inconsiderable, while the distance from Italy to Jerusalem is less than in the Old World. In fact, the city of David here abuts the land of Cæsar. On the Eastern side of the county behold the hero Hector, a brown Republican farmer, shaking no more the bloody spear as he looks from his orchards into the waters of Seneca, having long since exchanged the chariot for the horse-rake. His old antagonist, Ulysses, has located his land- warrant in the next range. On the West Ossian howls his humbugs in the latitude of Loon Lake, and Saxon Alfred lives unmolested by marauding Danes. The Spartans have colonized the adjoining corner of Livingston County, and appear to have quite given up black broth and laconics. The Athenians are to be found at the mouth of the Chemung,* and when the up-river raftmen, whooping and yelling, steer their rafts down the spring-flood, the citizens of the town are probably reminded of the time when the Goths came with similar uproar through the Hellespont, and sacked their city-a blow from which, judging from the present state of the fine arts at Tioga Point, it
* Athens, at the mouth of the Chemung, was formerly Tioga Point. The old name shows sense, the new one the want of it.
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would seem that the seat of the muses never re- covered.
Crooked Lake is the translation of Keuka, the ab- original name. Conhocton signifies come-together. It is sometimes erroneously rendered Trees-in-the-water. Five Mile Creek was formerly called Canoni. Gen. McClure says that Bath bore the name of Tanighna- guanda, by no means a euphonious one. Chemung is said to mean Big-bone. The tradition that the iden- tical bone by which the name was suggested, was taken from the river-bank by boatmen after the settle- ment must be erroneous. The Indians had a village and corn-field near Elmira, at the time of Sullivan's expedition, named Chemung, and the river was called the Chemung Branch. Further information concerning the aboriginal names of localities in this county we cannot give, and would be glad to receive.
GAME, ETC.
It is said in a manuscript, consulted in the prepara- tion of this volume, that " Many of the hunters esti- mated that there were from five to ten deer on every hundred acres of land in the county, or in that propor- tion throughout the country over which they hunted. The probability is, that this estimate would not be too high for many parts of the forest which were favorite haunts of the deer, but then there would be other tracts which they frequented but little, so that for the whole extent of territory embraced in the present limits of the county, equal to about 900,000 acres, it would
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probably be correct to estimate that at the first settle- ment of the country, there were, on an average, as many as four deer for every hundred acres of land- making the number within the present limits of the county, not less than 36,000.
An intelligent and respectable man, who came from Pennsylvania among the first emigrants from that State, used to relate that in the fall of the year 1790, or 1791, two young men came from near Northum- berland up the rivers in a canoe, on a hunting expedi- tion, built a lodge at the mouth of Smith's Creek, on the Conhocton, and hunted in that neighborhood. In the course of two months they killed upwards of two hundred deer, several elk, some bears and three pan- thers. Elk were at that time quite numerous in most parts of the county, and were found south of the Canisteo River, ten or fifteen years after. They also killed a number of wolves, foxes and martins, and a few beaver. The hunters preserved as much of the venison as they could, and with that and the skins they had taken, they loaded two large canoes, and early in the winter returned to Northumberland, where they sold their cargoes for upwards of $300.
Sixty years of persecution with hounds and rifle have not exterminated the deer; but, as may well be be- lieved, the buck that now shakes his horns in the forest, does so with little of that confidence with which in former times his predecessors tossed aloft their antlers. In twenty-four hours his ribs may be smok- ing on the dinner-table of a hotel, his hide may be steeping in the vats of the mitten-makers, and his
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horns may be grating under the rasps of the men that make cane-heads and knife-handles. In the days be- fore the conquest, notwithstanding the depredations of the wolves and Indians, the deer constantly increased in numbers, or at least held their own, and lived in a high state of exhilaration. It was a fine sight, that of a full-grown buck racing through the woods, clearing "fifteen to twenty feet, often twenty-five feet, and sometimes more than thirty feet of ground, at a single jump." The last elk killed in the county was shot in the town of Lindley, about yorty years ago.
As for the wolves, history despairs of doing them justice. They deserve a poet. How they howled, and howled, and howled ; how they snarled and snap- ped at the belated woodsman ; how they killed the pigs and the sheep ; how they charmed the night with their long drawn chorus, so frightful that " it was enough to take the hair off a man's head," and yet so dismally hideous that it could not but be laughed at by the youngsters-all these must be imagined ; words are too feeble to do justice to the howling of one wolf in the day time, much less to the howling of ten wolves at night, in the depth of a hemlock forest. Each pack had its chorister, a grizzled veteran, perhaps, who might have lost a paw in some settler's trap, or whose shattered thigh declared him a martyr for the public good. This son of the Muses, beginning with a for- lorn and quavering howl, executed a few bars in solo ; then the whole gang broke in with miracles of discord, as in a singing school the full voiced choir shouts in chorus, after the teacher has shown them "how that
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chromatic passage ought to be executed." All the parts recognised by the scientific, were carried by these " minions of the moon." Some moaned in barytone, some yelled in soprano, and the intermediate discords were howled forth upon the night air in a style that would make a jackall shiver. The foreign musician, awaked from his dreams by such an anthem, might well imagine himself fallen from a land where the Red Republicans had it all their own way, and having abro- gated the rules of rythm and dynamics, with other arbitrary and insufferable vestiges of the feudal system, had established musical socialism. The wolves and their howling linger more vividly than any other fea- tures of the wilderness in the memory of old settlers. It is only within a few years that they found the land too hot for them. It is not a great while since the citizens of the shire town were occasionally behowled from the Rollway Hills, and among those who, fifteen years ago, were very young school-boys, the memory is yet green of that day when the weightiest and grav- est of the townsmen, with many others who were not quite so weighty and grave, sallied forth with the avowed purpose of exterminating the wolves which lurked in the surrounding hills-a campaign barren. of trophies indeed, but which must have carried dis- may into the councils of the enemy, and convinced them of the uselessness of opposition to their "mani- fest destiny." A few members of this ancient family may yet lurk in the wild corners of the country, but the more discreet have withdrawn to the solitudes of Pennsylvania.
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The panthers have vanished, hide and hair, leaving a reputation like that of the Caribs. The " painter," in lack of lions, must always be the hero of desperate hunting tales, and were it not for the too well estab- lished fact that his valor was rather freely tempered with discretion, he would be a highly available cha- racter for the novelists. Except when wounded, they were not feared. Though powerful of frame and fe- rocious of face, they belied physiognomy and were generally quite willing to crawl off, or at most to stand at bay when met by the hunters. This forbearance, it must be confessed, arose not so much from sweet- ness of temper as from a bashfulness which almost amounted to cowardice. They disappointed the ex- pectations of their friends, and invariably forsook their backers before coming up fairly to the "scratch." However, the fierce face, the lion-like proportions, (they were from seven to ten feet long,) and the collusion of the novelists, have proved too much for the truth, and the "Great Northern Panther" at this day rivals in popularity Captain Kyd and Black-Beard. When exasperated by wounds he showed himself worthy of this high favor, but under ordinary provocation he was scarcely more terrible than a wood-chuck. For in- stance, a housewife, who owned Ireland as her native land, while attending to her domestic duties in the cabin, heard signals of distress among the pigs. On going out to see what had befallen her porkers, she found a fine shoat attacked by a panther. It was evi- dently the first acquaintance of the robber with animals of this species, for as often as he sprang upon
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the back of his prey, the pig squealed dismally, and the panther bounced off in amazement, as if he had alighted upon a hot stove. The lady ran screaming, and with arms uplifted, to rescue her pig, and the " Great North American Panther," instead of anni- hilating both pig and "lady-patroness" on the spot, scrambled into the top of a tree with evident alarm. The woman sent her husband straightway to fetch Patterson the hunter with his rifle, and stood under the tree to blockade the enemy. Several times the latter offered to come down, but his intrepid sentry screamed and made such violent gestures, that the panther drew back in consternation. The hunter came in an hour or so and shot it just as it took courage to spring.
The bear, too-the wise, respectable and indepen- dent bear was, in early times, a citizen of substance and consideration. Statistics concerning him are wanting. Disturbed by bone-breaking bullets in his berry gardens and plum orchards, blinded by gusts of buckshot that blew into his face as he put his head out of his parlor window, punched with sharp sticks by malicious youngsters as he sat nursing his wounded hams in the seclusion of a hollow log, plagued by ferocious traps which sometimes pinched his feet, some- times grasped his investigating nose with teeth of steel, assailed in his wooden tower by axe-men hewing at its basis, while boys with rifles waited for its downfall- the bear, we say, distressed by a line of conduct that rendered his existence precarious, emigrated to the mountains of the Key Stone State in disgust.
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A's for the lesser tribes, known as wild-cats, cata- mounts and lynxes, there were flourishing families of those creatures in all parts of the land, and they are still occasionally heard from in the outer districts. The last one worthy of historical notice prowled for a time in the interior woods, but his head' at last pre- eminent among the heads and tails of racoons and wood-chucks, adorned the Log Cabin of Bath in the picturesque election of 1840.P
There were but few beaver remaining in the streams at the time of the settlement. The lively trade in peltry which had been carried on between the Indians and Europeans was attended with a disastrous loss of fur to those poor creatures." In 1794 there were a few beaver remaining in Mud Lake, but the renowned Patterson set his eye upon them, and soon appeared on the harmonious shores of that secluded pond with his arms full of traps. Seven of the beaver were caught, the eighth and last escaped with the loss of a paw. These were the last beaver taken in this county. About twenty-five years ago a single beaver appeared in the Tioga, and even showed his nose on the farm of the old trapper. He was a traveller. He visited various parts of the river, as agent perhaps for some discontented colony on another stream, but probably discouraged by the farms and saw-mills, left the upper waters and appeared next in the lower Chemung. He imprudently went upon an island of a snowy morning; Canisteo raftmen tracked him to a corn-stout, beset, slew and skinned him, and delivered his hide to the hatters. The streams, though depopu-
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lated of beaver, abounded with fish, and contained for many years fine shad and salmon.
Rattlesnakes will conclude this catalogue of wor- thies. It has been previously intimated that these deadly reptiles flourished in certain places in large tribes. To say that there were thousands of them in the Conhocton valley among the pines, would be to speak modestly. The incident related of Patterson, the hunter, in a previous chapter of this volume, is sometimes told in a different form. It is told on ex- cellent authority, that he and his dog were going down the river trail, and killed rattlesnakes by daylight, till the odor of them made him sick, and till his dog, which was an expert snake-fighter, refused to touch them any more-(an active dog will dance around a snake, dash suddenly in, snatch it up in his teeth, and shake it to death.) It then becoming dark, he took the river and waded two miles to its mouth. There is another story touching snakes, which history will not willingly let die. The hero of the tale, it may be premised, was the narrator of it, and the sole witness to the facts. An old settler of this country was once journeying through the woods, and when night came, found him- self in a district infested by rattlesnakes, numbers of which were twisting their tails in the bushes in great indignation. Fearful that if he lay on the ground he would wake up in the morning with his pockets full of snakes, (for they are extremely free to snug up to sleepers on chilly nights, to enjoy the warmth of the human body,) in which case, it would be a delicate thing to pull them out, he placed a pole across two crotched
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