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 5
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The two families passed here the first winter very comfortably. In the spring of 1790 they were joined by Solomon Bennet, Uriah Stephens, Jr., and Colonel John Stephens his brother, with their families. As soon as the weather permitted, they set about prepar- ing the ground for seed. Although the flat was free from timber, this was no trifling task. The roots of the gigantic wild grass, braided and tangled together below the surface, protected the earth against the plow with a net so tight and stout, that ordinary means of breaking the soil failed entirely. Four yoke of oxen
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forced the coulter through this well-woven netting, and the snapping and tearing of the roots as they gave way before the strength of eight healthy beeves was heard to a considerable distance, like the ripping of a mat. The settlers never learned the origin of these mea- dows. " Captain John the Indian" said that he knew nothing of their origin; they were cleared "before the time of his people." After the frosts, when the herbage had become dry and crisp, the grass was set on fire, and a very pretty miniature of a prairie-on-fire it made. The flames flashed over the flats almost as over a floor strewn with gunpowder. A swift horse could not keep before them. The wild grass, by suc- cessive mowings and burning, became less rank and more nutritious. In time it gradually changed to " tame grass," and at the present day there are mea- dows on the Canisteo which have never been broken by the plow.
After the sowing of Spring wheat and the planting of the corn, the settlers constructed a log fence on a scale as magnificent, considering their numbers, as that of the Chinese wall. This ponderous battlement enclosed nearly four hundred acres of land. The flats were divided among the proprietors. From the pre- sent site of Bennetsville down to the next township, a distance of about six miles, twelve lots were laid out from hill to hill across the valley, and assigned by lot to the several proprietors. The lot upon which the first house was built is known as the "Bennet" or "Pumpelly farm." That part of it upon which the house stood is upon the farm of Mr. Jacob Doty. In
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the course of the same spring (1790) Jedediah Ste- phens, John Redford, and Andrew Bennet settled in the neighborhood. Jedediah Stephens, afterwards well known to the citizens of the county, was a faithful and respected preacher of the Baptist denomination. His house was for many years the resort of missionaries and religious travellers who passed through the valley, and indeed was said to be one of the few places where pilgrims of a serious disposition, and not inclined to join the boisterous company of the neighborhood, could find lodgings entirely to their satisfaction.
The harvest abundantly attested the fertility of the valley. Seventy or seventy-five bushels of corn were yielded to the acre. Indeed, the timbered flats have been known to yield seventy-five bushels of corn, _planted with the hoe after logging. They sent their grain in canoes to Shepherd's Mill, on the Susquehan- na, a short distance above Tioga Point, and nearly one hundred miles distant from Canisteo.
A few random notes of the settlement of this neigh- borhood may be added. Solomon Bennet was one of its leading spirits. He was a hunter of renown, and bequeathed his skill and good fortune to his sons, who became well known citizens of the county, and were famous for readiness with the knife and rifle, and for " perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment" (or better) touching traps. Mr. Bennet built, in 1793, the first grist mill on the Canisteo. It stood (and also a saw- mill we are told) on Bennet's creek, about half a mile from its mouth. It stood but a'year or two when it was, unfortunately, burned to the ground. This mill
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was resorted to sometimes by the citizens of Bath. Early settlers remember how the pioneer boys came over the hills, through the unbroken woods, with their ox-drays, and retain vividly the image of a distin- guished settler who came over from the Pine Plains with " his little brown mare and a sheepskin to ride upon" after a bag of corn-meal to keep off starvation. Flour was sometimes sent by canoes down the Canis- teo and up the Conhocton. After the burning of the mill, the settlers were again compelled to send their grain in canoes to Shepherds Mill. Mr. Bennet went to New York to purchase machinery for a new mill, but became engaged in other business, and failed to minister to the urgent necessity of his neighbors. George Hornell (afterwards well known as Judge Hor- nell) settled in Canisteo in 1793. He was induced to build a mill on the site now occupied by the present Hornellsville Mills. So impatient were the settlers for the erection of the building, that they turned out and prepared the timber for it voluntarily.
The first goods were sold by Solomon Bennet. Judge Hornell and William Dunn visited the neighborhood at an early day for trade with the Indians. James McBurney, of Ireland, first came to Canisteo as a pedler. He bought Great Lot, No. 12, in the lower township of Bennet, and other lands ; went to Ireland, and upon his return settled some of his countrymen on his lands.
Christopher Hulburt and Nathaniel Cary settled in 1795 at Arkport. The former ran, in 1800 or about that time, the first ark laden with wheat that descend-
7*
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ed the Canisteo, and about the same time John Morrison ran the first raft. The honor of piloting the first craft of the kind out of the Canisteo, however, is also claimed for Benjamin Patterson.
Dr. Nathan Hallett, Jeremiah Baker, Daniel Purdy, Oliver Harding, Thomas Butler, J. Russelman, the Upsons, the Stearns, and the Dykes also were among the earliest settlers on the upper Canisteo.
The first taverns were kept in the year 1800, or about that time, by Judge Hornell, at his mills, and by Jedediah Stephens below Bennet's Creek. The first house in Hornellsville stood upon the site of Mr Hugh Magee's Hotel.
Under the old organization of the County of Ontario, the settlement of Canisteo was in the town of William- son, which comprised a large part of what is now Western Steuben County, Allegany County, and how much more we know not. Jedediah Stephens was the first Supervisor of that town, and attended the meeting of the Board at Canandaigua. Town meeting was held at the house of Uriah Stephens, and seven votes were cast.
Solomon Bennet is said by the settlers of Canisteo to have been the Captain. John Stephens, the lieu- tenant, and Richard Crosby the ensign of the first military company organized in Steuben County.
A large proportion of the first settlers of Canisteo were from Pennsylvania, and had within them a goodly infusion of that boisterous spirit and love of rough play for which the free and manly sons of the back- woods are everywhere famous. On the Susquehanna
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frontier, before the Revolution, had arisen an athletic scuffling wrestling race, lovers of hard blows, sharp- shooters and runners, who delighted in nothing more than in those ancient sports by which the backs and limbs of all stout-hearted youth have been tested since the days of Hercules. The eating of bears, the drinking of grog, the devouring of hominy, venison, and all the invigorating diet of the frontiers; the hewing down of forests, the paddling of canoes, the fighting of savages, all combined to form a gene- ration of yeomen and foresters, daring, rude and free. Canisteo was a sprout from this stout stock, and on the generous river-flats flourished with amazing vigor.
Life there was decidedly Olympic. The old Pyth- ian games were revived with an energy that would have almost put a soul into thé bones of Pindar ; and although many of the details of those classic festivals upon which the schoolmasters dwell with especial de- light were wanting-the odes, the crowns of oak, the music, and so on-nevertheless, one cannot help think- ing that for the primitive boxers and sportsmen of the old school, men who wore lions' hides and carried clubs, the horse-play of Canisteo would have been quite as entertaining as the flutes and dog- gerel of Delphi. Every thing that could eat, drink and wrestle, was welcome; Turk or Tuscarora, Anak, or Anthropophagus, Blue Beard or Blunder- bore. A " back-hold" with a Ghoul would not have been declined, nor a drinking match with a Berserkir. Since the Centaurs never has there been better speci- men of a "half-horse" tribe. To many of the settlers
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in other parts of the county who emigrated from the decorous civilization of the east and south, these bois- terous foresters were objects of astonishment. When " Canisteer" went abroad, the public soon found it out. On the Conhocton they were known to some as the Six-Nations, and to the amusement and wonder of young Europeans, would sometimes visit at Bath, being of a social disposition, and sit all day, " sing- ing, telling stories and drinking grog, and never get drunk nayther." To the staid and devout they were Arabs, -- cannibals. Intercourse between the scattered settlements of the county was of course limited mainly to visits of necessity ; but rumor took the fair fame of Canisteo in hand, and gave the settlement a notoriety through all the land, which few "rising villages" even of the present day enjoy. It was pretty well under- stood over all the country that beyond the mountains of Steuben, in the midst of the most rugged district of the wilderness, lay a corn-growing valley which had been taken possession of by some vociferous tribe, whether of Mamelukes or Tartars no one could pre- cisely say ; whose whooping and obstreperous laughter was heard far and wide, surprising the solitudes.
The " Romans of the West" were not long in find- ing out these cousins, and many a rare riot they had with them. The uproars of these festivals beggar description. The valley seemed a den of maniacs. The savages came down four or five times in each year from Squakie Hill for horse and foot-racing, and to play all manner of rude sports. In wrestling, or in "rough-and-tumble" they were not matches for the
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settlers, many of whom were proficients in the Susque- hanna sciences, and had been regularly trained in all the wisdom of the ancients. The Indians were power- ful of frame and of good stature. The settlers agree _that " they were quick as cats, but the poor critters. had no system." When fairly grappled, the Indians generally came off second best. They were slippery and "limber like snakes," oiling themselves freely, and were so adroit in squirming out of the clinch of the farmers, that it was by no means the most trifling part of the contest to keep the red antagonist in the hug.
In these wrestling matches, Elias Stephens was the champion. He was called the " smartest Stephens on the river," and was in addition claimed by his friends as the " smartest" man in the country at large. No Indian in the Six Nations could lay him on his back. A powerful young chief was once brought by his tribe from Tonewanta to test the strength of the Canisteo Champion. He had been carefully trained and exer- cised, and after " sleeping in oiled blankets" for sev- eral nights, was brought into the ring. Stephens grap- pled with him. At the first round the chief was hurled to the ground with a thigh-bone broken. His backers. were very angry, and, drawing their knives, threatened to kill the victor. He and his friend Daniel Upson, took each a sled-stake and standing back to back de- fied them. The matter was finally made up, and the unlucky chief was borne away on a deer-skin, stretched between two poles .* In addition to this, Stephens
* Stephens was trained by a wrestler of some note living on the
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once maintained the credit of the Canisteo by signally discomfiting a famous wrestler from the Hog-back.
Foot races, long and short, for rods or miles, were fa- vorite diversions. In these the Indians met with better success than in wrestling ; but even in racing they did not maintain the credit of their nation to their entire satisfaction, for there was now and then a long-winded youth among the settlers who beat the barbarians at their own game. So for horse-racing, this ancient and heroic pastime was carried on with a zeal that would shame Newmarket. The Indians came down on these occasions with all their households, women, children, dogs and horses. The settlers found no occasion to complain of their savage guests. They conducted themselves with civility, generally, and even formed in some instances, warm friendships with their hosts.
Infant Canisteo of course followed in the footsteps of senior Canisteo. When fathers and big brothers
Chemung named McCormick, who afterward was for many years a citizen of this county. McCormick was a British soldier, and reputed to be the most powerful and expert pugilist in the army. He de- serted during the Revolutionary war and went with Arnold to Que- bec. After the failure of the desperate assault on that town, Mc- Cormick, with a party of American soldiers, were standing on the ice of the St. Lawrence when the British approached to make them prisoners. Knowing that the deserter would be hanged, if taken, his comrades gathered around him in a huddle, pretending to pre- pare resistance. The British parlied. In the mean time McCormick pulled off his shoes, for " the ice was as smooth as a bottle," and ran. A shower of bullets rattled around him, but he was so fortunate as to escape unhurt. Captain Silas Wheeler, late of the town of Whee- ler, was in that crowd, and gives McCormick the credit of extraor- dinary briskness,
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found delight in scuffling with barbarians, and in rac- ing with Indian ponies, it would have been strange if infant Canisteo had taken of its own accord to Belles Lettres, and Arithmetic. The strange boy found him- self in a den of young bears. He was promptly re- quired to fight, and after such an introduction to the delights of the valley, was admitted to freedom of trap and fishery in all the streams and forests of the com- monwealth. And for infant Canisteo, considering that passion for wild life which plays the mischief with boys everywere, even in the very ovens of refine- ment, a more congenial region could not have been found. The rivers and brooks alive with fish, the hills stocked with deer, the groves populous with squirrels, the partridges drumming in the bushes, the raccoons scrambling in the tree-tops, removed every temptation to run away in search of a solitary island and a man Friday ; while their little ill-tempered Iroquois play- fellows, with their arrow-practice, their occasional skir- mishes, and their mimic war-paths, satisfied those desires to escape from school to the Rocky Mountains and the society of grizzly bears and Camanches, which so often turn the heads of youngsters nurtured in the politest of academies.
This backwoods mode of education, though by no means so exquisite as our modern systems, has proved nevertheless quite efficient for practical purposes. The boys who in early times played with the heathen and persecuted raccoons, instead of learning their gram- mars have, astonishing to see, become neither pagans nor idiots. Some have become farmers, some lumber-
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men, some supervisors, and some justices of the peace ; and whether in the field or in the saw-mill, whether in the county's august parliament, or in the chair of the magistrate, the duties of all those stations seem to have been performed substantially as well as needs be. For the Robin Hoods of Canisteo could plow, mow, and fell trees, if need be, as well as the best, and did not hold laziness in higher respect than did the other pioneers of the county.
The Indians made their appearance shortly after the landing of the settlers-the Canisteo Valley having long been a favorite hunting field. The men of Wyom- ing found among them many of their old antagonists. Tories never were forgiven, but the proffered friend- ship of the Indians was accepted : old enmities were forgotten, and the settlers and savages lived together on the most amicable terms. Shortly after their arri- val, an old Indian, afterwards well known as "Captain John," made his appearance, and on seeing the elder Stephens, went into a violent fit of merriment. Lan- guage failed to express the cause of his amusement, which seemed to be some absurd reminiscence suddenly sug- gested by the sight of the settler, and the old " Roman"' resorted to pantomime. He imitated the gestures of a man smoking-putting his hand to his mouth to with- draw an imaginary pipe, then turning up his mouth and blowing an imaginary cloud of smoke, then stoop- ing to tie an imaginary shoe, then taking an imaginary boy in his arms and running away, and returning with violent peals of laughter. One of the sons of Mr. Stephens, a hot and athletic youth, supposing that the
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Indian was "making fun" of his father, snatched up a pounder to knock him on the head. Captain John was driven from the ideal to the 'real, and made good his retreat. He afterwards became a fast friend of the settlers, and explained the cause of his merriment.
When Mr. Stephens lived near Wyoming, he was one day going from his farm to the fort, with two oxen and a horse, which were attached to some kind of vehicle. His boy, Phineas, was riding on the horse. Mr. Stephens was an inveterate smoker, and walked by the side of the oxen, puffing after the manner imi- tated by Captain John. While passing through the woods near a fork of the roads, his shoe stuck in the mud, and was drawn off his foot. Just as he stooped to recover it, a rifle was fired from the bushes, which killed the nigh ox, by the side of which he had been walking. The alarm of "Indians !" was sounded from the other branch of the road, where some of his neighbors were killed. Mr. Stephens started and ran, but his boy crying out, " Don't leave me, father !" he returned and took him in his arms, and fled to the fort. The ambushed rifleman was none other than Captain John, and he, recognizing the smoker fifteen years after the adventure, was quite overpowered at the recollection of the joke.
Another meeting of two old enemies took place on the banks of the Canisteo not long afterwards. Major Moses Van Campen, (late of Dansville, Livingston County,) well known to the Six Nations as a powerful, daring and sagacious ranger in the border wars of Pennsylvania, moved up the river with a colony des-
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tined for Allegany County, and offered to land at the settlement on Canisteo Flats. Van Campen was especially obnoxious to the Indians for the part he had taken as a leader of a bold and destructive attack, made in the night, by himself and two others, prisoners, (Pence and Pike by name,) upon the party by which they had been captured in an incursion against the settlements, in which Van Campen's father and young brother had been killed before his own eyes. There
were ten Indians in the party. One evening, while encamped at Wyalusing Flats, on their way to Niagara, Van Campen resolved to put in execution a long medi- tated plan of escape. He managed to conceal under his foot a knife which had been dropped by an Indian, and with this, at midnight, the prisoners cut them- selves loose. They stole the guns from their sleeping enemies, and placed them against a tree. Pike's heart failed him, and he laid down just as the two allotted to him for execution awoke and were arising. Van Camping, seeing that "their heads were turned up fair," killed them with a tomahawk, and three besides. Pence killed four with the guns. Van Campen struck his hatchet into the neck of the only remaining Indian, a chief named Mohawk, who turned and grappled with him. A desperate and doubtful struggle followed, one being sometimes uppermost and sometimes the other. Van Campen was half blinded by the blood of his wounded antagonist, who felt, as often as he got oppor- tunity, for the knife in his belt. This would have soon settled the contest, and Van Campen finally stuck his 0
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toes into the Indian's belt and hoisted him off. The latter bounded into the woods and escaped.
The savages recognized Van Campen on his arrival at Canisteo as " the man that lent John Mohawk the hatchet." Captain Mohawk himself was there, and had a special cause of grievance to exhibit in a neck set slightly awry from the blow of the tomahawk. The settlers rallied for the defence of Van Campen. There was every prospect of a bloody fight; but after much wrangling it was agreed that the two parties should divide while Van Campen and Mohawk advanced be- tween them to hold a " talk." This was done, and in a conference of considerable length between the two old antagonists, the causes of difficulty were discussed, and it was finally decided that each was doing his duty then, but that now war being ended, they ought to for- get past injuries. Mohawk offered his hand. The threatened fight became a feast. A keg of spirits was broken and the hills rang with riot .*
The Indians sometimes entertained the men of Ca- nisteo with a display of their military circumstance, and marched forth on the flats, to the number of three hundred warriors, in full costume, to dance the grand war-dance. They made a fire about eight rods long
* Mohawk was a noble warrior,-a Roman indeed. See Stone's Life of Brant (somewhere in the second volume) for an incident whichi occurred in the captivity of the gallant Capt. Alexander Har- per. The "single voice" which responded with "the death yell" was Mohawk's without doubt. "The name of this high-souled war- rior " is not lost, as Col. Stone feared. The biographer of Van Cam- peu makes out a satisfactory case for Captain Mohawk.
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and paraded around it with hideous chants and a great clattering of little deer-skin drums. On one of these grand field-days, the whole tribe, arrayed most fantas- tically, was marching around the fire, and with the flourishing of knives, the battering of drums, and the howling of war songs, had worked themselves up into a brilliant state of excitement. The settlers, boys and men, were standing near watching the performance, when a high-heeled young savage stepped out of the line and inquired of one of the bystanders-
" What's your name ?"
The settler informed him.
"D-d liar ! d-d hog !" said the Indian.
Elias Stephens, who was a prompt and high tem- pered youth, said, " Daniel, I wish he would just ask me that question."
The Indian instantly turned and said,
" What's your name ? "
" Elias Stephens."
"D-d liar ! d-d- "
The sentence remains unfinished up to the present date. A well-planted blow of the fist knocked the barbarian headlong over the fire, senseless. The sen- sation for a moment was great. The dance was stopped, the drums became dumb ; tomahawks and knives were brandished no longer, and the savages stood aloof in such angry astonishment, that the bystanders trembled for their skulls. The Chief however came forward, and striking Stephens approvingly on the shoulders, said, " Good enough for Indian." He expected his warriors to behave themselves like gentlemen, and
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when copper-colored gentlemen so far forgot themselves as to use indelicate or personal language, he would thank pale-faced gentlemen to knock them over the fire, or through the fire, or into the fire, as it might be most convenient. The dance went on with renewed vigor, but the punished pagan descended from his high horse and sat aside in silence, volunteering during the rest of the entertainment no more flourishes not pro- mised "on the bills."
Sometimes the Indians treated the settlers to a dis- play of their tactics. Hiding behind a rampart of roots or lying in ambush among the bushes, at a signal given the whole party fired their rifles at certain imaginary foes. The chief sprang up and raised the war-whoop, and then the three hundred joined in that frightful cry of the Six Nations, which, to use the favorite phrase of the pioneers, "was enough to take the hair off a man's head." Then, rushing out, they tomahawked the pumpkins and scalped the turnips, then dodged back to their covert and lay still as snakes.
Elias Stephens, for his prowess and resolution, be- came an object of respect to the red gentry. Four- teen men were working in Bennett's millyard when sixteen " Romans" came down whooping furiously, and drove the lumbermen from their work, took possession of the mill, and converted it into a dancing saloon. It was told to Stephens. "What !" said he, " you four- teen let sixteen of those critters drive you out of the yard ! Lord ! I can whip a hundred Indians." And taking the swingle of a flail ran to the mill. The In- dians were capering about in high glee, brandishing 8*
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their knives and shrieking very like Mark Antony and fifteen other Romans, and indulging in all those antics with which the barbarians of the Log-House were wont to divert themselves.
" Put up those knives, damn you, and march," said Stephens. The diversions came to a sudden pause. "Put up those knives, damn you, and be off, or I'll beat all your brains out !" The Romans said never a word, but stuck their knives into their belts and de- parted.
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