USA > New York > Steuben County > History of the settlement of Steuben County, N.Y. including notices of the old pioneer settlers and their adventures, 1893 > Part 15
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Sixty thousand souls now live within the boundaries of the county. Twenty villages and upwards are scattered through the towns, some of them holding pretensions to beauty and import- ance. The great railway line between the city of New York and the Western States passes up the valleys of the Chemung and Canisteo, which, at the village of Corning, is joined by two im- portant tributaries-one extending to the coal mountain of Penn- sylvania where sixty years ago Patterson, the hunter, first unearthed the "black diamond " with his tomahawk, -the other passing northward through the valley of the Conhocton to the Genesee and Buffalo. Another tributary to the great trunk joins it at Hornellsville on the Canisteo, which also terminates at Buffalo, crossing the Genesee River at Portage Falls. The Can- andaigua and Jefferson railroad crosses one corner of the county. The Chemung Canal thrusts itself within the county line as far as Corning, and the Crooked Lake gives direct communication with the Erie Canal.
The dreams of our ancients have not become realities, but wonders, of which they did not dream, are amongst us. Iron monsters more marvellous than any that were seen by geologists in the marine herds which of old fed on our sunken meadows, rush through the valleys with wild and discordant shrieks. The hoot of the engine, and the roar of its chariot, employ the echoes of the bluffs. Steamers, and heavy-laden barges plow the lakes where once wallowed the Durham boat of the pioneer, or skimmed the canoe of the red fisherman.
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Let the reflecting republican, before turning from the perusal of these records to his saw-mill or meadow, consider a few of the comforts which the citizens of the county enjoys to day, which were unknown to the backwoodsman of forty or fifty years ago.
Then the solitary settler shared his clearing with the populace of the forest. Those hairy Six Nations, the bears, the wolves, the panthers, the foxes, the catamounts and the weasels, hovered around his narrow frontiers to slay and devour. His two or three swine or sorry sheep were in nightly peril of the scenes of Wyom- ing. Deer bounded before him in his walk through the woods. The fires of Indian lodges glimmered among the trees at night .- Now his flocks and herds range without fear over great pastures. Wagons roll before his dwelling on the roads which were once lonely trails. Lights glimmer at night on all sides from farm- house windows. He hears the bells in the distant village-steeples.
Then he was beyond the borders of the Far West. Behind him were the Atlantic cities,-before him were tremendous wilds which he heard were traversed by the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, rumored to be enormous rivers, on the banks of which were brakes and plains, possessed by buffaloes, wild horsemen and bears. . When he went East, people looked at him as we now look at the Mormon from Salt Lake, or the fur trader from Win- nipeg .- Now he is in the far East. As one standing on the shadow of a cloud sees it gliding under his feet, and presently beholds it miles away on the hill-side, so has the pioneer of Steu- ben seen the "Far West " gliding from beneath his feet, and now he beholds it moving up the slope of the Cordilleras. He reads of boilers bursting at the Falls of St. Anthony, of steamers dash- ing together at the mouth of the Arkansas, of flues collapsing under the Council Bluffs.
Then, in his lonely clearing, he guessed the hour of the day by the sunshine on his cabin floor ; he foretold snows, winds and droughts, by the shape of the clouds, by the vapors at sunset, by the Moon-man's expression of countenance .- Now the clocks of Connecticut are ticking in the forlornest hollow : iron pointers, on many steeples, publicly expose all irregularities of that luminary which governs times and seasons, and almanacs calculated "ex- pressly for the meridian of Western New York," tell him exactly
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when to expect freshets, and when to look out for hail-stormns.
Then, the trader, bestriding his horse, jogged off to the sea- port through the dark and dismal roads of the forest, dependent upon the whims of despotic tavern-keepers and the tender mercies of " cross widows "* by the way. His yearly assortment of goods was dragged in wagons from the Hudson. Now, whirling to the city in a night, he may send up by a railway those gorgeous fabrics which have superseded the homely merchandize of former times ; or the canal boat, laden with his ponderous crates and hogsheads, is tugged through the Northern ditches to the Crooked Lake, where a steamer politely offers his wheel-house, and escorts the fair wanderer into the heart of the hills.
Then, the lumbermen saw the creeks come leaping down the ravines like hearty young mountaineers, pines stood in the glens like stupid giants, unconscious that they contained cubic-feet and cullings, and the hemlocks made dark the hill-sides and hollows with their worthless branches. Now, the pines are so nearly extirpated that their uncouth cousins, the hemlocks, are thought ·worthy of the saw. The creeks have been taught useful knowl- edge and drive gang-mills, just as in Pagan islands the mission- aries make good boys of the little cannibals, and set them at work churning and grinding coffee.
Then, the flaxen-haired urchin tumbled in the leaves with bear- cubs and racoons ; he blackened his face among the half-burnt logs ; he was lost to all sense of syntax, but perhaps studied arithmetic at winter in the little log-school-house, and learned something about the Chinese wall and the antipodes. Then, the patriot saw the country going to ruin, without having it in his power to sound the alarm, for there was no county newspaper to trumpet his warnings to "a profligate and reckless administra- tion." Now, there are school-houses, academies and seminaries- " bulwarks of liberty "-bristling at all points with rhetoric and geometry. Three political newspapers ride every week the length and breadth of the county, like chariots armed with scythes. Three editors, fit successors of the Shiversculls and Brighthatchets of old, brandish the political scalping knife, and at times drop their ferocious weapons, to touch the lyre of poetry or the viol of
* Vide McClure, Norr.
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romance, at those brief intervals when the great congressional bass-drum ceases its sullen roar in the Republic's capitol.
Of the things to be attained by the county at a future day, we will not attempt to prophecy. The chief agricultural eminence now believed to be within our reach, is in the dairy line. Dis- tinguished graziers indulge in dreams of a Buttermilk Age, when the churns of Steuben will be as renowned as the forges of Pitts- burgh, or the looms of Lowell. They publicly assert that while our neighbors of Allegany may presume to make cheese, and our cousins of Ohio may hope to shine in the grease market, it will be presumption in them, or in any other tribes west of the Genesee, to try to rival the butter of Steuben : that the grass abounding on our juicy hills possesses a peculiar flavor and a mysterious virtue, and will produce most stupendous and unparalleled butter ; that while there is much grass of the same quality in Chemung, some in Onondaga, and scanty patches elsewhere, the wretched natives of Ohio are utterly destitute of it, as also are all those miserable myriads who extract a substance from the herbage of the prairies, which they insanely style "butter ;" that, feeding upon this. grass, calves have attained an appalling magnitude ; the ox may, by proper encouragement, become gigantic, and the Hornby steer, with his broad horns and deep flanks, will be looked upon with unspeakable envy by those rattish red bullocks that migrate in such immense hordes, like the ill-favored Huns of old, from Illinois and Indiana to the New York market .*
To the degree of physical prosperity to be attained by the county hereafter, one will hardly venture to set a limit. Let its citizens, first of all things, have a care that they themselves be men of whom the Republic need not be ashamed-God-fearing, law-abid- ing, intelligent, and free men, and they need not doubt that the future will fulfil the promise of the present. Failing in this great thing, it would be better that the land had remained a wilderness.
There are a few considerations respecting the relations whidh have heretofore existed, and which have not yet ceased to exist, between the citizens of the county and the original foreign pur- chasers and their heirs, which may with propriety be here pre- sented.
* Speech of a prominent agriculturist at a " Railroad meeting."
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It is now about sixty years since the greater part of the county became the property of the London Associates. From that time until the present day, an office has been kept at the shire-town of the county, for the sale of lands. The lands have been sold in small parcels, and upon credit, the purchaser taking immediate possession. The most valuable portions of the county have thus been long sold : but considerable tracts of land are yet undisposed of, and actions against single splitting, tort-feasors, are yet brought in the name of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King of Hanover.
As was almost unavoidable, from the nature of these relations, there has been no love lost between the citizens and the proprietors. During the agency of Col. Williamson there seems to have been a cordial under-standing between the two parties. The original proprietors were men of generous and enlightened spirit. Sir William Pulteney was a statesman of high standing. Mr. Colqua- houn had also mingled in public affairs, and was distinguished as a philanthropist. The administration of the estate in the first years of the settlement was conducted with an evident regard for the prosperity 'of the settler, and with a liberality and justice on the part of the proprietors which none are more ready to acknowl- edge than those who dealt with them. It is since the period of the earliest settlements that the policy and tone of the alien owners have failed to command the respect of the citizens.
The relation, and the sole relation, which for forty years and upwards has existed between the proprietors and citizens, has been that of sellers and buyers. So long as the former confine their claims to consideration to this relation, it cannot be alleged against them that they have transcended the bounds of what is considered reputable amongst men of business. They have required high prices for their lands, it is true, even the very highest prices that could be borne, but to demand high prices for lands or chattels is not considered an offence against the rules of reputable dealing amongst men of business. No one is compelled to buy. It is true that men have been required to fulfil their agreements with the land-holders, and, in default thereof, have been made to suffer the legal consequences, but neither against this can one, according to the settled maxims of common dealing, object. The law gives the
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right, and it is the practice of men to avail themselves of it. There are many large land proprietorships in the United States. We do not know that the administration of the generality of these is characterized by any greater degree of liberality than is that of the Pulteney and Hornby estates. The proprietors of the latter have certainly not insisted upon their strict legal rights, but. have hab- itually refrained from exercising the utmost stringency which the letter of the law would permit and have many times granted indul- gence to those in delinquency which they were not bound to grant. Whatever causes of quarrel may have existed between purchasers and agents of the proprietors are not fit subjects of comment here ; we speak merely of the general policy of the owners in adminis- tering the affairs of the estate, and hold that so long as they are content to confine their claims to consideration to their character as sellers of land, it must be admitted that they have conformned to the rules of common dealing amongst men. But if, beyond this, they should have the effrontery to lay claims to public grati- tude for services rendered to the county in its days of toil and priva- tion, or should demand credit for liberality in the administration of the affairs of the estate, of a higher tone than is generally exer- cised in this lower world, these pretensions would be simply pre- posterous. We do not know that any such claims are put forth. The only concern of the proprietors has been to get as much money as it was possible to get, and whether settlers lived or starved has not, so far as human vision can discern, had a straw's weight in their estimation. Many instances no doubt there have been of kind consideration on the part of employees of the estate, and some of these gentlemen have merited and obtained, the respect of those with whom their business brought them in contact, but the gener- al spirit of the administration of the successors of the original proprietors, considering it as a matter affecting the interests of a little State, has been mean and narrow. A frank, generous, and considerate bearing of the proprietors, it is perhaps safe to say, would have obviated nearly all of that hostility of the people which it is so easy to ascribe wholly to democratic cupidity and jealousy. The alien proprietorship deserves no thanks from the public, and probably will never think it advisable to ask for any. It has been a dead, disheartening weight on the county. The undeniable fact
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that a multitude of hard-working men have miserably failed in their endeavors to gain themselves homes-have mired in a slough of interest and instalment, leaving the results of their labors for others to profit by, should be of itself sufficient to shame the absurd pretension of pratronage, if it is ever put forth. The young county, full of rued and indomitable vigor, gained its present posi- tion of independence by work and courage, and in spite of the in- cubus which rested upon it. It has to thank no human patron for its victory.
And it is well that this is so. It is well that strong arms and stout hearts have achieved the conquest of this wilderness, unaid- ed by patrons, either at home or abroad. Fight makes might. The discipline of a half a century of poverty and tedious labor has made this people stronger of heart and hand than they would have been if the hemlocks had snapped like icicles, or the hills had proved softer than old meadow lands, or the apparitions of foreign Peers had hovered in the air, smiling encouragement to indigent squatters, and shaking showers of silver from the clouds.
There are certain other considerations arising from the relations which have so long existed between the citizens of the county and the foreign proprietors which may be here presented. No state of things can be imagined more offensive to democratic prejudices than that created by the relations existing between the people of this county and the heirs of Pulteney. Few stronger temptations to disregard the rights of property and to advocate something akin to that Agrarianism so much dreaded in republican com- munities by those distrustful of popular rule, are often presented to a populace, than such as arise from the tenure by foreign Lords of immense tracts of land in a country heartily hostile to every- thing savoring of aristocracy. No lawlessness would naturally be more readily excused by the popular sense than that which repu- diated the European claims of title, and formed illegal combina- tions to harrass the proprietors, and to set at nought the edicts of lawgivers, and the process of courts in their favor. What can be imagined more annoying to democratic feeling than to see, as the orators sometimes tell us, the money of republicans, earned by desperate labor, rolling in incessant streams to the treasuries of British Lords-the sufferers thereby believing, at the same time,
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that these rivulets of coin are kept up by some kind of jugglery. What group would so well serve the purposes of the orator and the demagogue, as that of poor, brave and free-born farmers standing in the posture of serfs to foreign Nebuchadnezzars ? What better pictures to adorn the popular harangue, or the County's Book of Martyrs, sometimes opened before sympathising juries, than those of foreign Nebuchadnezzars riding over the necks of prostrate democrats ; of foreign Nebuchadnezzars plying the rack, the boot and the thumbscrew to the "unterrified ;" of foreign Nebuchadnezzars hunting shingle-splitters with blood- hounds and janizaries, throwing farmers into fiery furnaces and dens of lions, and making a "St. Bartholemew's " among the squatters ?
That under these circumstances defective foreign titles should have been amended by the Legislature of the State, and the rights of the proprietors carefully regarded and repeatedly asserted ; that the tender mercies of the commonwealth should have reached such a climax of tenderness as to relieve the proprietors from the payment of taxes on their wild lands and to rebuke as unrighteous and impertinent the demands of the settlers that these indigent aliens should share in the maintenance of the roads by which they profited, and of the courts which they crowded with their suits ; that for sixty years their office should have stood unmio- lested and unthreatened in the midst of a populace doubtful of the legality of their claims and aggrieved by their perseverance in a policy which is popularly considered unjust and disreputable ; that their agents have never been flagrantly insulted, nor their foresters thrown into mill-ponds ; that the process of the courts has seldom been illegally impeded and never effectually resisted, and that juries have never refused to render for the proprietors verdicts required by the law and the facts ; that by a community abundantly intelligent to form unlawful combinations which would seriously disturb the operations of the land agency, no such unlawful combinations have been formned, but that the only rem- edies sought for that which was believed to be unjust and oppres- sive, have been by applications to the legislatures and by defences in the courts. These are things which those who tremble for the sacredness of property in republics will do well to consider.
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The duty of the citizens to the alien proprietors is plain ; to urge an observance of it would be justly offensive. There is no disposition in the mass of citizens to grant the proprietors any- thing less than justice. Law will be regarded ; rights will not be disturbed ; public faith will not be violated, and to urge in this case the practice of common honesty would be in the highest degree insulting. So long as the courts and the legislatures recognize the title of the proprietors, the people will not discredit the commonwealth by illegal resistance to authority.
Amidst all the causes of vexation which encompass us, there are yet various pleasant reflections for the exasperated republican to console himself withal, not the least of which is, the certainty that we shall in due time be delivered from the feudal phantoms which have so long beset us.
The mill-wheel turned by water never rests, but the institution that goes by land must soon or later stop grinding. The water that pours through the floom goes down to the sea, but rises again in fogs and vapors ; it ascends to the clouds ; the winds blow it landward ; it falls again upon the hill tops, and again pours through the floom. For the land office there is no such hope. The element that keeps its wheels in motion never evap- orates. Acres of gravel do not readily become clouds and rain themselves again into the Duke of Cumberland's pond ; and sec- tion lots, especially if they contain a ton or two of mountains, are most discouraging materials for a fog to feed upon. The repub- lican, therefore, terrified or unterrified, may confidently look for- ward to the time when the coronets of English Peers will no longer glitter in the air, greatly to the disturbance of the public temper, when "articles," "instalments," "interest," "assign- ments," "back payments," and all the terms of that unpopular vocabulary will become dead language ; when the deputy sheriff's occupation will be gone, and when Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King of Hanover, having been honestly and fairly paid for that which the law declares to be his, will beg no more the thunder of the courts to avenge, or the shield of the legislatures to protect him, but will abandon his title-deeds, dis- charge his stewards, and vanish forever behind the fogs of the Atlantic Ocean.
CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES.
THE INDIANS.
IT will not be necessary to speak of the history, laws or cus- toms of the Six Nations in this volume ; sufficient information for present purposes, as to those matters, is possessed by the popular mind. Steuben County constituted a part of the domain of the Senecas. The Indians with whom the pioneer had inter . course were from the North, and visited this region only to hunt. Many hundreds of them came in the winter from the Genesee, and even from the Niagara, built their lodges around in the woods, and killed deer for their summer's stock of dried venison. and other wild animals for their peltry.
The complement of a hunting lodge varied according to circum- stances. Sometimes a solitary old savage made his wigwam apart from his brethren, and hunted, fished and slept in silence ; sometimes the neat lodge of a couple of young comrades might be seen on some little island of the river, and sometimes the wood- man came upon a camp-fire blazing in the forest by night, where a score or more of hunters, squaws and children were eating and drinking in a very free and comfortable manner. The Indian "at home " was not often found by the pioneers to be that taciturn and immovable Roman which the romancers paint him. When before the fire of his wigwam with half a-dozen companions, he talked, laughed and joked, and had an odd habit of making a meal every quarter of an hour, as if afflicted with a chronic hunger, putting his hand into the kettle, or fishing up with a sharp stick a piece of venison as big as his fist at every pause of the conversa- tion, till the young settler, witnessing this perpetual banquet, feared that he would kill himself. He did not talk in riddles or allegories like those whalebone braves who stalk through tlie novels, but was often inclined to be shrewd and comical in his lan- guage, and sometimes loved practical jokes not of the most deli- cate order.
During the first few years of the settlement, many of the inhabitants were uneasy at the presence of the Indians. Some
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prepared to leave the county, and a few actually did leave it from apprehension of an attack. After the defeat of Harmer and St. Clair, in the Northwestern territory, the savages were often insol- ent and abusive, but Wayne's victory on the Miami, in 1794, put an end to their plots, and they afterwards 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 inexcu- sable fear when a score or two of barbarians came whooping to the cabin door, or raised the midnight yell in their camp by the creek-side, till even the wolves were ashamed of them.
The intercourse between the settlers and the Indians, were gen- erally friendly and social. The latter, however, had occasion some- times to complain of lodges destroyed 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 Americans were singu- larly 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 gun- powder, 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 gath- ered a great supply for their lodges. The disasters that followed were unaccountable. Now a loud explosion blew a quart of coals into the face of some mighty chief-then another hidden maga- zine being kindled, filled the eyes of the presiding squaw with dust and ashes, and another hoisted the pot off the fire, or hurled the roasting venison into the basket where the papoose was sleep- ing. The wood was plainly bewitched. Timber with such fiery snap was not to be endured. The Indians abandoned the neigh- borhood with precipitation, and left the hunter in quiet enjoyment of his forest rights.
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