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 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19
20
device of civilized man fretted its noble torrent. A single habi- tation of human beings stood upon its banks, the log cabin at the mouth of the Cowenisque ; and that was the westernmost cabin of New York .* But it bore now upon its frozen surface the fore- runner of an unresting race of lumbermen and farmers, who in a few years invaded its peaceful solitudes, dammed its wild flood, and hewed down the lordly forests through which it flowed. The travellers kept on their course beyond the mouth of the Canisteo to the Painted Post. Here they expected to find the cabin of one Harris, a trader, where they might have lodgings for the night, and, if necessary for the comfort of the savage breast, a draught from "the cup which cheers (and also) inebriates." On their arrival at the head of the Chemung, however, they found that the cabin had been destroyed by fire. The trader had either been intirdered by the Indians, or devoured by wild beasts, or else lie had left the country, and Steuben County was in consequence depopulated .:
Disappointed in this hope, the two travellers continued their journey on the ice as far as Big Flats. Here night overtook them. They kindled a fire on the bank of the river, and laid them down to sleep. The air was intensely cold. It was one of those clear, still, bitter nights, when the moon seems an iceberg, and the stars are bright and sharp like hatchets. The savage rolled himself up in his blanket, lay with his back to the fire, and did not so much as stir till the morning ; but his companion, though framed of that stout stuff out of which backwoodsmen are built, could not sleep for the intensity of the cold. At midnight a pack of wolves chased a deer from the woods to the river, seized tlie wretched animal on the ice, tore it to pieces and devoured it within ten rods of the encampment. Early in the morning the travellers arose and went their way to the settlements below, the first of which was Newtown, on the sight of the present village of Elmira.
Such is one of the earliest glimpses of our county granted us. Journies are performed in rather a different manner now ! The incidents of the trip sound oddly enough to the ear of the modern
* In strict truth, the cabin stood in Pennsylvania, a few rods from the New York line.
21
traveller-the excursion on snow shoes-the possible destruction of the village of Painted Post by the Indians-the encampment and night fire under the trees by the river bank, on a stinging Christmas night, while frost-bitten wolves regaled the ears of the travellers with dismal howling ! The backwoodsman was Samuel Baker, a New Englander, afterwards well known to our citizens as Judge Baker, of Pleasant Valley.
This is a winter scene. The Descriptive and Historical " Cit- izen " gives in his sketch * a summer picture,-"a picture of our county as it was a few summers before the irruption of the back- woodsmen ; for this, the figure of our rugged home arrayed in its ancient and barbarous yet picturesque and noble garb, is one which the reflecting citizen will sometime contemplate in imagin- ation, with pleasure, and not without some degree of wonder.
"On a summer's day, shortly after the close of the War of Revolution, let the observing citizen stand with me on an exceed- ingly high mountain and survey the land. It is a vast solitude, with scarce a sound to break the reigning silence but the splash- ing of the brooks in their defiles, and the brawling of the rivers at the rifts, or perhaps the creaking of sulky old hemlocks as the light wind stirs their branches or sways their tottering trunks slowly to and fro. What a noble forest is this, covering the val- leys and the high, rounded hills, and the steep sides of the wind- ing gulfs, and the crests of the successive ranges that rise above each other till the outline of a blue and curving barrier is traced against the sky. For ages upon ages has this land been a wilder- ness. Savages have hunted in it. Storms have passed over it, and its history would present but a record of wild beasts slain, of trees uprooted, and of the passage of terrible whirlwinds which broke wide lanes through the forest and overthrew the timbers of whole hill-sides. See how the three rivers flow through groves of elm and willow, while the white sycamores, standing on unmo- lested islands, raise aloft their long branches where the cranes rest with the plunder of the shallows. Free rivers are these, flow- ing joyously through the channels provided for them of old, shackled by no dams, insulted by no bridges, tormented by no
* " Descriptive and Historical Sketch of Steuben County,"-(MS.) politely placed at the disposal of the editor of this volume.
22
saw-mills. They bear with gladness the occasional canoe of the people that gave them their sounding names ; they give drink to the heated deer, to the panther, and the wallowing bear,-dis- gusted by no base-born beasts of the yoke wading their stony fords, nor by geese swimming in their clear waters, nor by swine lounging in the warm mud of the eddies. See, also, the lakes sleeping in the hollows prepared for them anciently, their bluffs and beaches occupied even to the water's edge with forest trees, while solitary loons and fleets of wild fowl cruise on their waters, scared by neither the wheels of the passing steamer, nor by the whistling bullets of fowlers. Behold too the creeks, the brooks, the torrents, leaping down from the highlands like hearty young mountaineers ; while in the ravines through which they brawl the great pines stand as if dreaming, unconscious that their gigantic trunks contain spars and saw-logs.
" But the forest is not destitute of an active populace. Bears sit growling at the windows of their towers in the hollow trees ; painted catamounts lurk in the glens ; panthers crouch on the low branches of the oaks; elk and many thousand deer are stand- ing in the ponds or browsing in the thickets ; while hungry gangs of wolves rove at dusk through the groves with dismal howling. And these are not the only citizens of the wood. There we see the myriads of squirrels, the wood-fowls whistling and drumming in the thickets, the old and clumsy sons of the she-bear tumbling in the leaves in their awkward play, the comical raccoons frolick- ing in the tree-tops, while the wise and sober woodchuck goes forth alone, and the otter cruises in the still waters of the streams.
" All these things, let the observing citizen mark,-these far rolling forests, these silent lakes and wild rivers, these savage creeks and torrents, these gorges and wooded glens, these deep- worn valleys and the abrupt ranges that bound them, and the promontories that jut from the everchanging outlines of the ranges,-all as they were in the ancient time before I begin the story of their conquest,-a half melancholy story ; for who can think how these solitudes were broken up and these fine forests mangled without a half-regretful thought ?
" The wilderness is doomed. Even now as we stand on the mountain the men who will invade it are astir. Down on the
23
Susquehanna uneasy farmers are already working their way upward in broad barges ; uneasy New Englanders are already launching canoes on the Unadilla, which will find their way hither. Even now Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen are tossing on the seas who in a few years will live in these valleys, farmers and tradesmen, and even supervisors, Justices of the Peace, and Judges. Barbarism, drawing its fantastic blanket over its shoulders, and clutching its curiously-wrought tomahawk, must withdraw to other solitudes, jingling its brazen ornaments and whooping as it goes."
Such was our County as seen by the "Citizen " before the year 1787. There are a few additional facts which escaped his notice on the "exceedingly high mountain," which may with propriety be mentioned before proceeding to the narration of events con- nected with the settlement.
This whole region,-especially that part of it occupied by the valleys of the Conhocton and Canisteo,-was of old one of the best hunting grounds belonging to the Six Nations, and was visited in the winter and autumn by large parties of Sencca In- dians, who came from their villages on the Genesee for the destruction of game. It was a royal park indeed-and yet of course not such a park as the elegant deer-folds of Europe thus named-but rather like those rugged and unkempt Asiatic parks, where the Nimrods and Cyruses of old, with their peers and cap- tains, made war upon lions and tigers, and boars ; only here were unfortunately neither boars, nor tigers, nor lions, and, to speak truly, but shabby substitutes for such noble game. It was only when the wild huntsman grappled with the wounded panther or scuffled with the angry bear, or dodged the horns of the furious stag, that the perils of the chase deserved record with the exploits of those worthies of old, who pricked lions in the jungles with their Assyrian pikes. Still, of very rude and ugly beasts there was no scarcity. Of bears and panthers there were quite as many as the County could support even under a system of direct taxa- tion for that purpose, and when we take into account beside these, the large and happy communities of rattlesnakes and catamounts which flourished in eligible localities, there is no reason why the
24
patriotic citizen should feel mortified at our county's ancient census returns.
There are certain facts with regard to the rivers which do not appear in the Citizen's "Sketch." Before the settlement of the county, the rivers were much deeper, stronger, and steadier, than they are at the present day. In modern times they are notoriously unreliable servants of the people-sometimes reducing the saw- mills to half-rations, and confining the eels to limited elbow- room ; anon rising above their banks, flooding the flats, sweeping away piles of lumber, and testing the labors of the commissioners of highways and bridges, as is the undoubted right of every river in this republican land. The destruction of the forests has caused the drying up of multitudes of little springs which formerly, by their penny contributions to the great sinking-fund, swelled appre- ciably the treasures of the streams. Freshets can be had on shorter notice now than then, but they are of shorter duration. Then, the snow melting in the woods slowly, caused the March and April floods to be deliberate and of long continuance. Now, the snow falling upon bare hills and open farms, melts rapidly at sunshine and shower, rushes into the ravines and swells the creeks with violent and short-lived freshets. Many channels which were formerly the beds of petty, but perennial brooks, are now " dry runs," except after rains, when they are filled with powerful tor- rents. The State Geologist apprehends serious inconvenience from the failure of water, if the destruction of the forest is con- tinued in the future as extravagantly as during the last fifty years.
Our ancient rivers, in addition to their superiority in depth and power to the shallow streams which to-day wind through our valleys, were far more correct in their habits and firm in their principles than the modern waters-not being so easily persuaded to indulge in irregularities, and not taking advantage of every winter-thaw, to rise up, and go off on a "bender," as it were, with the creeks and runnels, like a crew of light-headed' young- sters. And yet it is not to be supposed that they refrained en- tirely from such extravagances. Early settlers well remember how the lower valley of the Tioga was flooded from hill to hill fully a mile, deep enough, almost, at the shallowist, to swim a horse ; and how men, near Painted Post, paddled their canoes
25
in the roads for miles. This was about forty-five years ago. The rivers were furthermore greviously afflicted with flood-wood. They bore down with their strongest waters annual tribute to the Susquehanna, of trees, broken trunks, and enormous roots-the bullion of the forest-like savage chiefs of the mountain, bearing gifts to the prince of the plains, of rough ores, unwrought gems, and the feathers of strange birds. In modern days we continue this tribute, but in different forin, as evidence of our improved state-coining the uneooth bullion into boards or huge ingots of timber. Notwithstanding the great quantities of flood-wood from which the rivers freed themselves by the occasional floods, there were yet large masses of this raft which the freshiet did not loosen, or at most, shifted from point to point. The two lesser rivers were fairly strangled by these dams. Navigation, for any craft heavier than the birch canoe of the pagan, was utterly impracti- cable. After the settlement of the county, these collections of flood-wood were chopped and burned away at a considerable pub- lic expense. Something has been done, too, toward straightening the navigable streams. Upon the whole, it would appear that our county contained in old times, a very heedless and lawless family of waters. The rivers were badly snarled. It is one of the most pleasing results of a judicious civilization that these tangled tor- rents have been combed out smoothly, and that the mountain creeks, which then like wild colts came leaping through the ra- vines, have at last been caught in huge timber traps so ingenious- ly contrived with bulkheads and flooms, that there was really no chance of escape for these lively streams, and have been given to understand that all this capering through the glens, and leaping over the rocks, might be excused when the poor Indian who knew nothing about hydraulics held the land, but that they must now come into the harness and carry saw-logs and turn under- shot wheels.
Considering all these things-the forests, the hills, the shaded islands, the wild beasts, and the untamed rivers-our county ap- pears to have been truly a fastness of barbarism. Its ancient tenants did not yield it without a long battle, fought inch by inch with fire and steel. Mountains and rivers formed a league. The mountains displayed the fortitude of martyrs. When beset by
26
merciless farmers, they resolutely refused to give up their treas- ures. Dumb and obstinate they were stripped of their raiment, they were flayed, they were torn with plows and harrows, they were scorched with fire-like Jews in the castles of the old barons -and only surrendered their hidden wealth after the most dread- ful tortures. The rivers, with equal fidelity, resisted the inroads of the back-woodsmen. The "Citizen " says, "If the rivers of this county were anciently populated with any tribe of Indian bo- gles, or water-imps, (and there is no good reason for supposing that they were not,) I should say that these invisible citizens mustered for a last stand, in defence of their homes. They built barricades of flood-wood, they piled up battlements of great roots, they pulled down mighty sycamores to fortify the rifts. But they were overpowered like the insurgents of Paris. Their barricades were broken with axes or destroyed by fire, and the fleets of the pioneers pushed their way up the rivers by degrees, driving before them these unlucky little aborigines."
There were many patches of land on theriver flats, which were free from timber. At the north of the Canisteo there was an "open flat" of some two hundred acres. In the upper valley of that river there was a much larger one. There were open flats near the Painted Post and up the Tioga, and a single one on the Conhocton-the fine meadows south of the village of Bath.
There was at this time a man living near Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, who afterwards became a noted cttizen of this county ; and although his connection with it did not begin till after the first settlements were made, yet, for convenience, a brief sketch of him may be introduced.
BENJAMIN PATTERSON, THE HUNTER.
Of great renown, towards the close of the last century, through- out all the hill country of the West, was Ben Patterson, the hun- ter. From the mid-branches of the Susquehanna to the most north-western waters of that river, there was not one of greater fame. Courageous and energetic of spirit, and powerful of frame, he explored the forests of Pennsylvania, roved over the ridges and through the ravines of the Alleganies, navigated untried
27
rivers, discovered mines and hidden valleys, gave names to creeks and mountains, and guided adventurers through the wilderness.
Sometimes he was a hunter ; sometimes an Indian fighter ; sometimes a spy ; sometimes a Moses to despairing emigrants ; sometimes forrester to backwoods barons. He had been asso- ciated with all the noted characters of the frontier ; with Gurty, the renegade ; with Murphy, the runner ; with Van Campen, the ranger ; with Hammond, the fighter. He knew the farmers of Wyoming, the riflemen of the West Branch, and the warriors of Niagara. To bears, panthers, and wolves, to elk, deer, and bea- ver, he was an Alaric. The number of these beasts that fell be- fore his rifle almost passes account. In the latter years of his life, when an old man, living on his farm by the Tioga, and game began to become scarce, he thought it necessary to put a narrow limit to his annual destruction of deer, and in each year there- after laid up his rifle when he had killed an hundred. He was not a mere destroyer of wild beasts, but a man of keen observa- tion, of remarkable powers of memory, of intelligence, of judg- ment, and withal of strict integrity. He possessed great powers of narration. Not only children and rough men of the frontier, but men of learning, listened hour after hour to his thousand tales. The late Chief Justice Spencer, when Circuit Judge, once met him at the Mud Creek tavern, in this county, and was so ill- terested with his graphic descriptions of wild scenery and wood life, that he sat up all night with him engaged in conversation ; and always after, when holding court at Bath, sent for the hunter, provided for him at the hotel, and passed in his company a great part of his time off the bench.
Mr. Patterson was born in Loudon county, in the State of Virginia, in the year 1759, and died in 1830, at Painted Post, having been for the last thirty-five years of his life a citizen of this county. His mother was a cousin of Daniel Boone, the first of the Kentuckians. Early in life he removed with the family of his step-father to Pennsylvania, and passed the greater part of his youth in that State, though living for a time again in Virginia. It was on the Susquehanna frontiers that his hunting tastes were formed and developed.
During the Revolutionary war he served in a rifle-corps, organ-
28
ized for the defence of the borders, and in this perilous service met with many adventures. At the skirmish of Freeling's Fort, in1 1779, he and his younger brother Robert (who afterwards was also a citizen of this county) fought in the party of Captain Haw- kins Boone, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Freeling's Fort, on the West Brauch of the Susquehanna, had been taken by a party of Tories and Indains, the former under the command of McDonald, a noted loyalist of Tryon county, in New York, and the latter led by Hiakatoo (the linsband of Mary Jemison "the white woman.") Captain Boone's party of thirty-two volun- teered to scout in the neighborhood of the captured fort, and to attack the enemy if it could be advantageously done. They advanced cautiously, and succeeded in concealing themselves in a cluster of buslies overlooking the camp of the enemy. Both tories and Indians were engaged in cooking or eating, while a single sentinel, a fine tall savage, with a blanket drawn over his head, walked slowly to and fro. Boone's men commenced firing by platoons of six. The sentry sprang into the air with a whoop and fell dead. The enemy yelling frightfully ran to arms and opened a furious but random fire at their unseen foes. Their bul- lets rattled through the bushes where Boone's men lay hid, but did no mischief. The slaughter of Indians and Tories was dread- ful. The thirty-two rangers firing coolly and rapidly by sixes, with the unerring aim of frontiersmen, shot down one hundred and and fifty (so the story runs) before the enemy broke and fled. Boone's men, with strange indiscretion, rushed from their covert in pursuit, and immediately exposed their weakness of numbers. Hiakatoo with his Indians made a circuit, and attacked them in the rear, while McDonald turned upon their front. They were surrounded. "Save yourself men as you can," cried Captain Boone. The enemy closed with tomahawks and spears. This part of the figlit occurred in the midst of the woods. The rangers broke through their foes, and fled with such success that many escaped, but their captain and more than lialf of his men were killed. Robert Patterson, who was very swift of foot, was fol- lowed several miles to the clearings of another fort by three or four fleet Indians. Seeing that he would escape from them, his pursuers reserved their fire till he should clamber over the fence
29
which enclosed the clearing, when they might aim at him with greater certainty than while he was running through the woods. He however sprang to the top rail at a bound and escaped. The bullets struck the wood just under his feet. Benjamin Pat- terson, in the meantime, had hidden himself under a log over- grown with vines or briars. The Indians ransacked the woods all around, and passed so near his hiding place that he could touch their moccasins with his ramrod. Many times he thought'himself discovered, and was on the point of springing forth to die fight- ing, but the Indians gradually wandered away from his vicinity. The last straggler returning from the pursuit carried the dripping scalp of the only red-haired man in the party, which he was twirling around his finger with great delight. "I was strongly tempted to shoot that fellow," said Patterson, but on reflecting that the main body of the Indians was not distant, he thonght it prudent to deny himself that pleasure. At night he escaped to Boone's Fort.
The enemy retook the prisoners of Freeling's Fort, and carried away many captives to Niagara. Patterson, in a company of rangers, pursued. They believed that the Indians had a great many wounded with thein, for at the deserted encampments bush- els of slippery-elm bark were found, which had been pounded in preparing draughits and dressings .* The enemy struck over from Pine Creek to the Tioga, and passed up the valley of the Conhoc- ton to Niagara.
Patterson was engaged throughout the war in the perilous frontier-services ; sometimes scouting with the wary and fearless captains of the borders ; sometimes skirmishing in the forests ; sometimes devising plots and counter plots against the secret and wise foes who hid in the dark places of the wilderness, and came and went like the lightning. At the close of the war he was at liberty to give himself up to his roving and hunting propensities.
* Captain Montour, the chief who was buried at the Painted Post, was in McDonald's band, and died from wounds received at Freeling's or Freeland's Fort. He was said to be a son of Queen Catherine of Seneca Lake. There is no detailed account of this skirmish in any accessible book with which to compare Patterson's story. It is briefly alluded to in the biographies of Brant and Van Campen, the only authorities at hand.
30
He explored the region north of the West Branch, passed up through the Genesee country, spied out the land, and guided emi- grants, travellers and adventurers through the woods ; shooting always wherever he went. He was the guide of Talleyrand in an excursion through the wild country, and at a later period piloted another French gentleman for many weeks around the wilderness. The latter was agent for a company of French emi- grants, then residing at Philadelphia, who desired to make a set- tlement in some choice place on the outside of civilization. The Frenchman was a merry companion, and took to wild life with a good grace. With a negro servant he followed the hunter over a great extent of country, learning to swim and shoot, bathing in the lakes, sleeping on the ground, and learning backwoods science with much zeal. The emigrants, it is said, were sadly taken in by the land speculators who sold them at a great price, an armful of mountains not worth eighteen pence.
The hunter's home was for many years on the West Branch, near Northumberland. After the war, the region thereabout began to be overrun to a destructive rate with farmers, who laid waste the homes of the bear and the wolf with the inost sickening bar- barity. The forests were again and again decimated, till his old hunting grounds, disfigured with wheat fields, corn fields and potato fields, presented a melancholy scene of devastation. The wild beasts quite lost heart, and began to retire to deeper solitudes, and the hunter determined to remove his household elsewhere, into a land as yet unmolested by plowmen and wood-choppers. In the year 1796, he boated his goods up the river to Painted Post, and kept for seven years the old tavern at Knoxville. At the end of that time, he moved up on the farm now occupied by one of his sons, two miles above the village of Painted Post, on the Tioga. It was quite a productive farm, yielding a crop of twenty-two wolves, nine panthers, bears a few, besides deer, shad and salmon uncounted.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.