USA > New York > Erie County > Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Erie County, New York (Volume 1) > Part 4
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vation, which had also been a part of the towns of Willink and Erie, was formed into a town which retained the name of Willink. It is clear that these changes completely obliterated the old town of Erie, while Willink, instead of being eighteen miles wide and one hundred miles long, was left as a town bounded by the Buffalo Creek Reserva- tion, Lake Erie, Cattaraugus Creek and the east line of the county, with an extreme width north and south of twenty-five miles, and a length east and west of thirty-five miles. The obliteration from the map of the town of Erie led to much confusion and misunderstanding. Local historians and statisticians were misled and even old residents forgot that there ever was such a town, although it is laid down on the map of the Purchase made by Ellicott in 1804. The Erie town book is in possession of the Buffalo Historical Society, but it contains only a record of receipts from licenses to sell liquors. Five of these were re- corded in 1805, three to persons in the present county of Erie, and two at Lewiston. The first town meeting of Erie town was held at Crow's tavern, Buffalo, but the record was destroyed with nearly all others of that old town in 1813. A new town of Erie was erected in 1823 from Clarence, fifteen years after the first Erie had disappeared from the map. The name of this second Erie was changed to Newstead in Ap- ril, 1831.
Four new towns were erected in 1818. On the 10th of April an act was passed creating the town of Amherst from Buffalo (the latter now obsolete); Amherst then comprised the present towns of Amherst and Cheektowaga. Five days later the town of Willink passed out of ex- istence by legislative act. The law was passed in response to petitions sent to the Legislature, and the towns of Holland (comprising the pres- ent towns of Holland and Colden), Wales and Aurora were erected, from the former territory of Willink. '
1 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF TOWN FORMATIONS.
Clarence
.March 11, 1808
From Willink.
Concord
-March 12, 1812
Willink.
Eden
March 20, 1812
Willink.
Hamburg
.March 20, 1812
Willink.
Boston.
April 5, 1817
Eden.
Amherst
April 10, 1818
Buffalo.
Aurora
-April 15, 1818
Willink.
Holland
-April 15, 1818.
Willink.
Wales.
April 15, 1818
Willink.
Collins
March 16, 1821
Concord.
Evans
March 33, 1821
Eden.
Sardinia
.March 16, 1821
Concord.
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In 1835 the Holland Company sold all their remaining lands and inter- ests to a new company, principally of Batavians, and a new order of affairs was inaugurated, which led to serious difficulties; this phase of the matter is noticed in its proper place in a later chapter.
Even after all the lands in Western New York, with the exception of the reservations before mentioned, had been taken from the In- dians, the white men were not wholly satisfied, and in 1819 the pre- emption owners made a persistent effort to induce the Indians to sell a part or the whole of their remaining lands. A council was held on the Buffalo reserve, at which were present commissioners in the in- terest of the United States and of Massachusetts, with Colonel Ogden, some of his associates in the so-called Ogden Company, and all of the principal chiefs of the Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas. The United States commissioner explained the object of the council and submitted two propositions, both of which involved the sale of the Buffalo Creek Reservation. This gave Red Jacket opportunity to display his elo- quence, his diplomacy and his growing hatred of the white race. He declared most emphatically, as representing the voice of his people, that they would not sell a single foot of their lands. Waxing more eloquent as he continued on his favorite theme, he declared that they would not have a white man on their reservations, neither workman, schoolmaster, nor preacher. If any of the Indians wished to send their children to school, or go to church, they could do so outside of
Alden
March 27, 1828
From Clarence.
Newstead (Erie).
March 27, 1823
.. Batavia.
Colden.
April 2. 1827
Holland.
Lancaster
March 20, 1893
Clarence.
Tonawanda
.April 16, 1896.
Buffalo.
Brant
March 25, 1839
Collins and Evans.
Cheektowaga
March 22, 1899
Amherst.
East Hamburg (as Ellicott).
-October 15, 1850.
Hamburg, Lancaster and Cheektowaga.
West Seneca (as Seneca)
-October 16, 1851
Hamburg, E. Hamburg.
Grand Island.
October 19, 1852
Tonawanda.
North Collins (as Shirley)
.November 24, 1852
Collins.
Marilla
.December 2, 1853
Alden and Wales.
Elma
December 4, 1857
Lancaster and Aurora.
OBSOLETE TOWNS.
Black Rock.
-February 14, 1839 . To Buffalo, April 13, '53.
Buffalo
February 18, 1810
" Buffalo city, Apr. 20, '53.
Ellicott
.October 15, 1850
" E. Hamburg, Feb. 20, '52.
Seneca.
.October 16, 1851
" W. Seneca, Mar. 25, '52.
Shirley
.November 24, 1852
" N. Collins, June 24, '53.
Willink
April 11, 1804. " Aurora, Apr. 15, '18.
Erie
March 27, 1823
" Newstead, April, 1831.
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE.
the reservation. Then he added with intense bitterness that if Colonel Ogden had come down from heaven clothed in flesh and blood, and had proven that the Great Spirit had said he could take their lands, then and not till then would they have yielded. Afterwards Captain Pollard and thirteen other chiefs apologized to the commissioner for Red Jacket's language. Captain Pollard declared that he and many of his people wished for civilization and Christianity, but that all were united in opposition to parting with more of their lands. Nothing was effected at that time. In 1826, however, the efforts of the pre-emption owners were partially successful. In the latter part of August of that year, and notwithstanding the remonstrances of Red Jacket and his supporters, a treaty was made under which the Indians ceded to the Ogden Company 33,637 acres of the Buffalo Reservation, 33,409 of the Tonawanda Reservation, and 5,120 of the Cattaraugus Reservation, besides about 1,500 acres in the Genesee valley. This cession in- cluded all of the Tonawanda Reservation in Erie county excepting a strip about a mile and a half wide and two miles and a half long, in the northeast corner of the town of Newstead. The village of Akron is on the land then purchased. From the Buffalo Creek Res- ervation a strip a mile and a half wide was sold off on the south side, extending from a point in the present town of Cheektowaga a mile and a half east of Cayuga Creek to the east end of the reservation; also a strip about three miles wide from the east end, and finally a tract a mile wide, commonly called the "mile strip," extending along the entire south side of the reservation. From the Cattaraugus Res- ervation, besides a mile square in that county, there was ceded in Erie county a strip a mile wide along the north side of the reser- vation for six miles from the northeast corner (locally also called the mile strip), and a tract a mile square, known as the "mile block," south of the east end of that strip. Both are in the present town of Brant. After this treaty was agreed to by most of the chiefs, Red Jacket was informed by the agent of the Ogden Company that as he had so strenuously opposed the execution of the treaty, he need not sign it; but the famous chief would not hear to this. His name, Sagoyewatha, was affixed to every treaty made in the preceding forty years, and should not be omitted from this one.
As soon as practicable the land thus purchased was divided among the several individuals constituting the so-called Ogden Company and most of it was put in market. It was in the same year that the State
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offered for sale its land adjoining the Buffalo Reservation, on the State Reservation, which extended as far east in Buffalo as Morgan street. It was appraised at $25 an acre! But it is proper to add that this price was raised very soon after the sale. One purchaser has stated that he purchased twelve acres of the first purchasers for $950, kept it one year and sold it for $6,000.
The Indians were not further harassed for possession of their lands until 1838, when a vigorous attempt was made to obtain possession of the whole of the territory remaining in their possession, not alone in Erie county, but in the whole of Western New York. A treaty was sanctioned by the executive department of the government by which the government agreed to give the New York Indians 1,820,000 acres of land in Kansas and there build for them mills, shops, churches, schools, etc. A council of chiefs was called at the council house on the Buffalo Creek Reservation in January, 1838, and the treaty was laid before them, accompanied by a deed conveying to the Ogden Company all of their reservations for $202,000-$100,000 for the land, and $102,000 for the improvements. This treaty received the sig- natures of forty-five chiefs, or those who claimed to be chiefs. The treaty was sent to the State Senate, where it was amended by strik- ing out the appropriations for mills and other improvements on the Kansas lands, and inserting the sum of $400,000. The chiefs were again called together by United States Commissioner Gillett, who ex- plained to them that the deed was good even if the treaty was not rat- ified. General Dearborn was commissioner from Massachusetts, and he took an opposite ground. The amended treaty was signed by six - teen chiefs, while a remonstrance received sixty-three signatures. By some means, not wholly creditable to the white men it was charged, twenty-six more names of chiefs were obtained. But after the most persistent efforts a total of only forty-one signatures from the ninety. seven claiming to be chiefs could be obtained, while of the seventy-five who were undisputedly chiefs, only twenty-nine were signers. But not- withstanding this shortage in the number of signatures the treaty was ratified by the Senate. It afterwards became known that the Ogden Company had executed written contracts to pay certain chiefs sums of money for their influence, besides giving them life-leases of their im- provements. It was a plain case of bribery, and when the facts were made public, so much popular feeling was excited, and the determina- tion of the Indians not to go west was so strong, that the company was
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE.
unwilling to resort to the extreme measure of removing them. In May, 1842, a new agreement was made by which the Ogden Company permitted the Senecas to remain on the Cattaraugus and the Alle- gany Reservations (subject to the company's pre-emption right), and the Indians gave up the Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda tracts, on con- dition that they receive their proportionate value; that is, the value of all four of the reservations having previously been placed at $100,000 and the value of the improvements at $102,000, the company agreed to pay so much of $100,000 and of $102,000 as proper arbitrators should decide was due, based upon the proportionate value to the Indians of those two reservations to the whole four. This new arrangement sat- isfied the Buffalo Creek Indians, but not those on the Tonawanda Res- ervation. Arbitrators were chosen and decided that the proportionate value of the Indian title to those two reservations was $75,000, and that of the improvements was $59,000. Each Indian on the Buffalo Creek Reservation received his proper share of this $59,000, but such a distribution could not be made on the Tonawanda Reservation, for the reason that those Indians would not permit appraisers on their lands. After some trouble between the Indians and claimants, the whole controversy was settled by the United States government pur- chasing the entire title of the Ogden Company to the Tonawanda Res- ervation and presenting it to the Indians residing there, giving them the title in fee simple. Meanwhile the Buffalo Creek Indians accepted the money alloted to them, and after a year or two allowed them in which to make necessary preparations, they in 1843-44 abandoned the home where they had dwelt for sixty years, and which had been a favorite rendezvous of their nation for 200 years, and were scattered, some to their brethren on the Cattaraugus Reservation, some to the Allegany, and a few to the land allotted them in Kansas. A pathetic conclusion, truly! The company immediately had the land surveyed and sold to settlers.
While in a general and superficial way the State of New York and the Federal government have been magnanimous in dealing with the now fallen nations of Indians who once roamed as conquerors over this broad land, there is still much to be regretted in the details of their treatment. Even to this day our Indian affairs in the far West seem to be conducted upon a system under which the natives do not always receive justice. Ever hospitable and kind to the white pioneer, freely sharing his home and the best he could procure for his entertainment,
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DESCRIPTIVE OF THE SUBJECT.
it seems at this distance and to the sympathetic mind, a hard condi- tion that made it necessary to war upon the Indian and drive him from his country, even to taking almost his last acre.' He could do no less than fight for his home with such weapons and temperament as 'his Creator had given him. Pages have been written picturing the hor- rors that awaited the immigrant from the Old World; tales have been told of the atrocity with which the families of the early settlers were slaughtered and their homes burned according to the barbaric code; and these stories have been handed down to posterity until, may be, we have become accustomed to look upon them as the only truthful history of the red men in connection with the settlements in Central and Western New York, and to accept without reservation the dictum that the Indian was not only a savage from first to last, under all cir- cumstances, but from the outset an implacable, remorseless, and blood- thirsty enemy to the white pioneers. This, we believe, is not in its broad sense true. The thoughtful student of the circumstances of the Indians when first visited by the pioneers of civilization, must reach the conclusion that at that time, and afterward until they were pro- voked into belligerency and made mad with rum, they were essentially friendly to their unknown visitors. This may be amply confirmed. Had they been otherwise-had they fallen upon the first immigrants, as they did upon white settlers on many later occasions, it would have required a great civilized army to have effected a foothold on these shores, instead of its having been accomplished by mere hand- fuls of helpless men and women. When a country has been long possessed even by civilized white people, and usurpers seek to wrest it from them, it is a custom held almost sacred for the possessors to fight to the death for their hearthstones. Should we expect less from savages? The white man came to the Indian with professions of friendship on his tongue, but too often with a gun in one hand and a rum bottle in the other. The Indian proved an apt pupil and readily accepted both. The result might have been forseen.
1 Colden wrote: "The hospitality of these Indians [the Five Nations] is no less remarkable than their other virtues; as soon as any stranger comes they are sure to offer him victuals. If there be several in company, and come from afar, one of their best houses is cleaned and given up for their entertainment."
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE.
CHAPTER II.
INDIAN OCCUPATION AND ANTIQUITIES.
Characteristics of Indian Archaeology-Local Indian History-Aboriginal Occu- pants in the Vicinity of Erie County-Conquest of the Senecas over the Eries and the Kahquahs-Seneca Villages-Remains and Relics of the Senecas-Burial Places and Earthworks-Geological and Archaeological Antiquity of Buffalo Relics-Sites of Indian Occupation around Buffalo-Description of Various Kinds of Relics- Conclusion.
While it is wholly foreign to the purposes of this work to enter upon a detailed history of the Iroquois Indians, their occupation of Western New York, their customs, and their characteristics, it will not be out of place nor unprofitable to present a concise review of some features of the subject, especially that of Indian relics and remains, upon which it is believed considerable new light is shed in this chapter.
The student of Indian antiquities must keep ever in mind the fact that his work is archaeological and not historical. The archaeologist who explores the temples, tombs, monuments and dwellings of an an- cient civilized people, may well expect to find inscriptions, styles of architecture and the material expression of customs and superstitions which will enable him to settle ethnological and historical questions and even to assign approximate dates. The aborigines of the New England and Middle States, at the time of their first contact with Euro- peans, were strictly stone-age peoples, with absolutely no skill in me- tallurgy, with only the crudest ideas of the flight of time, and the most imperfect and perishable means of recording events. Their weapons and utensils were almost devoid of distinguishing characteristics, while their common remote ancestry and their habit of adopting captives of war, have divested even their bones of racial peculiarities which would serve to guide the student of ethnology. Though we may not be able to say to which one of the many tribes mentioned by early settlers a skeleton or a relic belongs, we are in many cases able to say whether it belonged to any of these, or whether it antedates the savages of whom we have either historic or legendary information.
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INDIAN OCCUPATION AND ANTIQUITIES.
The little that is well established with regard to the political geog- raphy of Western New York shows that the vicinity of Buffalo was sub- stantially uninhabited from the beginning of European influence, early in the seventeenth century, until the middle of the Revolutionary war, and that barely twenty years elapsed after the establishment of the first permanent Seneca village at Buffalo Creek, when the thriving village of Buffalo began its existence. In other words, except for articles lost by hunting and fishing parties during brief sojourns in the summer, the Indian relics of Erie county date back to the stone age whose latest limit may be set at about 1650. In many regions, for example about Rochester and Canandaigua, the Indians continued for a century and a half in an independent state, following their ancestral customs of do- mestic life, warfare and burial, after they were well supplied with French glass beads, brass kettles and scraps of the same metal for ar- row-heads, etc., iron tomahawks and other articles of European man- ufacture.
According to the reports of the early French missionaries, corrobo- rated in many instances from other sources, the distribution of the In- dian tribes at the beginning of the seventeenth century was as follows: On both sides of the Niagara River, but particularly to the west, were the villages of the Neutral Nation, so called because they found it necessary for their own preservation to maintain peace both with the Iroquois of Central New York and the Hurons of Canada, who were mutually hostile, but who met as if under a flag of truce in any of the villages of the Neutral Nation. Along the southern shore of the lake were the Eries, whose name, signifying wild-cat,' suitably describes the nature both of this nation and of the stormiest of the great lakes. The Iroquois, of the same general ancestry as the Hurons, were a con- federation of five locally independent tribes, named in order from east to west, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, each occu- pying the territory corresponding approximately to the valleys and in- land lakes of the same names. In 1654 or 1655 war parties of the Eries and Iroquois met at the outlet of Honeoye.Lake and the former was utterly routed. The Iroquois followed up their victory by an in -. cursion into the Erie territory and killed all but a few fugitives who escaped beyond the Mississippi. According to tradition, many years afterward the descendants of the remnant of the Eries came east and
' It is also stated that the word means raccoon. The derived meaning, however, remains un- changed, as the early explorers regarded the raccoon as a kind of cat.
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE.
engaged the Iroquois in battle, were again defeated and their remains were burned and heaped up into a mound which has been visible until recently, near the site of the Indian Mission Chapel on Indian Church street in Buffalo city. Mr. William C. Bryant has described the site of one of the most northern of the Erie villages, near Cattaraugus Creek. At this spot copper relics have been found, which are rare nearer Buffalo.
The Neutral Nation (Kah Kwahs, or Kahquahs) were estimated by the Jesuits at ten thousand, undoubtedly an exaggeration, but only four of their villages were on this side of the river, one being on Buffalo Creek and one on Eighteen-mile Creek. This nation was unable to carry out its peace policy and was effaced by death and adoption into the rival tribes of the Hurons and the Iroquois. By the latter part of the seventeenth century the only vestige of the Kah Kwahs was a small body who had been adopted by the Senecas, but who were allowed to form a village by themselves. It is possible that the large number of iron tomahawks found about East Aurora, a number disproportion- ate to other relics found and without other indications of corresponding peaceful occupancy, indicates the final struggle of the Kah Kwahs. We can scarcely imagine so many valuable possessions to have been lost otherwise than in a decisive battle, while the period of the dis- appearance of this nation is one in which French trade with the Indians was just beginning. It is consistent with what we know of the Indian character to suppose that the Kah Kwahs would possess European weapons before the adornments and implements of peace, and that they would obtain weapons similar to those which they had previously made of stone, before they would be supplied with fire-arms.
As to the population of the Eries we have no authentic reports, but they were evidently sufficiently numerous to afford an obsti- nate opposition to the attacks of the Iroquois, yet not so numerous as to hold their own against the latter in a single campaign. In 1677, about a quarter of a century after the conquest of the Eries, an Englishman visited all the five tribes of the Iroquois and made what is presumed to be a fairly accurate census. He reported the number of warriors (probably a fifth or sixth of the total population) as follows: Mohawks 300; Oneidas 200; Onondagas 350; Cayugas 300; Senecas, 1,000. Other estimates indicate the approximate correctness of these figures, and several observers speak of the Senecas as equaling in number all of the other tribes together. In 1792 the Iroquois on the
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Iron tomahawk from East Aurora:
Head-comb of bone or shell, from grave at Ganagaru. principal village of Sen- ecas near present village of Victor.
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INDIAN OCCUPATION AND ANTIQUITIES.
State Reservation, much reduced in numbers by constant warfare and by the effects of vices borrowed to some extent from the white people, but increased by the admission of the Tuscaroras as a sixth member of the confederacy, amounted to 6,000, of whom 1,000 were warriors.
In 1687, at the approach of De Nonville, the Senecas destroyed what had been for years their principal and almost their most western village, at Boughton Hill, twenty miles east of Rochester. In the same year La Hontan mentions a Seneca village on the site of Buffalo, but it was in all probability a summer encampment. In 1779 Sullivan's cam- paign against the Senecas, who were loyal to the British, extended no farther west than the Genesee River. The first permanent set- tlement of the Senecas in the territory which they had wrested from the Kah Kwahs was made in 1780, at Buffalo Creek, as an immediate consequence of Sullivan's expedition. In fact, this colonization of the Senecas was under the auspices of the British Indian agent and military officers at Fort Niagara, and was considered the cheapest way in which to provide for the Indians who had fled to them for succor. Agricul- tural implements, clothing, seed and even much of the food of the In- dians at Buffalo were supplied through Fort Niagara up to the evacua- tion by the British in 1796. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the utensils, clothing, weapons or houses of this Seneca village of one hundred years ago would, if found, appeal to the archaeologist as "Indian relics " in any truer sense of the word than the broken tools and dishes, the cast-off garments or the houses and barns of the pres- ent inhabitants of the Tuscarora Reservation. In the home country of the Senecas, on the other hand, there was so little intimate contact of the natives with the whites that, for several generations, the Indians preserved their habits of life, and continued to use their stone-age im- plements, though conjointly with articles of European manufacture obtained in their limited trade. Thus, on the site of the village on Boughton Hill, already mentioned, may be found arrow heads of flint and those which are merely triangular bits of brass, stone celts and iron tomahawks, pipes of unglazed clay whose stems were molded about strands of twisted grass, as well as pipes of exquisite French workman- ship. In the same grave the writer has found beads of glass and a belt of wampum, a brass kettle and a stone for heating the water in it, which indicates the persistence of habit, for the Indian pottery was not firm enough to be set over a fire. Having heated water in his fragile pot- tery by casting into it a hot stone, he continued to do the same in his
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