USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 3
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Indians liked to be together and it is not surprising that they built their houses so that they could be shared by many families. The longhouse was divided into stalls for sleeping, one for each family. The families shared round firepits dug in the center of the earthen floor between the stalls. A long open space ran the length of the longhouse and in the evenings it was always crowded with
men and women and scrambling children who made the whole place hum with gossip and ring with laughter and yells.
It was uncomfortable in longhouses In spite of the merriment, a longhouse was not a comfortable home by our standards. Flea-infested dogs had the run of the place, often sharing even the sleeping platforms. With no windows and only a few smoke holes in the bark roof instead of chimneys, smoke was always a serious problem. At times it was almost unbearable, burning nostrils and inflaming eyes. Years of living in such a smoky dwelling often gave the Iroquois eye-trouble, especially the. old people. Cold drafts were still another problem. Women stuffed moss and grass in cracks to keep out the wind but it did not help much.
But, for all of this, Indians liked life in the longhouse even in winter. On winter nights coppery figures grouped around each fire, laughing, joking, cooking, eating, telling stories, and gam- bling. Most Indians loved to gamble. In the heat of a game they often bet everything they had - weapons, clothing, even their wives. At times the gambling craze ran especially high and village challenged village with hordes of people as spectators. Often Indian gamblers tramped home through the snow late at night, barefoot and without clothing, yet laughing all the while.
An Iroquois home, the long house.
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Women ruled the longhouse Everyone who lived in a longhouse be- longed to the same clan and the leader of the clan was always a woman. These clan matrons arranged all the ceremonies of the tribe, including mar- riage. Once a man married, he went to live in the longhouse of his bride's family. Here he could remain only so long as he be- haved himself. Since he belonged to a different clan, he had nothing to say in his wife's longhouse, not even over how his children should be raised. This was left up to his wife and her relations, because the children always belonged to their mother's clan. All the relatives treated children as their own, always will- ing to teach them the work they would do as grown-ups, and rarely punishing them.
What were other wilderness activities of the Indians?
Farming was done by women Although Indians did things together, they had strict rules on how work should be divided between men and women. In farm- ing, for instance, after the men had cleared the land, their job was done. They could hunt, go on the war path, or sit around joking and talking. The women and girls did the actual farming. They planted, hoed, and harvested corn, beans and squash, the chief Indian crops. The women always raised corn, beans, and squash together and thus these crops were known as the "Three Sisters." They gave special care to corn because it was their most important food. They held festivals giving thanks to the Great Spirit for the corn.
Everyone enjoyed festivals like the corn festival The Green Corn Festival was like many other Indian festivals. Everyone took part, young and old alike. In the village, cooking smells, the odor of burning tobacco, chunks of deer meat broiling on sticks, and ears of roasting corn drew a noisy, hungry crowd. Indians gayly fixed up in paint, feathers, and wampum shook turtle shell rattles and chanted songs and danced with slow steps as the surrounding woods returned the muffled throb of the drums. A festival always included games. Rough games like lacrosse often ended in serious injury or even
death but crazed by the excitement of the game nobody cared. At a festival, the Indians enjoyed the eating. They stuffed them- selves with food until they could no longer eat any more. Later on when white traders brought them whiskey and brandy, they drank until they dropped unconscious.
Food gathering, fishing and hunting provided food Although farming was their most im- portant source of food, much of the food Indians ate came from the forest. Groups of women and girls roamed the woods to- gether gathering pigeon eggs, nuts, roots, mushrooms, berries, and other foods. Whole families went off on fishing trips, often far from the village. Although they did this together, men and women had different tasks and they never did each other's work.
When it came time to hunt, again whole families made up the hunting parties. After the harvest, family after family tracked into the forest carrying dried corn, extra clothing, and weapons. Deep in the woods they set up their camps. With bows and arrows, nets, and blowguns, men and boys killed game for the women to skin and smoke. Hunting lasted until mid-winter. Then families, loaded with smoked meat and skins, returned home over pathways and streams hidden under ice and snow.
Indians traded Trading was another thing Indian fam- ilies did together. In Niagara County, the site of Fort Niagara was a favorite meeting place for Indian traders. Here they exchanged furs, clothing, and weapons, articles they had carved from wood or bone, and perhaps dried corn, beans and squash. A big part of trading was visiting and gossip. Indians liked to talk with other Indians and what was said or done on trading parties made for endless stories in the longhouses the following winter.
But trade would become a matter of life or death to Indians when white men arrived, and in the end it would destroy their way of life. The next section explains how this happened.
White traders change Indian ways of living
It was through trade that white men changed Indian ways of living. Indians very quickly became dependent upon the trade goods brought by the white men and in time forgot their old ways of life. Many in fact lived by trading alone, depending upon other Indians for their food supply. Nowhere can we find a better example of how this came about than in the story of the Hurons and Neuters. So let us return to the time, many thousands of years ago, when these people, then wandering hunters, pushed into the area of the Great Lakes.
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When they reached the Great Lakes, the Hurons and Neuters separated. The Hurons settled north of Lake Ontario and the Neuters tracked onto the Niagara Peninsula north of Lake Erie. The Neuters spread eastward, raising stockaded villages in the thick woods that covered the Niagara Peninsula. In time some Neuters crossed the Niagara River and built stockaded settle- ments in what is now Niagara County. But most of the Neuters remained in Canada until the Iroquois destroyed them in 1651.
How did the Neuters live?
For centuries the Neuters farmed their fertile lands and hunted in the great forest. They raised large amounts of corn, beans, and squash, and grew crops of tobacco. They hunted in forests that teemed with deer, bear, and other animals. Ducks, geese, and pigeons were so numerous that they often blackened the sky. Neuters also had large beds of flint in their territory. Flint was a useful material for making arrowheads, axes, and knives. Other Indians needed it and were always eager to trade with the Neuters. The Neuters were fortunate Indians, at least until the French arrived.
Frenchmen appear in Niagara region
Why were Champlain and Brulé important?
Champlain settled Quebec and made enemies of the Iroquois The first white man of any importance to the Neuters was the great French ex- plorer, Samuel de Champlain. Champlain first came to Canada, or New France, as Frenchmen called it, in 1603. Like other explorers before him, he was searching for a passage through North America to China. He spent some time exploring the area around the St. Lawrence River and then sailed back to France. In 1608 he returned to New France. This time he came to stay and the following year he built a trading settlement called Quebec on the St. Lawrence.
After he built Quebec he continued exploring and extending trade with the Algonkin tribes around the St. Lawrence and with the Hurons further west. He was soon drawn into a war between the Indians in Canada and the Iroquois in New York. Champlain and his men killed a few Iroquois with their muskets near Lake Champlain. In time the French and Iroquois became enemies over the fur trade, not because of this action alone. They blocked all French attempts to trade or travel through New York. This is important because it meant that all Neuter contact with the
French came by way of the Hurons. And whatever Hurons said about the French, the Neuters believed, as we shall see later.
Brulé encouraged French and Indian trade In order to encourage trading among Hurons and other Indians, Champlain sent young boys to live among some of them and learn their ways. Then these boys could advise the Indians in their trading with the French-to the benefit of the French, of course. The most famous of these young adventurers was Stephen Brulé whom we met earlier. Brulé went to live among the Indians at the age of sixteen and he was one of the best interpreters Champlain had.
This Iroquois woman is pounding roasted shelled corn into meal. The fire-hollowed log in the illustration is known as a mortar.
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Brulé was one of the first white men the Neuters saw. His trip through Neuter territory in 1615 had been a mission to get the Susquehanna tribe to join in an attack on the Iroquois. Champlain himself never reached the Neuters. However it was he who named them Neuters because they remained at peace with their warring Huron and Iroquois neighbors. In Neuter bark houses Hurons and Iroquois could meet in peace. But once outside the village, the truce was at an end and Hurons and Iroquois would kill each other on sight. The Neuters never took sides in the Huron and Iroquois wars. They remained neutral.
Why did the Hurons trade with the French?
Their first contact with white men did not mean very much to the Neuters. Brulé had amazed them of course, and they talked
about him for months afterward. But they had few further con- tacts with white men for some years. Meanwhile, changes were taking place among their Huron neighbors to the north. And these changes meant trouble for the Neuters, for the story of the Neuters is tied closely to the story of the Hurons.
Very soon after Champlain founded Quebec, a big trade with the Hurons began. Goods the French had to trade were far better than things the Indians could make for themselves. French traders offered iron hatchets and knives in place of flint ones; kettles in- stead of clay pottery; and brandy, trinkets, and cloth which the Indians did not have. It was even possible with enough beaver pelts for the Hurons to buy a "thunder pole," their name for the white man's smooth-bore gun, or musket.
These hunters are using bows and arrows made of hickory wood. Arrows were tipped with flint which was bound to the shaft with sinew.
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Hurons took to trading quickly. They grew only skimpy crops and found they could make a much better living by trading with the French. Hurons soon acted as middlemen between the French and other Indians. They traded fur to the French for blankets, axes, and other goods and then exchanged some of these goods with other Indians for more fur. Thus the Hurons rapidly built up a profitable trading business. The only trouble was that trading was so good that they began to give up hunting and fishing and what little farming they did. In time they forgot their old ways of living and when the older people died off many secrets about ways of hunting, fishing, and farming died with them.
Thus the Hurons came to depend upon trade to live. They did in fact become excellent traders but there was always a fear in the back of their minds. The nagging fear was that the French would stop trading with them. If the French ever started trading directly with the Neuters and other Indians further west, the Hurons might suffer extreme hardship. The Hurons knew this well and lived in constant fear. To protect the trading empire they had built, they carefully tried to keep Frenchmen from making direct contact with other Indians, especially the Neuters. Thus most French trading was carried on through the Huron middlemen.
How were the Hurons dependent upon the Neuters?
It happened that the Hurons had closer trading ties with the Neuters than any other Indians. Neuter lands produced great quantities of corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and hemp. Neuter forests teemed with beaver, deer, bear, and other animals. The Hurons depended upon the Neuters for their food supply, some of which, along with Neuter tobacco, they traded with western Indians for fur. Neuters paid a high price for the French goods they got from the Huron traders. But they had no contact with the French and believed that the Hurons charged them a fair price. The Neuters in fact believed everything Hurons told them about the French. This was to cause trouble later on.
To get a good idea of how carefully the Hurons guarded the Neuters from direct trade with the French we have only to look at their treatment of the early French missionaries to the Niagara region. Hurons were ready to have these priests murdered to keep them away from the Neuters.
The story of the missionaries begins with Stephen Brulé's second visit to the Niagara region in 1625. This time Brulé re- mained among the Neuters for several months and fully explored
their lands. He noted the fertile soil, the abundant animal life, and the marvelous waterways of the Niagara region. And if he missed seeing the great waterfalls of Niagara on his first trip in 1615, he surely saw them in 1625. The following spring Brulé returned to the Hurons.
What missionaries visited Niagara region?
Father Dallion came to Christianize the Neuters and open trade for the French
Glowing reports from Brulé sent a Fran- ciscan friar into the Neuter country some months later. The friar, Joseph Dallion, had done missionary work and taken part in the fur trade in Huron villages. Among the Neuters he wanted to start a mission and open direct trade between the tribe and the French. Dallion set out from his Huron mission with two other Frenchmen in the autumn of 1626. He and his companions tramped southward, pushing through the thick woods around the west end of Lake Ontario. After they crossed the Neuter frontier, Dallion's companions returned to the Huron mission.
The Neuters had a warm greeting for Father Dallion. Aston- ished crowds of naked Neuters surrounded him wherever he went and gave him squash, dried corn, and deer meat. His appearance amazed them even more than Brulé's had. Brulé had been dressed much like an Indian; Dallion wore long flowing grey robes. They watched him trace the sign of the cross in the air. And they grunted with delight when he gave them presents of shiny knives and gleaming trinkets. Charmed by the strange white man, the Neuters adopted him into their tribe and gave him a famous war chief for his Neuter father as was their custom.
But Dallion remained with his Neuter relatives for only three months. During this time he tramped from village to village, always promoting religion and trade. He found that Brulé's report had been accurate. The Neuter country was especially beautiful and fertile. Dallion was amazed at the frequent flights of ducks and passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun, and the many beaver that inhabited the streams. He wandered east of the Niagara River to a Neuter settlement near what is now Lewiston. Meanwhile, however, trouble was brewing for Father Dallion among the Hurons to the north.
Dallion's actions among the Neuters alarmed the Hurons. The Hurons, remember, depended upon Neuter farm goods to live. Huron traders exchanged Neuter food, tobacco, and hemp for beaver furs from western Indians. Then the Hurons exchanged the furs for French trade goods. As middlemen for the French, the
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Hurons feared that Dallion would ruin their trade if he opened direct trade between the French and the Neuters.
So the Hurons decided to act. Bent upon ruining the friar, run- ners raced southward to Neuter territory. Upon reaching the Neuter villages, the runners squatted with painted chiefs in the smoky, firelit huts. They accused Dallion of being an evil magician and they swore that he poisoned the air in Huron villages, causing the death of many Huron children. They insisted that the friar in- tended to infect the Neuters in the same way. The Neuters believed the Hurons.
The story spread rapidly and the Neuters were terrified when- ever the friar came near. When Dallion refused to leave, the fright- ened Neuters began mistreating him, hoping to drive him away. Finally a rumor that he had been murdered reached the Huron mission. A Frenchman set out to learn if the tale were true. He found Dallion and together they returned to the Huron mission where the Hurons greeted the friar with pleasure. At his Huron mission Dallion could not harm their trade.
Fathers Brébeuf and Chaumonot made a visit
Fourteen years slipped away before French priests again went to Niagara country. This time it was the Jesuits Jean de Bré- beuf and Joseph Chaumonot who appeared in the Neuter villages. Brébeuf was a nobleman, tall and strong and with the bearing of a soldier. His companion, Chaumonot, was of humble birth and was far less vigorous. Both men shared a deep need to plant the faith among the natives in New France. In the end Brébeuf met torture and death in a Huron town. After his death he was awarded sainthood by the Catholic Church.
Brébeuf and Chaumonot were experienced in the ways of In- dians. In the smoky, drafty, flea-infested bark houses of the Hurons, the Jesuits helped the sick, taught religion, and baptized the In- dians. They studied Huron, a language like Neuter. Both men spoke good Huron. Brébeuf wrote a book about the Huron language and Chaumonot wrote a Huron grammar and dictionary.
The Jesuits' great adventure among the Neuters began in the autumn of 1640. On a cheerless November day Brébeuf and Chau- monot, armed with faith and hope, set out for Neuter villages in the Niagara region. The pair tramped southward. At St. Joseph, a Huron town, they found a guide to lead them to the Neuter land. The party continued southward through the leafless forest, making camp for the night when twilight came on. They ate their dried corn as they sat around the campfire. After the skimpy meal, Brébeuf
and Chaumonot read their prayer books by the firelight. Often they stopped reading and listened to the night sounds-wind whispering in the tree-tops, the movements of night creatures in the under- brush. In the morning they continued their journey. Finally on the sixth day the tired Jesuits stumbled into a Neuter village.
No warm welcome awaited Brébeuf and Chaumonot in the Neu- ter village. Once again the Neuters had been warned by the Hurons. Neuter chiefs and young men had hurriedly gathered and listened in terror as the Hurons lied about the Jesuits, repeating the famil- iar tale of poison and disease that had ruined Friar Dallion in 1626.
Indians used clay pots for cooking until white traders brought iron kettles.
Not content with this, the Hurons urged the Neuters to murder Brébeuf and Chaumonot. Hurons were afraid to kill the Jesuits themselves so they tried bribing the Neuters with French hatchets to act as killers. The bribe almost succeeded, for the Neuters nearly killed the Jesuits when they arrived in the Neuter villages. Only the action of old tribesmen, who feared French revenge, stopped the murder.
Brébeuf and Chaumonot remained in the Neuter country for four miserable months. They had escaped death for a time but the Neuters had agreed among themselves that no one should give them shelter or food. Hungry and cold, Brébeuf and Chaumonot wan- dered from village to village, finding every lodge shut against them. They took Neuter curses and blows wherever they went. Their ears rang with warnings that they would be put in the kettle and eaten if they remained in the Neuter country. Still, month after month the Jesuits stayed among the Indians. They trudged through the wintry forests, hoping for better treatment in the next village.
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One night Brébeuf noticed a huge cross hanging in the sky in the direction of what is now New York. He believed that this was a sign from God so he and Chaumonot stumbled eastward and finally reached a river which many believe to be the Niagara River. Snow was falling and the gray river was choked with ice cakes sailing on the rapid current. But the Jesuits arrived safely on the opposite shore and tramped into a Neuter settlement, perhaps later called Onguiaahra (Ongiara) .
Although Onguiaahra's population regarded the Jesuits with horror, a woman invited them into her lodge. She sheltered the pair for two weeks, fed them and helped in making a list of Neuter words. The woman convinced her relatives that the Jesuits meant no harm but she could not quiet the fears of the rest of the village. At last Brébeuf and Chaumonot admitted defeat. They bade the kind woman farewell and crossed the Niagara River in gloomy February, disappearing in a swirl of snowflakes in the direction of their Huron mission. Again the sly Hurons had won, for the French and the Neuters had been kept apart. The Huron trade was safe.
The Huron treatment of the French missionaries gives us a good picture of how Huron life had changed. The Hurons had become a nation of traders. They depended upon the Neuters to supply them with food in exchange for French goods. Since trade had become a matter of life and death for them, it is easy to see why the Hurons acted as they did toward the French priests.
Women lost their importance and the life of the longhouse people changes There is another aspect of trading that is often over-looked in the story of how trad- ing changed Indian life. And strangely, few white traders or Hurons or Neuters or Iroquois understood it. European traders who paddled and portaged the wilderness came from a culture in which men ruled and owned property and women had few legal rights. This idea was so much a part of them that Europeans did not think about it. And wherever their paddles dipped into wilder- ness waters or wherever their feet pressed woodland trails, they carried the idea that men ruled and owned property.
So when they squatted around campfires and exchanged guns, blankets, kettles, axes, and beads for furs, they would trade only with the men. When land was bought, white traders insisted on buying it from the men, even though it was controlled by the women. When trade rights were bargained, Europeans bargained with the men. This gave the men a new importance in Indian life and re- duced the importance of women.
Indian life, with its strict laws about the rights of men and women, began to change. The clans declined as the importance of women declined, especially the role of the clan matron. And the clan longhouse with its related families began to disappear. Indians began building single-family log cabins in which the father replaced the mother as the head of the family. When the longhouse passed, so did the Indian's old way of living.
Trade, then, was the thing that changed Indian ways of living. And in the end it destroyed them, as we shall see. In the East some of the powerful Five Nations were becoming dependent upon Dutch goods. Soon the growing competition for beaver skins would lead to a great war between the Hurons and the Iroquois. The Neuters too would be destroyed. And finally the Iroquois would emerge as one of the most powerful Indian confederacies in all of North America. But this is a story for the next chapter.
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Trotting at a steady pace, this Indian runner bears a wampum belt. News of the appointment of a new chief was sent to other tribes in the confederacy in this manner.
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2. The Iroquois defeat their enemies
This chapter tells how the Iroquois became dependent upon Dutch goods, how they killed off the beaver in New York to get trade goods, and how they fought wars with the Hurons and other Indians for control of the western fur trade. As a result of these wars Niagara became an outpost of the Iroquois empire.
Struggle for control of the fur trade leads to war
What brought the war?
Iroquois became dependent upon Dutch trade goods In the last chapter we saw how French traders changed Indian life, particularly that of the Hurons. The French, however, were not the only white traders. Nor were the Hurons the only Indians dependent upon the white man's goods. Far to the east of Niagara country, the Iroquois were fast becom- ing dependent upon Dutch trade goods. Iroquois life, like that of the Hurons, was changed by white trade goods. This was one of the causes of the Iroquois Wars, as we shall see.
The Dutch and the Iroquois started trading in a small way in 1609 when Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River. In 1614 the Dutch built a trading center near Albany. But it was not until the Dutch raised Fort Orange (Albany) in 1624 that a steady trade developed. The Dutch made trade agreements with the Iroquois tribes west of Fort Orange, particularly with the nearby Mohawks.
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