USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > Settlement in the West : sketches of Rochester with incidental notices of western New-York > Part 42
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Herriot's History of Canada, 79. (This work is a compilation, principally from Charlevoix.)
t Smith's New-Jersey, 466, &c.
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THE SIX NATIONS.
this belt to inform you that the Munseys are women, and cannot hold treaties for themselves ; therefore I am sent to inform you that the invitation you gave the Munseys is agreeable to us the Six Nations."
At a treaty held at Lancaster in 1742 by the Governor of Pennsylvania with the Iroquois, the governor complained of the Delawares, who refused to remove from some lands which they had sold on the River Delaware .* On this oc- casion a great chief, called Caunassateegoo, after severely reprimanding them, and ordering them to depart from the land immediately to Wyoming or Shamokin, concluded in the following manner :- " After our just reproof and abso- lute order to depart from the land, you are now to take notice of what we have further to say to you. This string of wampum serves to forbid you, your children and grand- children, to the latest posterity, from ever meddling in land affairs-neither you nor any who shall descend from you are ever hereafter to sell any land. For this purpose you are to preserve this string, in memory of what your uncles have this day given you in charge. We have some other business to transact with our brethren, and therefore depart the coun- cil, and consider what has been said to you." The Confed- erates had captured a great part of the Shawanese nation, who lived on the Wabash ; but afterward, by the mediation of Mr. Penn, at the first settlement of Pennsylvania, gave them liberty to settle in the western parts of that province ; but obliged them, however, as a badge of their cowardice, to wear female attire for a long time ; and some nations, as low down as 1769, were not permitted to appear ornamented with paintt at any general meeting or congress where the Confederates attended, that being an express article in their capitulations .¿ This humiliation of the tributary nations was, however, tempered with a paternal regard for their in- terests in all negotiations with the whites; and care was taken that no trespass should be committed on their rights, and that they should be justly dealt with in all their con- cerns.
War was the favourite pursuit of this martial people, and military glory their ruling passion. Agriculture and the la-
* 1 Colden, 31. t Rogers's Concise Account, &c., 209, &c.
# This is the Shawanese nation who, under the auspices of their prophet, had an engagement at Tippecanoe with the army under the command of Gen. Harrison.
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borious drudgery of domestic life were left to the women. The education of the savage was wholly directed to hunting and war. From his early infancy he was taught to bend the bow, to point the arrow, to hurl the tomahawk, and to wield the club. He was instructed to pursue the footsteps of his enemies through the pathless and unexplored forest; to mark the most distant indications of danger; to trace his way by the appearances of the trees and by the stars of heaven ; and to endure fatigue, and cold, and famine, and every privation. , He commenced his career of blood by hunting the wild beasts of the woods, and after learning the dexterous use of the weapons of destruction, he lifted his sanguinary arm against his fellow-creatures. The profes- sion of a warrior was considered the most illustrious pur- suit ; their youth looked forward to the time when they could march against an enemy with all the avidity of an epicure for the sumptuous dainties of a Heliogabalus. And this martial ardour was continually thwarting the pacific counsels of the elders, and enthralling them in perpetual and devasta- ting wars. With savages in general, this ferocious propen- sity was impelled by a blind fury, and was but little regu- lated by the dictates of skill and judgment : on the contrary, with the Iroquois, war was an art. All their military move- ments were governed by system and policy. They never attacked a hostile country until they had sent out spies to ex- plore and to designate its vulnerable points ; and whenever they encamped, they observed the greatest circumspection to guard against surprise : whereas the other savages only sent out scouts to reconnoitre ; but they never went far from the camp, and if they returned without perceiving any signs of an enemy, the whole band went quietly to sleep, and were often the victims of their rashi confidence .*
Whatever superiority of force the Iroquois might have, they never neglected the use of stratagems : they employed all the crafty wiles of the Carthaginians. The cunning of the fox, the ferocity of the tiger, and the power of the lion, were united in their conduct. They preferred to vanquish their enemy by taking him off his guard ; by involving him in an ambuscade ; by falling upon him in the hour of sleep ; but when emergencies rendered it necessary for them to face him in the open field of battle, they exhibited a courage and con- tempt of death which have never been surpassed.
* Colden, 110. Herriot, 15.
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THE SIX NATIONS.
Although we have no reason to believe that they were, generally speaking, Anthropophagi, yet we have no doubt but that they sometimes eat the bodies of their enemies killed in battle, more, indeed, for the purpose of exciting their ferocious fury than for gratifying their appetite-like all other savage nations, they delighted in cruelty. To inflict the most exquisite torture upon their captive ; to produce his death by the most severe and protracted sufferings, was sanctioned by general and immemorial usage. Herodotus informs us that the Scythians (who were, in all probability, the ancestors of the greater part of our red men) drank the blood of their enemies, and suspended their scalps from the bridle of their horses for a napkin and a trophy ; that they used their sculls for drinking vessels, and their skins as a covering for their horses .* In the war between the Cartha- ginians and their mercenaries, Gisco, a Carthaginian gener- al, and 700 prisoners (according to Polybius), were scalped alive ; and in return, Spendius, a general of the mercenaries, was crucified, and the prisoners taken in the war thrown alive to the elephants.t From these celebrated nations we may derive the practice of scalping, so abhorrent to human- ity ; and it is not improbable, considering the maritime skill and distant voyages of the Phonicians and Carthaginians, that America derives part of its population from that source by water, as it undoubtedly has from the northeast parts of Asia by land, with the exception of a narrow strait.
But the Five Nations, notwithstanding their horrible cru- elty, are in one respect entitled to singular commendation for the exercise of humanity : those enemies they spared in battle they made free ; whereas, with all other barbarous na- tions, slavery was the commutation of death. But it becomes not us, if we value the characters of our forefathers ; it be- comes not the civilized nations of Europe who have had American possessions, to inveigh against the merciless con- duct of the savage. His appetite for blood was sharpened and whetted by European instigation, and his cupidity was enlisted on the side of cruelty by every temptation. In the wars between France and England and their colonies, their Indian allies were entitled to a premium for every scalp of an enemy. In the war preceding 1703, the government of Massachusetts gave £12 for every Indian scalp; in that
* Beloe's Herodotus, 2 vol., p. 419. 30* t Polybius, b. 1, c. 6.
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year the premium was raised to £40; but in 1722 it was augmented £100 .* An act was passed on the 25th Febru- ary, 1745, by our colonial legislature, entitled "An act for giving a reward for such scalps and prisoners as shall be taken by the inhabitants of (or Indians in alliance with) this colony, and to prevent the inhabitants of the city and county of Albany from selling rum to the Indians."t In 1746 the scalps of two Frenchmen were presented to one of our colo- nial governors at Albany by three of the confederate In- dians ; and his excellency, after gratifying them with money and fine clothes, assured them how well he took this special mark of their fidelity, and that he would always remember this act of friendship.# The employment of savages, and putting into their hands the scalping-knife during our revo- lutionary war, were openly justified in the House of Lords by Lord Suffolk, the British Secretary of State, who vindi- cated its policy and necessity, and declared " that the meas- ure was also allowable on principle ; for that it was per- fectly justifiable to use all the means that God and nature had put into their hands."§ The eloquent rebuke of Lord Chatham has perpetuated the sentiment, and consigned its author to immortal infamy. It were to be wished, for the honour of human nature, that an impenetrable veil could be drawn over these horrid scenes ; but alas ! they are com- mitted to the imperishable pages of history ; and they are already recorded with the conflagrations of Smithfield, the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and the cannibal barbarities of the French Revolution.
The conquests and military achievements of the Iroquois were commensurate with their martial ardour, their thirst for glory, their great courage, their invincible perseverance, and their political talents. Their military excursions were extended as far north as Hudson's Bay. The Mississippi did not form their western limits ; their power was felt in the most southern and eastern extremities of the United States. Their wars have been supposed, by one writer, to have been carried near to the Isthmus of Darien.PP And Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, which was probably writ- ten in 1698, describes them as terrible cannibals to the
Douglass's Summary, p. 199, 586. 2 Holmes's American Annals, 116.
t 1 vol. Journal of Colonial Assembly, p. 95.
# 2 Colden, 120. § Belsham, T Rogers's America, 209.
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THIE SIX NATIONS.
westward, who have destroyed no less than two nations of other savages .*
The ostensible causes of war among the Indians were like many of those among civilized nations; controversies about limits, violations of the rights of embassy, individual or national wrongs ; and the real and latent reasons were generally the same-the enlargement of territory, the exten- sion of dominion, the gratification of cupidity, and the acqui- sition of glory. According to a late traveller, a war has existed for two centuries between the Sioux and the Chippe- was.t For an infraction of the rights of the calumet, the Confederates carried on a war of thirty years against the Choctaws.f For a violation of the game laws of the hunt- ing nations, in not leaving a certain number of male and female beavers in each pond, they subdued and nearly de- stroyed the Illinois ;§ and they appeared to have accurate notions of the rights of belligerants over contraband arti- cles ; for they considered all military implements carried to an enemy as liable to seizure ; but they went farther, and conceiving this conduct a just ground of war, treated the persons supplying their enemies as enemies, and devoted them to death. But the commerce in furs and peltries, pro- duced by their intercourse with the Europeans, introduced a prolific source of contention among them, and operated like opening the box of Pandora. Those articles were eagerly sought after by the whites ; and the red men were equally desirous of possessing iron, arms, useful tools, cloths, and the other accommodations of civilized life. Be- fore the arrival of the Europeans, furs were only esteemed for their use as clothing ; but when the demand increased, and an exchange of valuable articles took place, it became extremely important to occupy the most productive hunting- grounds, and to monopolize the best and the most furs. And it was sometimes the policy of the French to divert the at- tacks of the Iroquois from the nations with whom they traded by instigating them to hostilities against the South- ern Indians friendly to the English colonies ; while at other times they excited wars between their northern allies and
* Magnalia, p. 728.
t Pike's Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi, &c., 64.
# Smith's New-York, 52.
§ See Garaugula's Speech in Appendix, No. I.
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the Iroquois, in order to prevent the former from trading with the English, which they preferred, because they could get their goods cheaper. On the other hand, the English en- tangled the Confederates in all their hostilities with the French and their Indian allies. The commerce in furs and peltries was deemed so valuable, that no exertion or expense was spared in order to effect a monopoly. The goods of the Eng- lish were so eagerly sought after by the Indians, and so much preferred to those of the French, that the latter were com- pelled to procure them from the colony of New-York ; from whence they were conveyed to Montreal, and distributed among the savages. It was then evident that the English had it in their power, not only to undersell the French, but, by a total interdiction of those supplies, to expel them from the trade. The enlightened policy of Gov. Burnett dictated a most energetic step, and a colonial law was passed for the purpose .* He also established trading-houses [t] and erected a fort at Oswego, at the entrance of Onondaga [now Oswego] River into Lake Ontario. This position was judi- ciously selected ; not only on account of its water com- munication with a great part of the Iroquois territory, but for the facility with which articles could be transported to and from Schenectady ; there being but three portages in the whole route, two of which were very short. It had an- other decided advantage. The Indian navigation of the lakes being in canoes, is necessarily along the coast. The southern side of Lake Ontario affording a much more secure route than the northern, all the Indians who came from the great lakes would on their way to Canada have to pass close by the English establishment, where they could be supplied at a cheaper rate and at a less distance. Oswego then became one great emporium of the fur-trade ; and its ruins now proclaim the vestiges of its former prosperity. The French perceived all the consequences of those meas- ures, and they immediately rebuilt the fort at Niagara, in order that they might have a commercial establishment 200
miles nearer the Western Indians than at Oswego. Having previously occupied the mouth of Lake Ontario by Fort Frontenac, the fort at Niagara now gave them a decided ad-
* I Colden's Five Nations, 95. Smith's New-York, 224, &c. Herriot's Canada, 174.
[+] See notices in this volume of the military and trading posts in Western New-York, in article headed " Irondequoit Bay."
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THE SIX NATIONS.
vantage in point of position. The act passed by Governor Burnett's recommendation was, under the influence of a per- nicious policy, repealed by the British king. The Iroquois had adopted a determined resolution to exterminate the French. " Above these thirty years," says La Hontan, " their ancient counsellors have still remonstrated to the warriors of the Five Nations, that it was expedient to cut off all the savage nations of Canada, in order to ruin the com- merce of the French, and after that to dislodge them from the continent. With this view they have carried the war above four or five hundred leagues off their country, after the destroy- ing of several different nations."* Charlevoix was impress- ed with the same opinion. " The Iroquois," says he, "are desirous of exercising a species of domination over the whole of this great continent, and to render themselves the sole masters of its commerce."t Finding the auxiliary efforts of the English rendered abortive, their rage and fury increased, and the terror of their arms was extended accordingly. At a subsequent period they appeared to entertain different and more enlightened views on this subject. They duly appre- ciated the policy of averting the total destruction of either European power ; and several instances could be pointed out, by which it could be demonstrated that the balance of power, formerly the subject of so much speculation among the statesmen of Europe, was thoroughly understood by the Confederates in their negotiations and intercourse with the French and English colonies.
To describe the military enterprises of this people would be to delineate the progress of a tornado or an earth- quake.}
' Wide-wasting death, up to the ribs in blood, with giant-stroke wid- ow'd the nations."§
Destruction followed their footsteps, and whole nations subdued, exterminated, rendered tributary, expelled from their country, or merged in their conquerors, declare the superiority and the terror of their arms. When Champlain arrived in Canada in 1603, he found them at war with the
* Vol. i., p. 270.
+ Charlevoix's Histoire Générale de la Nouvelle France, 1 vol., b. 11, p. 487.
# For the military exploits of the Iroquois, generally speaking, see De la Potheire, La Hontan, Charlevoix, Colden, Smith, and Herriot.
§ Cumberland's Battle of Hastings.
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APPENDIX.
Hurons and Algonkins. He took part and headed three expeditions against them, in two of which he was success- ful ; but in the last he was repulsed. 'This unjust and im- politic interference laid the foundation of continual wars be- tween the French and the Confederates. The Dutch, on the contrary, entered into an alliance with them on their first settlement of the country, which continued without in- terruption ; and on the surrender of New-York to the Eng- lish in 1664, Carteret, one of the commissioners, was sent to subdue the Dutch at Fort Orange, now Albany, which having effected, he had a conference with the Confederates, and entered into a league of friendship, which continued without violation on either part .*
The conquests of the Iroquois, previous to the discovery of America, are only known to us through the imperfect channels of tradition ; but it is well authenticated that, since that memorable era, they exterminated the nation of the Eries or Erigas, on the south side of Lake Erie, which has given a name to that lake. They nearly extirpated the An- dastez and the Chauanons ; they conquered the Hurons, and drove them and their allies, the Ottawas, among the Sioux, on the head waters of the Mississippi, " where they separa- ted themselves into bands, and proclaimed, wherever they went, the terror of the Iroquois."t They also subdued the Illinois, the Miamies, the Algonkins, the Delawares, the Shawanese, and several tribes of the Abenaquis. After the Iroquois had defeated the Hurons, in a dreadful battle fought near Quebec, the Neperceneans, who lived upon the St. Lawrence, fled to Hudson's Bay to avoid their fury. In 1649 they destroyed two Huron villages and dispersed the nation ; and afterward they destroyed another village of 600 families. Two villages presented themselves to the Con- fedcrates, and lived with them. "The dread of the Iro- quois," says the historian, " had such an effect upon all the other nations, that the borders of the River Ontaonis, which were long thickly peopled, became almost deserted without its ever being known what became of the greater part of the inhabitants."} The Illinois fled to the westward after being attacked by the Confederates, and did not return until a gen- eral peace ; and were permitted in 1760 by the Confederates
* 1 Colden, p. 34. Smith's New-York, p. 3-31. Douglass's Sum- mary, p. 243.
t Herriot, page 77.
# Ibid, p. 70.
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THE SIX NATIONS.
to settle in the country between the Wabash and the Scioto Rivers .* The banks of Lake Superior were lined with Al- gonkins, who sought an asylum from the Five Nations ; they also harassed all the Northern Indians as far as Hudson's Bay, and they even attacked the nations on the Missouri. When La Salle was among the Natchez in 1683, he saw a party of that people who had been on an expedition against the Iroquois.f Smith, the founder of Virginia, in an expe- dition up the Bay of Chesapeake in 1608, met a war party of the Confederates, then going to attack their enemies.} They were at peace with the Cowetas, or Creeks, but they warred against the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and almost all the Southern Indians.o The two former sent deputies to Albany, where they effected a peace through the mediation of the English. In a word, the Confederates were, with a few exceptions, the conquerors and masters of all the Indian nations east of the Mississippi. Such was the terror of the nations, that when a single Mohawk appeared on the hills of New-England, the fearful spectacle spread pain and terror, and flight was the only refuge from death.| Charlevoix mentions a singular instance of this terrific ascendancy. Ten or twelve Ottawas being pursued by a party of Iroquois, endeavoured to pass over to Goat Island, on the Niagara River, in a canoe, and were swept down the cataract ; and as it appeared, preferred to the sword of their enemies?
" The vast immeasurable abyss, Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turned." **
In consequence of their sovereignty over the other nations, the Confederates exercised a proprietary right in their lands. In 1742 they granted to the province of Pennsylvania certain lands on the west side of the Susquehannah, having formerly done so on the east side.tt In 1744 they released to Mary- land and Virginia certain lands claimed by them in those colonies ; and they declared at this treaty that they had conquered the several nations living on the Susquehannah
* Pownall's Topographical Description of Parts of North America, &c., 1776, p. 42.
t Tontis's Account of De la Salle's last Expedition, printed in London from the French in 1698, p. 112.
# Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, 310, &c.
§ Adair's History of the Indians. Il 1 Colden, p. 3.
T 3 Charlevoix, Letter 15, p. 234.
* Milton's Paradise Lost, book 7.
tt 2 Colden, p. 20.
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and Potomac Rivers, and on the back of the great mount- ains in Virginia .* In 1754 a number of the inhabitants of Connecticut [claiming the pre-emptive right under quit-claim deeds from that state-vide article about the " Controversy with Connecticut"] purchased of them a large tract of land west of the River Delaware, and from thence spreading over the east and west branches of the Susquehannah River.t In 1768 they gave a deed to William Trent and others for land between the Ohio and Monongahela. They claimed and sold the land on the north side of Kentucky River. In 1768, at a treaty held at Fort Stanwix, with Sir William Johnson, the " line of property," as it was commonly denominated, was settled ; marking out the boundary between the English colonies and the territories of the Confederates. §
The vicinity of the Confederates was fortunate for the colony of New-York. They served as an effectual shield against the hostile incursions of the French and their savage allies. Their war with the French began with Champlain, and continued with few intervals until the treaty of Utrecht, which confirmed the surrender of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Acadia to Great Britain. For near a century and a half they maintained a war against the French possessions in Louisiana and Canada ; sometimes alone, and sometimes in conjunction with the English colonies. During this eventful period they often maintained a proud superiority ; always an honourable resistance ; and no vicissitude of fortune or visitation of calamity could ever compel them to descend from the elevated ground which they occupied in their own estimation and in the opinion of the nations.
Their expeditions into Canada were frequent ; wherever they marched, terror and desolation composed their train ;
" And vengeance, striding from his grisly den, With fell impatience grinds his iron teeth ; And massacre unbidden cloys his famine, And quaffs the blood of nations."il
In 1683 M. Delabarre, the Governor-general of Canada, marched with an army against the Cantons. He landed near Oswego ; but finding himself incompetent to meet the enemy, he instituted a negotiation and demanded a confer- ence. On this occasion, Garangula, an Onondaga chief, at-
* 7 Mass. Hist. Coll., p. 171. t Ibid, p. 231.
# 2 Holme's Annals, p. 287. Jefferson's Notes, p. 296. § Ibid. Il Glover's Boadicea.
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THE SIX NATIONS.
tended in behalf of his country, and made the celebrated re- ply to M. Delabarre, which I shall presently notice. The French retired from the country with disgrace. The second general expedition was undertaken in 1687 by M. Denon- ville, governor-general. He had treacherously seized several of their chiefs, and sent them to the galleys in France. He was at the head of an army exceeding 2000 men. He landed in Irondequoit Bay ; and when near a village of the Senecas, was attacked by 500, and would have been defeated if his Indian allies had not rallied and repulsed the enemy. After destroying some provisions and burning some villages, he retired without any acquisition of laurels. The place on which this battle was fought has been, within a few years, owned by Judge Augustus Porter, of Grand Niagara. On ploughing the land 300 hatchets and upward of 3000 pounds of old iron were found ; being more than sufficient to defray the expense of clearing it.
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