USA > New York > Niagara County > Souvenir history of Niagara County, New York : commemorative of the 25th anniversary of the Pioneer Association of Niagara County > Part 17
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to a sled; covered it with straw and blankets, and my father carried the helpless one out in his arms. He survived the moving, and the little band of father and three sors started for the road, going east. My father had a musket; there were no other arms. Dr. Smith came along on foot, and said, "Bates, is your gun loaded?". "No, I have no cart- ridges." "Well, I have two, load your gun with one and I will load mine with the other." And he passed on. They had arrived at the hollow, where the road to the Reservation turns off, up the mountain, where five British Indians came up rapidly on horseback. The chief had a sword in place of a hatchet, and riding up behind the sleigh, he made a pass at my uncle, but his blow fell short. My uncle has told me of his feelings at the moment. He was so weak that he could not turn his head to avoid the sword, and thought his end had come. A brass kettle, hanging on the hind sled stake rattled just then; the horses started back, and the sav- age missed his blow. He rode up again, when my father raised his gun and fired. My uncle said that he was looking up directly in the Indian's face, when the bullet struck him in the throat, a gush of blood followed, he wheeled and fell, rose up and ran a few rods and fell dead. The other Indians had fired a random volley to break my father's aim, at which a little band of friendly Tuscaroras in the mountain, but bidden by trees, fired a random volley, and gave the war whoop. They were led by the noted little Col. Jacobs. The attacking party, alarmed, spurred their horses into the woods for Fort Niagara. The sleigh had gone about a mile. when Mr. Sparrow Sage overtook it, and said, "Bates, the Indian's horse has run into my yard ; you had better go back for him; it will help you all away." He did so. His little office and his few books had been burned on his return ; he sold the horse for sixty dollars, and it was his beginning in life again. One of his first suits in court was in defense of title to the horse. The horse had been captured from sol- diers by the Indian and had the "United States" brand upon him. A government commissary saw the brand and claimed him. The plea was made that the horse had been captured by the enemy and belonged to any person who should re- take him from the enemy. It was declared good law, and the purchaser kept the horse. The larger things of life lie in the smaller. Dr. Smith's single cartridge and Jacob's war whoop held in them the life of our family, and the sixty dollars was the beginning of a practice which ended in Con- gress and the Comptrollership at Albany. But the latter did what the Indian hatchet could not do; it killed him !
After the war most of the settlers came back in one or two years. Many others followed; the town, the county, were organized, and as it was for long the county town, per- haps more than the average proportion of marked men settled it.
THE FIRST CHURCH BELL OF THE FRONTIER.
Many readers will have seen an account of Brant, the Mohawk Chief's church bell. He had been to Eng- land; been made much of; been confirmed in the Episco- pal church, and when he came back brought a small church bell with him for church service near his home. It was hung in the crotch of a large tree and used for Sabbath service, when a chaplain from the fort or an occasional missionary could be procured. Of course, when he withdrew to Can- ada he took the bell with him. It may be claimed to have been the first church bell rung west of Utica. I have often seen the tree, in my boyhood, on my grandfather's farm. The old gentleman was not much given to relics, especially of Indians. His wife had died from exposure in her flight
into the woods; he and his sons, as has been noticed, had been in imminent danger of death at their hands; his house had been burned by them ; his property destroyed, and him- self reduced to begin life over again with the title of his lands and empty hands. So he could not be said to have had a decided affection for the noble red man. Some would have spared the tree as a relic. My iconoclast relation wanted sled runners; he cut the tree down, and made a sled of it.
LAFAYETTE'S VISIT.
The first distinct reminiscence of my own regarding Lewiston life is of Lafayette's visit in 1825. I was then four years old. All is as distinct to me as any incident of life since. The tall, fine form of the noble Frenchman ; the wild delight of his twelve year old boy, in putting cents into split sticks for the Tuscarora boys to shoot at; all that would strike a boy, is vividly before me today. One incident, for its pathos, can never be forgotten. He said to the committee, "In the Revolution, there was a Tuscarora Indian who was of great service, and was much thought of by General Washington and myself. I think his name was Cusick, Solomon Cusick ; I wonder if he is yet alive?" "Mr. Cusick is alive, sir, and is here to meet you today," was the reply. The crowd parted, and from the middle of the street came tottering, on his cane, a silver haired old native. The generous Marquis sprang from the steps, met Cusick half way, threw his arms around him, and stood looking him in the face. Neither could speak ; tears streamed down their cheeks; it was plain that both were under the spell of the memory of Washing- ton. Strong men wept like children at the sight, and I re- member it as the first time I had ever seen men cry. The hotel was kept by Thomas Kelsey, now the residence of Eugene Sage.
MORGAN EXCITEMENT.
Then came the trying days of the Morgan excitement. It is not my purpose to enter into details, but it was one of the most exciting occasions the County ever saw, and Lewis- ton was its center. My father was one of the prosecutors of the abductors, and was earnestly engaged in the search for Morgan's body. He had no thought, at that time, that neighbors of his own were implicated. Yet the hack to take him to Youngstown was furnished in Lewiston, and the leader of the whole conspiracy was a former Lewiston citi- zen, and cut his throat in Youngstown. No one on the stage line would ride in the hack after the facts became known. It stood on a back street and rotted down on its hinges. No money, when I was fifteen, would have tempted me to go along that street after dark. Feeling ran high; near friends became estranged; one of the oldest friends of my father and he did not speak to one another for seven years. Time healed the strife, and they died friends.
THE TUSCARORAS.
I have spoken of the Tuscaroras. A few words as to them. It is well known that the majority of them as of the Oneidas, although the weakest of the tribes, sympathized with the colonies. Since the Revolution they have shown sincere attachment to Americans, and at times have fought for them. I have mentioned Cusick. He was for many years the interpreter for the missionary to his people ; but he was so honest, not being a committed Christian himself, he would preface each sentence interpreted, with "hi-na-hae- na," he says. He would not commit himself to it, as a fact. When he made a profession of religion, he dropped the pre- face and gave credit to the speaker. John Mountpleasant,
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the elder, was a noble specimen of a man, physically, and, in many respects, mentally and morally. It is a well known fact that all the leading names in the tribe are those of British officers, who lived with the native women as wives, during their quasi exile from England on the Frontier. Many fine qualities of mind and person have come down to them from these ancestors. The Mountpleasants, Thomp- sons, Johnsons, Chews, Gansons, Pattersons and others, all have their names from this source. The older Mount- pleasant was a special frontier friend of our family, and had a kindly regard for me. He said to my father in his office one day : "Bates, you think you have a white boy there ; you are mistaken ; he can fish ; he can hunt ; he is a good Tusca- rora, and I take him into the tribe." My father begged me off to finish my schooling, and would then leave it to me. Often when we were fishing on the Rapids, and the fishing was dull, I would write down Indian words as he would give them ; then pronouce them from my writing till the English letters gave the Indian sounds. It was sixty-five years ago. Here are the numerals for counting now: (I), un-che ; (2), nak-te; (3), och-suh; (4), hunt-och; (5), whish-oh; (6), oh-hyoch; (7), jah-hyock; (8), nak-re; (9), nee-sc; (10), wachsthua.
Like all primitive languages, the names of objects are from some quality of the object, as cutch-a-punch-toke, noch fish, for black bass; cus-na-ka-ra, white bass, or silver fish; u-sint-not, stone-in-the-head, sheephead, from the peculiar bone in that fish's head. The Tuscarora has not been reduced to writing or printing ; it is only an oral tongue today, al- though soft and musical. A lady came on from Washing- ton and took two months to writing it down ; she gave it up, reporting that "the language was two-thirds words and one- third grunts, and you can't print a grunt."
In the strange changes of life, it fell to my lot to bury Mountpleasant's wife, long after his own death ; a venera- ble silver-haired woman, almost the last of the pure blood of her race, and nearly a hundred years old ; blind for years, with an eye beautifully dark and soft, and showing no sign of blindness. The boy he had adopted did this office in his home, long after his own manly form had turned to dust.
COLONEL JACOBS.
Another notable Tuscarora was the little Colonel Jacobs; a small, thin, wizened man, with the soul of a hero in the shell. I have noticed his part in saving my grand- father and his sons from massacre. In his later days he fell under the vice of his race, and became a victim of the bottle. But, to the end, he had a humor, almost ludicrously shrewd. Coming in from a squirrel hunt one day, I saw the Colonel. lying in a corner of the fence by the wayside, with his bottle rolled two or three feet away. With a boy's impulse I dropped my game and shot the neck off his bottle. He was not drunk at all ; only asleep. He sprang to his feet, drew his knife, and set out for me in full chase. I had to drop my game to make time, when he shouted, "I kill you! I kill you!" and I began to think of dropping my rifle. He halted, and shouted: "I know you; I know you, Joshua; I tell your father in the morning." Sure enough, the morn- ing found him on hand, and me, unluckily, copying papers. He made his complaint. My father said, "Joshua, the Col- onel says you shot his bottle ; how is that?" It was a case of George Washington and the hatchet, and I had to own up, urging that the Colonel seemed to have had enough already. "But the bottle was his, and the whisky was his, not yours; don't do such a thing again, Colonel, how much will make
the bottle good; a quarter?" "O, yes; and let the boy go; he no mean harm; only little fun!" He then went out, turning at the front door, with a squint, ludicrous beyond words, and beckoned me out with his little bony hand. I followed him; he closed the door carefully, and said to me, raising two fingers, "One shilling, one quart; two shilling, two quart ; you shoot him every time !"
ONE-EYED JOHN.
Another venerable member of the tribe was an old, very old man, named One-Eyed John, or Fisher John; one of the few pure bloods of the tribe, with a skin from age and exposure between sole leather and mahogany. He was a taciturn old man; had little to say, till one had got inside the shell. John thawed to me for my love of the spear and the Rapids. Sitting, one day, looking into the water, and the fish not running freely, he said: "You know Doc Patter- son?" "Yes, pretty well." "He baptize, last Sunday." (The Baptists had organized recently and introduced immer- sion.) "Well, John, I hope it will do him good." "Don't know! Patterson uncertain! Last spring I was out in the woods; snow melting off ; little ponds all around ; see snake run into little pond : swim on bottom ; come out on other side; same snake; so Patterson!" I think I have seen the same among white men.
Old John's grandmother was a girl twelve years old in the great migration of 1712 ; he told me, from her, the whole story of that movement of the fierce, but heroic race.
MEN AND EVENTS.
I suppose that, in a volume under the auspices of the' Pioneer Association, it is reminiscences of pioneer men and pioneer days that is looked for ; say to 1830 or 1840; if one should attempt even reference to men and things of a later date, it would be divested of the pioneer quality. And in such reminiscences I find myself turning to men. And, after all, men, living men, are what make a frontier, and what make a world. So, when I recall a sawmill, by Richard Ayer, on the Tuscarora stream, it is the rugged, active, downright farmer, Richard Ayer, that I recall; not the mill. When I think of the old gristmill, in the river, turned by wa- ter from the famous "old pond," I think of John Gray, who built and kept the mill; of the grave, fine looking John Gray who was one of the few pioneers to honor a Christian calling in a Christian life, in the form of the Baptist faith; how princely his speech to the little boy who brought the family grist to mill, and waited till it was ground. So it must be of men chiefly that reminiscences must be looked for from me, and of incidents that bring them out.
EARLIEST SETTLERS.
Among the earliest settlers were Aaron Childs, who af- terwards removed to Niagara Falls, and spent his life there. A little matter touching his two sons may amuse the reader of today. The oldest, William, from the first became prom- inent in Sabbath school and church work, in connection with his business of life. The other son could not be said, in act or speech, to have followed strictly the Sabbath school line. So marked was the difference that, with the brusque freedom of frontier life, one was called "Deacon Childs." the other "Sinner Childs." A man once asked the latter, "Sinner, how came you and your brother by your names, Deacon and Sinner?" "O, I suppose, because Bill prays and I swear, but we don't either of us mean anything by it!"
Another pioneer of marked type was Rufus Spalding. He was one of the best of farmers and honest of men ; but his views on religion were aggressively skeptical. He
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named his boys Volney, Voltaire, Steven and Franklin. He seems to have felt the list exhausted with the first two, and his use of the last two does not evince full faith in the ortho- doxy of the immortal author of "Tristam Phandy," or of the venerable compiler of "Poor Richard's Almanac." He lived to see Voltaire a preacher of the Gospel and Franklin a com- municant in the Episcopal Church. Mr. Spalding's near neighbor was Sparrow Sage ; a man as consistently and un- obtrusively a believer in the Gospel as Mr. Spalding was ag- gressively the other way. Mr. Sage, in the forties, adopted the views of Mr. Miller, in the Second Advent, as many of the most earnest and fervent Christians of that day did. When, in the most elaborate calculation the time for the Advent was set for the following spring, Mr. Sage, with his large and fine family, took all their measures and ordered their affairs, with reference to the momentous event. As not to be needed beyond the spring, he consistently for- bore to put in his winter crops, and left his whole farm fal- low. Mr. Spalding, one of the best farmers in the County, put in his crops in his usual most careful manner. He had almost a neighborly concern for Mr. Sage over his course, and his remarks on it could not be strictly comprised within Sunday school limits: "When spring came and the non- sense should all become smoke, what would become of his family ? It would be too late to put in grain ; the man would have nothing to eat, and his family would starve." It was a case for verbal pyrotechnics, and the words were fully fired. At the same time, all that knew Mr. Spalding knew that he would divide his loaf with his neighbor, and would be the first man with his teams to help him put in his spring crops. But there must be the verbal explosion. The win- ter passed, the spring came ; the calculations erred, and Mr. Sage looked around him, like a good farmer and honest man, to do the best he could in the emergency. There was not time to plow ; he simply harrowed in his wheat, and reaped a crop far beyond Mr. Spalding's, and one of the best in the region. The latter was confounded; it came little short of being downright affliction. A whole winter's objurgation must be swallowed, and to any farther remark, there was Mr. Sage's wheat fields. "What was the use of farming, anyway? If wheat could be scratched in, why not take things easy before hand, as Sage had, and scratch it in when the time came. Who couldn't be a farmer in that way?" And the good, kind man-for he was kind-hearted as a wo- man-reaped a leaven of discontent with his own grain. To a neighbor's remark, "that it was good for a farmer to look down on the ground, but that it was good sometimes to look up," he gave an expressive stare, but disdained an answer.
THE FIRE OF PATRIOTISM REKINDLED.
The Rebellion came, and the man whose boyhood went back of the Revolution, was all aflame. The best elements of his nature shown forth. He was near 90; his concern for the cause was an actual personal distress. He staid in the village, with his daughter, to be in contact with the news, and as the aged form sat in the sunshine in those dark days of the spring of 1861, no one could do him a greater kindness than to stop and speak a word of cheer. His son was revenue collector of the district ; a meeting was organ- ized for outlet to the pentup feelings of the people ; the Na- tional flag was raised; the venerable patriarch was made chairman of the meeting ; a dry goods box was made a ros- trum for the speaker, and the tension was painful in the ex- treme. The speaker began in this way : "The venerable man who sits at our head today saw the light before our nation began; the question before us today is whether he shall,
while yet living, see its sun go down ; whether one man's life shall cover our existence as a nation." "Never! never!" shouted the old man, thumping his cane violently on the floor while the tears streamed down his aged face. He lived to see the conflict over, the nation saved, and went con- tent, for his eyes had seen the day.
HEROISM OF THE PIONEERS.
I have mentioned Sparrow Sage. In the most unas- suming form was hid the soul of a hero. In the War of 1812, learning that an Indian had come to his house, in his absence, and had taken his wife off prisoner to Fort Niag- ara, he seized an ax, pursued and overtook the ruffian in the forest, armed with rifle, hatchet and knife, rushed ferociously upon and disabled him by a blow in the shoulder with the ax, and sent him howling to the woods. "Any man would do that," the reader may say ; I am a man myself, and I have my doubts whether any man would do it ; whether even most men would.
At this point, at the risk of bringing in my family name again, I will refer to my uncle, Lothrop Cooke. When the War of 1812 broke out he was on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, working a farm. He had married a lady of French descent there, and they had an infant child. The Canadian Parliament passed an act requiring all aliens to take the oath of allegiance, in pain of imprisonment and confiscation of goods. The son of a Revolutionary soldier, he refused to take the oath. Learning that officers were on the way to arrest him, he put his wife and child, with a few things need- ful for them, into a bark canoe, and paddled across Lake On- tario to Fort Niagara, forty miles. To appreciate the deed, one has but to look out on the lake from the shore. As has been mentioned, he had lost a leg, by exposure in dragging the boats up the stream, at the battle of Queenston Heights, and, on recovery, used a crutch and cane. He was the first Sheriff of Niagara County, then Deputy Sheriff. While in this latter office a desperado of this war, living on the lake shore in Porter, had become the terror of his neighbors, poi- soning horses, houghing oxen, in defiance of arrest and prosecution. It was known he would shoot, and all feared him. A man said to the Sheriff at Lockport: "Send the warrant of arrest to Lothrop Cooke, at Lewiston." My uncle got on his horse at once and started out on his errand. It was a congenial one, for this outlaw was the very officer of militia to whom my uncle had carried Van Rensselaer's request for help at the Queenston battle, and he had plead fever and could not come. He saw his man hoeing in a field by the road, and, frontier like, passed the time of day with him. The man came up to the fence, without fear, since the fence was between them. For twenty minutes, I had heard my uncle say, he tried to get the man's eye off from him, but could not. He had ridden up to the fence in a way that he could spring over from his horse, with his one leg. All at once, he said, "Why, Major, what is that vessel doing so near the shore? She will get aground." He turned, and my uncle was at once over the fence, and on top of him, bearing him to the ground. He was a very powerful man, six feet five inches, and with a frame of bone and muscle. The out- law also was a powerful man, but he was taken by surprise. "Let up, Lothrop; let up; I give up." My uncle rose up, drew a horse pistol, and said: "Now, Major, we know each other well; put out your hands for the shackles, and all will be well. Refuse, and I will shoot you dead. And you know that I will do it." He held out his hands and in fifteen minutes was on his way to Youngstown and Lockport.
In the great work of constructing the locks of the Erie
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Canal, at Lockport, a serious riot occurred among the Irish laborers. There were, I think, some 2,000 of them, and they were all led by one man; a sturdy, fearless fellow, who seemed to have brains to lead, as well as brains to dominate. The peace and safety of the town became at last involved and the authorities were at a stand. Elias Ransom said to the Sheriff and Mayor: "Send for Lothrop Cooke; he is Deputy Sheriff, and will not fear the mob." When my un- cle arrived the warrant was placed in his hand for the arrest of the ringleader. "Do you want help, Mr. Cooke?" "Not a man! You have not enough citizens to make the arrest if they resist, and they will not look on a single man as a de- fiance." It was certainly a singular spectacle, even for the irregular disturbances of a frontier. On the one side a crowd of 2,000 men, armed with clubs and stones, with the ringleader some rods in advance, to direct their motions ; on the other, a single man, a cripple, using a crutch and cane for his support. He was a very powerful man, with an eye like an eagle, and, more than any man I ever saw, seemed per- fectly devoid of fear. As he came towards them, on crutch and cane, the warrant visible between his fingers, the Irish- men, true to their national humor, burst into laughter and raised a shout of derision. He advanced directly towards the leader. My uncle could leap ten feet on his single leg ; when some thirty feet distant he began prodigous leaps for- ward; the man, taken by surprise, and alarmed, turned to run, but stumbled and fell. In a moment my uncle was on top of him, and like the ruffian Major, the man was like a boy in the hands that held him. "Let up ; let up," he cried out ; "if the devil is after me on one leg I surrender." He was allowed to get up. "Now, my man, we are both men, and this is no child's play. You know that you are wrong, and that all them men are wrong. Give me your word, as a man, that you will persuade the crowd to go back to work and I will tear up this warrant, and give you my word that no man shall suffer for anything done in the riot." "Mr. Sheriff, you are a brave man, and a kind man; I'll do it !" He went back and addressed the mob ; told them the terms offered; advised their acceptance, and led off himself to re- sume work. All did the same, and the town had peace. It is true, I bear the same name, but even modesty will allow me to declare the act, like that of the canoe and of the ruf- fian's arrest, the act of a hero.
There were other men of the same mould in the pioneer days. Look at Silas Hopkins, a lad of seventeen ; after driv- ing a band of oxen, in company with others, to Fort Niagara and Newark, belting his money around him, and starting back alone, to New Jersey. No roadway through the wilder- ness ; no place of lodgment save the damp earth and the for- est for a roof ; the howl of the wolf and the hoot of the owl in his ears as he fell asleep, night by night, in that 450 miles journey, and the trail where already men had been waylaid and murdered for the money they were taking home. Many grown men, and stout-hearted men, will read this volume. How many of them would care to repeat the deed of this boy of the frontier in 1787? When answering the draft, in the Civil war, at the Provost's office, I was not surprised to see at my side, for the same purpose, a grandson of Silas Hop- kins. There are but two left in the old town to bear the family name of Silas Hopkins and Lemuel Cooke.
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