USA > New York > The old New York frontier : its wars with Indians and Tories, its missionary schools, pioneers, and land titles, 1614-1800 > Part 4
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Through the help of Corlear, a noble-hearted Dutchman, and of Dominie Megapolensis, Father Jogues finally escaped. He went to France, and Anne of Austria, the Queen, summoned him to her presence. This mother of Louis, the Sun King, " kissed his mutilated hands, while ladies thronged round to do him homage." Owing to his deformity of body, caused by torture, Jogues was unable to say mass. His case having been laid before the Pope, a special dispensation restored to him the sacred and cherished privilege. Father Jogues then returned to Canada, and the Jesuits again sent him into the Mohawk country, where he now met his fate. While entering an Indian house, to which he had been in- vited as a guest, he was barbarously murdered. The scene of this tragedy was near the present town of Auriersville. Parkman pronounces Jogues " one of the purest examples of Roman Catholic virtue which the western world has seen."
Another Jesuit, who became a captive, was Joseph Bressani. In July, 1644, he wrote from the Iro-
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quois country to the General of the Jesuits in Rome : " I do not know if your Paternity will rec- ognize the handwriting of one whom you once knew very well. The letter is soiled and ill written ; be- cause the writer has only one finger of his right hand left entire, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds, which are still open, from staining the paper. His ink is gun-powder mixed with water and his table is the earth."
Jogues, Milet, Bruyar, and Bressani belonged to an early and disinterested generation. Their eu- logist, Parkman, shows that the Jesuits who came in later times had not the same apostolic simplicity. More properly they were the political agents of France, with eyes on the affairs of two worlds. For more than fifty years the English had to combat their influence, and in doing so sought aid from Protestant missionaries who really came to have an important share in the great struggle between Latin and Anglo-Saxon forces for supremacy.
First among Protestants in the Mohawk country was Megapolensis, who, before closing his labors, had learned the language, preached in it fluently, and made many converts. He began his work at Albany about 1642 and served six years. Megapo- lensis says he preached also "in the neighbor- hood," and the Indians had been pleased to hear he intended going into " their own country and castles (about three days' journey farther inland) when ac- quainted with their language."
From the time of Megapolensis until Governor Dongan came over, was a generation, and not until Dongan's time was vigorous work undertaken. In 1687 Dongan asked the Indians not to "receive any French priests any more, having sent for English
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JESUIT PRIESTS
priests whom you can be supplied with all to con- tent." In the same decade, in his request to the Indians to arrest unauthorized Susquehanna traders, Dongan made an exception in the case of "the priests and one man with each or either of them." Dongan, although a Romanist, was opposed to the Jesuits, being an English Governor first, and a Ro- manist afterward. He was the first English Govern- or who interfered with the Jesuits, and he violated his instructions in so doing. But he gave evidence of that clear understanding of French intrigue and its dangers which another Irishman, William John- son, was to have a better opportunity of putting in- to practice sixty years afterward.
Dongan desired James II. to send out five or six priests to live at the Indian castles, since by this means French priests " will be obliged to return to Canada, whereby the French will be divested of their pretences to the country and then we shall en- joy that trade without any fear of its being diverted." He proposed that three priests continually travel from one Indian village to another. Though his design did not fully succeed, he made some headway with it. By 1687 he had successfully uprooted some of the French missions. That his conduct was statesmanlike, events that followed in the ensuing struggle amply proved. A few years after his time (in 1700) the Legislative Council of the province took up the war Dongan had begun and passed "an act against Jesuits and Popish priests."
One of the Protestants of Dongan's time was Dr. Dellius, a Dutchman. He was among the Mo- hawks before 1691, and baptized numbers of them. For his services he was allowed $300 in 1693, with a further sum for an interpreter. At Schenectady
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labored Bernardus Freeman, a Calvinist, who, in 1701, reported that out of one hundred Mohawks, thirty-five were Christians. Mr. Freeman made a translation into Mohawk of the Ten Command- ments, the Athanasian Creed, and parts of the Prayer Book. His version was printed in New York in 1715.
Work assumed a more systematic form in the new century. A petition was forwarded to Lon- don asking that ministers of the Church of Eng- land be sent to "instruct the Indians and prevent their being practised upon by the French priests and Jesuits." Six clergymen were proposed, one for each nation, with two young men to attend them.
Four years later the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent out the Rev. Mr. Smith and the Rev. Thoroughgood Moor, each of whom was allowed {20 for his outfit and £100 as yearly salary, with £30, given by Queen Anne, for his passage. Of Mr. Smith nothing more is known, but Mr. Moor reached the field of his labors among the Mohawks and remained three years. He had little success and set sail for England, but was never heard from again. He has been credited with the authorship of the first book printed in the Mohawk tongue, " Another Tongue brought in to Confess the Great Saviour of the World," which traders were expected to distribute. After Mr. Moor, came Thomas Barclay, who remained from 1708 until 1712, and has historic rank as the first rector of St. Peter's Church in Albany.
When Queen Anne's war closed, in 1712, the Rev. William Andrews, who had already been in the country and knew something of the Mohawk
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language, came over and spent three years among the Mohawks and Oneidas. With money supplied by Queen Anne, a fort one hundred and fifty feet square was built at the Mohawk castle known after- ward as Fort Hunter, with a block-house at each corner and quarters for twenty men. The Indians built a school-house thirty feet long and twelve wide, and from distant places prepared to have children sent for instruction. At one time Mr. Andrews had twenty children at this school, between sixty and seventy regular attendants at church, and when all the Indians were at home, as many as one hun- dred and fifty attendants, of whom thirty-eight were communicants.
Andrews came out to teach the Oneidas as well as the Mohawks, and bore as his credentials a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In going to the Oneidas he passed over one hundred miles " through a vast wilderness of woods " and along a narrow Indian path. Wherever he labored the great difficulty was to overcome the demoralizing influence of hunting expeditions in which boys as well as men engaged. Mr. Andrews complained that nothing he did seemed to last. An evil influ- ence was exerted by Dutch traders who falsely told the Indians he would claim one-tenth of all they had. He describes the Indians as a "sordid, mercenary, beggardly people, having but little sense of religion, honor or goodness among them; living generally filthy, brutish lives ; " and being of such "inhuman savage natures " as to kill and eat each other. " Heathen they are," he said, "and heathen they will still be." Mr. Andrews returned in 1718. At St. Peter's Church in Albany, has long been preserved an interesting relic of his time-a set
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of church plate given by Queen Anne in 1712, for use among the Onondagas, while at Fort Hunter may be seen a stone rectory of the same period.
Queen Anne's interest in the Indians dated from the visit of several of their kings to London, in 1709- IO. They were taken over by Colonel Peter Schuy- ler, Mayor of Albany, a man of fortune, public spirit, and great influence among the Indians, who knew him always as "Quidder," the nearest ap- proach they could make to pronunciation of his name. France at that time was making serious inroads against the English in New York. A criti- cal time had come in that century-long contest between two civilizations for supremacy in the New World. Colonel Schuyler made this visit at his own expense in order to urge the English Government to take more vigorous measures against the French. Marked interest was shown in the Indians. They became the lions of social and public life, and at Court were received with all the honors of elaborate ceremonial.
In 1731 the Rev. John Miln, who, in 1728, had become rector of St. Peter's, engaged to visit the Mohawks four times a year and to remain five days on each visit. He appointed the Rev. Henry Bar- clay catechist at Fort Hunter. By 1741, in two towns Barclay had five hundred Indians under his influence, of whom fifty-eight were communicants. In 1743, only a few unbaptized ones remained. Two years later war with France interfered with this work. The French laid the frontier in ashes, took one hundred prisoners, and the county of Albany, that had been populous and flourishing, became a scene of desolation. After the war closed, in 1746,
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the Rev. John Ogilvie, a graduate of Yale College, who had studied theology under the Bishop of London and became rector of St. Peter's in Albany in 1750, went into the country, and labored there periodically for many years "amid great discour- agements and in the very outskirts of civilization." An assistant in his work was the Rev. John Jacob Oel, a Palatine, who remained until the Revolution began. He was long settled at Canajoharie, but labored also among the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, many of whom he baptized. Mr. Oel in the Sus- quehanna Valley found rivals in the Non-conformists from New England, against whom he made com- plaints .*
After Mr. Ogilvie, came to St. Peter's the Rev. Henry Munro, who labored among the Mohawks until 1770, when his missionary duties were trans- ferred to a resident clergyman, the Rev. John Stuart, of whom more will be read in a later chap- ter of this work. Just at the close of Mr. Munro's labors he dedicated at Canajoharie the chapel for the Indians, which Sir William Johnson erected there and which still stands.
* Brown refers to a place " called by the Indians Awquawge (Ogh- waga) where the first Gospel was taught unto the Indians, by one Elisha Gan." He gives no date however.
II
Missionaries from New England
1745-1748
A FTER the Church of England missionaries came the Non-conformists. First on the
list in influence on the Susquehanna Valley is the Rev. John Sergeant, who, at Stockbridge, Mass., in 1736, had founded an Indian mission with Timothy Woodbridge serving as conductor of a school for Indian boys. Sergeant had been en- gaged by the Boston Commissioners of the Society in Scotland for Propagating the Gospel, and during fourteen years had given much faithful devotion to the cause. He not only taught Indians in and near Stockbridge but went elsewhere seeking fields of labor. On one of these tours, made in 1744, he visited the Susquehanna Valley. He was in a sense the pioneer New England missionary in this field.
In the neighboring town of Northampton, then lived Jonathan Edwards, who had shown much interest in the Indians, several of whom he had taught. No man more than he had encouraged the noble and successful David Brainerd in his work on the frontier of New York, New Jersey, and Penn- sylvania between the years 1744 and 1747. Brain- erd's labors in the main were on the Delaware near the site of Easton, but he labored also on the Sus- quehanna in Pennsylvania. In 1745 he appears to have gone to Oghwaga, since he preached on the
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Susquehanna to Indians whom he had known at Stockbridge.
In those days, at Edwards's house lived the Rev. Elihu Spencer. Brainerd, while in Boston in the very last stages of consumption, recommended Spen- cer to the Commissioners, who wished to settle a missionary in the upper Susquehanna Valley. Al- most the last letters Brainerd wrote related to Spen- cer's coming. In 1748, just after Brainerd breathed his last, Spencer set out on his journey. Thus we have Sergeant, Brainerd, and Spencer as the forerun- ners of that numerous company who in the succeed- ing twenty-five years made these lands the scene of busy endeavors.
For the coming of these men credit belongs to Sir William Johnson. As early as Henry Barclay's time, Oghwaga had become a centre of English in- fluence. Near Fort Hunter, where Barclay had his post, Johnson was then living, and in 1746, when war with France began anew, Johnson opened com- munication with the Indians at Oghwaga, secured their friendship, and sent them belts. To a council in Albany he was able at this time to summon sixty Oghwaga warriors, "with the usual train of old men, women and children," who came up in charge of Captain Vrooman and Captain Staats. The warriors said they knew several roads to Canada, and wished " to see the hatchet that we may grasp it." Four- teen of them were at once despatched against the enemy in a company of sixty men.
When Mr. Spencer arrived in 1748, he therefore came to a savage people who were not strangers to English influence, religious, as well as political and military. He was a young man of twenty-seven, a graduate of Yale, and from Brainerd had learned
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some of the rudiments of the Indian language. In 1748 he had been ordained, and in September, the war with France having come to a temporary close, went to Oghwaga. He remained until spring, and became very much interested in his work, although he had limited success. He made slow progress with the language. " Though I was very desirous of learning the Indian tongue," he afterward said, "yet through my short residence at Ononghquage and the surly disposition of my interpreter, I con- fess my proficiency was not great." But he ac- quired enough knowledge to enable him to make a translation of the Lord's Prayer. It is as follows :
Soūngwâūnēhă, cāurounkyāwgă, tēhsēētāroan, sauhsoně- yōŭstă, ēsă, săwănēyou, okěttāūhsělā, ēhněāūwoūng, nā, cāu- rounkyāwgă, nughwonshāūga, nēattěwěhněsălāūga, tauguăunău- tōronoăntoūgsick, toāntaūgwělēēwhěyoustaung, chěnēēyeut, chāquătaūtēhwhěyoustaūnnă, toūghsaŭ, tāugwăussărēnēh, tāu- ăutoltěnăugăloūghtounggă, nāsāwně, sāchěaŭtāūgwāss, coăn- tēhsălöhāunzāickăw, ēsă, săwăunnēyou, ēsă, săshãutztă, esă, sōūngwāsoung, chenněauhāūngwā, āuwěn.
Among Spencer's converts were two Indians who long remained faithful allies and assistants to the missionaries who followed him to Oghwaga-Peter Agwrondougwas, known as "Good Peter," and Isaac Dakayenensese. Peter was the chief of the Oneidas, and had been born on the Susquehanna. His greatest gift was oratory, in which he had no superior in his time among the Iroquois.
From the correspondence of Edwards it appears that Spencer " went through many difficulties and hardships, with little or no success." His interpre- ter was " a woman that had formerly been a captive among the Caughnauwaga Indians in Canada, who
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speak the same language with those Oneidas, except with some small variation of dialect." Edwards explains further in regard to the interpreter, who was Mrs. Benjamin Ashley :
She went with her husband, an Englishman, and is one of the people we here call Separatists ; who showed the spirit he was of there in that wilderness beyond what we knew before. He differed with and opposed Mr. Spencer in his measures and had an ill influence on his wife who, I fear, was very unfaithful, refusing to interpret for Mr. Spencer more than one discourse in a week, a sermon upon the Sabbath, and utterly declined assisting him in discourses and conversations in the week-time. And her interpreta- tions on the Sabbath were performed very unfaithfully, as at last appeared.
Spencer's short residence at Oghwaga was fol- lowed five years later by a missionary expedition, which is better known, and has often through mis- take been accepted as the earliest of such enter- prises in this valley-the one led by Gideon Haw- ley and Timothy Woodbridge. That Spencer had no share in it is explained by the fact that in the meantime he had left New England and become set- tled as pastor over a Presbyterian church in Eliza- beth, N. J. He was afterward settled in Jamaica, L. I., and finally in Trenton, where he remained from 1769 until 1784, the year of his death. From 1752 until his death, he was a guardian of Princeton College. He was a facile extempore speaker, and his talents in that direction earned for him the famil- iar appellation of "ready money Spencer." His native place was East Haddam, Conn., and he was a brother of General Spencer of the Revolution.
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III
Gideon Hawley's Coming
1753
W ITH the close of the war in 1748, mis- sionary work at Stockbridge was taken up with new vigor. In Timothy Wood- bridge's school, in the following year, were fifty- five students, including several from Oghwaga. At the same time a school for Mohawks was in charge of Captain Kellogg, with Kellogg's sister, Mrs. Ashley, serving as interpreter. In 1750 some twenty Mohawks had arrived, and in 1751 about twenty more, including the celebrated King Hen- drick, who a few years later was killed in the battle of Lake George.
In 1749 the mission at Stockbridge lost its leader by the death of Sergeant. Edwards was chosen to succeed him, but this was not until 1751. The mission then contained 218 Indians, of whom 182 had been baptized, and 42 were communicants. Edwards, in the year of his appointment, attended the great Indian council which met in Albany. Here he learned how concerned the English had become in regard to the growth of French influence. The younger Conrad Weiser had heard at Onon- daga that a Jesuit had converted one hundred men and taken them to Montreal, where they received as presents gorgeous coats and hats ornamented with silver and gold. Sir Peter Warren, Johnson's uncle, then one of the leading men on Manhattan
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GIDEON HAWLEY'S COMING
Island, gave the Stockbridge school $3,500, and Johnson had been directed to use his influence to aid it all he could.
After Edwards's return from Albany, Gideon Hawley arrived at Stockbridge and was placed in charge of one of the schools. Woodbridge, who had known Brainerd intimately, and had now been ten years at Stockbridge, had the other. Both teachers were popular with the Indians, and espe- cially with the Mohawks and Oneidas ; but a resi- dent trustee, in his ambition to divert society funds from the proper channels, seriously impaired the usefulness of the school, and the Indians, becoming dissatisfied, resolved to return to New York. Some of these Indians had gone to Stockbridge from Oghwaga after Spencer's return, having "mani- fested a thirst for Christian knowledge." One was named Jonah and another Sharrack.
In these circumstances it was decided that Haw- ley and Woodbridge should themselves go to Ogh- waga, at which place Edwards told the Boston Com- missioners the hope for successful work mainly lay. The chief seat of missionary operations was to be " the country about Oghwaga near the head of the Susquehanna river." Edwards wrote further :
All but one or two of them are of the nation of the Oneidas and they appear not to be looked upon as con- temptible by the rest of the Five Nations : * from what was openly said of them at a public council by the sachems of the Mohawks who advised us to treat the Oghwagas with care and kindness as excelling their own tribe in religion and virtue, giving at the same time many instances of their virtue. Oghwaga is within the territory of the Six Nations
* The Iroquois were now the Six Nations, the Tuscaroras having entered the League thirty years before Edwards wrote.
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and not so far from the other settlements but that it may be convenient for making excursions to the other tribes : as convenient perhaps as any place that can be found. It lies in a pleasant, fruitful country, surrounded by many settle- ments of Indians on every side and where the way is open by easy passage down the river which runs through one of the most pleasant and fruitful parts of America for four hundred or five hundred miles, exceedingly well peopled on both sides and on its several branches by Indians. Ogh- waga is on the road by which several of the nations pass as they go to war with Southern nations. There are several towns of the Oneidas and several missionaries might prob- ably find sufficient employment in those parts.
Hawley finally departed on his mission, in May, 1753. He left Stockbridge in company with Woodbridge, Ashley, and Mrs. Ashley, the latter destined soon to die at the mission. Hawley says Ashley was taken along from necessity, but he proved to be "a fanatic and on that account unfit to be employed in the mission." They were to go "about one hundred miles beyond any settlement of Christian people." Before leaving the Mohawk Valley, introduced probably by Edwards, they "at sunset," says Hawley, "were politely received at Colonel Johnson's gate by himself in person. Here we lodged. It was favorable to our mission to have his patronage which I never lost." Here also they met several Indians who lived at Oghwaga, and Hawley mentions two ministers who were settled near Johnson's house, one of whom, a Calvinist, seems to have been the Rev. William Johnston who afterward founded the settlement at Sidney.
From the Schoharie country the expedition crossed the hills to the Susquehanna, having ob- tained, besides a man with a horse to carry two sacks
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of flour, three or four " blacks " to accompany them. They also had a " fellow named Pallas, a vagrant Indian, whose company we had reason to regret but could not refuse upon our mission." Hawley says ; the road " was generally obstructed by fallen trees, old logs, miry places, pointed rock and entangling roots." They were "alternately on the ridge of a lofty mountain and in the depths of the valley."
Finally they came to rivulets which poured their waters into the Susquehanna. By one of these they halted, kindled a fire, made their prayers, and passed the night sleeping on the bare earth rolled up in blankets. Late on the following day they reached Towanoendalough, where was a village of "three wigwams and about thirty souls." Here the Sus- quehanna was first seen, and its size disappointed them, as well it might, since here the stream is scarcely more than a creek. They lodged in " a little store house set on crotches six feet or more from the ground." *
At Towanoendalough the party were joined by a trader named George Winedecker and a companion, who had come down from Otsego Lake with a boat- load of goods, including rum, and were bound for Oghwaga and the intermediate Indian villages. The ill effects of Winedecker's rum were soon to be seen. During the night spent at Towanoendalough the party were awakened by the " howling of the Ind- ians over their dead," and in the morning saw Indian women "skulking in the adjacent bushes for
* As Hawley had an Indian guide, we may assume that he followed one of the trails which ran into the Susquehanna from the Schoharie Valley. Thus he might have crossed over to the upper waters of the Charlotte, as the Palatines had done twenty years before, or proceeded to the head of Schenevus Creek, descending which he would have reached the river near Colliers, following the present course of the railroad.
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fear of the intoxicated Indians who were drinking deeper." These women were carefully hiding guns, hatchets, and other dangerous weapons.
From this point to Oghwaga was a journey of three days, " and how bad the travelling is we can- not tell," said Hawley. "Some went by water and others by land with the horses. I went with the land party." In Winedecker's boat went Wood- bridge and the interpreter, and in a canoe purchased at this place were sent the provisions and baggage. The half-intoxicated Indians "pursued the party by water in which was Mr. Woodbridge and the party by land. One came so near us with a club as to strike at us and he hit one of our horses." At Wauteghe they found fruit-trees and a tract of cleared land extending along the river, but there were no inhabitants to be seen. Hawley had a narrow escape from death at the hands of Pallas, who was handling a loaded gun when in liquor. Pallas was aiming to shoot some ducks and fired very close to Hawley. Hawley was always inclined to think Pallas intended to kill him. This incident occurred twelve miles below Wauteghe, "where a small stream empties into the river." The horses were turned out to graze for the night, but by morning three or four of them had returned to Wauteghe.
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