USA > New York > The old New York frontier : its wars with Indians and Tories, its missionary schools, pioneers, and land titles, 1614-1800 > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
On the following day, when the horses had been recovered, the party proceeded six or eight miles farther, and stopped at Kaghneantasis or the whirlpool, " because there was herbage for our horses." Next day they arrived at Unadilla, and about noon passed "a considerable village, some families of which were of the Houssautunnuk Ind- ians." As it was Sunday, Winedecker was not
60
GIDEON HAWLEY'S COMING
permitted to land. The Indians "stood on the banks and beheld us." Pallas was sent ashore at this point and his services dispensed with. From the Northwest, says Hawley, "a stream here rolls into Susquehanna." Its name was "Teyonadel-
hough." They landed five or six miles farther down and put up for the night. Oghwaga moun- tain was sighted the next day, and then Hawley knew his journey was nearly ended. He arrived near nightfall, the weather cold and wet. A cordial welcome came from the Indians, but the accommo- dations for living were rude and unwholesome.
On the following day, June 5th, "many were worse for the rum that came with us," and one of the horses injured an Indian boy. The Indians became enraged at this and made threats against the whole party, but in the afternoon "came chiefs of the Oghwagas and assured us that these insulting and ill-behaved Indians did not belong to them, but were foreigners." These chiefs had come up from the lower settlement. Hawley says he opened a treaty with the chiefs " upon the affairs of our ad- vent and the importance of our business in every way."
All in all, it was a singular expedition that went to Oghwaga, this mixed band of missionaries, trad- ers, and Indians. Here were red men who had ex- pressed a desire for religious teaching ; here were red men with a fatal fondness for strong drink, and here, in one party journeying down the valley, were missionaries with the Bible and a trader with the rum-the two gifts of the white man to the Indian. It soon became apparent that the work at Oghwaga which needed attention first was the red man's fond- ness for fire-water. Woodbridge, a few weeks later,
61
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
returned to Albany and carried with him a speech which the Indians had desired him to present to William Johnson. In part it is as follows, and its pathos cannot escape the reader :
My brother Col. Johnson, hear me now. We are both nations together under one head at Oghwaga. My brother Warraghiyagey,* here we are assembled under one head. I say, hear me now. The Governor and great men have took pity on us and come so far to bring us to light and religion that we may go straight. My brother, my dear brother, pity us: your batteau is often here at our place and brings us rum and that has undone us. Some- times on Sunday our people drink and cannot attend their duty, which makes it extremely difficult. But now we have cut it off : we have put a stop to it.
You must not think one man or a few men have done it; we all of us both old and young have done it. It is done by the whole. My brother, I would have you tell the great men at Albany, Schenectady and Schoharie not to bring us any more rum. I would have you bring us pow- der, lead and clothing which we want and other things what you please ; only do not bring us any more liquors.
* The name by which the Indians called Johnson after they had adopted him.
62
IV
War Interrupts Mr. Hawley's Work
1756
M R. HAWLEY had not been long at Oghwaga when a new conflict arose with the French. Johnson in 1751 had made striking headway in his efforts to cement the Indian attachment, but in 1754 so grave was the outlook, that another and greater council, in reality a con- gress, was called at Albany, to which were invited delegates from all the colonies in America. Stone calls this "the most august assembly which up to that time had ever been held in the western world." Its primary object was to make still stronger the alliance with the Six Nations, but in American his- tory it has other rank and eminence. At this con- gress was brought to official attention the famous Plan of Union, mainly drawn up by Franklin, which in an organic sense marks the beginning of the his- tory of the United States. John Bigelow has char- acterized it as " the first coherent scheme ever pro- pounded for securing a permanent federal union of the thirteen colonies."
England rejected the plan because of its democratic features, and the colonies because it had too much regard for the royal prerogative. Acceptance of it would unquestionably have saved both lands a world of direst trouble, but the name of Washington
63
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
scarcely could have been known to history. At this congress Gouldsborough Banyar, the Deputy Secretary of the Council of the Province, who after- ward had large landed possessions in the Susque- hanna Valley, acted as one of the secretaries, and Martin Kellogg was an interpreter, in which capac- ity Kellogg also saw service at Oghwaga. Indians from Oghwaga were present.
Hawley early realized the risk that attended his stay in the valley, but he remained at his post more than a year longer. Not until war was actually in progress did he depart. A son of Jonathan Ed- wards, Jonathan, Jr., then only ten years old, who, at his father's desire, had spent six months with Haw- ley, learning the Oneida tongue, was, however, sent home. For a part of the distance an Indian car- ried the boy on his back.
Thirty years afterward, when this boy had become President of Union College, he published a book on Indian languages, in which he referred to his expe- rience among the Indians. When he was six years of age his father had removed with his family to Stockbridge, which at that time was inhabited by Indians almost solely. Indians being the nearest neighbors, he "constantly associated with them ; their boys were my daily schoolmates and play- fellows. Out of my father's house I seldom heard any language spoken besides the Indian. By these means I acquired knowledge of that language and a great facility in speaking it. It became more famil- iar to me than my native tongue. I knew the names of some things in Indian which I did not know in English : even all my thoughts ran in Indian."
In December, 1755, Indians came to Oghwaga with accounts of discontent in Pennsylvania as a re-
64
WAR INTERRUPTS MR. HAWLEY
sult of the defeat of Braddock. Hawley at once communicated the facts to Johnson, with a strong recommendation that a fort be erected at Oghwaga, the one already existing at Cherry Valley being too far distant from the point of danger. The discon- tented Indians were Delawares, who, some years before, had left their own river and settled at Wyoming. By the defeat of Braddock they had lost faith in the strength of the English, and under French influence had threatened to desolate the whole Pennsylvania frontier. In Northampton County fifty houses had been burned and over one hundred persons murdered and taken into captivity. Virginia settlements had also suffered. Early in the year 1756 the Delawares started northward.
By May so many had departed that from Shamo- kin to Wyalusing, Mr. Kulp says, " there reigned the silence of the grave." Jonathan Edwards, hear- ing of these events, wrote that " there is great dan- ger that Mr. Hawley's mission and ministry there will be entirely broken up." Some friendly Del- awares arrived at Johnstown during this season, with word that one hundred others were on their way from Oghwaga in want of food. Johnson at once sent word to John Wells, of Cherry Valley, whom a Tory was afterward to murder during the Revolution, and to Robert Flint to supply them with all that they needed. In August a young sachem named Thomas arrived from Oghwaga with fifty- four men, women, and children, and said he was ready to go to war. John Wells, from plans pre- pared in Albany, built the fort Hawley had recom- mended, and Hawley retired from his mission. The fort stood about a mile and a half above Windsor village, on the east side of the river.
65
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
Proceeding to Johnstown, Hawley attended an Indian council, and then served as an army chaplain in an expedition from Albany to Crown Point. Johnson himself in the following year commanded the English forces at the battle of Lake George, of which, through his victory, he became the hero. Wounded in the battle, he remained a cripple for the rest of his life. England granted him the sum of $25,000, and the King made him a baronet. Hawley attempted to return to his work at Ogh- waga, but the enterprise proved to be " too hazard- ous to be prosecuted." He went as far as Cherry Valley in December, 1756, " but could not safely penetrate into the wilderness, my mission being nearly one hundred miles beyond any plantation of whites." In the following spring he received a let- ter from Johnson, " which the Indians desired him to write me," inviting him back to his mission, and again started to return. He got as far as Albany but had trouble to find a companion, and when the small-pox broke out, definitely abandoned the un- dertaking.
Had Hawley reached Oghwaga, his work could not have prospered. In October of this year chiefs wrote to Johnson that they had news " of a company of about thirty men being at Cheningo,* going to war against our brethren, the English." Two men had been sent down to warn them off, but "in spite of all that we and our brethren, the Nanticokes, could do, they marched along until we met them a second time when, after a long council, they turned back but nine." The chiefs begged Johnson " to
* In the Oneida dialect written Ochenang, and meaning bull thistles. The place was afterward called Chenango Point, and is now Bingham- ton.
66
WAR INTERRUPTS MR. HAWLEY
be strong brother and not keep this news private, but to give notice to all the towns."
Information had also reached them of "another great company not far from Tioga, coming the same way, mixed with French, and will be here in a few days." It was after such correspondence, joined to his experience in the war, that Johnson, in 1757, wrote concerning the Oghwagas and others on the upper Susquehanna : " They have always, and dur- ing this war constantly, shown themselves firmly at- tached to our interests, and no Indians have been more ready to come and join his Majesty's arms." He added that they were " a flourishing and increas- ing people," and were determined " to live and die with us."
In November of this year fell a blow which sent consternation through the frontier-the massacre and burning of German Flatts. So great was the terror, that at Cherry Valley and other places set- tlers sent their goods and valuables to Albany and Schenectady. Stone remarks that at one time it seemed "as if these settlements would be entirely depopulated."
Indeed the whole course of that final struggle with France created a state of alarm on this frontier, ren- dered all the more intense by the attitude of the four western Iroquois nations. The defeat of Brad- dock had weakened, if not actually broken, their allegiance to the English. Tryon County put eight hundred men into the field, one company being sta- tioned at Cherry Valley in command of Captain Robert Mckean of whom in the Border Wars there will be more to chronicle in this history.
In these gloomy circumstances the labors of Gid- eon Hawley in this valley closed. His work had
67
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
in no small way been fruitful. Among his aids had been the two " pious Indians," named Isaac Dakay- enensese and Peter Agwrondougwas, whom Spen- cer had converted. After Hawley's departure Peter carried on the missionary work alone, preaching at Oghwaga, and making journeys to other villages. In 1792 John Trumbull painted a miniature of Peter that may still be seen in Yale University. After Mr. Hawley's failure to return, Peter made a journey to Lebanon in midwinter, through deep snows, to ask for a new minister. Mr. Hawley con- tinued his labors among Indians elsewhere. In 1758 he was settled over some tribes at Leicester, Conn., and later over others in Massachusetts, where he spent nearly half a century "in the most bene- ficient and self-denying labors for the salvation of his Indian brethren." He died in 1807 at the age of eighty. He was a native of Bridgeport and a graduate of Yale.
68
V
New Men at Oghwaga
1762-1763
A FTER the fall of Quebec, when the English became masters of North America east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, other missionaries took up Hawley's work. The Rev. Eli Forbes went down in June, 1762, having with him the Rev. Asaph Rice and an interpreter named Gunn, who is, perhaps, the missionary referred to by Brown as Gan. They went by the Mohawk to Canajoharie,* and thence to Cherry Valley, follow- ing the river to Oghwaga, now a town of three hun- dred inhabitants, chiefly Oneidas. Here they found Good Peter, and so impressed was Forbes with his character and work that he described him as the equal of any Englishman he knew in his Christian virtues and abilities. With their arrival we have a new chapter to chronicle in the missionary history of this valley.
In addition to the Stockbridge school, New Eng- land in those times possessed an institution for Indian boys at Lebanon, where, in 1743-five years before Spencer came down to Oghwaga-the Rev. Dr. Eleazer Wheelock had begun to teach Samson Occum. In 1759 Occum became an ordained min- ister, and then in 1761 went among the Oneidas as a missionary, with a letter from Johnson. He was
* Meaning The Pot That Washes Itself, a reference to the circular gorge in the creek near its mouth.
69
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
sent out by the Boston commissioners, and perhaps visited Oghwaga. Dr. Wheelock's success with this Indian and others-and Occum rose to con- siderable repute afterward as a preacher-induced him to receive Indian children from New York, and as reports from Mr. Hawley at Oghwaga reached him, his hopes and plans for the civilization of the red man assumed large proportions. He gained the ear of Johnson as well as his confidence through having as one of his students a youth who was af- terward to write his name large in the history of this frontier-Joseph Brant. Dr. Wheelock's school fi- nally aroused the interest of nearly all the Colonial officials in America, who recommended it to their friends in England as " one of the noblest and most worthy objects of their Christian beneficence." The Rev. C. J. Smith was sent to England to solicit aid, and in time a total of about $47,500 was secured for the enterprise, the King heading the list with $1,000.
Dr. Wheelock desired to secure a tract of land for an Indian educational institution, and many let- ters from him to Johnson have been preserved. His experience and his information had made him confident that a great work could be done among the Six Nations. Johnson, in 1763, wrote that the Oghwaga, Mohawk, Schoharie, and Canada Indians were " determined to live and die with the English," and that this was " due in great measure to the little knowledge they have acquired of our religion which I heartily wish was more known to them and the rest." In the same year Dr. Wheelock proposed that " a tract of land, fifteen or twenty miles square, or four townships, on the west bank of the Sus- quehanna river be given to form an Indian school."
70
NEW MEN AT OGHWAGA
To this scheme Johnson was not favorably disposed ; he thought the education of Indians could be best carried on in places remote from Indian influence- a view to which, after some further experience, Dr. Wheelock came round.
Dr. Wheelock then proposed that something be done in the Wyoming country, where, he wrote, " I understand some of our people are about to settle on a new purchase on the Susquehanna : if it does not disoblige and prejudice the Indians, I should be glad, and it may be if that settlement should go on, a door may be open for my design on that purchase." Sir William said in reply that it would be " highly improper to attempt any settlement in their country as they (the Indians) are greatly dis- gusted at the great thirst which we all seem to show for their lands, and therefore I must give it as my opinion that any settlement on the Susquehanna may prove fatal to those who should attempt to establish themselves thereon, as the Indians have all declared, not only their greatest aversion there- to, but have all threatened to prevent such settle- ment." About this time Johnson wrote to the Lords of Trade that some of the missionaries had too often used their influence to get lands, and the Mohawks had lately told him " they apprehended the reason they had not clergy as formerly amongst them was because they had no more lands to spare."
Dr. Wheelock at one period unquestionably had great faith in the possibility of elevating the red men. In 1762 he said that for several years faith- ful men had been at work in Oghwaga. " The Indians are in some measure civilized," he wrote, " some of them baptised, a number of them, in a judgment of charity, real Christians." They had a
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
sachem who was "a man of understanding " and " entirely friendly to the design of a school." Dr. Wheelock thought there was opportunity for one hundred missionaries and as many interpreters on the Susquehanna and elsewhere. In the following year he reported that Samuel Ashpo (or Ashbow) had spent six weeks at Jeningo, " from which he was obliged to retreat on account of a rupture be- tween the Indians and the English." This referred to the conspiracy of Pontiac. In March, 1763, Forbes and Rice went to Oghwaga. They gathered a church and set up two schools, one for adults and one for children. In September Forbes returned to Lebanon, taking with him four Indian boys, one of whom was eventually graduated from Dr. Wheel- ock's school.
72
VI
Pontiac's War and After It 1763-1768
M R. RICE remained at his post until, per- haps, the end of the summer of 1763; but not longer. In the Far West had now been organized the conspiracy led by Pontiac. Pon- tiac had fought with the French against Braddock, and, with the French cause now lost, aspired on his own account to wrest vengeance from the English. His conspiracy was the last remnant of a European struggle in America, extending over more than three quarters of a century. Ultimately it failed, but not until almost every white man had been driven from the Ohio Valley, and 2,000 men on the western frontier had lost their lives.
To this uprising and its influence on the Six Nations was due Johnson's German Flatts confer- ence of September, 1763, to which came two hun- dred and seventy Indians from the Susquehanna villages. The Indians said they desired to renew the covenant chain, and declared that all their brethren on the river, as far down as Owego, were " friends and determined to remain so." Hostile Indians reached Oghwaga in the same season, their purpose being either to win over the Six Nations to Pontiac or to renew the warfare on the English settlements. By some of them Isaac Hollister, a Connecticut settler, had been taken prisoner in the Wyoming Valley and carried "up the Susquehanna about one hundred and fifty miles."
73
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
So serious became the danger, that Johnson, in February, 1764, sent out an expedition under orders to capture all hostile Indians found on the river. It comprised two hundred men, mostly Indians. Near " the main branch of the Susquehanna " the enemy were heard from, as encamped a short dis- tance away, and already on the road against the settlements. At daybreak Johnson's men rushed upon the Delawares, took them by surprise, and made prisoners of the whole party, forty-one in number, including their chief, Captain Bull, a son of Teedyuscung,* " who had discovered great in- veteracy against the English and led several par- ties against them during the present Indian war." When the expedition set out, Johnson had offered rewards of $50 for the heads of two Delawares named Long Coat and Onaperaquedra. The whole party of captives were taken over to the Mohawk Valley, and thirteen of them were sent to New York, where they were lodged in the common jail, after having been much observed by the people of that city, who are described as admiring their sullen and ferocious countenances.
In March, shortly after this success, another ex- pedition, in which a share was taken by Joseph Brant, was sent down. Brant had already seen ser- vice in war. Besides taking part in the siege of Fort Niagara in 1759, where he conducted himself, according to Stone,} with " distinguished bravery,"
* Teedyuscung was a noted chief of the Delaware nation. Although he had been converted by the Moravians, he could never resist the tempta- tion to follow other Indians on the war-path, his sympathies being with the French. Having incurred the hostility of the Six Nations in 1763, a party of their warriors set fire to his house and caused him to perish in its flames.
+ William L. Stone was born in Ulster County in 1792, and died at Saratoga in 1844. At the age of seventeen he was a journeyman printer
74
PONTIAC'S WAR AND AFTER IT
he had been in the battle of Lake George. He was then a boy of thirteen, and, according to his own account, " was seized with such a tremor when the firing began that he was obliged to take hold of a small sapling to steady himself."
This expedition to the Susquehanna comprised one hundred and forty Indians and a few whites, the latter having for leader Captain Andrew Mon- tour, a half-breed interpreter and frontiersman, whose mother was the more celebrated interpreter, Madam Montour. It reached Oghwaga before the close of March, and on April Ist departed down the river, first calling at Kanhaughton, a town which had been abandoned, and containing thirty-six good houses of squared logs and stone chimneys. It was now burned. Montour proceeded up "the Cayuga branch " and destroyed another town of twenty houses, besides four smaller villages. He afterward burned Kanestio, which had sixty houses, and from which he took away horses, corn, and implements.
When Captain Montour returned to the Mo- hawk Valley, with report of his success, Johnson decided to send his son Sir John to Oghwaga with a body of Indians and a small select corps of whites, " to take advantage of the consternation the enemy were thrown into." Sir John followed the river
in the office of the Cooperstown Federalist, and in 1813 editor of the Herkimer American, where he had Thurlow Weed for a printer. He became in 1821 an owner of the New York Commercial Advertiser, of which he was thenceforth editor until his death, becoming in 1840 one of the many editors whom Fenimore Cooper sued for libel. Stone's Life of Brant was published in 1838 and went through many editions, one of which appeared in Cooperstown from the Phinney house, and the eighth being issued in Buffalo. In 1865 his son brought out a new edi- tion with an index. Stone wrote other books, but none in repute equal to this, the noblest tribute ever paid by a white man to an Indian's memory.
75
THE OLD NEW YORK FRONTIER
route, and his force had been fitted out with some liberality of display in order to impress the Indians. He made a few prisoners and then returned.
Tranquillity having been restored, two mission- aries from Lebanon were allowed to leave the Mo- hawk Valley late in the summer. At Oghwaga they gathered a church of fourteen members. They were graduates of Yale, one of them C. J. Smith, the other Theophilus Chamberlain. On leaving Lebanon they had originally been accompanied by eight Ind- ian boys, one of them Brant, who for a time acted as interpreter for Smith ; but Pontiac's War, as we have seen, soon took Brant into the field, where, says Dr. Wheelock, he " behaved so much like a Christian and a soldier that he gained great esteem." When that war closed, Brant's house at Canajoha- rie was described as an asylum for missionaries. The route to the stations was a direct one by way of Bowman's Creek and Cherry Valley.
With the coming of winter, famine was threat- ened in the valley. The food-supply had been ex- hausted in consequence of the war, and the mission was removed to Otsego Lake. Here was opened a small school, into which was put as teacher a Mo- hawk boy, educated at Lebanon, named Moses. One of the missionaries, the Rev. C. J. Smith, sent to Mr. Wheelock the following report of the school :
I am every day diverted and pleased with a view of Moses and his school, as I can sit in my study and see him and all his scholars at any time, the school-house being noth- ing but an open barrack. And I am much pleased to see eight or ten and sometimes more scholars sitting under their bark table, some reading, some writing and others a study- ing, and all engaged to appearances with as much serious-
76
PONTIAC'S WAR AND AFTER IT
ness and attention as you will see in almost any worshipping assembly and Moses at the head of them with the gravity of fifty or three score. I expect this school will be much larger when it comes to Oghwaga, as there are but a few here, and many of these that are, on account of the pres- ent scarcity, are obliged to employ their children. The school at Oghwaga will doubtless be large enough for Jo- seph * and Moses both.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.