A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its first beginnings to the present time; including chapters of newly-discovered, Vol. I, Part 14

Author: Harvey, Oscar Jewell, 1851-1922; Smith, Ernest Gray
Publication date: 1909-1930
Publisher: Wilkes-Barre : Raeder Press
Number of Pages: 734

USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its first beginnings to the present time; including chapters of newly-discovered, Vol. I > Part 14

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* Lieut. Col. JOHN PRINTZ, Governor of New Sweden from 1643 to 1653.

+ See page 57.

# See Chapter V, post.

105

"The only part of their bodies which they covered was from the waist half-way down the thighs, and their feet they guarded with a kind of shoe made of the hide of buffalo, or of deerskin, laced tight over the instep and up to the ankles with thongs. It was and still continues to be a common practice among the men to slit their ears, putting something into the hole to prevent its closing, and then by hanging weights to the lower part, to stretch it out so that it hangs down the cheek like a large ring .* They had no knowledge of the use of silver or gold, though some of these metals were found among the southern Indians."

The tools of the Lenâpés were rude and poor-strictly those of the stone age (for they had no knowledge of any metal save a little copper for ornament), yet they handled their tools with great skill and neat- ness. They were adepts in dressing the skins of animals, especially the deer. "They made earthenware vessels, baking them hard and black. Soapstone they hollowed out for pots and pans, while other household vessels were made of wood. The large wild gourd, the calabash-one of the few contributions to the use of the white people-served them as bucket and dipper. Near their villages, in the alluvial bottom lands, or in spaces in the woods cleared by fire, the women raised the family crops, planting the maize, our 'Indian corn,' when 'the oak leaf was the size of a squirrel's ear,' and raising also beans, pumpkins and a few other vegetables."+ Thomson says they raised "the very prolific and nutritious sweet potato, which might be kept during winter in kilns dug under the lodge fire-place." Zeisberger describes the women as going into the woods in February to boil the maple sap and make sugar, and this process is declared by some writers to be an Indian discovery.

"The Lenâpé could not have been a large tribe. Within the limits of Pennsylvania they numbered perhaps 2,000 people. It cannot now be said with confidence that they had any central or fixed 'town.' They had places to which they resorted, such as rivers and creeks in which they fished ; mountains where they hunted, or cleared spaces where they planted ; but they had no buildings more substantial than the simple hut, or lodge, commonly known to the whites as the wigwam, in which they sheltered themselves. Its frame was formed of sapling trees, and was covered by the bark of larger ones. Each hnt was for a single family, differing in this respect from the houses of the Iroquois. Some- times the Lenâpé huts might be placed in groups, forming a village, and surrounded by a palisade of driven stakes, for defense against enemies, but all such frail structures decayed and disappeared almost as soon as their occupants quitted them. *

* It seems that the Shawanese Indians (concerning whom much is related in subsequent chapters) also, at one time, practised this custom of ear slitting. The accompanying illustration is a reduced facsimile of a drawing by George Catlin, originally published in his "Letters and Notes" mentioned on page 84. The Indian here represented was Lay-law-she-kaw ("He Who Goes up the River"), a Shawanese chief, whose portrait was painted by Catlin in 1831. The chief was then an aged man, with white hair, and was the head of his tribe, at that time settled on the Kansas River.

Catlin refers to this chief and his elongated ears in the follow- ing words : "A very aged but extraordinary man, with a fine and intelligent head, and his ears slit and stretched down to his shoulders-a custom highly valued in this tribe-which is done by severing the rim of the ear with a knife, and stretching it down by wearing a heavy weight attached to it at times, to elongate it as much as possible, making a large orifice, through which, on parades, etc., they often pass a bunch of arrows or quills and wear them as ornaments. In this instance (which was not an unusual one) the rims of the ears were so extended that they touched the shoulders, · making a ring through which the whole hand could easily be passed."

+ "Pennsylvania-Colonial and Federal," I : 9.

106

"One fact not yet con- sidered influenced the life of the Indians of Pennsyl- vania to a degree which we can understand only with an effort. They had, with the sole exception of the dog-a half-wild creature- no domestic animal. The horse they had never seen- nor the cow. They had not the llama of South America, the camel, the elephant or LENÁPÉ PALISADED VILLAGE. From Campanius' "New Sweden." any other of the beasts of burden so useful in the Old World. They had, there- fore, no means of movement or transportation but those which their own bodily vigor supplied. On land they walked or ran, on the water they paddled their canoes. By their marches on the chase or in war they had worn paths, or 'trails,' which may yet be traced here and there, over hill and mountain ; but it is most probable that, living near many streams of water, they mnade large use of these as highways of travel. -X-

"The Lenâpé were straight, of middle height, their color a reddish

brown. Penn speaks of them as 'generally tall, straight, well built and of singular proportion ; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin.' Their complexion he called 'black,' but said it was artificially produced by the free use of bear-grease, and exposure to sun and weather. They married young, the men, he says, usually at seven- teen, the women at thirteen or fourteen ; but their families were seldom large, and the increase of the tribe must have been slow. Polygamy

existed, but was not common."*

In the preceding pages (in particular, pages 39, 40, 81 and 100) mention is frequently made of the Mengwes, Mingoes, t Iroquois or Five -later the Six-Nations, and a brief account is given of the over- throw and expulsion of the Alleghans by the Mengwes and Lenni Lenâpés. With reference to the time of the occurrence of this event Horatio Hale says in "The Iroquois Book of Rites" that it is variously estimated ; but "the most probable conjecture places it at a period about 1,000 years before the present day"-and it was the termination of a desperate warfare that had "lasted about one hundred years."

It was apparently soon after this that the Mengwes and Lenni Lenâpés scattered themselves over the wide region south and south-east of the Great Lakes, thus left open to their occupancy. A tradition of the former nation points to the vicinity of Montreal, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, as their early, or perhaps first, home in this newly acquired territory, whence they gradually moved south-westward along the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

* "Pennsylvania-Colonial and Federal," I : 7, 11, 12.

{ "The name 'Mingo,' or 'Mengwe,' by which the Iroquois were known to the Delawares and the. other southern Algonkins, is said to be a contraction of the Lenape word Mahongwi, meaning 'the People of the Springs' The Iroquois possessed the head-waters of the rivers which flowed through the country of the Delawares."-H. Hale, in "The Iroquois Book of Rites."

The Iroquois were also called at an early day "Maquas" and "Massawomacs." (See "Report on. Indians at the Eleventh Census, " pages 30 and 642 ; also, see foot-notes, pages 110 and 112, post.)

107

According to Morgan, * in his "League of the Iroquois" (edition of 1851, page 4), the remote origin of the Mengwes, and their history anterior to about the year 1609 (the era of the discoveries in this country by the Dutch), "are both enshrouded with obscurity. Tradition inter- poses its feeble light to extricate, from a confusion which Time has wrought, some of the leading events which preceded and marked their political organization. It informs us that prior to their occupation of New York they resided * tipon the north bank of the St. Law- rence, where they lived in subjection to the Adirondacks, a branch of the Algonkin race, then in possession of the whole country north of that river. Having been in a struggle for independence with the Adirondacks, they were overpowered and vanquished by the latter and compelled to retire from the country to escape extermination." Their first settlements in the territory now comprehended within the limits of the State of New York are believed to have been on the Seneca River in northern-central New York. At that time they formned only one body or nation and were but few in number. Subsequently they divided into bands-each of which assumed or acquired a distinctive name-and spread abroad to found new villages.

They had become the acknowledged masters of the country east of the Mississippi at the time of the European discovery of this continent, and were then known as the Iroquois. As to the origin and proper meaning of the word Iroquois, Hale says ("Book of Rites") that "accord- ing to Bruyas the word garokwa meant 'a pipe,' and also 'a piece of tobacco'-and, in its verbal form, 'to smoke.' In the indeterminate form the verb becomes ierokwa, which is certainly very near to Iroquois. It might be rendered 'they who smoke,' or 'they who use tobacco,' or briefly, 'the Tobacco People.' The Iroquois were well known for their cultivation of this plant, of which they had a choice variety."

The Iroquois-"an island in the great ocean of the Algonkin tribes" -first appear in history as occupying a portion of the area of the present State of New York-the same territory, between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers, upon which they continued to reside until near the close of the eighteenth century. To the north-west, in the adjoining part of Canada, were their kinsmen the Hurons, t or Wyandots, including the tribe called by the French "Tionontates" ("Tobacco Nation"), noted like the Iroquois for the excellent tobacco which they raised and sold. To the south-west, along the south-eastern shore of Lake Erie, were the Eries, or "Cat Nation" (as they were denominated by the early Jesuits), also kinsmen of the Iroquois; and westward, along the south-western shore of Lake Ontario and the north-eastern shore of Lake Erie, dwelt the Neutral Nation, so called from their neutrality in the war between the Hurons and the Iroquois. They had their council-fires along the

* LEWIS H. MORGAN was born at Aurora, N. Y., in 1818, and died at Rochester, N. Y., in 1881. He was graduated at Union College, became a lawyer, and served several terms in the New York Legislature He often visited the New York Indians on their reservations, and was adopted by the Senecas. wrote many books on aboriginal life in America, but his "League of the Iroquois" is the best-known This book was originally published in one volume at Rochester in 1851, and in spite of the fact that it soon passed out of print, and that such competent critics as the late John Fiske pronounced it "the most complete and trustworthy description of the civilization of the North American Indians that has yet appeared," the work was never reprinted until 1902, when a very handsome edition in two volumes was published in New York.

Francis W. Halsey (referred to on page 32, ante) said of this book on its republication : "It treats of a large subject in our history in a way that is final, and the charm of its author's style pervades every page of it. Many other men have written about this ancient people, but none of the books approaches Morgan's in originality of presentation, exhaustive knowledge or interesting descriptions."

+ See page 39.

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Niagara River-principally on its western side. Far to the south of the Iroquois, on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and Maryland, were the Andastés or Susquehannocks,* and in Virginia and North Carolina, the Tuscarora and other tribes.

Subsequently to their establishment in New York, but many years prior to the era of the Dutch discoveries, the five nations (Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, Oneida and Cayuga) into which the Iroquois had become subdivided were united in a league. Morgan states that "the epoch of its establishment cannot now be decisively ascertained ; " but he thinks that, without doubt, the formation took place at least a cen- tury before the Dutch discovery. To-day the majority of writers on this subject hold the opinion that the Iroquois League, or Confederacy, was organized about the middle of the fifteenth century-not many years before the discovery of this country by Columbus, and between 500 and 600 years after the overthrow of the Alleghans, as previously described.

According to the traditions of the Iroquois the founder of their League was Hi-a-wat-ha (Da-ga-no-we-da), t the hero of Iroquois legend. He was an Onondagan chief-"the incarnation of Wisdom, whose power was equal to his intelligence"-and he had long beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace. "The project of a league," says Morgan, "originated with the Onon- dagas, among whom it was first suggested as a means to enable thein more effectually to resist the pressure of contiguous nations." Tradi- tions all refer to the northern shore of Onondaga Lake as the place where the first council-fire was kindled, around which the chiefs and wise men of the five nations assembled in general congress to agree upon the terms and principles of the compact by which their future destinies were to be linked together, and where, after a debate of many days, the establishment of the Iroquois Confederacy was effected. The nations who constituted the Confederacy were the Ga-ne-a-ga-o-no ("People Pos- sessors of the Flint"), or Mohawks, the O-nun-da-ga-o-no ("People on the Hills"), or Onondagas, the Nun-da-wa-o-no ("Great Hill People"), or Senecas, the O-na-yote-ka-o-no ("Granite People"), ¿ or Oneidas, and the Gwe-u-gweh-o-no ("People at the Mucky Land"), or Cayugas.

Morgan says, ("League of the Iroquois") :

"After the formation of the League the Iroquois called themselves Ho-de-no-sau- nee, which signifies 'the People of the Long House.' It grew out of the circumstance that they likened their Confederacy to a long house-having partitions and separate fires, after their ancient methods of building houses-within which the several nations were sheltered under a common roof. *

* * Upon an extended examination of their insti- tutions it will become apparent that the League was established upon the principles, and was designed to be but an elaboration, of the family relationship. * * *

"The system under which they confederated was not of gradual construction, under the suggestions of necessity, but was the result of one protracted effort of legislation.

* See pages 38 and 39.

+ Longfellow's famous and charming poem, "The Song of Hiawatha," was based on a distortion of the legend of Hi-a-wat-ha, as transposed from the original Iroquois tale. The poet placed the scene of Hi-a-wat-ha's sojourn upon earth in "the land of the Ojibways" and "the land of the Dacotahs," among the "great lakes of the Northland," instead of in northern-central New York : and thus a genuine per- sonality-"a grave Iroquois lawgiver and reformer of the fifteenth century-has become, in modern liter- ature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis."

# "The People of the Stone," says Dr. Beauchamp.

¿ See note (#), page 81, ante.

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The nations were at the time separate and hostile bands although of generic origin, and were drawn together in council to deliberate upon the plan of a league. . The traditions further inform us that the Confederacy as framed by this council, with its laws, rules, inter-relationships of the people and mode of administration, has come down through many generations to the present age, with scarcely a change-except the addition of an inferior class of rulers (called chiefs in contradistinction to the sachems), and a modification of the law in relation to marriage."

Hale says ("Book of Rites") :

"In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or another, been members of a league or confederacy. It may alnost be said to be their normal condition. But the plan which Hiawatha had evolved differed from all others in two particulars. The system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent govern- ment. While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representa- tives elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy.

"Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wislied the federation to extend until the tribes of inen should be included in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves ; and their statement, as will be seen, is supported by historical evidence. * *

* His conceptions were beyond his time, and beyond ours ; but their effect, within a limited sphere, was very great. For more than three centuries the bond which he devised held together the Iroquois nations in perfect amity. It proved, more- over, as he intended, elastic. The territory of the Iroquois constantly extending as their united strength made itself felt, became the 'GREAT ASYLUM' of the Indian tribes."

Benson J. Lossing, the American historian, in an article entitled "Our Barbarian Brethren" (see Harper's Magazine, XL : 804), says :

"The Iroquois Confederacy was a marvel, all things considered. ** It was composed of five large families bearing the dignity of nations. These were subdivided into tribes or smaller families, each having its totem or heraldic insignia. By common consent A-to-tar-ho ["To-do-da-ho"], a chief of the Onondagas, who was eminent for his wisdom and valor, was chosen to be its first President. He was then living in grim seclusion in a swamp. He was an object of veneration and awe, and when a delegation of Mo- hawks went to offer him the symbol of supreme power, they found him seated in the deep shadows smoking his pipe, but unapproachable, because he was entirely clothed with hissing serpents ! Here is the old story of Medusa's snaky tresses, invented in the forests of the new-found world, and forming a part of the traditionary history of the Iroquois Confederacy.

"The chief features of this remarkable League were the principles of tribal union through the totemic system, military glory and domination, and a practical example of an almost pure democracy most remarkably developed. Each canton or nation was a distinct republic, entirely independent of the others in what may be termed the domestic concerns of the State ; but each was bound to the others of the League by ties of honor and general interest. Each had an equal voice in the General Coun- cil, or Congress, and possessed a sort of veto power which A-to-tar-lio. was a guaranty against despotism. * % The mili- tary organization of the League seems to have been not only independent of the civil authority, but dominant of it. The military leaders were called chiefs. They derived their authority from the people, who recognized and rewarded their ability as warriors."

In the early days of the Iroquois Confederacy its members were commonly known to other Indians by the general name of "Mingoes" *- regardless of their tribal names and distinctions-and their Confederacy soon came to be called the "Five Nations." They rose rapidly in power and influence. One of the first results of their federal system was a universal spirit of aggression-a thirst for military glory and political

* 1n 1779, 1782 and 1832 certain Iroquois Indians-few in number-living on a branch of the Scioto River were officially denominated "Mingoes."

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aggrandizeinent, which made the old forests of America resound with human conflicts from New England to the Mississippi, and from the northern confines of the Great Lakes to the Tennessee and the hills of Carolina. The Five Nations never subjugated the Indians east of the Connecticut River, however.

The Five Nations were, indeed, entitled to respect, not only because of their fighting powers, but for their intelligence and long start toward civilization. They were by far the most advanced of the North American Indians. DeWitt Clinton denominated them "the Romans of the Western World."

"This empire of the Iroquois belongs not to remote antiquity, but is one of yester- day. When we have gone back 400 years everything beyond is shrouded in the dim twilight of Indian legend and scattered lore. In the centuries before our Revolutionary War this people had made a great deal of forgotten history on our continent. Among Indian races they had been supreme. They were master spirits, and the imperial nature ·of their ambition quite rivals that of many white races. With their seat of authority established in central New York they were masters of a domain which now forms many States. The territory over which they exercised their sway might well have been called an empire. Indeed, there was nothing boastful or unwarranted in their assump- tion of imperial rank for the chief man whom they chose to preside over them.

"The war-cry of this people was heard on the shores of the Mississippi and in Mexico. They went south as far as Georgia. When Capt. John Smith met some of the Mohawks paddling about Chesapeake Bay, other Indians told him that the Mohawks made war on all the world." North of the Aztec monarchy no people ever built up on this continent so powerful a political organization. It is believed that the conquests of the Iroquois reached to further limits than those of Greece, and that Rome herself did not much surpass them territorially.

"Theirs was not an Empire of the inind like Greece, of law and gold like Rome, but one purely of the sword, or the bow and arrow and the tomahawk. It was purely because of their genius for war that the Iroquois were able to raise themselves to their proud eminence. That genius acted in a land which had been built for empire. Morgan well pointed out that a great source of their strength lay in the lands which were their home, which were the highest on the continent, between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. There, in central New York, were the headwaters of great rivers-the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Susquehanna, the Ohio-which marked the highways along which they .could descend to the conquest of inferior races far to the south and west. Long before the white man had made New York State a seat of civilization this dusky warrior race had marked out our territory as a land of empire."t

About the year 1600 the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were distributed throughout northern New York as follows : The Mo- hawks (or Caniengas, as Hale says "they should properly be called")} possessed the Mohawk River, a small part of the territory south of it and nearly all the region in the north-east corner of the State to the St. Lawrence River-including what is now known as the Adirondack region. "They covered Lake George and Lake Champlain with their flotillas of large canoes, managed with the boldness and skill which, hereditary in their descendants, make them still the best boatmen of the North American rivers." Lake Otsego and Canadurango Lake (mentioned on page 32) lay within the Mohawk territory.

At this time the Mahikans, or Mohegans (referred to on page 101), were located south of the Mohawks, while west of them the Oneidas held a strip of territory, about thirty miles in width, extending from the present northern boundaries of the counties of Delaware and Broome north to the St. Lawrence-including the Chenango River and the sinall river and part of the lake which now bear the name Oneida.

* See pages 38 and 39.

+ FRANCIS W. HALSEY, in The New York Times Saturday Review, June 7, 1902.

t They were also called "Maquas." The word maqua has been translated as "bear" and as "man- eater." See further, foot-notes on pages 106 and 112.

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West of the Oneidas the imperious Onondagas, the central and, in some respects, the ruling nation of the League, possessed the region ex- tending from the present counties of Tioga and Broome northward to the south-eastern and eastern shores of Lake Ontario and a short stretcli of the St. Lawrence River. The territory of the Onondagas was smaller in extent than that of the Oneidas, and included within its limits the three lakes Skaneateles, Onondaga and Otisco and part of Oneida Lake.

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A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its first beginnings to the present time; including chapters of newly-discovered, Vol. I, Part 14

Author: Harvey, Oscar Jewell, 1851-1922; Smith, Ernest Gray Publication date: 1909-1930 Publisher: Wilkes-Barre : Raeder Press Number of Pages: 734

Author: Harvey, Oscar Jewell, 1851-1922; Smith, Ernest Gray
Publication date: 1909-1930
Publisher: Wilkes-Barre : Raeder Press
Number of Pages: 734