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 15
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Still proceeding westward, the lines of trail and river led to the long and winding reaches of Cayuga Lake, about which were clustered the towns of the people who gave their name to the lake .* The small- est of the five territories was that possessed by the Cayugas. It compre- hended parts of the present counties of Tompkins, Seneca, Cayuga and Wayne, and was bounded on the north by Lake Ontario. The Cayugas had several names when first known.
Beyond the Cayugan territory, over the wide expanse of hills and dales surrounding the lakes Seneca, Keuka and Canandaigua, were scattered the populous villages of the Senecas ("more correctly called Sonontowanas, or Mountaineers," says Hale).+ Their territory extended westward to the Genesee River, and was bounded on the north by Lake Ontario, and on the south by the region occupied by the Gachoi, or Gachoos. West of the Senecas at this period were the Neutrals, and south-west were the Eries, mentioned on page 107. "When first known the Senecas lived entirely in what is now known as Ontario County and in a small part of Monroe County, occupying several villages and having two conspicuous divisions. Tradition points to Yates County for their origin, and it is probable that forts in that direction may have been occupied by part of the nation.":
Jeffries says in his work on the human race that "the Five Nations, at the landing of the Pilgrims, constituted a rising power in America : and had not New England been settled by Europeans it is most likely that the Iroquois would have exterminated the inferior tribes of red men."
"To this Indian league," writes Morgan, "France must chiefly ascribe the final overthrow of her magnificent schemes of colonization
* The Indian name for this lake was Gwe-u-gweth, "the Lake at the Mucky Land."
+O. H. MARSHALL (in "Historical Writings, " page 231) says : "The name 'Senecas' first appears on a Dutch map of 1616. * * How this name originated is vexata questio among Indo-antiquarians and etymologists. 'The least plausible supposition is, that the name has any reference to the moralist Seneca. Some have supposed it to be a corruption of the Dutch term for vermilion, or cinnabar, under the assump- tion that the Senecas, being the most warlike of the Five Nations, used that pigment more than others, and thus gave origin to the name. This hypothesis is supported by no authority."
Schoolcraft (in his "History of the Indian Tribes," page 326) says: "The word Seneka, or Seneca, has been a puzzle to inquirers. How a Roman proper name should have become the distinctive cogito- men for a tribe of American Indians, it is not easy to say. The French, who first encountered them in western New York, termed them, agreeably to their system of bestowing nicknames, 'Tsonontowans' ; that is, 'Rattlesnakes.' * * * The Senecas call themselves 'Nundowa,' or 'People of the Hill,' from an eminence at the head of Canandaigua Lake, which is the locality of a popular allegory."
Dr. Beanchamp (previously mentioned), in an article on Indian names, published in the Syracuse Journal in 1896, wrote : "The name of the Senecas is an old one (although not their own), first appear- ing on the Dutch maps of 1614-16, and having been given them by the Algonkin tribes near the coast. These spoke a radically different language. In their tongue Sin-ne meant to eat,' and the form is still found in the Ojibwa-as in I'e-sin-ne, 'we eat.' It was variously spelled by the Dutch, the most common form being 'Sinneke,' or 'Sinneque,' and the spelling hardly suggests to the eye the Latin form so easily derived from it by the ear.
"Mr. Hale says that Sinako means 'stone snakes' in the Delaware, and that Mr. Squier was told that, as applied to this nation, their enemies, it meant 'mountain snakes.' This does not seem as well sup- ported as the other, and the more reasonable interpretation is thought to be 'the devourers, or eaters, of men,' actually or figuratively. All the early Iroquois had a terrible reputation in this way. Literally they were devourers of their enemies."
Says Heckewelder-quoting the Rev. C. Pyrlæns : "The Five Nations formerly did eat human flesh. 'Eto niacht ochquari,' said they, in devouring the whole body of a French soldier ; which, being inter- preted, is, 'human flesh tastes like bear's meat "' "-Hayden's "The Wyoming Massacre," page 33.
On the map on page 33, ante, and on the map of Pennsylvania in Chapter V (both of which were published in 1756), it will be noticed that the territory at that time occupied by the Senecas is indicated in these words: "Chenessies, Canasadages and Chenandoanes, called by the English SENECAS."
# Bulletin of the New York State Museum, No. 32, page 125.
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in the northern part of America." To insure their well-being in Canada the French took the part of the Algonkins, and consequently were led into conflict with the Five Nations. It was thus that came about the first recorded battle of whites and Indians, on the site of Ticonderoga, at the lower end of Lake Champlain, in New York, a description of which we owe to Champlain. It took place July 30, 1609, more than eleven years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock."
The introduction of gunpowder into America revolutionized the entire Indian mode of life. Learning the importance and use of fire- arms-cumbrous arquebuses and matchlocks-from the Dutch and in the hands of Champlain's followers, the Five Nations seized upon these new weapons as rapidly as they could acquire them from the Dutch, with whom they had made an important treaty near Fort Orange-later, Albany-about 1614. With the possession of fire-arms began not only the rapid elevation, but absolute supremacy, of the Five Nations over other Indian nations. Thus rendered formidable they fearlessly extended the range of their triumphs. Within little more than fifty years all western New York, northern Ohio and much of Pennsylvania and Canada were theirs. They had changed the map.
"They made war or peace with equal facility, holding with a death grasp to their old ideas and traditions, conquering and absorb- ing tribes, and getting the control and government of the country from the Carolinas on the south to the lakes on the north and the Mississippi on the west. The Mohawk* war-whoop was the terror of aboriginal life, and the signal-fires of the Iroquois League, illumi- nating the hills and valleys of the Atlantic coast, ineant danger to the outlying tribes. Their phenomenal fighting capacity, coupled with the rapidity of inovement and power of concentration of their fighting men, gave the impression of a vast number of warriors."- Thomas Donaldson, in "Report on Indians at the Eleventh Census," page 447.
In 1643 the Five Nations expelled the Neuter Nation from the Niagara peninsula, and established a permanent settlement at the mouth of that river. In 1654 they nearly exterminated the Eries-adopting into their Confederacy many of the survivors of the disrupted tribe. Ambition now stimulated every canton, or nation, of the Confederacy, and when, in 1664, New Netherland was surrendered by the Dutch to the Duke of York, and became the Province of New York, the council- fire of the Iroquois League, at Onondaga, burned still brighter and more fiercely. By the terms of this surrender the good will of the Five Nations was secured to the' English. Unaided by this influence New
* As previously noted (on pages 106 and 110) the Mohawks and the Iroquois were indiscriminately called "Maqnas" by certain tribes of hostile Indians. This was no doubt due to the fact that the Mo- hawks were for many years more widely known as fierce and indomitable foes than any of the other nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. In this respect they were predominant ; and therefore it naturally followed that. by those far removed from the seat of power of the Confederacy, the name of a well- known section, or nation, of the latter should be applied to the entire body.
Dr. Beauchamp stated (in the article mentioned in the note on page 111) : "The early Dutch and English traders and colonists took the names of the interior tribes from the Algonkins, whom they first met along the coast. Thus the Mohawks were called by names which they themselves could not pro- nounce, their being no 'M' or other labial sound in the Iroquois dialects. The Dutch thus termed them 'Maguas,' or 'Maquas' ('Bears'), and this was gradually modified into Mohawks-also expressive of 'man- eaters.' Roger Williams says that 'the Mauguauogs, or man-eaters, that live two or three hundred miles west from us, make a delicious monstrous dish of the heads and brains of their enemies.' * * By the two early Algonkin names [Sinneke and Maqua], different in sound but similar in meaning, the Dutch and English long designated all the Iroquois-the Maquas, or Mohawks, being one part, and the Sinnekes. comprising all the rest."
Schoolcraft says ("History of the Indian Tribes," page 209) : "The warlike Mohawks were the most prominent tribe in the Confederacy at the time of the discovery of the Hudson."
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York, as well as the northern and central English colonies, could not have protected so wide a frontier without extraneous aid.
About the year 1670, after they had finally completed the dispersion and subjugation of the Adirondacks and Hurons, the Five Nations acquired possession of the whole country between the lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, and of the north bank of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Ottawa River near Montreal. They also, about this time, became the terror of the New England tribes, who had been practically sub- jugated by the English. As to the warfare successfully carried on by the Five Nations against the Susquehannocks for several years prior to 1675, reference has already been made (on pages 39 and 40). In 1680 the Senecas, with 600 warriors, invaded the country of the Illinois Indians, upon the borders of the Mississippi, while La Salle was pre- paring to descend that river to the sea. At various times, botlı before and after this period, the Five Nations turned their warfare against the Cherokees upon the Tennessee River, and the Catawbas in South Carolina.
About the time William Penn landed in Pennsylvania (October, 1682), the once proud and powerful Lenni Lenâpés, who had then come to be called the Delawares, had been subjugated and "made women" by the Five Nations. It is well known that, according to this Indian form of expression, the Delawares were thenceforth prohibited from making war, and were placed under the sovereignty of their conquerors, who did not even allow sales of land-although the land might have been for some time in the actual possession of the Delawares-to be valid with- out their (the Five Nations) approbation. William Penn and his descendants, accordingly, always purchased the right of possession from the Delawares, and that of sovereignty from the Five Nations. It was with the Unami and the Unalachtigo clans of the Delaware nation that Penn held in 1683 his "Great Treaty" (referred to on page 40), which, says Voltaire, "was the only treaty ever made without an oath, and the only one kept inviolate."*
From the foregoing it will be observed that for nearly a hundred years prior to 1700 the Five Nations were involved in an almost unin- terrupted warfare. At the close of that period they had subdued and were holding in nominal subjection all the principal Indian nations occupying the territories which are now embraced in the States of New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the northern and western parts of Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, northern Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, a portion of the New England States and the prin- cipal part of Upper Canada. "Over these nations the haughty and iin- perious Iroquois exercised a constant supervision. If any of them became involved in domestic difficulties, a delegation of chiefs went among them and restored tranquillity, prescribing at the same time their future conduct." Upon the Algonkins the Five Nations looked down "with the most inveterate contempt."
During King William's War (which was waged for several years in a desultory manner between the English Colonies in America and the Five Nations on one side, and the French and Indians of Canada on the other, and which was ended by the treaty of peace at Ryswick in the Autumn of 1697) the French had found themselves so severely
* See on page 130 a photo-illustration of a wampum belt used at that treaty.
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taxed to resist the Five Nations, that the conclusion of the treaty of peace was most welcome news. Cadwallader Colden, in his "History of the Five Indian Nations"-previously mentioned, on page 32-says (page 202) : "Nothing could be more terrible to Canada than the last war with the Five Nations. While this war lasted the inhabitants ate their bread with fear and trembling. No man was sure, when out of his house, of ever returning to it again. While they labored in the fields they were under perpetual apprehensions of being seized or killed or carried to the Indian country, there to end their days in cruel torments. They, many times, were forced to neglect both seed-time and harvest. In short, all trade and business was often at an entire stand, while fear, despair and inisery appeared on the faces of the poor inhabitants."
"The Iroquois, in their best days, were the noblest and most interesting of all Indians who have lived on this continent north of Mexico. They were truly the men whom a name they bore described, a word signifying men who surpassed all others .* They alone founded political institutions and gained political supremacy. With European civilization unknown to them, they had given birth to self-government in America. They founded independence ; effected a union of States ; carried their arms far beyond their own borders ; made their conquests permanent ; conquered peoples becoming tributary States much after the manner of those which Rome conquered 2,000 years ago, or those which England subdnes in our day. In diplomacy they matched the white man from Europe ; they had self-control, knowledge of human nature, tact and sagacity, and they often became the arbiters in disputes between other peoples. *
* Convinced that they were born free, they bore themselves always with the pride which sprang from that consciousness. * * In war genius they have been equalled by no race of red men. The forts which they erected around their villages were essentially impregnable. An over- whelming force alone could enter them; artillery alone could destroy them. It was virtually an empire that they reared, and this empire of the sword, like the Empire of Rome, meant peace within its borders. Before the Europeans came there had, unques- tionably, for some generations, been peace among them. It was an ideal and an idyllic state of aboriginal life, all of which was to be overthrown by the white man when he · arrived, bearing in one hand fire-arnis, and in the other fire-water."-Francis W. Halsey, in "The Old New York Frontier," page 11.
"As in old Rome the soldiers were honored above all other men, so they were among the Iroquois ; and the warriors, under their chiefs, were all-powerful in public affairs. * * The Iroquois was only a barbarian more advanced toward civilization than the rest of his dusky brethren on the continent. He was superstitions and cruel. So
INDIANS TORTURING A FEMALE CAPTIVE.
After a painting by Capt. S. Eastman, U. S. A. (1856.)
were the men and women of all the other American nations. They all believ- ed in witches, as firmly as did Cotton Mather and a majority of civilized men and women in his day, in the light of Christianity ; and they punished them in luman form as fiercely and piously as did the illagistrates of Henry VIII, or the rulers and gospel-ininisters of Salem in later times.
"The 'medicine inen' and 'prophets' were as acute deceivers, and as despotic and absurd in social life, as were the priests and oracles and conjurers of the Civilized Man in another hemi- sphere. They tortured their captive enemies, in revenge for kindred slain, with almost as exquisite
* Schoolcraft, following Cadwallader Colden, says the Iroquois "by a hyperbole are also called Ongwi Honwi, 'a people surpassing others.' "
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a refinement of cruelty as did the ministers of the Holy Inquisition of Civilized Man the enemies of their opinions ; and they lighted fires around their more eminent prisoners of war, in token of their power, as bright and hot as those kindled by enlightened Englislı- men around Joan of Arc as a sorceress, or Bishops Latimer and Ridley as unbelievers in an utter absurdity."-Benson J. Lossing, in "Our Barbarian Brethren," previousty mentioned.
At an early day there were located in what is now the south-eastern part of the United States certain tribes who were believed to belong to tlie Iroquoian family of aboriginals. They are known in history as the "Iroquois tribes of the South," or "Southern Iroquois," and they occupied, principally, the territory along the Cliowan River and its tributary streams in Virginia and North Carolina. So far as known these tribes-with the one exception hereinafter noted-had no connection at any time with the Iroquois Confederacy. One, and perhaps more, of these tribes was known, particularly in Virginia, under the name of Monacan. Other tribes were the Chowan, the Meherrin (now said to have been identified with the Susquehannocks), the Nottoway, the Tutelo (now understood to have been a Siouan tribe) and the Tuscarora.
In 1708 the Chowans, Tuteloes and Notto- ways had together ninety-five warriors in North Carolina ; but the Tuteloes and Nottoways were principally seated in Virginia. The last-named had preserved their independence and their num- bers in Virginia later, even, than the one-time powerful Powhatans (referred to on pages 39 and 100), and at the end of the seventeenth century. had 130 warriors. They do not appear to have migrated from their original seats in a body. In the year 1822 they are said to have been reduced to twenty-seven souls in Southampton County, Vir- ginia,* and were still in pos- session of 7,000 acres of land there which had been at an early date reserved for them.
The Tuscaroras, or Dus-ga- NOT-TO-WAY ( "THE THINKER"), a "Southern Iroquois" chief.t o-weh-o-no ("Shirt-wearing Peo- ple"), were by far the inost lina in historic times prior to 1700. powerful nation in North Caro- Their principal seats in 1708 were on the rivers Neuse and Taw, or Tar, and they had about 1,200 warriors in fifteen towns. In 1711 the Tuscaroras attacked the English colonists,
* See "Report on Indians at the Eleventh Census, " pages 7 and 14.
+ This is a reduced facsimile of an outline drawing made by George Catlin from a portrait painted by himself at or near Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in 1831. Relative to Not-to-way Mr. Catlin wrote: "A temper- ate and an excellent man, and was handsomely dressed for his picture. I had much conversation with him. and became very much attached to him. He seemed to be quite ignorant of the early history of his tribe, as well as of the position and condition of its few scattered remnants who are yet in existence. He told me * * * that, though he was an Iroquois-which he was proud to acknowledge to me, as I was to 'make him live after he was dead'-he wished it to be generally thought that he was a Chippeway." * *
The Chippewas, or Ojibways (of the Algonkian family), had migrated from the East to the banks of the Mississippi River late in the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century. Later they ranged over the territory now comprehended in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and became very numerous and powerful. At various periods remnants of other tribes merged into the Chippewa tribe. and it is very probable that some of Chief Not-to-way's ancestors had belonged to the disrupted and dis- persed Nottoway tribe of Virginia and North Carolina.
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massacring 130 in a single day, and a fierce war ensued. In the Autumn of 1712 all the white inhabitants south and south-west of Chowan River were obliged to live in forts. In their warfare the Tuscaroras expected assistance from the Five Nations; but this could not have been given without involving the Confederacy in a war with the English-and so the Tuscaroras were left to their own resources. A force, consisting chiefly of "Southern" Indians, was sent by the Government of South Carolina to assist in the overthrow of the Tuscaroras, which was effect-
ually accomplished. More than 600 Tuscarora prisoners were taken, who were given into the hands of the "Southern" Indians, carried to South Carolina and sold as slaves. The eastern Tuscaroras-dwelling chiefly along the Taw-immediately sued for peace, and about the year 1714 the great body of the Tuscarora nation who were free removed to the territory of the Five Nations in the Province of New York. There, having been granted by the Oneidas land and the right of settlement within the bounds of the Oneida canton, they were admitted about the year 1715* into the Iroquois Confederacy, as the sixth nation.
They were admitted on the ground of a common generic origin ; retaining their own hereditary chiefs, but without enlarging the original framework of the Confederacy. They were never received into an equal alliance with the other nations, although they had authority to be rep- resented and enjoy nominal equality in the Council of Sachems of the Confederacy. "The accession of the Tuscaroras," wrote Schoolcraft, "however it might have pleased the cantonal government, could have added but little to the efficiency of a people who had, from the earliest times, been the terror of the Indian tribes."
For some years following the admission of the Tuscaroras to their League the Iroquois continued to be commonly called the "Five Nations,"f but in the course of time they began to refer to themselves as, and to be called by others, the "SIX NATIONS."
"The uncertainty and doubt surrounding most North American Indian history are partially removed from the Six Nations. They, of all American Indians, have best preserved their traditions. Besides, their system was so complete, and their governinent so unique and so well fitted to the people, that from the earliest European arrival they have been constantly written about. Their small numbers, compared with the enormous country they occupied and the government they originated, with their deeds of daring, will always excite surprise. Their League, tribal and individual characteristics and personal strength of will, together with their great courage and prowess, account for their success in war and the methods which brought comfort and peace."- Thomas Donaldson, in "Report on Indians at the Eleventh Census," page 447.
The Mohawks, Onondagas and Senecas were looked upon by the Six Nations as the "elder brothers" of their Confederacy, and were addressed as "fathers" by the Oneidas, Cayugas and Tuscaroras, who were styled the "younger brothers" and were addressed as "children." The historic center of the Confederacy was in what is now Onondaga County, New York-although not always in the same locality, it being
* See "Documentary History of the State of New York," I : 26; Morgan's "League of the Iroquois;" Larned's "History for Ready Reference," I : 92, and "Report on Indians at the Eleventh Census, " page 461.
f In evidence of this see the Indian deed of July, 1754, in Chapter IV.
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moved from place to place as necessity or convenience required. It was known as Onondaga Castle, and from 1756 to 1779, at least, was located half a mile south of the present village of Onondaga Valley, distant only a few miles from the present city of Syracuse, and six miles south of Onondaga Lake. This particular Onondaga Castle was a stockade, 150 feet square, with block-houses on two corners, built in 1756 by Sir William Johnson for the Onondagas. It was destroyed in April, 1779, by a force of American soldiers under command of Colonel Van Schaick -the Indians occupying it having first been killed or put to flight.
Highways running south, east and west led from Onondaga-one of the principal ones leading south to Tioga Point (see page 34). Also, upon the banks of the Susquehanna and its branches in New York, and upon the banks of the Chemung and its tributaries, which have their sources near the Genesee, were trails which converged upon Tioga Point. There all these became gathered into one trail, which, descending the North Branch of the Susquehanna for a short distance, branched into two great trails which led southward through Pennsylvania into Maryland and Virginia. "For centuries upon centuries," says Morgan, "and by race after race, these old and deeply worn trails had been trod by the red man."
At Onondaga was located the Council-house, "Long House"* or what might be called the "Federal Capitol" of the Six Nations. In 1764 the "Long House" was a building nearly eighty feet long, and contained four fire-places .; Here the "Great Council-fire" burned, and here general congresses were held and the policy of the Confederacy was agreed upon. According to Morgan ("League of the Iroquois") when the League was instituted fifty permanent, or hereditary, sachemships were created, with appropriate names, or titles .; In the sachems who held these titles were vested the supreme powers of the Confederacy ; and, united, these sachems formed the Great Council of the League, the ruling body, in which resided the legislative, executive and judicial authority. As a safeguard against contention and fraud, each sachem was "raised up" and invested with his title by the Great Council, with suitable forms and ceremonies. Nine of the sachemships were assigned to the Mohawk nation, nine to the Oneida, fourteen to the Onondaga, ten to the Cayuga and eight to the Seneca. This same system and form of government still prevails in the League of the Six Nations as it exists to-day, the Tuscaroras never having been granted any sachemships.
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