USA > Pennsylvania > Erie County > History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Volume One > Part 6
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"In this first war of the Eriez, which occurred in 1634, they proved themselves no despicable enemy. In 1653 they again engaged in war with the Iroquois. In this contest 'Greek met Greek,' and the event, otherwise doubtful, was decided by a pestilence which prevailed and swept off greater numbers even than the club and arrow. After their defeat according to Seneca tradition, they fled down the Ohio, and the once sacred peace-lodge of Yag-o-wanea was demolished. They were compeled to leave the land where Niagara pours its echoes and animates to heroic deeds. The Iroquois they found the worst of conquerors-inordinate pride, thirst of blood and dominion were the mainspring of their warfare, and their victories were stained with every excess of passion. When their ven- geance was glutted by the sacrifice of a sufficient number of captives, they adopted the survivors as members of their confederate tribes, sep- arating wives from husbands, and children from parents, and distributing (7)
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them among different villages, in order that old ties and associations might be more completely broken. This policy, as Schoolcraft informs us, was designated by a name which signified 'flesh cut in pieces and scattered among the tribes.' Jefferson says of them: 'They fled to dis- tant regions of the west and south, and wherever they fled they were fol- lowed by the undying hatred of the Iroquois. In accordance with the threat of the Onondagas, their council fire was put out, and their name and lineage as a tribe lost." So the tale was told by one who strove to set forth the facts in fairness to all.
This proud, brave and peace-loving nation, became thus the most unfortunate, although formerly the most honored, nation amongst the red men of this part of the continent. Their nation has long since been dissipated, and only tradition and a few names of places remain to testify to their former occupation of this section of the country. They have become almost as mythical and mysterious to moderns as have the Mound-builders themselves. No successor to Gegosasa, or to the great institution at Kienuka, or Fort Gau-strau-yea, was ever instituted. That institution, together with its significant mission on earth, was thus abruptly terminated. From that time on there seems to have been no regulation amongst the natives concerning their feuds or their warfare. Human instincts and passions, guided by ambition, or stimulated by revenge, thereafter controlled the actions of the red men, and was the condition when the French entered the St. Lawrence River basin in 1535.
We have no means of knowing just when the great confederacy of the Iroquois, known as the Hohnnonchiendi, or The Six Nations, came into being. But we do know that when the white people first came into this northern country that the confederacy was in full being and was full of potency for defensive purposes. It served the direct purpose of thoroughly uniting the Indians of this section of the land, and down to Albany in New York state. This group was thoroughly warlike, powerful, and enter- prising. They thus interposed a most ample and substantial barrier to the exploration of their part of the country.
Perhaps the reader has often wondered why the French took such a long time to penetrate to Lake Erie after they had become so well acquainted with the lower reaches of the river which drained it. One of the reasons was the open and active hostility of the Iroquois to them. This hositility had arisen out of the conduct of Champlain towards the Indians when he and his men had journeyed into the wilderness and laid
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claim to the discovery of the beautiful lake which later bore his own name. His indiscrete actions there brought on a strife which resulted in much bloodshed, and an endless amount of antagonism to the French interests. This attitude of the Iroquois was well known to the French, and instilled into the French mind a wholesome respect for the wishes of those natives. Explorers approaching the territory inhabited by these Indians were either captured and tortured as a sort of reprisal, or discovered many reasons for safely avoiding actual contact with them. In consequence all of the earlier French expeditions outfitted for the western country passed well to the north of the Iroquois' lands, and whenever later expedi- tions passed through Lake Ontario, bound for the Niagara or Toronto stations, they invariably sought the safe waters of the northern shore for many years rather than risk falling in with any of the watchful Iroquois.
Another sufficient reason was, that the earliest explorers had ascended the St. Lawrence River until the broad mouth of the Ottawa River opened out to them upon their right hand, with its strong deep and broad current flowing out of the great west which they were seeking to reach; and thus they found a beckoning invitation to ascend the Ottawa River, rather than the St. Lawrence, which stretched away amongst the hills towards the territories infested with their arch enemies. The Ottawa River afforded them a very direct route nearly to good passages into Lake Huron, and of course thence to Mackinac and the upper waters of the great lakes system. Once launched upon this route, it became the usual and accustomed passage way for their expeditions, and little thought was given, for many years, to what lay up the St. Lawrence. In fact until their plans became more involved with the territories lying south along the newly discovered Mississippi River, and south into the Illinois and Indiana territories, no interest seems to have manifested itself as to where the waters of the St. Lawrence reached, or to the problem as to whether the current of that great river was identical with the current from the waters abounding about their post at Michillimackinac. For a long time they were intent upon exploiting the fur trade which they had opened up along the upper shores of Lake Huron, and of proselyting the Indians of those regions to the Roman Catholic faith. Many stations were established for both purposes; and these required frequent expedi- tions from the eastern supply depots to carry arms, ammunition, clothing, and other necessities to the traders and missionaries, as well as to carry
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the needed goods with which to barter for the immense quantities of peltries obtained by the Indians for them in that great hunting ground. The Ottawa River and its portage was in consequence, a very busy route for a long time before the first white man laid eyes upon the western shores of even Lake Ontario.
Another reason perhaps, was that even those Indians who were friendly to the French, were highly superstitious along certain lines. One of their most venerated objects in this great wilderness was the resi- dence of the Great Manitou in the surging spray and wild waters of Niagara Falls. They were exceedingly loath to have alien eyes behold the sacred place of abode of this powerful spirit. The place was regarded by themselves with awe and worship. Every instinct of their individual and national life restrained them from even divulging the existence of the place; least of all, its whereabouts. And so it transpired that the French interest was constantly diverted by them from that whole region, and was only developed by reason of their greed and thirst later to estab- lish themselves in the Ohio country before the English could acquire its possession.
To us it is highly interesting to peruse the first efforts of the French explorers, engineers and mappers to portray the extent and character of this region. Those efforts are highly romantic and exaggerated sketches of the territory. For many years even the St. Lawrence River was shown upon their drafts in a grossly erroneous form and course, while this region which we now occupy was left upon those same sketches entirely blank. Even Lake Erie was omitted from them, without even a hint that a body of water of any description lay anywhere in the region where its waters flowed. It amuses us also now, to reflect that they advanced no theory to account for the destination of currents, composed of such vast quan- tities of steadily flowing waters, which they knew passed by their various stations in the north.
However, little by little stray bits of information came to them, and from such rumors and crude descriptions overheard by them, they com- menced to construct the early maps of this region. But even yet no consistent effort was attempted to penetrate the wilderness in this direc- tion for first hand and accurate data. Their maps and drafts therefore exhibit to us of today the most crude and visionary caricatures; wholly at variance with the facts.
In 1566 one of these early maps shows a large unnamed river which
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
R. Pommes
Tjadra Main
ERIE
LAKE
Portage
old
"Plate 1.
Little Lake" Ft. Le Boeuf
.......
....
Indian
....
Ft. Weningo ( Venany) (Franklin)
. Place 2
Cr.
· Byt. Licking
Cr.
Toby's
French
Mogulbutighton Cr.
Mittanning
Trail
....
108
Riviere;
B
AA Ft. Duquesne (Pitt ) (Pittsburg)
Braddock's +
Field
Part of NEW FRANCE. Showing Portages, Forts, Ancient Trail, and Water Routes From Lake to Fr. Duquesne. ( Adapted from various old Maps)
sarco mill +
.........
R. Au Boeufs
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
might, without much of a stretch of the imagination, stand for the St. Lawrence; while south of it the map-maker, who was Zalterii, of Venice, showed a large "lago," and this emptied into the sea through a rather short river which he dubbed the "S. Lorenzo." Excepting for this the whole region of the lakes was left blank. After Jacques Cartier, in 1535, entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence, most of the early mappers show vaguely a river in the region where he discovered its entry into the ocean. It came to be accepted that a lake, or lakes, of considerable extent, must form the sources of the St. Lawrence, and so Mercator in 1569 very sketchily indicates lakes as its sources; and following this map in 1570, Ortelius adopts his conclusions. Mappers throughout that period adopted these views, without any real knowledge of the facts, so that the whole vintage of the maps of that period but vaguely depict rumors which had passed through many minds before they reached the engraver. Even in 1592, one hundred years after the discovery of America, Emeric Molineaux shows a small lake up in this territory beyond where he conceives the St. Lawrence heads. This old map is still preserved in London. But in 1600 he drafts another map of the region and draws this little lake as a very large one, with two communications, the one with the St. Lawrence eastwardly, and the other towards the north and entering the north- ern sea.
The first indication that the French had even heard of Niagara is found in the map drawn by Marc Lescarbot, in 1609. Upon this draft he indicates a "saut" or fall, and locates it at the extreme west end of a great river. This great river is no doubt intended as the St. Lawrence. This was no doubt drawn from Indian rumors which had reached the French. This cataract seems to have been heard about long before they had any definite reports about the size or situation of the great lakes. Perhaps the first satisfactory showing of the St. Lawrence, and certainly of Lake Champlain, although far from accurate, is in 1612, when Champlain pub- lished his map of the region. It shows a fairly large lake from which flows the St. Lawrence, and at its western end enters a stream flowing from another lake which is indicated as "a great lake 300 leagues long," while close to the place where this latter stream empties is a spot marked "Waterfall". Another large lake south of the first one is marked "lac des irocois," with a river flowing north and into the lake from which flowed the St. Lawrence. But the first two lakes bear no name.
In 1631 a map-maker named Henrico Hondio published his map
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named "America," showing the St. Lawrence as phenominally enlarged, and with a number of tributary streams entering it from their several sources in large lakes ; but he gives none of these lakes, nor the streams, any names. On one of these streams flowing from the south-west he marks the words "Premier sault," showing that he had received rumors of a large waterfall situated upon one of the tributaries of the St. Law- rence. On Champlain's map published in 1632, after he had traveled through the Georgian Bay district, thence east to Lake Ontario near its eastern end, thence south across it and into central New York, is depicted Lake Ontario which he calls "Lac S. Louis". Lake Huron he styles "Mer Douce"; but it is a greatly exaggerated lake with its eastern end opposite the middle of Lake Ontario, and with a waterfall marked west of Lake Ontario as "Waterfall, very high, at the end of St. Louis fall, where several sorts of fish are stunned in their descent."
A map of De Laet's in 1633 shows Lake Ontario as a very small lake, but west of it is one large enough to comprehend all the rest of the lakes in this whole region. The former was labelled "Lac des Yroquois," and the latter merely a grand lac," but without indicating any cataract in connection with either one.
The Royal Geographer, N. Sanson d'Abbeville, makes an effort to rep- resent the St. Lawrence River with some degree of correctness on his map entitled North America in 1650. He places Lake Ontario under the title of "L. de St. Loys," and southwest from it he places a large lake without naming it. Lakes Huron, and even St. Clair are indicated, with the Detroit River shown, while Lakes Michigan and Superior have their eastern lines indicated and their western boundaries are left to the imagi- nation of the reader. He shows a river between Erie and Ontario, but omits mention of the cataract. The region north of Lake Erie is named "N. Neutre"; that to the south "N. du Chat," Neuter Nation and Nation of the Chat, respectively.
Thirteen years before La Salle is known to have been in this region although he has been the alleged discoverer of Niagara, the official map maker of France issues a map in 1656 of "Canada or New France" upon which are portrayed "Lac de St. Louys" and southwest from it "L. Erie, ou de Chat," with a very long river connecting them broken by "Ongiara sault," a corrupted spelling of the older word "Onguiaahra." This, how- ever, does not yet bear the earmarks of one who had been upon the ground. But Galinée's map of 1670, a sketch of the lakes and river region
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which he and some associates had traveled through the previous year, although not accurate, yet forms a graphic picture fairly satisfactory, of this region and the lower St. Lawrence basin, together with the Genesee River and several native villages in the Iroquois country. A remarkable feature of this map is the notation in the Seneca territory, of a "fontaine de bitume," evidently a natural outflow of petroleum, the first discovery of this product, evidently, in the country. He also notes "Fall which descends, by report of the natives, more than 200 feet," but the river is shown very much elongated. This sketch shows Long Point wholly out of proportion and size, as "Presque Isle de Lac D'Erié," while the bay behind it is named "Petit lac d'erié." He enlightens us, however, with the statement, "I show only what I have seen until I see the rest," and without showing the south shore of Lake Erie at all.
The most wonderful title applied to our lake is to be found in Cor- onelli's map of the western part of Canada or New France issued from Paris in 1688, on which is shown, with fair correctness, the entire chain of lakes, with the outlet rivers from each, and the lower lakes labelled "Lac Erie ou Teiocharontiong et Lac de Conty et du Chat," and the "Lac Frontenac, ou Ontario et Skaniadorio u St. Louis." He notes of Lake Erie, "It empties into Lake Frontenac." Of Niagara he tells us, "100 tois en perpendiculaires," which signifies about 640 feet, a somewhat interesting and wonderful natural feature of the landscape. The French must have established posts before this, as he indicates Forts Conty (mouth of Niagara River) and Frontenac on the north side of the St. Lawrence where that river receives the waters from the chain of lakes. He shows a small creek entering Lake Erie at what is likely the Eighteen Mile Creek west of Buffalo.
Coronelli published other maps of the region in 1689, with nothing about the Presque Isle or Chautauqua region, but does indicate the lower Ohio, and its upper course as he supposes it to run, shown by dotted lines; another in the same year, with similar data, and all noting many Indian towns and villages especially about Lake Ontario.
Guillaume Delisle published a number of maps, one of which, Paris, 1700, indicates Forts Frontenac and Niagara ; while one in 1703, "Mexique" notes Fort Niagara as "Fort Denonville," and shows the Wabash River just skirting the south shore of Lake Erie, and following its name the words "otherwise named Ohio or beautiful river." Another of his maps names Long Point as "Pte. de l'Est" (East Point).
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
De Fer, Paris, 1702, published a map with our lake dubbed "Lac Frié," and with the location of a fort marked on it somewhere in this gen- eral region, but not named. Certainly there could have been no construc- tion by white men in a region where as yet their information even was by Indian report rather than by personal inspection.
On Delisle's map of "Louisiana, etc.," Paris, 1718, Niagara is ex- plained as "600 feet high," while our shore of the lake is not shown; but Long Point is indicated as "La Grand Pointe"; the Ohio River is shown as being a tributary of the Wabash. The western end of Lake Erie is shown with a fine bay marked "Lac Sandouské."
A most ambitious and droll depiction of our region is attempted by Herman Moll in his map of 1719, called "A new and correct map of the whole world," which shows a most wonderful river rising in Virginia, and flowing northwest until it empties into Lake Erie at about where Silver Creek now is. This river he names "Conde," our lake is "Errie," Ontario is "Frontignac," while the cataract is labeled "the great Fall of Niagara." A later map terms our lake, "Irrie."
A map of something like real merit was published by the French Engineer, Jacques Nicolas Bellin, dated Paris, 1744, where for the first · time some of the prevailing errors of previous publishers have been eliminated. The Ohio river has been removed from the south shores of our lake, and seems to have been permanently located about where it is now; and it is the Wabash which is its tributary, instead of the reverse. This map shows one of the sources of the Ohio as in "Lac Hiatackoun," which is placed near to Lake Erie. This lake seems now, for the first time to find a place upon the early maps; for it was first found by the expedition of 1739.
In 1740, his map of the country omits the name of Chautauqua Lake, but indicates a portage between it and Lake Erie. On this map is shown for the first time the upper Allegheny, with Le Boeuf River and Le Boeuf Lake, and numerous Indian villages and towns along both streams.
About 1750, his later map terms the Genesee River the "Casconchia- gon," Lake Chautauqua as "Lac Tjadakoin," our south shore shows "Presqu' Isle" peninsula and the fort, with "Grande Pointe" across the lake.
The first American map-maker was Lewis Evans, who prepared a most worthy and famous map which ran a publication of ten different editions between 1755 and 1807, the first being published by Benjamin
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Franklin and D. Hall of Philadelphia. Although an extremely competent maker of maps, Mr. Evans died poor, his work having been pirated and published without authority by others who reaped the profits from it. On this the great cataract is named "Oxniagara," the Indian gutteral gh or ch in the word being here represented by an X, and often by a character nearly like the figure 8. The lake and portage to Chautauqua are called "Jadaxque." The portage at Presque Isle is shown with a dis- tance of fifteen miles. While much data never before shown concerning this region is noted, yet, strange as it may seem, Lake Erie is left prac- tically blank. A map attributed to Hennepin shows our lake extending far to the south, practically as far as Virginia, calls our lake "Lac du Conty," and having other extravagant data. Another one exhibits a very large river flowing from the southeast into the eastern end of Lake Erie, termed the River Condé.
CHAPTER IV
FRENCH ACTIVITIES.
DISCOVER NIAGARA-LA SALLE AND HIS "THE GRIFFON" THE FIRST WHITE MAN'S VESSEL TO SAIL LAKE ERIE-DENONVILLE'S EXPEDITION AGAINST THE IROQUOIS-DESTRUCTION OF INDIAN ORCHARDS AND CORN-INDIAN AGRICULTURE AND VAST CROPS.
The advent of the first white person into what might be termed the Niagara region, of which, for our purposes, our county really forms a part, is very conjectural, although with strong probability that he was a · young French interpreter named Etienne Brulé. He seems to have been with Champlain in the Huron regions, but appears to have parted com- pany with that distinguished explorer in September of 1615, and volun- teered a journey into the territory of the Andastes Indians, who appear to have then occupied the southern shores of our lake from Buffalo west, and eastward to the head-waters of the Susquehanna River. He tried to stir them up to enter a campaign against the Iroquois. This makes it seem that he must have passed through the western New York Country, for he seems to have come out upon Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Humber River (Toronto) and was probably the first white man to see that lake. If he traveled round the west end of Lake Ontario he must have seen Lake Erie, probably the falls. But that is very problematical; and it is quite possible, too, that he may have crossed Lake Ontario by canoe without reaching Niagara.
However, it was Brulé who made a wonderful report about the Neutre Nation when he returned to the mission station of the French Called "Toanchain," in the Huron country, and it was his report which
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inspired the Franciscan Friar, Joseph de la Roche Dallion in October, 1626, to journey to the villages of the Neutres, where he spent three months visiting with them, and assuring them that "I came on behalf of the French, to contract alliance and friendship with them, and to invite them to come and trade." He relates how kind and receptive they were, especially in the matter of his little presents of small knives, and that as a mark of their great trust and affection, they adopted him to "Souharis- sen, who was my father and host." Here is the first time an individual native in this region is mentioned in history, so far as we can learn; and the barter by this Franciscan seems to have been the very first bartering in this region between white folks and the Indians. It is related that Chief Souharissen had under his reign or leadership "28 towns, cities and villages, besides several little hamlets of seven or eight cabins." However, Dallion soon returned to their Huron mission which seems to have been situated in the modern town of Medonte, Ontario, which is on Georgian Bay near to Penetanguishene, after having endured many hard- ships, largely due to his having no interpreter through whom to converse with the Indians. Several "Fathers" of the Recollect orders seem to have followed to the Neutrals; and one of them, Father Lallement, seems to have been greatly impressed with the future possibilities for trading upon the great waterways forming the Great Lakes System; for he writes in 1640 that "if once we were masters of the coast of the sea nearest the dwellings of the Iroquois, we could ascend that river (St. Lawrence) without danger, as far as the Neutral nation, and far beyond, with con- siderable saving of time and trouble." Until the publication of Father Hennepin's "Louisiane" in 1683, the great cataract was denominated as "Onquiaahra" and as "Ongiara," which seems an effort to abbreviate the spelling of the same Indian gutteral sound. But with Hennepin's work we have the first spelling of the word as we have it now, "Niagara." Father Paul Ragueneau in 1647-8, writes about it "Almost due south from the country of the same Neutral nation, we find a great lake nearly 200 leagues in circumference, called Erie; it is formed by the discharge of the Fresh Water Sea (Huron), and throws itself over a waterfall of frightful height, into a third lake, named Ontario, which we call Lake Saint Louys."
At length France takes a determined step towards establishing dic- tatorial rights and powers within this territory, when several independent expeditions joined forces, with Francois Dollier de Casson a native French
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soldier-priest who had the reputation of being able to hold a man upon either palm with his arms extended; Rene de Brehant de Galineé, of a noble Breton family who had astronomical skill and an adept at map- making; and Rene Robert Cavalier, de La Salle, twenty-six years of age, who had sold his property on Montreal Island which he called St. Sulpice, but which has become universally known as La Chine, and with the pro- ceeds had equipped an expedition with which he was about starting for the western country, when he was persuaded to join in with the others. So, on July 6, 1669, this augmented force left Montreal with nine canoes and twenty-one men, and explored the east end, and then the southern shore, of Lake Ontario as far as Irondequoit Bay, where they took across country to the southward into the land of the Senecas, hoping to get a guide to the Ohio country. Tarrying here several weeks, they at last were forced to abandon this plan and returned to their canoes at Iron- dequoit Bay, and continued westward along Lake Ontario until, as Gal- lineé writes, "We discovered a river one eighth of a league wide and extremely rapid, which is the outlet or communication from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The depth of this stream (for it is properly the river St. Lawrence) is prodigious at this spot; for at the very shore there are 15 or 16 fathoms of water, which fact we proved by dropping our · line." This, then, is the first description by white folks of this great river from a personal inspection. Strange that they did not go up the river to see the great falls, but he adds "our desire to go on to our little village called Ganastogue Sonontoua Outinaoutoua prevented our going to see that wonder," adding that the Indians told them about it, which was "higher than the tallest pine trees; that is, about 200 feet. In fact, we heard it from where we were." But they went on to the west along the shore of the lake, reaching Burlington Bay, past the present city of Hamilton, and thence by an Indian trail they presently reached the Grand River. About there, on September 24, they met Joliet, Pere and the expedition coming eastward. Joliet had come down Lake Huron, through the rivers St. Clair and Detroit, which as yet had not received their names, had sailed along the north shore of Lake Erie, and then up the Grand River where the two parties had met. Therefore we may con- clude that Lake Erie was discovered from the west, rather than from the east; and that Joliet, Pere and party, were the first white men to actually see it and to sail over it, although Brule may have done so, but that is mere conjecture.
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