History in Our Backyards An Anthology of Genesee Country Writings Part One: Ancestral Lands "History is like a moving stream or an endless tapestry woven of many threads. One of the things few of us realize is that the stream flows forever and there is no end to the tapestry and its threads. For history is now as well as yesterday." Howard C. Hosmer, Monroe County, 1821-1971, (Rochester Museum and Science Center, Flower City Printing, 1971) 22.   ~ During glacial periods that pushed animals and humans away from Siberia, the area of today’s Alaska was not icebound. A corridor hundreds of miles wide ran between icy plateaus up to 10,000 feet high, from the Arctic east of the Rockies to open country south of Canada. About 1,000 A.D., trade was carried along a sea corridor that reached across the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River, from the Gulf Coast to Wisconsin and from New York to Kansas and Nebraska. In addition to tools, clothes and weapons, ideas, customs and ceremonies were also exchanged. Obsidian was traded from the Rockies to Ohio, tobacco from Virginia to the St. Lawrence River, copper from the Canadian border to North Carolina and flint, pipestone and salt was traded everywhere. William Brandon, The American Heritage Book of Indians, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1961) 16-17, 50, 148. ~ Archeologists have traced three waves of wandering Algonkians, along with a mound-building and an Eskimo-like people in western New York before the Senecas who were Iroquoian speakers and deadly foes of the Algonkians. Arch Merrill, Land of the Senecas, (American Book-Stratford Press Inc.: NY, 1969) 25-6. ~ The City of Geneva reclaimed a marshy overgrown area along Seneca Lake in 1922 and made it a park, now Seneca Lake State Park, on 141 acres on Routes 5 & 20, the original Seneca or Iroquois Trail. Bones, stone points and tools were there found in 1935. Archaeologists determined the artifacts belonged to a Lamoka culture who lived in central New York from 3500 to 2000 B.C.E. The Lamoka moved to the area because of the fish and game along Seneca Lake, south to today's Schuyler County. They ate deer, pigeon, turkey, hares, mussels, bullhead, pickerel; and ground acorns into flour. Emerson Klees, The Erie Canal In The Finger Lakes Region, (Roch. NY: Friends of the Finger Lakes Pub., 1996) 127; also, Klees, Legends and Stories, (Roch. NY: Friends of the Finger Lakes Pub., 1995) 3. ~ Ancient mound builders raised corn and vegetables, made hand-woven fabrics, grooved axes, shell beads, bone and antler implements and pottery in many villages in the westernmost counties of New York, and in Squawkie Hill, near Mount Morris and Vine Valley near Canandaigua. A second group of wandering Algonkians worked in bone and stone, made crude pottery and lived on wild vegetables in large encampments, often along waterways. Ancient village sites were at the location of University of Rochester, Keuka College, Mendon Ponds, Ellison, Durand-Eastman and Maplewood parks and the hills overlooking Irondequoit Bay. Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 26-7. ~ An historical marker on the river path north of Elmwood Avenue, near the University of Rochester Interfaith Chapel reads: "Indian Town. In primitive wilderness here was a large Algonkin village whose bark cabins and tilled fields covered 9 acres. University of Rochester, June 2002." University of Rochester, River Campus ~ The Iroquois are believed to be descendants of ancient Asian nomads who crossed the Bering Strait during the Ice Age and reached the Great Lakes and eastern North America about a thousand years ago. Lydia Bjornlund, The Iroquois, (Lucent Books, 2001), 8. ~ There was a varied group of Iroquoian-speakers living between the Algonquin-speaking nations of the east coast and the Great Lakes. In addition to the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk in New York area, there were the Hurons in the north; the Tobacco Nations and Neutrals in the west; the Erie in the southwest and the Susquehanna or Conestoga in the south. Archaeological remains show that Iroquoian-speaking people lived in the lower Great Lakes for about two or three centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans. The group now called the Iroquois had villages in Central New York from the Genesee River to Lake Champlain. They come from agricultural people called Hodenosaunee, or People of the Longhouse. During the 1600s before the arrival of European weapons and diseases, there were 90-100,000 people in the Algonquian-speaking tribes throughout North America. Brandon, American Heritage Book of Indians, 174-75. also, Blake McKelvey, The Seneca "Time of Troubles (Rochester, NY: Roch. Hist. Series vol. 13 jly 1951) 2. also, Candy Moulton, Everyday Life Among the American Indians 1800 to 1900 (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 2001), 217-19. and, Grolier, Iroquois League, Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1997. ~ The many groups of Ongweh-owheh or Genuine People, fought amongst themselves before a Huron, Degandawida, brought a message of peace and power that was first accepted by a woman who became called Jigonsaseh, meaning New Face or New Mind. After Degandawida and Jigonsaseh united with Ayonwartha (a.k.a. Hiawatha, b. about 1450) the League of Five Nations was founded on the Great Law of Peace around 1525 at a Great Council Fire in Onondaga (near today's Liverpool.) Ayonwartha who lived in an Onondaga village west of Syracuse, showed the confederation how one arrow can be broken, but five tied in a bundle could not. The laws introduced by the three, gave authority and respect to women who chose the council leaders. They introduced a new law, of exchanging wampum to replace the tradition of killing a a murderer or innocent relative in revenge for a murder. It was written with shells and beads into a wampum belt that is considered the earliest surviving record of a peace-based law. This powerful alliance ended much of the brutal feuding and torture among the Iroquois tribes. It helped the Five Nations thrive amidst their North American enemies and historians consider it the most organized and sophisticated government north of Mexico, nearly invulnerable until the American Revolution. Irene A. Beale, Genesee Valley Women, 1743-1985, Geneseo, NY, Chestnut Hill Press, 1985) 1-2. also, Emerson Klees, People of the Finger Lakes Region, (Roch. NY: Friends of the Finger Lakes Pub., 1995) 175-'78. also, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 50, 10. also, Blake McKelvey, A Panoramic History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York, (Windsor Publications, 1979), 10. also, Grolier, Iroquois League, 1997. and, Brandon, American Heritage Book, 177. ~ The messengers for the Peace League met with the factions of the Senecas at Totiakton. One day while the grass was knee high, the skies darkened at midday until it was dark as night. The Senecas promptly agreed to join the League. A university professor later determined that the year was 1451 because there were total eclipses of the sun that year and in 664. Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 49-50. ~ The League of Five Nations (or Iroquois League, League of the Long House or Tree of Peace) consisted of the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca peoples. The Mohawk were the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Mohawk comes from mohowawog, "eaters of men." Oneida comes from Onayotekanona, People of the Standing or Upright Stone, for a large boulder by their village. Onondaga comes from Ononondowagah or Nundawaono, People of the Great Hill. Cayuga may mean, People at the Landing; and the Seneca, called Osininka, "people of the stone," were Keepers of the Western Door. Iroquois means Men of Men, also, from Ireohkwa, "real adders." Walter D. Edmonds, The Musket and the Cross, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968) 8. also, Brandon, American Heritage Book, 186. also, Densmore, Christopher, Red Jacket, Iroquois Orator and Diplomat, Syracuse University Press, 1999), 3. and, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 9. ~ The people of the Five Nations lived in semi-permanent fortified hilltop villages that they moved as needed when the soil and hunting grounds were depleted or when enemies threatened. As many as 20 extended families from a common maternal clan lived in the long houses. Men hunted deer and some bear for food; muskrat and beaver mostly for pelts; cleared fields and traded. Making war to protect the tribe was the main occupation and source of prestige for young men. Older men sat on councils where strong orators were held in high esteem. While caring for their children, women worked at their own pace gathering wild roots, nut, berries, plants and herbs and tended gardens of maize, beans, squash, called The Three Sisters; tobacco and sunflowers. They stored two-to-three years of dried harvest in storehouses for all to use. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 14; and, McKelvey, Panoramic History, 12. ~ The Five Nations held ceremonies founded in deep respect for the Earth's bounty. They had a Sun Festival in early spring. The Green Corn Festival was a large mid-summer feast that lasted for several days. The most elaborate was the Mid-winter Festival after the men returned from their big hunt. During this week-long event, the community also practiced dream-guessing, an important process in which dreamers went door to door to purge themselves of all their unfulfilled dreams. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 34-35. ~ The Great Council had 50 life-appointed sachems, male peace chiefs, who were nominated by head women of the clan. The chiefs were responsible for keeping internal peace, representing the tribes to outsiders and coordinating war against enemies. The Five Nations actively increased their numbers through war and the taking of captives. Major decisions were reached through unanimity, compensating for unequal numbers of tribal representatives. Densmore, Christopher, Red Jacket, Iroquois Orator and Diplomat, (Syracuse University Press, 1999) 7. and, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 52 ~ By 1600, there about 20,000 people in the Five Nations. Immense wealth generated by the fur trade led French, Dutch and English investors to vie for control of trade and portage routes for 150 years, using Nation warriors as scouts and guerrillas. Tribes seeking European weapons, whiskey, tools and clothes, shifted their alliances from the Five Nations to traders. At first, the Mohawks and Cayugas allied themselves with the French and the Seneca, Oneida and Onondaga sided with the British. Bjornlund, The Iroquois,16; also, Walter D. Edmonds, The Musket and the Cross, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968) 8; and, Encarta, 1994. ~ Seventy years of inter-tribal battles, called the Beaver Wars, started in 1609, when French traders helped Algonquin and Huron warriors--for the first time with guns--wipe out Five Nation enemies around Lake Champlain. Turner, Orsamus, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase and Morris Reserve, (Rochester, NY: 1851, revised 1946) 15, 37; also, Edmonds, The Musket, 10; also, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 55; and, McKelvey, The Seneca "Time of Troubles, vol. 13 jly 1951, 3. ~ The people of the Five Nations called themselves, We Human Beings and the Europeans, Axemakers. They began to ally with English traders in New England and the Dutch near today's Albany. These trade wars were the beginning of the breakdown of the Great Law of Peace. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 63. ~ Between 1640 and 1730, the Iroquois population was reduced by internal warring over European weapons and trade, exposure to ardent spirits--French brandy, English whiskey, Dutch gin and Caribbean rum--new European diseases and conversions to Christianity. Their population was cut in half in the first decade of the 1700s. Bjornlund, ,The Iroquois 20, 63, 81; also, Turner, History, 15. ~ In 1643, the Mohawks made a solemn and binding trade treaty with the Dutch called the Covenant Chain which the Dutch extended to the other Iroquois tribes. Even though the Dutch increased their trade with the Iroquois, the Iroquois were beginning to struggle because the beaver population in their territory was dwindling. The Huron fur trade was still thriving. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 59. ~ Through powerful diplomacy, the Five Nations joined a Covenant Chain in 1677 with the colonies of New York, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia. The Covenant gave the English defense and safe passage through Five Nation lands. The Iroquois Nation believed they had the right to trade with French traders, but New France was frustrated by their raids into Ohio, Illinois and Ontario, Canada, and was not eager to trade with them. In 1680, Albany became the main fur-trading center of English North America. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 59, 62. ~ The Covenant Chain of 1692 was recorded on a four-foot long wampum belt as two rows, representing two equal nations. One row was for the white man’s ship and the other for the Iroquois in their canoe, with a silver chain tying the ship and canoe to the Tree of Peace. The three links of the chain were: peace, friendship and forever. www.sixnations.org. ~ By 1720, the Five Nations Iroquois Confederacy stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and the St. Lawrence River to the Tennessee River. Encarta, 1994. ~ The Confederacy expanded between 1715 and 1722, when 1,500-2,000 Tuscarora from South Carolina joined the League as non-voting members, after warring with colonists. The League's name was changed to League of Six Nations. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 13, 17, 20. ~ The Covenant Chain weakened during the series of wars between the French and English. The English side won and the French and Iroquois were badly beaten during King George's War from 1744-48. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 63, 66. ~ During the colonial Indian wars, Dutch, French and English captives often refused to return to colonial civilization when they had the chance. Brandon, American Heritage, 242-43. ~ The Six Nation Iroquois League's strength and population peaked around 1750, when their control extended west to Kentucky and the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; north from Quebec to the southern shore of Lake Michigan; east to the Connecticut River and south to Pennsylvania and Chesapeake Bay. Despite their strength and prestige, the League was no match for European weapons, diseases and land fever. In the 1700s, the League attained the highest point of power and glory of any Indian nation north of Mexico. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 17, 20; also, Brandon, American Heritage, 188. ~ The three major groups of forest-dwellers in the 1750s were the Iroquois in the northeast, the Algonquin around the central Great Lakes area and the Southern nations. They didn't have fixed territorial borders, but their boundaries shifted as white settlers moved into the East Coast. They roamed widely to hunt, lived in permanent villages, often near rivers where they farmed the bottom lands. Paul O'Neil, (Alexandria, Va: Time-Life Books, The Frontiersmen, 1977) 77. ~ The French and Indian War began in 1754 and lasted seven years. In the decades after the Covenant Chain of 1677, other colonies became stronger participants in the alliance than New York. After England took direct control of the covenant in 1755, the Iroquois still remained the strongest link in the chain. Turner, History, 43; also, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 63, 67. ~ In the 1750s, there were no white settlements past German Flats, now Herkimer, N.Y. Lands south into Pennsylvania, north, and west into Ohio Country were controlled by the Six Nations. Densmore, Red Jacket, 3. ~ Indian runners had to have a good memory and stamina and could carry messages from Buffalo to Albany in three days. A Seneca who was called Otetiana in his youth and later Sagoyewatha, became a runner and spokesman for the Six Nations at Fort Pitt and Albany in 1775 and 1776. He assured the councils that the Six Nations intended to stay out of the conflict between the colonists and the English, saying, "This quarrel does not belong to us, and it is best for us to take no part in it; . . ." At first, the Oneida and the Tuscarora sided with the Americans, the Mohawks with the English; the Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca were neutral. Densmore, Red Jacket, 11. ~ North American Indians considered ginseng one of their most sacred herbs and added it to many herbal blends. They used to chew ginseng when running great distances to keep up their stamina. www.multiflora.com; www.quickchange.com/ginsengstore/history   ~ The Six Nation Iroquois League had a democratic political organization that compensated for unequal tribal representation in order to reach major decisions through unanimity. Their model of government was studied by several of the U.S.'s founding fathers including Richard Lee, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Benjamin Franklin was inspired by the Iroquois League and copied it in his plans for the federation of States. Grolier, Iroquois League, 1997; also, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 10; and, Brandon, American Heritage, 11. ~ In 1777, British Col. John Butler first tried without success to get the Six Nations to side with the English for an invasion of New York from Oswego. Densmore, Red Jacket, 12. ~ The Rev. Samuel Kirkland, who first came to the Genesee Country in 1765, had attended a mission school in Lebanon, Conn. with a Mohawk student, Joseph Brant. Because Kirkland had gained the Seneca Nation's trust, he was able to get them not to side with Mohawk clan chief Joseph Brant and British Col. John Butler. Turner, History, 130. ~ British Col. Butler held a council in July 1777 at Irondequoit Bay and with gifts and liquor, got the support of the Seneca Nation. Seneca Sagoyewatha took part in several battles against the Americans in June and July 1778. His lack of boldness in combat was not considered a total disgrace because of his young age. For his services as a runner, the English gave him a red jacket and a new name, Red Jacket. He wore both with pride. Densmore, Red Jacket, 11-13. ~ The Axemakers (European and colonial soldiers) were horrified by how ferocious Indian Nation warriors were so ferocious in battle. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 70-72; also, Golden Book of the American Revolution, Fred Cook, (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1959), 116, 160. ~ In retaliation for atrocities by the "Redskin-Redcoat menace," Commander George Washington sent 4,000 soldiers in 1779 to destroy the heart of the Seneca Nation, particularly Little Beard's Town (near Avon) to force them to move to Canada. Washington was by profession a surveyor who had recorded the topography of wilderness areas where he later campaigned. Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 71; also, Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 92; also, Turner, History, 83-4; also, Th. Metzger, Select Strange and Sacred Sites: The Ziggurat Guide to Western New York, (Exit 18 pamphlet, 2002) 20; and, John Keegan, Fields of Battle, The Wars for North America, (New York: Vintage Books, 1997) 9. ~ For several weeks, the 16 regiments under Gen. John Sullivan's soldiers destroyed the corn fields, orchards and 40 villages of the Seneca Nation around Elmira and northern Pennsylvania that sided with the English. Soldiers destroyed Kanadeseagea (Geneva), a Seneca town of 80 houses in the heart of orchard country, as well as Schoyere, Canandaigua, Honeoye, Kanagha and Geneseo's 128 buildings. They burned 160,000 bushels of corn and destroyed all but one village to the far west of the Genesee River, without achieving their purpose of wiping out the native enemies. Cook, Golden Book, 160-61; also, Turner, History, appendix, 473-74. ~ When the American Army reached the "Great Genesee Castle" at Little Beard’s Town, near Cuylerville, it had "128 houses, mostly large and elegant," and tremendous stores of corn and other crops, which were all burned. Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 30. ~ After Sullivan's soldiers left the area, the Indian Nations did not fully re-settle east of the Genesee River. They moved to the west side of the Genesee River around Geneseo, Mt. Morris and Avon, at Gardeau, Canadea, Tonawanda, Tuscarora, Buffalo Creek, Cattaraugus and Allegany. Turner, History, 84. ~ Indian Nation refugees who were totally dependent on the British for food, clothing and supplies, spent the winter of 1779-80 in squalid camps near the fort at Niagara. The British supplied desperate and angry warriors with food, guns and powder. Cook, Golden Book 160-61; also, Densmore, Red Jacket, 14; and, Bjornlund, The Iroquois, 71. ~ As early as 1780, Seneca fugitives relocated near the English along Buffalo, Tonawanda and Cattaraugus creeks, Lake Erie and the Allegany River. Some Seneca returned to Canawaugus, Squawkie Hill, Big Tree and Caneadea. Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 95. ~ By 1780, the largest portion of Indian Nation refugees who built homes along Buffalo Creek were displaced Seneca, Cayugas, Onondagas and Munsees. The Seneca and Six Nations were unsettled for the next 30 years. Most of the Seneca remained for a time on their ancestral lands. The Six Nations became split between those living in the U.S. and in Canada. Red Jacket/Sagoyewatha lived at Buffalo Creek for most of the rest of his life, speaking in the Six Nations' councils from 1775 to 1788. Densmore, Red Jacket, 14, 22. ~ During the spring of 1780, Mohawk clan chief Joseph Brant led raids to punish the Oneida and Tuscarora for being American allies. English, Loyalist and Four Nation fighters continued brutal raids known as the Border Wars, from Canada, Oswego and Niagara into the Mohawk Valley in New York and Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania frontiers, in 1780, '81 and '82. After 300 years, the Law of Great Peace was broken. Ebenezer "Indian" Allen, a former lieutenant in the British Indian Department, led a raid in New Jersey in 1782. He then retreated to the Gardeau Flats near Mount Morris and kept track of the movements of the Seneca and settlers in the area. Turner, History, 79; also, Bjornlund, The Ironquois, 70; also, Cook, Golden Book, 161; and, David Minor, http://home.eznet/dminor. ~ Ebenezer Allen stayed at the Gardeau cabin of Mary Jemison in 1782-83 while working as an agent of the British Indian Department. In addition to an Indian wife, Sally, with whom he had two daughters, he had a common-law wife Lucy Chapman, and also six children with Millie Gregory, the daughter of a former Tory Ranger. Merrill, Arch, Pioneer Profiles, (American Book-Stratford Press Inc., NY, 1957) 119, 121. ~ The Treaty of Paris in 1783 set the 45th Parallel and Great Lakes boundaries between the United States and English possessions in Canada. England ceded all the land between the Allegany Mountains and the Mississippi River. It did not settle the status of the four Indian Nation’s English allies living in lands conceded to the United States. The Covenant Chain was shattered and a confederation in Ohio emerged as the new voice for the Nations. Densmore, Red Jacket, 14; also, Bjornlund, The Ironquois, 71. The new American government considered the Oneida and Tuscarora allies, but not the Seneca, Mohawks, Onondaga and Cayugas. Chief Joseph Brant and a large group of Mohawks moved to the Canadian side of Lake Ontario and rekindled a fire representing the Six Nations there. Bjornlund, The Ironquois, 74; also, Densmore, Red Jacket, 14, 29. ~ The Onondagas and the Oneidas ceded their lands to New York State.at a first treaty at Fort Stanwix (near Rome, N.Y.) in September 1784. Turner, History, 231. ~ The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in October 1784 defined the boundaries of the Indian Nations with a western boundary from Buffalo Creek to Pennsylvania, cutting off Seneca lands in the region. It denied Six Nation claims to ancestral lands in Ohio Country. Densmore, Red Jacket, 14. ~ A day after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was signed in 1784, Pennsylvania commissioners persuaded the Indian Nations to sell all their lands in northeastern Pennsylvania for $4,000 in goods. Even though a Six Nations' council refused to accept the treaty, the United States still considered it binding. Densmore, Red Jacket, 14; also, Bjornlund, The Ironquois, 74-5. ~ New York State acquired more Oneida and Tuscarora lands in June 1785. Densmore, Red Jacket, 23. After the Indian Nation domain west of the Genesee was sold at the Treaty of Big Tree, signed Sept. 15, 1797, reservations allotted were: Big Tree, two square miles; Little Beard’s Town, two square miles; Squawkie Hill, two square miles; Gardeau, 17,000 acres; Caneadea, 2 miles wide and eight miles long along the Genesee River; Buffalo Creek, 130 square miles; Tonawanda, 70 square miles along Tonawanda Creek; Cattaraugus, 17 miles along Cattaraugus Creek; Allegany, a strip 40 miles long and a mile wide on either side of the Allegheny River; and Canadaway, a small tract along Lake Erie in Chatauqua County. Merrill, Land of the Senecas, 102.