Part 20

They own the fee simple of about 5,000 acres, besides their reservation, which they purchased from the Holland Company.

NIAGARA FALLS.

This name is Mohawk. It means, according to Mrs. Kerr, the Neck, the term being first applied to the portage, or neck of land, between lakes Erie and Ontario.

BUFFALO.

Whence this name? The Indian term is Te-ho-so-ro-ro in Mohawk, and De-o-se-o-wa in Seneca. Ellicott writes it Tu-she-way. Others, in other forms. In all, it is admitted to mean the place of the linden, or bass-wood tree.

There is an old story of buffaloes being killed here. Some say a horse was killed by hungry _Frenchmen_, and palmed off for buffalo meat at the camp. How came a horse _here_?

A curious bone needle was dug up this year, in some excavations made in Fort Niagara, which is, clearly, of the age prior to the discovery.

Bones and relics must stand for the chronology of American antiquity.

America is the tomb of the red man. All the interest of its anti-Columbian history, arises from this fact.

ERIES.

By Father Le Moyne’s letter of 1653, [vide Relacions,] the war with the nation of the Cat or Eries was then newly broke out. He _thanks_ the Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas and Oneidas, for their _union_ in this war.

On the 9th August, 1653, we heard a dismal shout, among the Iroquois, caused by the news, that three of their men had been killed by the Eries.

He condoles with the Seneca nation, on the capture of their great chief, AU-REN-CRA-OS, by the Eries.

He exhorts them to strengthen their “defences” or forts, to paint their warriors for battle, to be united in council.

He required them never to lay in ambush for the Algonquin or Huron nations, who might be on their way to visit the French.

We learn, from this, that the Eries or Cat nation, were not of the Wyandot or Huron, nor of the Algonquin nations. It would seem that these Eries were not friends of the French, and that by exciting them to this new war, they were shielding their friends, the Algons and Hurons, from the Iroquois club and scalping knife. That they were the same people called the “Neuter Nation,” who occupied the banks of the Niagara, there is but little reason to believe. The Senecas called them Gawgwa or Kah-Kwah.

Cusick states that the Senecas fought against a people, west of the Genesee river, called Squakihaw, _i. e._ Kah-Kwah, whom they beat, and after a long siege took their principal fort, and put their chief to death. Those who recovered were made vassals and adopted into the tribe.

He states that the banks of the Niagara river were possessed by the Twa-kenkahor, or Missasages, who, in time, gave it up to the Iroquois peaceably. Were not these latter the Neuter Nation?

To discuss the question of the war with the Eries, it is necessary to advert to the geographical position of the parties. The Senecas, in 1653, as appears by French authorities, lived in the area between the Seneca lake and the Genesee river. The original stock of the Five Nations appears to have entered the area of western New-York in its central portions; and, at all events, they extended west of the Genesee, after the Erie war, and possessed the land conquered from the latter.

MISSION STATION, BUFFALO RESERVATION.

Seventy-four Seneca chiefs attended the general council held here. Putting their gross population at 2,500, this gives one chief to every thirty-three souls. This makes them “captains of tens.”

The Seneca language has been somewhat cultivated. Mr. Wright, the missionary, who has mastered the language, has printed a spelling book of 112 pages, also a periodical tract for reading, called the “Mental Elevator.” Both valuable philological data.

The Senecas of this reservation are on the move for Cattaraugus and Alleghany, having sold out, finally, to the Ogden company. They leave their old homes and cemetery, however, with “longing, lingering looks.”

Here lie the bones of Red Jacket and Mary Jemison.

Curious and interesting reminiscences the Senecas have. Jot down their traditions of all sorts. Can’t separate fiction from fact. They must go together; for often, if the fiction or allegory be pulled up, the fact has no roots to sustain itself.

KAH-KWAHS, ERIES, ALLEGHANS,—who were they?

Mr. Wright showed me an ancient triturating stone of the Indians, in the circular depressions of which they reduced the siliceous material of their ancient pottery.

The Seneca language has a masculine, feminine and neuter gender. It has also an animate and inanimate gender, making five genders.

It has a general and dual plural.

It abounds in compound descriptive and derivative terms, like the Algonquin.

They count by the decimal mode. There are names for the digits to ten. Twenty is a compound of two and ten, and thirty of three and ten, &c.

The comparison of adjectives is effected by prefixes, not by inflections, or by changes of the words, as in English.

Nouns have adjective inflections as in the Algonquin. Thus _o-a-deh_ is a road, _o-a-i-yu_ a good road. The inflection, in this last word, is from _wi-yu_, good.

IRVING, CATTARAUGUS CREEK.

It is a maxim with the Iroquois, that a chief’s skin should be thicker than that of the thorn locust, that it may not be penetrated by the thorns.

Indian speakers never impugn each other’s _motives_ when speaking in public council. In this, they offer an example.

Mr. Strong says, Silversmith of Onondaga, has the tradition of the war with the Eries.

INDIANS IN CANADA.

It is observed by a report of the Canadian Parliament, that the number of Indians now in Canada is 12,000. Of these, 3,301 are residing in Lower Canada, and the remainder 8,862, in Canada West. The number of Indians is stated to be on the increase, partly from the access of births over the deaths, and partly from a numerous immigration of tribes from the United States. This report must be taken with allowances. It is, at best, but an estimate, and in this respect, the Canadians, like ourselves, are apt to over estimate.

The Indian is a man who has certainly some fine points of character; one would think a man of genius could turn him to account. Why then are Indian tales and poems failures? They fail in exciting deep sympathy. We do not feel that he has a heart.

The Indian must be _humanized_ before he can be loved. This is the defect in the attempts of poets and novelists. They do not show the reader that the red man has a feeling, sympathising heart, and feeling and sympathies like his own, and consequently he is not interested in the tale. It is a tale of a statue, cold, exact, stiff, but without _life_. It is not a man with man’s ordinary loves and hopes and hates. Hence the failure of our _Yamoydens_, and _Ontwas_, and _Escatlas_, and a dozen of poems, which, although having merits, slumber in type and sheepskin, on the bookseller’s shelf.

HORTS’ CORNERS, CATT.

One seems here, as if he had suddenly been pitched into some of the deep gorges of the Alps, surrounded with cliffs and rocks and woods, in all imaginable wildness.

COLD SPRING, ALLEGANY RIVER. [Sep. 3.]

Reached the Indian village on the reservation at this place, at 9 o’clock in the morning.

Indians call the place Te-o-ni-gon-o, or De-o-ni-gon-o, which means Cold Spring.

Locality of the farmer employed by Quakers, at the mouth of a creek, called Tunasassa; means a clear stream with a pebbly bed.

Allegany river they call Oh_e_o, making no difference between it, and the stream after the inlet of the Monongahela.

Gov. Blacksnake absent; other chiefs, with his son Jacob meet in council; business adjusted with readiness.

Allegany river low; very different in its volume of water and appearance from what it was 27 years before, when I descended it, on my way to the WEST.

Lumbering region; banks lined with shingles, boards, saw logs. Indians act as guides and lumbermen.

Not a favorable location for the improvement of the Senecas. Steal their timber; cheat them in bargains; sell whiskey to them.

Had the imaginative Greeks lived in Allegany county, they would have pictured the Genesee and Allegany rivers, as two girls, who having shaken hands, parted, the one to skip and leap and run eastward to find the St. Lawrence, and the other to laugh through the Ohio valley, until she gradually melted into the ocean in the gulf of Mexico.

NAPOLI CENTRE.

The counties of Cattaraugus, Chautauque and Allegany, and part of Wyoming and Steuben, constitute a kind of Switzerland. The surface of the country resembles a piece of rumpled calico, full of knobs and ridges and vallies, in all possible shapes and directions. It is on the average elevated. Innkeepers and farmers encountered on two trips over it, say that there is considerably more moisture in the shape of rain and dews and fogs, than in the Genesee country. It is less valuable for wheat, but good for corn, grass, and raising stock. Nothing can be more picturesque. The hills are often cultivated to their very tops. It is healthy. Such a region is a treasure in a State so level and placid as much of western New-York; and had it the means of ready access to markets, and to the Atlantic, it would, in a few years, be spotted with gentlemen’s seats from the seaboard. There are some remarkable examples of the east and west, and north and south fissures of rocks (a trait also noted at Auburn,) in these counties. At one place, the fissures are so wide, and the blocks of rock between so large, that the spot is sometimes called CITY OF ROCKS. The rock here is conglomerate, i. e. the bed of the coal formation; a fact which denotes the elevation of the country. It is to be hoped, when this country is further subdivided into counties and towns, that some of the characteristic and descriptive names of the aborigines will be retained.

LODI.

This bright, busy, thriving place, is a curiosity from the fact, that the Cattaraugus creek, (a river it should be called) splits in exactly, or nearly so, in two parts, the one being in ERIE, the other in CATTARAUGUS. Efforts to get a new county, and a county seat, have heretofore been made. These conflict with similar efforts, to have a county seat located at Irving, at the mouth of the creek.

IRVING, MOUTH OF CATTARAUGUS.

This is a fine natural harbor and port of refuge. Its neglect appears strange, but it is to be attributed to the influence of capitalists at Silver-Creek, Dunkirk, Barcelona, &c.

EIGHTEEN-MILE CREEK.

Here are vestiges of the Indians old forts, town sites, &c. Time and scrutiny are alone necessary to bring out its antiquities.

BUFFALO.

_The Chief, Capt. Cole._—The noted Onondaga Chief, Capt. COLE, died at his residence, among his people, a few days since, aged about seventy-five years. This Indian was well known here, having, for many years, made his home upon the reservation adjoining the city. He took the field, in defence of the country, during the last war, under the late Gen. PORTER, who was often heard to speak of his bravery and usefulness, in the various battles along the Niagara frontier.

* * * * *

COLE was of the “old school” of his race—a primitive, unadulterated Indian, equally uncontaminated in mind as in habits, by intercourse with the whites. Probity and justice were the leading features of his character; and to direct these he had an intellect which won for him a high control and extended influence among his tribe.

Some years since COLE was selected by our townsman, young WILGUS, as the finest specimen he had ever met, of the race to which he belonged; and he immediately took means to secure him as a sitter. The result was the half length portrait of the Chief which WILGUS executed, and which has been so often seen and admired alike by our citizens and by strangers.

An incident connected with the history of this piece, seems appropriate here, as illustrative of its excellence. When WILGUS left for Porto Rico, where he now is, he took the portrait of Cole with him. It was seen, upon that island, by a gentleman from Amsterdam, who declared it the first piece he had seen which gave him the slightest ideas of the peculiar characteristics of the Indian race; and he became so interested in the picture that he asked and obtained permission to take it with him, to Europe, for the inspection of his friends. The piece was, by him, carried to Amsterdam, where the admiration of it was universal, and where it would have been retained, at almost any price, had it been for sale. But it was not: the gentleman had promised to return the painting safe to Buffalo; and he has done so, it having arrived here this spring; and it now stands, unostentatiously enough, in the bookstore of the artist’s father, upon Main-street.

BATAVIA.

The Tonewandas at length consent to have their census taken.

AUBURN.

Go with Mr. Goodwin to visit Oswaco lake—Gov. Throop’s place—Old Dutch Church overlooking the lake, &c.

_Fort-Hill._—Extensive vestiges of an elliptical work—Curious rectangular fissures of the limestone rock on the Owasco outlet—north and south.

The Indian name of the place, as told by an Onondaga chief—Osco; first called Hardenburgh’s Corners, finally named after Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village”—so that the poet may be said to have had a hand in supplying names for a land to which he once purposed to migrate.

It would have pleased “poor Goldsmith” could he have known that he was the parent of the name for so fine a town—a town thriving somewhat on the principle laid down in the concluding lines of the poem—

“While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky.”

SYRACUSE.

Pity a better name could not have been found for so fine, central, capital a site. The associations are now all wrong. What had Dionysius or Archimedes to do here? It was Atotarho Garangula, Dekanifora, Ontiyaka, and their kindred, who made the place famous. Onondaga would have been a far better appellation. The Indians called the lake and its basin of country together Gan-on-do-a. Salt Point, or the Saline, sounded to me as if, abating syllibants, it might be written Ka-ji-ka-do.

UTICA.

There was a ford in the Mohawk here. It was the site of Fort Schuyler—a fort named after Major Schuyler, a man of note and military prowess in the olden time, long before the days of General Philip Schuyler. Some philological goose, writing from the Canadas, makes Utica an Indian name!

MOUTH OF THE NORMAN’S KILL, OR TAWASENTHA, ALBANY.

Mr. Brayton says, that in digging the turnpike road, in ascending Kiddenhook hill, on the road to Bethlehem, many human bones, supposed to be Indian, were found. They were so numerous that they were put in a box and buried. This ancient burial ground, which I visited, was at a spot where the soil is light and sandy. On the hill, above his house, is a level field, where arrow-heads have been found in large numbers.

Mr. B., who has lived here sixteen years, does not know that the isolated high ground, east of the turnpike gate, contains ancient bones—has not examined it with that view. Says Mr. Russell, in the neighborhood, has lived there fifty years, and will ask him.

Nothing could be more likely, than that this oasis on the low land should have served as the cemetery for the Mohawks, who inhabited the island, where the Dutch first landed and built a fort in 1614.

The occupancy of this island by the Indians could never have been any thing but a _summer residence_, for it is subject to be inundated every year by the breaking up of the river. This was probably the cause why the Dutch almost immediately abandoned it, and went a little higher, to the main land, where Albany now stands. The city, however, such are the present signs of its wealth and progress, has extended down quite half way to the parallel of the original site of “Het Casteel” under Christians, and should these signs continue, within twenty years South Pearl-street will present lines of compact dwellings and stores to the bridge over the Tawasentha, and Kiddenhook be adorned with country seats.

NEW-YORK.

Whatever else can be done for the red race, it is yet my opinion, that nothing would be as permanently beneficial, in their exaltation and preservation, as their admission to the rights and immunities of citizens.

INDIAN ELECTION.

At a council of the Six Nations of Indians, held upon the Tonawanda Reservation, on Wednesday, Oct. 1st, there were present the Mohawks, Onondagas and Senecas, confederate brothers on the one part, and the Oneidas, Cayugas and Tuscaroras, brothers on the other part.

The Masters of the grand ceremonies were Deatgahdos, Hahsant (Onondagas) and Oahgwashah, (Cayuga.) The speakers were Hahsauthat, (Onondaga,) Shosheowaah, (Seneca,) and Oaghwashah, (Cayuga.)

After the grand ceremonies were performed, the following were appointed Grand Sachems, Sachems and Chiefs.

Desha-go-gaah-neh was appointed Grand Sachem, in place of Ga-noh-gaith-da-wih, deceased.

Ga-noh-la-dah-laoh was appointed Grand Sachem, in place of Gah-no-gaih, deceased.

Deyawa-dah-oh was appointed Grand Sachem in place of Ganyo-daiyuh, deposed.

The above are Seneca Indians.

Of the Onondagas—O-jih-ja-do-gah was appointed Grand Sachem in place of Hononiwedoh, (Col. Silversmith, an Onondaga resident among the Senecas) deposed.

So-dye-a-dolik was appointed Chief of the Onondagas, in place of Sha-go-ga-eh, (Button George,) deposed.

Deyushahkda was appointed Sachem of the Tuscaroras, and Ga-yah-jih-go-wa was appointed a Chief as runner for De-yus-hahkdo.—_Buff. Pilot._

W.

SKETCHES OF AN INDIAN COUNCIL.

A grand council of the confederate Iroquois was held last week, at the Indian Council House on the Tonawanda Reservation, in the county of Genesee. Its proceedings occupied three days—closing on the 3d instant. It embraced representatives from all the Six Nations—the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Seneca; and the Oneida, the Cayuga and the Tuscarora. It is the only one of the kind which has been held for a number of years, and is, probably, the last which will ever be assembled with a full representation of all the confederate nations.

With the expectation that the council would commence on Tuesday, two or three of us had left Rochester so as to arrive at the Council House Monday evening; but owing to some unsettled preliminaries, it had been postponed till Wednesday. The Indians from abroad, however, had arrived at the Council Grounds, or in their immediate vicinity, on Monday; and one of the most interesting spectacles of the occasion, was the entry of the different nations upon the domain and hospitality of the Senecas, on whose ground the council was to be held. The representation of Mohawks, coming as they did, from Canada, was necessarily small. The Onondagas, with the acting Tod-o-dah-hoh of the confederacy, and his two counsellors, made an exceedingly creditable appearance. Nor was the array of Tuscaroras, in point of numbers at least, deficient in attractive and imposing features.

Monday evening we called upon and were presented to Blacksmith, the most influential and authoritative of the Seneca sachems. He is about 60 years old—is somewhat portly, is easy enough in his manners, and is well disposed and even kindly towards all who convince him that they have no sinister designs in coming among his people.

Jemmy Johnson is the Great High Priest of the confederacy. Though now 69 years old, he is yet an erect, fine looking, and energetic Indian, and is both hospitable and intelligent. He is in possession of the medal presented by Washington to Red Jacket in 1792, which, among other things of interest, he showed us.

It would be incompatible with the present purpose to describe all the interesting men who there assembled, among whom were Capt. Frost, Messrs. Le Fort, Hill, John Jacket, Dr. Wilson and others. We spent most of Tuesday, and indeed much of the time during the other days of the week in conversation with the chiefs and most intelligent Indians of the different nations, and gleaned from them much information of the highest interest in relation to the organization, government and laws, religion, customs of the people, and characteristics of the great men, of the old and once powerful confederacy. It is a singular fact, that the peculiar government and national characteristics of the Iroquois is a most interesting field for research and inquiry, which has never been very thoroughly, if at all, investigated, although the historic events which marked the proud career of the confederacy, have been perseveringly sought and treasured up in the writings of Stone, Schoolcraft, Hosmer, Yates and others.

Many of the Indians speak English readily; but with the aid and interpretations of Mr. Ely S. Parker, a young Seneca of no ordinary degree of attainment, in both scholarship and general intelligence, and who, with Le Fort, the Onondaga, is well versed in old Iroquois matters, we had no difficulty in conversing with any and all we chose to.

About mid-day on Wednesday, the council commenced. The ceremonies with which it was opened and conducted were certainly unique—almost indescribable; and as its proceedings were in the Seneca tongue, they were in a great measure unintelligible, and in fact profoundly mysterious to the pale faces. One of the chief objects for which the council had been convoked, as has been heretofore editorially stated in the American, was to fill two vacancies in the sachemships of the Senecas, which had been made by the death of the former incumbents; and preceding the installation of the candidates for the succession, there was a general and dolorous lament for the deceased sachems, the utterance of which, together with the repetition of the laws of the confederacy—the installation of the new sachems—the impeachment and deposition of three unfaithful sachems—the elevation of others in their stead, and the performance of the various ceremonies attendant upon these proceedings, consumed the principal part of the afternoon.

At the setting of the sun, a bountiful repast, consisting of an innumerable number of rather formidable looking chunks of boiled fresh beef, and an abundance of bread and succotash, was brought into the council house. The manner of saying grace on this occasion was indeed peculiar. A kettle being brought, hot and smoking from the fire, and placed in the centre of the council house, there proceeded from a single person, in a high shrill key, a prolonged and monotonous sound, resembling that of the syllable _wah_ or _yah_. This was immediately followed by a response from the whole multitude, uttering in a low and profoundly guttural but protracted tone, the syllable _whe_ or _swe_, and this concluded grace. It was impossible not to be somewhat mirthfully affected at the first hearing of grace said in this novel manner. It is, however, pleasurable to reflect that the Indian recognizes the duty of rendering thanks to the Divine Being in some formal way, for the bounties and enjoyments which He bestows; and were an Indian to attend a public feast among his pale faced brethren, he would be affected, perhaps to a greater degree of marvel, at witnessing a total neglect of this ceremony, than we were at his singular way of performing it.

After supper, commenced the dances. All day Tuesday, and on Wednesday, up to the time that the places of the deceased sachems had been filled, every thing like undue joyfulness had been restrained. This was required by the respect customarily due to the distinguished dead. But now, the bereaved sachemships being again filled, all were to give utterance to gladness and joy. A short speech from Capt. Frost, introductory to the enjoyments of the evening, was received with acclamatory approbation; and soon eighty or ninety of these sons and daughters of the forest—the old men and the young, the maidens and matrons—were engaged in the dance. It was indeed a rare sight.