Part 6

The remaining history of the Oneidas can only be glanced at, but has some points of peculiar interest. They are the only tribe of the ancient Konoshioni who adhered to us, at least the better part of them, in our life and death struggle of the revolutionary war, saving some portion of the Tuscaroras; whose aid, however, is justly due to the Oneida influence. It was by the Oneidas that the Tuscaroras were brought off from the south. The Oneidas had long distinguished themselves in their war excursions against the southern Indians. Their traditions are replete with accounts of these war parties against the Oyada, or Cherokees. They had found allies at the south in the Tuscaroras, who were themselves engaged in desperate wars, at various periods, against the Catabas, and Cherokees, and others. Besides this, Iroquois tradition claims the Tuscaroras as one of their original cantons, or rather as a band of the original Eagwe Heowe, who had, in early times gone south.[32] And when a crisis happened in their affairs, they nobly went to their relief, and seated them on their western confines, between themselves and the Onondagas, where they remained during the revolution. The Oneidas bore their full share in the long and bloody wars waged by Iroquois for more than two centuries, against the French in the Canadas, and against the distant Algonquins, Hurons and Illinese. And he who scans the ancient records of treaties and councils, will find that their sachems were represented in the conferences assembled on this continent, by the kings and potentates of Europe, who planted colonies at various times, between the respective Gulphs of Mexico and the St. Lawrence. After the flight of the Mohawks, in 1776, they were in the van of the Konoshioni, and to use their symbolic phraseology, stood in the eastern door of the Long House. When the mixed Saxon population of New-York and New-England began, after the war of 1776, to move westward, the Oneidas first felt the pressure upon their territory. By siding with the colonists, they had secured their entire ancient domain, from which they ceded to the State, from time to time, such portions as they did not want for cultivation, taking in lieu money annuities. Nor did they fail to profit, in a measure, by the example of industry set before them in agriculture and the arts. For a while, it is true, they reeled before the march of intemperance, and sunk in numbers, but many of them learned the art of holding the plough. From the earliest times they were noted, along with their more western brethren, for the cultivation of Indian corn, and the planting of orchards. They also became tolerable herdsmen, and raised in considerable numbers, neat cattle, horses and hogs.

[32] Vide Cusick’s pamphlet.

To preserve their nationality, their sachems, about the year 1820, sent delegates west to look out a location for their permanent residence. They purchased a suitable territory from the Monomonees of Wisconsin, a wandering and non-industrious race, seated about Green Bay, and expended a part of their annuities in the payment. This turned out a wise measure. They soon began to remove, and have at this time a very flourishing settlement on Duck river, in that territory. At that location they have established schools, temperance societies and a church. They bear a good reputation for morals and industry, and are advancing in civilization and the arts.

By an official return of the date of 1844, they numbered 722 persons at that settlement. Two hundred and ten are still seated within the boundaries of New-York, mostly in Oneida county. They are a mild people, of a good stature, and easy manners, and speak a soft dialect of the Iroquois, abounding in the liquid _l_, which, together with a mild enunciation, imparts a pleasing character to their speech.

[_c._] Onondagas.

Onondaga was, from the remotest times, the seat of the Iroquois government. Granting credence to the account of their own origin, on the high grounds or falls of the Oswego, they had not proceeded far up the course of the widely gathered waters of this stream, when a portion of them planted their wigwams in this fertile region. Whatever was the cause of their migrating from their primary council fire, nothing was more natural than that, by pursuing this stream upward, they should separate into independent tribes, and by further tracing out its far spread forks, gradually expand themselves, as they were found by the discoverers and first settlers, over the entire area of western New-York. On reaching the grand junction of Three River Point, a part went up the Seneca river, who subsequently dividing, formed the Senecas and Cayugas. The bands who took the eastern fork, or Oneida river, pushed forward over the Deowainsta, or Rome summit, into the first large stream, flowing east, and became the Mohawks. The central or Onondaga fork was chosen by the portion who, from the hill country they first located in, took this name; and from them, the Oneidas, pursuing in fact the track of the Mohawks, were an off-shoot. That such was the general route, and causes of their separation, appears as evident as strong probabilities, in coincidence with their own traditions and modern discovery, can make it. That the whole of the original number who started from the south banks of Lake Ontario, did not keep together till they reached the valley of the Hudson and the sea, and then go back to the west,—for so their general tradition has it, is also both reasonable and probable to suppose. Large bodies of hunters cannot keep long together. They must separate to procure food, and would separate from other causes. The first effect of their separation and spread into various rich vallies, abounding in game, nuts and fish, was a rapid increase in population. The next, to become overbearing, quarrel about territory, and fight. They were compelled to build forts to defend their stations, or secure their women and children, at night, and by this system, kept down their population to about its first point of increase. It is altogether probable that they did not more than maintain, for ages, a stationary population, which occasionally went down by disease and other calamities, and again revived, as we know that natural causes, in the laws of vitality, will revive a people quickly, after the scourge of pestilence.

The idea of a confederation was, it is believed, an old one with this people, for the very oldest traditions speak of something of this kind, among the lake and St. Lawrence tribes of older days. When the present league was formed, on the banks of the Onondaga lake, this central tribe had manifestly greatly increased in strength, and distinguished itself in arms, and feats of hunting and daring against giants and monsters, for in such rencontres their traditions abound.

Most distinguished, however, above all others, east or west, was a leader of great courage, wisdom and address, called Atotarho; and when they proposed to form a league, this person, who had inspired dread, and kept himself retired, was anxiously sought. He was found, by the Mohawk embassy, who were charged with the matter, sitting as he is represented in the annexed cut, composedly in a swamp, smoking his pipe, and rendered completely invulnerable, by living serpents. These animals extended their hissing heads from all parts of his head and body. Every thing about him, and the place of his residence, was such as to inspire the utmost fear and respect. His dishes and spoons were made of the skulls of enemies, whom he had slain in battle. Him, when they had duly approached with presents and burned tobacco in friendship, in their pipes, by way of frankincense, they placed at the head of their league, as its presiding officer. They collected a large quantity of wampum, and invested him with a broad belt of this sacred article. I found the original drawing of this personage, from which the above is reduced, in the summer of 1845, in the house of a Seneca on the Cattaragus reservation. The owner of this curious pictorial relic, on being asked, proceeded to a chest and carefully took it from its envelope, and allowed me to make a copy. It represents Atotarho, at the moment of his discovery, by the Mohawk delegation.

The right thus awarded to the Onondagas, to furnish a presiding officer for the league, has ever been retained, and is still possessed by that canton. To the Mohawks, at the same time, was awarded the Tekarahogea, or chief war captain—an office, however, of the general recognition of which, there is a disagreement amongst interpreters.

A singular tradition may be here added. It is said that the XIIIth Atotarho reigned at Onondaga when America was discovered. [D.]

Giving to each Atotarho[33] a rule of fifteen years, and taking Hudson’s voyage as the period the Indians allude to, we should have A. D. 1414, as the era of the present confederacy, in place of 1539, before mentioned on the authority of a general tradition recorded by Pyrlaus. We cannot, however, place much reliance upon Cusick’s chronology.

[33] Incidental circumstances have led to the substitution of the above head for the original figure.

[_d._] Cayugas.

The history of this canton does not stand out prominently among the Iroquois while it will be found that as one of the inclusive tribes who carried their name and fame so high among the aborigines, they have performed their due part, and produced warriors, sages and speakers of eminence. Were every thing else, indeed, blotted out of their history, the fact of their having produced a Logan[34] would be sufficient to rescue their memory from oblivion. In their early search after a place to hunt, fish and plant corn, as an independent tribe, they, on the assumption of their own traditions, passed up the Seneca river, into the sylvan and beautiful lake which bears their name. In visiting this lake the present year, in search of their ancient sites, it was not without a melancholy interest, that I surveyed, within the boundaries of Aurora, the remains of one of those apple orchards, which were ruthlessly cut down by a detachment of the army of Gen. Sullivan, in his severe but necessary expedition in 1778. Many vestiges of their ancient residence still remain in Cayuga county, nor has local memory, in its intelligent and hospitable inhabitants, dropped from its scroll the names of several of its distinguished chiefs, and their places of abode. They point to a spot at Springport, now trenched on by the road, where lie the remains of Karistagea, better known by his English appellative of Steeltrap, one of their noted chiefs and wise men, who extended the hospitalities of his lodge to the first settlers on the “Military Tract.” The nation itself, although they had fought strenuously under the Red Cross of St. George in the Revolutionary war, appeared to be composed of mild and peaceable men, of friendly dispositions towards the settlers. They brought venison, fish and wild fruits for sale to the doors of families, whose elder branches yet dwell upon the shores of the Cayuga.

[34] Logan was the son of Skellelimus, a Cayuga, and went early to the Ohio valley, if he were not born there.

Yet their history is a melancholy one, and their decline, on the settlement of Western New-York, was probably one of the most striking instances of the rapid depopulation of a tribe in modern days. Their first cession of land to the State was in 1789. This was confirmed at the general treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1790, and such had been the pressure of emigration into that quarter, that in 1795, at a treaty held at Cayuga bridge, they ceded their reserve of one hundred miles square in the valley of the Seneca outlet and the basin of Cayuga lake, reserving but four miles square. In these treaties they deemed themselves wise to change into large money annuities,[35] a territory which was no longer useful for hunting, and which they did not cultivate.

[35] A perpetual annuity of $2,300 was secured by one of these treaties.

Experience has shown, however, throughout America, that Indian tribes, who live on annuities, and not by agricultural labor, are in the most dangerous condition of rapid decline. To render the danger eminent, it needs but the close proximity of a European population, who present the means of indulging selfish gratifications. Among these means, so seductive to the Indian mind, ardent spirits have ever been the most baneful. It proved so at least with the Cayugas, for within sixteen years after the treaty of Fort Stanwix, they had all emigrated west. Some of them had rejoined their brethren, who followed Brant and the Mohawks to Canada. Some had migrated to Sandusky, in Ohio, and others found a refuge among the Senecas, near Buffalo. With the Senecas they have ever been on most intimate terms. Whilst they lived on the Cayuga lake, and the latter on the Seneca, they were separated by a midland range of forest, little more than 16 miles broad. They intermingled freely in their hunting parties, and even in their villages. The inhabitants still point to a large tree near Canoga, on the banks of Cayuga lake, where the celebrated orator Red Jacket was born.

In investigating the Indian population of New-York, under the provisions of the census act, I found 114 Cayugas residing in twenty families, on the Cattaragus reservation. These families cultivate 316 acres of land, and during the year 1845, they raised 1,970 bushels of corn, 1,622 of oats, 210 of wheat, 955 of potatoes, and 277 of buckwheat, besides esculents and small articles. They were found to possess 43 milch cows, 39 horses, 40 sheep, and 109 hogs. Besides the Cayugas residing on the Cattaragus, there were found, dispersed among the other cantons, 83 persons; making the whole number within the boundaries of New-York, 197. The style of their dwellings is, generally, that of squared timber, plainly but comfortably furnished, with glass windows, and plain common furniture. Sixteen of the number are members of Protestant churches. The males dress exclusively in the European fashion, and their condition and prospects are, like those of the Senecas, among whom they dwell, in a high degree encouraging to the friends of humanity. Of the number out of the bounds of the State, there have been no accurate means of judging. The vocabulary of their language (vide appendix O) will denote its close affinities with other tribes of this family.

From a remark made to me, by a daughter of Brant, (the late Mrs. Kerr,) at her house near Wellington square, Canada, in 1843, I am inclined to think, that in the early wars waged by the Iroquois against the Virginia Indians, the Cayugas defeated and made prisoners the remnant of the Tuteloes, whom they brought and settled among them, in the Cayuga country.

[_e._] History and origin of the Senecas.

One of the first traits which strikes an observer on entering the territory of this tribe, is the fact that they are called by a name which is not known in their vocabulary, and which they only recognize from having long been thus designated by others. Identical as it is in its present orthography, with the name of the Roman moralist, it is yet wholly improbable that it had any such origin; it must be regarded as an accidental coincidence of sound in some other Indian tongue. That this tongue is the Mohawk, a people who stood first in position east on the Iroquois borders, is probable, but not certain. The earlier authors spelt it with a _k_, with the _a_ final, which probably had the usual broad sound. It occurs on a map of 1614, which was brought over from Holland recently, by the historical agent of the State, and has been laid, by that gentleman, before the New-York Historical Society, with the proofs of its genuineness, thus bringing the use of the word within five years of the voyage of Hudson.

The term by which they call themselves is NUNDOWAGA, or the People of the Hill. A name which leads us at once to consider the accounts of their own origin. Various relations of this story have been given, differing in some of their details, but all coinciding in the main events, namely: that they originated and lived on a well known hill, at the head of Canandaigua lake, where they were put in eminent peril of utter destruction by a monstrous serpent, which circled itself about the fort and lay with its mouth open at the gate. The following is given from a native source, and has some novel details to recommend it.

While the tribe had its seat and council fire on this hill, a woman and her son were living near it, when the boy, one day caught a small two-headed serpent, called Kaistowanea, in the bushes. He brought it home as a pet to amuse himself, and put it in a box, where he fed it on bird’s flesh and other dainties. After some time it had become so large that it rested on the beams of the lodge, and the hunters were obliged to feed it with deer; but it soon went out and made its abode on a neighboring hill, where it maintained itself. It often went out and sported in the lake, and in time became so large and mischievous that the tribe were put in dread of it. They consulted on the subject one evening, and determined to fly next morning; but with the light of the next morning the monster had encircled the hill and lay with its double jaws extended before the gate. Some attempted to pass out, but were driven back; others tried to climb over its body, but were unable. Hunger at last drove them to desperation, and they made a rush to pass, but only rushed into the monster’s double jaws. All were devoured but a warrior and his sister, who waited in vain expectancy of relief. At length the warrior had a dream, in which he was showed that if he would fledge his arrows with the hair of his sister, the charm would prevail over their enemy. He was warned not to heed the frightful heads and hissing tongues, but to shoot at the heart. Accordingly, the next morning he armed himself with his keenest weapons, charmed as directed, and boldly shot at the serpent’s heart. The instantaneous recoiling of the monster proved that the wound was mortal. He began in great agony to roll down the hill, breaking down trees and uttering horrid noises, until he rolled into the lake. Here he slaked his thirst, and tried by water to mitigate his agony, dashing about in fury. At length he vomited up all the people whom he had eaten, and immediately expired and sunk to the bottom.[36]

[36] If this be viewed as an allegory, it may admit of this interpretation. Internal feuds created by somebody brought up in their own lodges, originated hatred and hot blood. In a long and bloody war, the nation was nearly exterminated; at length the affections of a woman prevailed. Harmony was restored, and a new era of prosperity began, by removing the council fire to another place.

The fort was immediately deserted, and all who had escaped went with their deliverer to, and fixed their council fire on, the west shores of Seneca lake, where Geneva now stands.

The general course of the migration and conquests of the Senecas has, however, been towards the west. Taking their own general and ancient traditions of the parent stock, to wit, their origin in the valley of the Oswego, they may be supposed to have followed the Seneca branch of those outspread waters to the banks of the Seneca and Canandaigua lakes, and thence into the rich valley of the Genesee. At an early day they were limited to the region east of this capital stream, which, crossing the country in a transverse direction, formed a natural boundary. There lived west of it, in ancient times, a tribe who are known as Alleghans, Andastes and Eries, or, as the Senecas call them, Kah-Kwahs. They had their council fires at or near Buffalo, extending west and also east. The people called by the French the Neuter Nation, had placed themselves, so far as we can learn, on the waters of Oak-Orchard creek, which draws its tributaries in part from the fertile districts of Genesee, Niagara and Orleans counties. From the accounts of the Tuscaroras, [D.] this people were governed in early times by a queen, who ruled over twelve forts in that quarter. North of them, embracing the Niagara ridge and the country below it, dwelt a branch of the Algonquin nation, who are called by the same authority, TWANKANNAH. Other names occur, which are believed to be either synonymes for these, or minor divisions of the three principal tribes named, of which some further notice will be taken in a subsequent paper on the antiquarian remains of the country.

That these Trans-Genesean people were populous and warlike, not only maintaining their grounds against the Senecas, but often defeating them and driving them back, is proved not only by the traditions of the Senecas themselves, but by the striking evidences of their military strength and skill, denoted by the remains of forts and intrenchments and cemeteries, yet existing throughout the extensive area, included between the Genesee and the Niagara, extending up the southern shores of Lake Erie to Chautauque and the other principal known Indian routes to the waters of the Alleghany and Ohio. There is, at least, one authority[37] for believing that the Eries themselves were remotely descended from the Senecas, and we have living tradition to prove [VIII.] that, at the time of their final defeat and so called extermination, some of them fled west, whilst the remainder of them, scattered, cut up and depressed, were incorporated in the Seneca canton.

[37] Cusick.

To the Twankannas, the Neuter Nation, and other tribes and bands, not being Eries, who lived in this portion of the State, the Iroquois applied the general term of Adirondacks,[38] a bold, warlike, northern race, who spread over many degrees of latitude and longitude in former days, covering, by generic affiliation with other tribes, all New-England and the Atlantic coast, to North Carolina, and who are still, in their numerous and subdivided descendants, in the upper lakes and the west, the most numerous of any of the aboriginal stocks yet existing east of the Mississippi and Missouri. So long as the Iroquois remained divided, the Eries and their Algonquin allies kept their ground; and there is no reason to believe that they began to decline until a considerable period after the era of the Onondaga league. That league was at first but little more than an agreement to stand by each other, and to send delegates and forward news to a central council; but it put an end to intestine wars, and its popular capacities soon developed themselves, and made it formidable to their neighbors. Thus much by way of prelude to their wars, to be noticed hereafter.

[38] Called Algonquins by the French.