1890. | HARRIS—ROOT FOODS OF SENECA INDIANS. 107 
French officers had the curiosity to estimate the whole quantity of 
ripe and green corn they had destroyed in the Seneca villages and 
fields, and they found the total amount 400,000 minots or 1,200,000 
bushels. This was undoubtedly an exaggerated statement, yet it illus- 
trated the fruitful returns of native industry, and the prosperous 
condition of those Indians who depended upon agriculture for their 
main support. 
Ninety-two years later, during the revolutionary war, General 
Sullivan led an army of 4000 men to the Genesee river to 
chastise the Senecas for their destructive raids upon the border settle- 
ments of New York and Pennsylvania. The principal town of the 
western Senecas, then known. as the “Genesee castle,’’ was located 
upon the present site of Cuylerville, and consisted of 128 houses. On 
the rich soil of the valley near at hand the Senecas had 200 acres of 
grain, large crops of beans, potatoes and other vegetables, and several 
orchards, one of which contained 1,500 trees. The great Genesee 
valley was an ideal Indian paradise where all their simple wants were 
fully supplied ; but Sullivan’s soldiers destroyed everything of a nutri- 
tive nature, and at their departure did not leave in the locality food 
sufficient to save a child from starvation. 
The deplorable circumstances of the Senecas, subsequent to these 
destructive invasions of the whites were fair examples of a condition 
to which these warlike people were constantly subject from enraged 
enemies. From riches and abundance they were liable at any moment 
to be reduced to poverty and starvation. In such emergencies their 
‘first recourse for food was wild game; and during the season of 
scarcity their rude implements of husbandry were often employed to 
delve in uncultivated plains and unfrequented nooks of the forest, for 
esculent roots upon which they subsisted for long periods. 
We learn something of the domestic habits of the Iroquois from 
the narration of Luke Swetland, who was a prisoner among the Senecas 
at Kendaia, near Seneca Lake, from August 1778, to September 1779, 
and who, after his release, published an account of his adventures. 
Regarding their means of subsistence Mr. Swetland says: “The 
Indians live in some respects as one family, on corn, beans, squashes 
and potatoes while those last, some meat, sugar, milk and butter; but 
in the summer chiefly on ground nuts and other weeds and roots. 
Their country contains many lakes affording plenty of fish, salt springs 
where I made salt, a sort of root with which they make bread, they call 
it 6ok-te-haw, a great plenty of wild mandrakes, etc.” ! 
1 Narrative of the captivity of Luke Swetland, among the Seneca Indians. 18. 
