282 THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY 



In population they exceeded any other of the Five Nations, 

 but did not equal in numbers the Hurons or the Neutrals. In 

 1660 after the Huron and Neutral wars they were reported to 

 have not more than 1000 fighting men. In 1664 (l) they had 

 "fully 1200 men". In 1677 Greenhalgh reported that they had 

 1000 warriors, yet in 1730 in a report made to the Governor of 

 New France they were said to have but 350 men (2). In the 

 census of tribes made for Sir William Johnson in 1763 the Senecas 

 were reported to have 1050 warriors. 



The Senecas were divided into clans as were the others of 

 the Five Nations. Besides the Bear, Wolf and Turtle clans 

 which were common to all the Iroquois, they had five others, the 

 Beaver, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk clans, (3). Of the fifty 

 chiefs entitled to sit in the Great Council the Senecas were enti- 

 tled to eight. 



In the turmoil of war, politics and diplomacy in which the 

 Iroquois were constantly involved, the Senecas sometimes sided 

 against the French and their allies and sometimes were neutral. 

 Their friendship with the English continued with various lapses 

 until after the Revolution. In the siege of Fort Niagara Sir Wm. 

 Johnson was helped by the Senecas; yet four years later they 

 surprised and destroyed a party of English soldiers on the portage, 

 at Devil's Hole, north of Niagara Falls. They fought with the 

 British during the Revolution. 



During all their history the Senecas have been an agricultural 

 people. From the earliest times they were largely dependent 

 upon their crops of corn, beans and squashes for subsistence. 

 They gathered the wild fruits and nuts of the forest; but they 

 planted European fruit trees about their villages at an early date. 

 In the numerous journals of General Sullivan's expedition, men-" 

 tion is made of the orchards of peaches and other fruit which 

 were destroyed by that force. Game abounded in the forests of 

 the wilder portions of their country. Fish they captured with 

 nets, hooks and spears. 



Of the life of the Senecas before the advent of traders from 

 Albany, nothing is known. They probably differed in no respect 

 from other Stone Age people of the Iroquoian stock. When they 



i. Jesuit Relations, 1664. 



2. Doc. Rel. to the Col. Hist, of N. Y., Vol. IX, P. 1054. A French 

 census. 



3. L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, P. 75, Vol. 1, edition 1901. 



