PEEF ACE. 



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The History of Steuben County is made up chiefly of local annals. There is little 

 in it which reaches back to the Colonial or even to the Revolutionary period. In the 

 preparation of the following pages, everything known to the writer as furnishing any 

 information respecting the state of this locality in the time of the Colonies and during the 

 Revolution, has been carefully sought out and embodied in a few preliminary chapters. 



For our earliest geographical knowledge of this portion of the State of New York, 

 we are indebted to the French military authorities at Fort Niagara, who, during the old 

 contest with the English for supremacy over a large portion of this country, built and 

 occupied that important garrison. Captain Pouchot, a French engineer at Fort Niagara, 

 made the first map in which the principal streams of this county are indicated, deriving 

 his information of the topography of the country from the Indians, whose knowledge 

 appears to have been remarkably accurate. This map is found in the " Paris Documents," 

 and was published in Paris in 1758. 



The history which we have given of the aboriginal inhabitants of this county has 

 not been confined to the fragments of tribes who inhabited it at the time of its first 

 discovery by Europeans, but has taken a wider range, embracing a general account of 

 the Indian nations from which they sprang, and, especially, of the Iroquois, who were 

 the dominant race throughout this region of country. The rivalry and mutual conflicts 

 between these and the Andastes and Delawares, leading to the final conquest of the latter 

 and the colonization of a mixed remnant of the broken tribes within the territory of 

 Steuben County, have also been brought to view, and the general subject, thus presented, 

 has been supplemented by a chapter on the Indian occupancy of this county prior to and 

 during the period of the Revolution. This has been followed by an account of the general 

 condition of the Indians subsequent to the Revolution, and the extinguishment of their 

 title to lands in the State of New York. 



The various documents, journals, and reports of the campaign of General Sullivan 

 in 1779, and the histories and reminiscences of the Wyoming massacre, furnish us wdth 

 the only knowledge we have of this locality during the struggle of the Colonies for 

 independence. Happily, for our later history, the pre-emption right of the State of Mas- 

 sachusetts, the purchase of these lands by Phelps and Gorham, and the transmission of their 

 title to the present inhabitants, are matters of public record. We have largely in this 

 department availed ourselves of the excellent work of Mr. Turner, entitled " Phelps and 

 Gorham's Purchase," and, in the later phases of the Pulteney Estate, of the researches and 

 conclusions of some of the most eminent legal minds in the county. It is unnecessary 

 here to enumerate the authors we have consulted in the preparation of this volume, as they 



are generally referred to in the foot-notes or in the text of the work. 



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