HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK. 



19 



Schoolcraft describes the social character of the Indian 

 thus : " In the lodge he is a mild, considerate man, of the 

 non-interfering and non-scolding species. He may, indeed, 

 be looked upon rather as the guest of his wife, than what 

 he is most unjustly represented to be, her tyrant, and he is 

 often only known as the lord of the lodge by the attention 

 and respect she shows to him. He is a man of few words. 

 If her temper is ruffled, he smiles. If he is displeased he 

 walks away. It is a province in which his actions acknowl- 

 edge her right to rule, and it is one in which his pride and 

 manliness have exalted him above the folly of altercation." 

 The wife owned all the property; arms only belonged to 

 the husband. The family were hers, and when war or the 

 chase had made the father a victim, she, who had always 

 been at its head, kept it unbroken. With the Iroquois war 

 was the business of life, and the pursuit of an enemy on 

 the war-path, or hunting the wild beasts of the forests, 

 were the only employments that men could engage in with- 

 out subjecting themselves to the loss of rank, and the 

 liability of being called women. 



The central tribe was the seat of government, and here 

 all the general councils were held and the policy of the 

 nation settled. The first we know of these people, they 

 here swayed the sceptre of an empire twelve hundred miles 

 long and eight hundred wide. The means of free and rapid 

 transportation of armies was to these savages the same ad- 

 vantage that it is to the most artificial state of society. 

 Around the shores of Onondaga Lake the councils deliber- 

 ated, and when once the plan of the campaign was arranged, 

 the canoes were afloat, and soon, far down the St. Lawrence, 

 the Adirondack heard the war-whoop of the '' Men of the 

 Mountains."* Or on the banks of Georgian Bay the trem- 

 bling Huron felt the weight of their power. Or, launching 

 their barks on the waters of the Susquehanna, soon on the 

 shores of Chesapeake Bay they dictated terms to their ene- 

 mies. Fort Hill, in South Carolina, afterwards the resi- 

 dence of John C. Calhoun, was one of their stations, from 

 which they waged mveterate war upon the Catawbas and 

 Cherokees. The Iroquois nation could bring to battle more 

 than two thousand warriors of their own blood, besides 

 levies of the tribes they had subjected. Their policy in 

 regard to conquered enemies was like that of ancient Rome ; 

 they were converted into allies rather than slaves, and having 

 been fiiirly conquered in war after a brave resistance, they 

 were counted as younger brothers, worthy to fight by the 

 side of their conquerors and share their glory. f 



" They reduced war to a science, and all their movements 

 were directed by system and policy. They never attacked 

 a hostile country till they had sent out spies to explore and 

 designate its vulnerable points, and when they encamped 

 they observed the greatest circumspection to guard against 

 surprise. Whatever superiority of force they might have, 

 they never neglected the use of stratagem, employing all 

 the crafty wiles of the Carthaginians. To produce death 

 by the most protracted suffering was sanctioned among them 

 by general immemorial usage."J 



The Europeans, instead of teaching mercy to these men, 

 encouraged and fostered the worst points in their characters. 



and by every temptation they were led to become even more 

 cruel, as they became demoralized and vicious by intercourse 

 with the more learned but less principled '' pale-face." Mas- 

 sachusetts first gave twelve, then forty, and finally one hun- 

 dred pounds for a scalp. The Colonial Legislature of New 

 York, in 1745, passed an act for giving a reward for scalps. 

 In 1746, a governor of the colony not only paid for two 

 scalps of Frenchmen in money and fine clothes, but thanked 

 the three Indians that brought them to Albany, and prom- 

 ised " always to remember this act of friendship." Amer- 

 ican scalps were received and paid for in English money by 

 the officer in command at Maiden, in the war of 1812. 



* Meaning of the word "Onondaga." 

 f Hon. George Geddes. 



X De Witt Clinton. 



CHAPTER IIL 



IIsTDIAnSrS OF THE SUSQUEHANKA VAIiLES". 



The Andastes — Conquest of the Andastes by the Iroquois — Tioga, the 

 Southern Door to the Confederacy — The Iroquois Viceroy — Conquest 

 of the Delawares — Colonization of Vagabond Indians. 



The Andastes as early as 1620 were inhabitants of the 

 Susquehanna Valley. Gallatin erroneously places them on 

 the Allegany, and Bancroft and others have followed the 

 error. But the later researches of Mr. Shea have shown 

 the identity of the Andastes with the Susquehannocks of 

 the English and the Minquas of the Dutch.§ 



In the year 1750 a Cayuga chief informed David Zeis- 

 berger that a strange tribe of Indians, whom he called 

 Tehotachse (so spelled in German), but which were neither 

 Iroquois nor Delawares, formerly inhabited the valley of 

 the Susquehanna, and were driven out by the Cayugas. In 

 a letter written by Joseph Brant, the famous Mohawk chief, 

 to Timothy Pickering, relative to the Iroquois claim to the 

 northern part of Pennsylvania, dated at Niagara, Dec. 30, 

 1794, he says, " The whole Five Nations have an equal 

 right one with another, the country having been obtained 

 by their joint exertions in war with a powerful nation for- 

 merly living southward of Buffalo Creek, called Eries, and 

 another nation then Uv'uig at Tioga Point ; so that by our 

 successes all the country between that and the Mississippi 

 became the joint property of the Five Nations. All other 

 nations inhabiting this great tract of country were allowed 

 to settle by the Five Nations." That the Andastes are 

 referred to in both these quotations there can hardly be a 

 doubt. This was one of the most populous and powerful 

 of all the Algonquin tribes. Their villages were thickly 

 planted from Tioga to Virginia. At Sheshequin and Wysox, 

 at Wyalusing (Gohoutato) and at Mehoopany (Onochasae), 

 the names of their towns have been preserved. They 

 appear to have been the most warlike of all the Eastern 

 nations, having carried their conquests over the tribes of 

 New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. For more than three- 

 fourths of a century they waged almost an unceasing war 

 with the Iroquois, by which the whole valley of the Sus- 

 quehanna " was stained with blood." The following para- 

 graphs from Dr. Egle's '' History of Pennsylvania," give a 

 full account of these conflicts : 



^ Parkman's Jesuits in North America, p. 46, note. 



