20 



HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK. 



"Prior to IHOO, says the 'Relation de la Nouvelle 

 France,' the Susquehannocks and the Mohawks came into 

 collision, and the former nearly exterminated their enemy 

 in a war which lasted ten years. In 1608, Captain Smith, 

 in exploring the Chesapeake and its tributaties, met a party 

 of these Susquehannocks, as he calls them, and he states 

 that they are still at war with the Mohawks. 



" They were friendly to the Dutch, who were exploring 

 the mouth of the Delaware. When the Swedes came, in 

 1638, they renewed the friendly intercourse begun by the 

 Dutch. Southward, also, they carried the terror of their 

 arms, and from 1634 to 1644 they waged w^ar on the 

 Yaomacoes, the Piscataways, and Panexents, and were so 

 troublesome that in 1642 Governor Calvert, by proclamation, 

 declared them public enemies. 



"When the Hurons, in 1647, began to sink under the 

 fearful blows dealt by the Five Nations, the Susquehan- 

 nas sent an embassy to offer them aid against the com- 

 mon enemy. Nor was the offer one of little value, for the 

 Susquehannas could put into the field thirteen hundred 

 warriors, trained to the use of firearms and European modes 

 of war by three Swedish soldiers whom they had obtained 

 to instruct them." 



Speaking of this, the historian of Bradford Co., Pa., 

 Rev. David Craft, says : " This is doubtless the era of the 

 fortifications on Spanish Hill and at the mouth of Sugar 

 Creek. These fortifications bear unmistakable evidence of 

 having been constructed under the supervision of white 

 people, and differ materially from the palisaded inclosures 

 of Indian construction. The origin and objects of these 

 defenses must always be in some measure matters of con- 

 jecture ; but all the traditions relating to Spanish Hill at- 

 tribute the defenses to white men long before the settlement 

 of the whites, and their object to afford resistance to the 

 Iroquois. And about this time the Andastes were waging 

 war in good earnest with the Five Nations, in which the 

 Cayugas were so hard pressed that some of them retreated 

 across Lake Ontario into Canada, and the Senecas were 

 kept in such alarm that they no longer ventured to carry 

 their peltries to New York except in caravans guarded by 

 an escort." 



Later, the power of the Susquehannas seems to have 

 been on the wane, and they to have abandoned their towns 

 above Wyoming about 1650. They were so hard pressed 

 by their enemies that the Legislature of Maryland, in 1661, 

 authorized the Governor to aid them with the provincial 

 forces. In 1662, about eight hundred Iroquois set out to 

 capture a fort of the Andastes, situated about fifty miles 

 from the mouth of the Susquehanna. On reaching the 

 fort it was found to be so well defended as to render an 

 assault impracticable, when the Iroquois had recourse to a 

 stratagem. They sent a party of twenty-five men to settle 

 a peace and obtain provisions for their return. The Sus- 

 quehannas admitted them, built high scaffolds visible from 

 without, on which they tortured the Iroquois messengers 

 to death in the sight of their countrymen, who thereupon 

 decamped in miserable discomfiture, pursued by the victo- 

 rious Andastes. The war between them at length degen- 

 erated into one of mutual inroads, in which the Andastes, 

 greatly reduced by pestilence, gradually melted away before 



the superior numbers of their enemies, so that in 1672 they 

 could number only three hundred warriors. 



In 1675, according to the " Relations Inedites" and 

 Colden, the tribe was completely overthrown ; but unfor- 

 tunately, say these authorities, w^e have no details whatever 

 as to the forces which effected it or the time and manner 

 of their defeat. It is evident from all that we know of the 

 fierce war of extermination waged upon them by the Iro- 

 quois, that this powerful enemy was their final destroyer. 

 Too proud to submit as vassals to the Iroquois and too 

 weak to contend against them, the remnant of them for- 

 sook the Susquehanna and took up a position on the western 

 borders of Maryland, where for many years they kept up a 

 terrible border war with the whites. Some of them con- 

 tinued to exist in the central part of the State under the 

 name of Conestogas for nearly a century after, when they 

 were utterly destroyed by the Paxton Boys in 1763. 



The Iroquois, who held the rule over the Susquehanna 

 Valley for more than a century, were the only Indian na- 

 tions who possessed anything approaching the form of civil 

 government. By virtue of their superior civil and military 

 organization, they soon became the dominant power among 

 the aborigines, and, after the conquest of the Andastes, 

 carried their arms in triumph on the south to the Gulf 

 and on the west to the Mississippi. 



Tioga (present Athens, Pa.) was made the southern en- 

 trance to the confederacy, at which a sachem was stationed, 

 without whose consent no one, neither Indian nor white 

 man, was allowed to enter the territory of the Iroquois. 

 At Shamokin (present Sunbury) the great council had a 

 viceroy, a Cayuga sachem, who ruled their dependencies in 

 the South. 



Along the Delaware River, and extending across New 

 Jersey, were the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, divided into 

 three tribes, — the Turtles, or Unamis, on the south, the Tur- 

 keys, or Unalachtgos, in the centre, and the Wolves, or Min- 

 sis, on the north. The latter had their villages in the Minisink 

 country, on the head-waters of the Delaware, and were 

 generally called by the English Monseys. By conquest, as 

 was claimed by the Iroquois, by treachery, as was alleged 

 bv the Delawares, the former had reduced the latter to the 

 condition of vassals, deprived them of the right of warriors, 

 and compelled them to bear the taunt and assume the garb 

 of women. They were allowed neither to sell lands, engage 

 in war, nor make treaties, unless by the consent of their 

 domineering masters. Mr. Craft, wdth his usual discrimi- 

 nation, has pointed out the fact that it was owing quite as 

 much to this condition of complete subjugation of his In- 

 dian neighbors as to the peaceable character of his Quaker 

 policy, that the province of Penn was so long exempt from 

 the bloody wars and massacres which form so dark a page 

 in our colonial history.* 



The Indians instinctively withdraw from the presence of 

 civilization. This peculiarity of Indian character completely 

 frustrated the benevolent plan of William Penn, in which 

 he designed that his white and red brethren should dwell 

 together in the same community and be governed by the 

 same laws. It was found to be equally necessary in the 



* History of Bradford County, p-' It. 



