HISTORY OF STEUBEN COUNTY, NEW YORK. 



21 



province, as it bad been in tbe otber colonies, tbat tbe In- 

 dian must retire beyond the white settlements, to whose laws 

 and customs he could not conform and whose restraints he 

 could not endure. As the Iroquois from time to time sold 

 the land of their dependencies to the whites, they opened 

 the valley of the Susquehanna as an asylum to which 

 the people whom they had deprived of their ancestral homes, 

 and over whom they exercised the right of protection as 

 well as command, might resort. By this policy families 

 of different nationalities were brought into the same village 

 and not unfrequently were occupants of the same wigwam, 

 so that it was no uncommon thing to find Nanticokes, Mo- 

 hicans, Monseys, and Wampanoags living together, without 

 any tribal distinction whatever. This gave rise to the term 

 " vagabond- Indians," so appropriately applied to mixed and 

 transient settlements of the fragments of different disinte- 

 grated tribes in the Susquehanna valley, and particularly 

 within the limits of the county of Steuben. Says Rev. 

 Mr. Craft : " Tioga, or, as it is more frequently written in 

 the Pennsylvania records, ' Diahoga,' from its important 

 situation in the Iroquois territory, was probably occupied as 

 a town immediately after the conquest ; but from there to 

 Shamokin the country was almost entirely unoccupied for a 

 hundred years, when it was colonized by the refugees whose 

 possessions had been sold to the whites.' 



The Iroquois and Delawares have each a tradition of an 

 early eastward emigration from regions west of the Missis- 

 sippi to the places where they were found by the Europeans. 

 The period of our later Indian history finds that wave re- 

 turning towards the setting sun. It is, therefore, a period 

 of commotion among tribes easily excited, of removal and 

 change among a people who, in the most quiet times, 

 abandoned the places of their habitation for the most 

 trivial reasons. 



Mohicans and Wampanoags from Southeastern New 

 York and New England, Delawares from New Jersey and 

 Eastern Pennsylvania, Nanticokes, Tuscaroras, and Shaw- 

 nees from the South, pushed from their ancient homes by 

 the rapacity of the white man, were seeking new homes 

 and fresh hunting-grounds, where they would henceforth 

 be free from encroachment. To the Iroquois the native 

 fugitives looked for defense from the grasping policy of the 

 whites, and for counsel and permission as to where they 

 should fix their future seats. It happened, therefore, that 

 during this period this tide of western emigration was 

 pushing up both branches of the Susquehanna, in order to 

 pour itself upon the great plains between the Alleghanies 

 and the Mississippi, only to be forced still farther West by 

 the advancing tide of civilization. During the later por- 

 tion of this period the -'vagabond Indians" probably occu- 

 pied the few town sites which have been discovered within 

 the limits of Steuben County. It will throw some light 

 upon this subject to consider some of the Indian settle- 

 ments which are well known to have existed in the 

 adjacent valleys near the period of settlement by the whites. 

 In the spring of 1750, Cammerhoff, a bishop of the 

 Moravian Church, in company with the intrepid Zeis- 

 berger, passed up the Susquehanna from Wyoming to 

 Tioga, en route for Onondaga, in order to negotiate with 

 the Great Council for the establishment of missions among 



the Iroquois. They were accompanied by a Cayuga chief 

 and his family. When they reached the vicinity of Wyalu- 

 sino*, the remains of an old town were still visible, which 

 the Cayuga said was called '' Go-hon-to-to," inhabited by a 

 tribe speaking a strange language, neither Delaware nor 

 Iroquois, called by the latter " Te-ho-toch-se" (Andastes), 

 upon whom the Five Nations made war and wholly exter- 

 minated them. For nearly a century this " blood-stained 

 field" seems to have been abandoned as a habitation; 

 althoughbeingatthejunctionof two important trails, it may 

 have been the temporary residence of wandering parties. 



In 1752,"^ Papunhauk, a Monsey chief of some note, 

 from the Minisink country, with a number of families, 

 emigrated to Wyalusing, and built a new town a little below 

 the site of the old Gohontoto. It was probably abandoned 

 during the French war.f On the Wysaukin plains a party 

 of Shawanes stopped for a time, built their huts and planted 

 their corn, but the number of the party and the time of 

 their settlement and removal are unknown. The settlement 

 was located nearly opposite the mouth of Towanda Creek. 

 Cammerhoff and Zeisberger encamped here, after a f\i- 

 tiguing journey of fifteen miles up the rapid current of the 

 Susquehanna, swollen by recent rains, and named the spot 

 the '' Garden of Roses," on account of the profusion of wild 

 roses which loaded the air with their fragrance. On the 

 evening of Sept. 30, 1767, Zeisberger spent the night here 

 in an empty Delaware hut, but, he adds, " no one lives 

 here now." He calls the place the '' Wisach." 



In August, 1748, the Nanticokes (tide-water people), 

 almost the entire nation, abandoned their ancestral home on 

 the eastern shore of Maryland, and moved northward, fol- 

 lowing the course of the Susquehanna. They settled prin- 

 cipally at " Shamunk" (Chemung) and " Zemuge" (Che- 

 nango). In the course of this migration a party of them 

 stopped for a time on the Towanda Flats. Opposite Tioga 

 Point, on the west side of the river, was Queen Esther's 

 town, which was probably built ndt far from 1770. It at- 

 tracted attention during the Revolutionary war, because of 

 the prominence acquired by the notorious woman whose 

 name it bears. 



At the junction of the Chemung and Susquehanna 

 Rivers was "Diahoga" (Tioga), the oldest, most populous 

 and important Indian town in this whole region of country. 

 It was the door into the territory proper of the Iroquois 

 Confederacy. To it all the great trails centered. All persons 

 who entered this territory except by this door or the Mohawk, 

 were considered and treated as spies and enemies. Here 

 was stationed a Cayuga sachem, who, in the figurative lan- 

 guage of the nation, guarded this door of their Long 

 House, and whoever entered their country must first ob- 

 tain permission. It was the place of rendezvous for war- 

 parties going out on their expeditions, and to this point 

 prisoners were brought to be disposed of according to the 

 customs of the League, either to be put to death with the 

 most cruel tortures, or adopted into the fi\mily of some slain 

 warrior, thenceforth to forget former home and kindred, 

 and be received in all respects into the place of his former 



* Pennsylvania Archives, iii. 736. 



f Journal of Moses Tatemy and Isaac Hill. 



