THE SIX NATIONS AND THE LONG HOUSE.
THE military nerves of the continent of North America lie in the
water-ways bounding, traversing, or issuing from the State of New York.
Its heart is the region between the Hudson and the Niagara. In these
days of steam-traction, when transit is made at right angles to the
rivers, and thus directly across the great natural channels of
transportation, New York may be less the Empire State than in the days
of canoes and bateaux. Yet even now its strategic importance is at once
apparent. In the old days of conflict, first between the forces of Latin
and Teutonic civilization, and later between British king-craft and
American democracy, it was the ground chosen for struggle and decision.
Before the European set foot on the American continent, the leading body
of native savages had discovered the main features of this great natural
fortress and place of eminent domain. Inventors of the birch-bark canoe,
the red man saw that from this centre all waters of the inland ocean
made by the great lakes, the warm gulf, and the salt sea, could be
easily reached. With short land-portages, during which the canoe, which
served as shelter and roof at night and house and vehicle by day, could
be carried on the shoulders, the Indian could paddle his way to Dakota,
to Newfoundland, or to Hudson’s Bay on the north, or the Chesapeake and
the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. In his moccasins he
could travel as far. From New York State the pedestrian can go into
twenty States and into two thirds of the territory of the United States
without leaving the courses of valleys. No other State can so
communicate between the east and the west without overcoming one or more
mountain ridges. The T-shaped Hudson-Mohawk groove in the earth’s crust
unites the valleys east of Massachusetts. With such geographical
advantages, added to native abilities, the Iroquois were able to make
themselves the virtual masters of the continent of North America.
Here, accordingly, was built the Long House; that is, was organized the
federation of the Five Nations. Like the Pharaohs, Sultans, Mikados, and
European princes of the world which we call old, because of its long
written history, these forest sovereigns named their government after
their house. The common edifice of the Iroquois was a bark structure
fifty or more feet long, and from twelve to twenty feet wide, with doors
at either end. In each dwelling lived several families.
So also, in the Great Long House, stretching from the Hudson to the
Niagara, dwelt at first five families. The Mohawks occupied the room at
the eastern end of the house, in the throat of the Mohawk Valley, the
_schenectady_, or “place just outside the door,” being on the
“mountain-dividing” or Hudson River. More exactly, the place of “Ye
treaties of Schenectady” was at the mouth of Norman’s Kill, a little
south of Albany. Here was the place of many ancestral graves, where
multitudes of the dead lay, and where Hiawatha, their great civilizer,
dwelt.
Of all the tribes the Mohawks were, or at least in England and the
colonies were believed to be, the fiercest warriors. It was after them
that the roughs in London in the early part of the eighteenth century
were named, and the term was long used as a synonym with ferocious men.
The tea-destroyers in Boston Harbor in 1774 also took this name. Next
westward were the Oneidas, inhabiting the region from Little Falls to
Oneida Lake. The Onondagas at the centre of the Long House, in the
region between the Susquehanna and the eastern end of Lake Ontario, had
the fireplace or centre of the confederacy. The Cayugas lived between
the lake named after them and the Genesee Valley. The Senecas occupied
the country between Rochester and Niagara. The evidence left by the
chips on the floors of their workshops, show that their most ancient
habitations were on the river-flats and at the edges of streams. Later,
as game became scarcer, they occupied the hills and ledges farther back.
On these points of vantage their still later elaborate fortifications of
wood were built. As the rocks of New York make the Old Testament of
geology, so the river-strands and the quarries are the most ancient
chronicles of unwritten history, in times of war and peace.
How long the tribes of the Long House lived together under the forms of
a federated republic, experts are unable to tell. It is believed that
they were originally one large Dakota tribe, which became separated by
overgrowth and dissensions, and later united, not as a unity, but as a
confederation. The work of Dr. Cadwallader Colden, who in 1727 published
his “History of the Five Nations,” has been too much relied upon by
American and English writers. It was one of the very first works in
English on local history published in the province of New York. Utterly
ignoring the excellent writing of the Dutch scholars, Domine
Megapolensis, De Vries, and the lawyer, Van der Donck, who wrote as men
familiar with their subject at first hand; ignoring also the personal
work of Arendt Van Curler,—Colden compiled most of his historic matter
from French authors.
According to the tradition of the Algonkin Indians of Canada, which
Colden gives at length, the Iroquois were at first mainly occupied in
agriculture, and the Algonkins in hunting. The various wars had
developed in the Iroquois the spirit of war and great powers of
resistance, so that they held their own against their enemies. Another
of the many bloody campaigns was to open on the shores of the lake named
after Champlain, when Europeans appeared on the scene, and trustworthy
history begins. Champlain, it seems, did not desire to join in the
Indian feuds, but was compelled to do so in order to retain the
friendship of the Hurons. This first use of fire-arms in Indian warfare
meant nothing less than revolution in politics, in methods of war, in
the influence of chiefs, and in other elements of Indian civilization.
What gunpowder began, alcohol completed.
This much seems certain, that at the opening of the seventeenth century
the whole continent was a dark and bloody ground, in which war was the
rule and peace the exception; in which man hunted man as the beasts and
fishes destroy and devour one another. The Iroquois, speaking
substantially one language, were as an island in a great Algonkin ocean.
Unlike mere fishermen and hunters they were agriculturists, and many
hundred square miles were planted with their maize, squashes, pumpkins,
beans, tobacco, and other vegetables, edible or useful. They were able
to store up corn for long campaigns and to brave a season of famine. The
streams furnished them with fish, and they hunted the deer, elk, bison,
and smaller animals for flesh or furs; but their noblest game was man.
To kill, to scalp, to save alive for torture, to burn his villages and
houses, to wreak vengeance on his enemies, was rapture to the savage.
Before they knew gunpowder, the Iroquois, equipped with flint weapons
and clothed in bark armour, often fought in the open field and with
comparative personal exposure. Their battles were by masses of men who
were led by chiefs, and their tactics and strategy resembled those of
white men before the introduction of fire-arms. One famous field in the
open ground near Schenectady was long pointed out in Indian tradition as
the place where the great battle between the Iroquois and the Algonkins
had been fought before the coming of the whites. For the defence of
their villages they built palisades with galleries for the defenders to
stand on, and with appliances at hand to put out fires, or to repel
assaults and drive off besiegers. Theirs was the age of stone and wood;
but their civilization was based on agriculture, which made them
superior to that of their neighbours, whom they had compelled to be
tributary vassals.
The apparition of the white man and the flash of Champlain’s arquebus,
vomiting fire and dealing death by invisible balls, changed all Indian
warfare and civilization. Gunpowder wrought as profound a revolution in
the forests of America as in Europe. Bark or hide shields and armour
were discarded; bows and arrows were soon left to children; the line and
order of battle changed; fighting in masses ceased; the personal
influence of the chiefs decreased, and each warrior became his own
general. Individual valour and physical strength and bravery in battle
counted for much less, and the dwarf was now equal to the giant.
An equally great revolution in industry took place when the stone age
was suddenly brought to a close and the age of metals ushered in. The
iron pot and kettle, the steel knife, hoe, hatchet, and the various
appliances of daily life made more effective and durable, almost at once
destroyed the manufacture of stone and bone utensils. The old men lost
their occupation, and the young men ceased to be pupils. This loss of
skill and power was tremendous and far-reaching in its consequences; and
its very suddenness transformed independent savages into dependents upon
the white man. In time of famine or loss of trade, or interruption of
their relations with the traders caused by political complications, the
sufferings of the Indians were pitiable.
Champlain’s shot dictated the reconstruction of Indian warfare; but the
Iroquois took to heart so promptly the lesson, that the Algonkins north
of the St. Lawrence were able to profit little by their temporary
victory. Full of hate to the French for interfering to their
disadvantage, the Mohawks at once made friends with the Dutch.
Both Hudson and Champlain had visited Mount Desert Island, and thence
separating had penetrated the continent by the great water-ways, both
reaching the heart of New York within a few miles of each other. While
the French founded Quebec, and settled at Montreal, the Dutch made a
trading settlement on the Hudson at Norman’s Kill, Tawasentha. This
“place of many graves” and immemorial tradition was the seat of their
great civilizer and teacher, Hiawatha, who had introduced one phase of
progress. It was now destined to be the gateway to a new era of change
and development. As in Japan, at the other side of the globe, at nearly
the same time white men, gunpowder, and Christianity had come all
together.
It was not out of disinterested benevolence that the confederate savages
sought the friendship of the Hollanders. They came to buy powder and
ball, to arm themselves with equal weapons of vengeance, and to protect
themselves against the French.
But if Champlain was a mighty figure in the imagination of the red man
of the Mohawk Valley, there was coming a greater than he. This new man
was to impress more deeply the imagination of all the Iroquois, and his
name was to live in their language as long as their speech was heard on
the earth. Champlain was a bringer of war; “Corlaer” was an apostle of
peace.
Arendt Van Curler is a perfectly clear figure in the Indian tradition,
and in the history and documentary archives of the Empire State. Having
no descendants to embalm his name in art or literature, he has not had
his monument. Yet he deserves to have his name enrolled high among the
makers of America. The ignorance, errors—and there is a long list of
them—of writers on American and local history concerning Arendt Van
Curler, have been gross and inexcusable. It were surely worth while to
know the original of that “Corlaer” after whom the Indians named, first
the governors of New York, and later the governors of English Canada,
and finally Queen Victoria, the Empress of India. To the Iroquois mind,
Corlaer was the representative of Teutonic civilization. Other governors
of colonies and prominent figures among the pale-faces, they called by
names coined by themselves, just as they named their own warriors from
trivial incidents or temporary associations. Even the King of Great
Britain was only their unnamed “Father;” but as our ablest American
historian, Francis Parkman, has said: “His [Van Curler’s] importance in
the eyes of the Iroquois, and their attachment to him are shown by the
fact that they always used his name (in the form of Corlaer) as the
official designation of the governor of New York, just as they called
the governors of Canada, Onontio, and those of Pennsylvania, Onas. I
know of no other instance in which Iroquois used the name of an
individual to designate the holder of an office. Onontio means ‘a great
mountain;’ Onas means ‘a quill or pen;’ Kinshon, the governor of
Massachusetts, ‘a fish.’”[4]
Rev. I. A. Cuoq, in his “Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise,” also remarks
that the title Kora, the present form of [Van] Curler, given even yet to
the kings and queens of England and to the English governors of Canada,
is a purely Iroquois creation; while that of Onontio, used of the French
king and governors, was given for the first time to Montmagny, the
successor of Champlain. Quite differently from their method in the case
of Van Curler, they translated, with the aid of the French missionaries,
Montmagny’s name, rendering it freely by Onontio, which means, strictly
speaking, “the beautiful mountain,” rather than “the great mountain.”
The term Onontio was used until the end of the French dominion in
America, whereas Kora [or Corlaer] is still in vogue; Queen Victoria
being to the Canadian Indians Kora-Kowa, or the great Van Curler.
As first-cousin of Kilian Van Rensselaer, Arendt Van Curler, a native of
the country near Amsterdam, but probably of Huguenot descent, reached
America in 1630, and became superintendent and justice of the colony at
Rensselaerwyck. From the very first he dealt with the Indians in all
honour, truth, and justice. He was a man of sterling integrity, a Dutch
patriot, and a Christian of the Reformed faith, but also a man of
continental ideas, a lover of all good men, and a Catholic in the true
sense of the term. He rescued from death and torture the Christian
prisoners in Mohawk villages; and his first visit into, or “discovery”
of the Valley as far as Fonda in September, 1642, was to ransom Father
Jogues. His description of “the most beautiful land on the Mohawk River
that eye ever saw,” and the journal of his journey, probably sent with
his letter of June 16, 1643, to the Patroon, form the first written
description of the Valley. He mastered the vernacular of the savages,
visited them at their council-fires, heard their complaints, dealt
honestly with them, and compelled others to do the same. The first
covenant of friendship, made in 1617, between the Dutch and the
Iroquois, and its various later renewals, he developed into a policy of
lasting peace and amity. The scattered links of friendship between the
Dutch and the confederacy of Indians he forged into an irrefragable
chain, which, until the English-speaking white men went to war in 1775,
was never broken. In 1663 he saved the army of Courcelles from
starvation and probably destruction. Winning alike the respect of the
French in Canada, and of their enemies, the Mohawks, he was invited to
visit the governor, Tracy, in Quebec. On his journey thither in 1667, he
was drowned in Lake Champlain near Rock Regis, the boundary-mark between
the Iroquois and Algonkin Indians. This lake, like the Mohawk River, and
the town of Schenectady which he founded, the Indians and Canadians
called Corlaer.
Rarely, if ever, was a council held in Albany or at Johnson’s house or
at the Onondaga fireplace, that Corlaer’s name was not mentioned, and
their “covenant chain” with him referred to under the varied figures of
rhetoric.
Van Curler’s policy was continued and expanded by Peter Schuyler, a son
of Van Curler’s warm personal friend, Philip Schuyler. As the Iroquois
in speaking never closed the lips, but used the orotund with abundance
of gutturals, they were unable to pronounce properly names in which
labial consonants occurred. They could not say Peter; so they called
their friend “Quider.” The policy of Johnson was simply a continuation
and expansion of that of these two Hollanders, Van Curler and Schuyler.
There was no name of any white man that Johnson heard oftener in the
mouths of the Indians than that of Corlaer; and yet, in the index of
seventy thousand references to the Johnson manuscripts in Albany there
is no reference to this founder of the Dutch policy of peace with the
Indians.
In their political and social procedures, in public discourse, and in
the etiquette of councils, no denizens of European courts were more
truly bond-slaves to etiquette and custom than these forest senators. In
certain outward phases of life—especially noticed by the man of hats,
boots, and clean underclothing—the Indian seems to be a child of
freedom, untutored and unsophisticated. In reality he is a slave
compared to the enlightened and civilized man. He is by heredity,
training, and environment fettered almost beyond hope. His mind can move
out of predestined grooves only after long education, when a new God,
new conceptions, induced power of abstract reasoning, and an entirely
new mental outlook are given him. First of all, the savage needs a right
idea of the Maker of the universe and of the laws by which the creation
is governed; and then only does his mental freedom begin. So far from
being free from prescribed form, he is less at liberty than a Chinese or
Hindu. His adherence to ceremonial runs into bigotry. The calumet must
be smoked. The opening speech must be on approved models. The wampum
belts are as indispensable in a treaty as are seals and signatures in a
Berlin conference or a Paris treaty. To challenge tradition, to step out
of routine, to think for himself, and to act according to conviction, is
more dangerous and costly to him than to one who has lived under the
codes of civilization.
To gain his almost invincible influence over these red republicans of
the woods, Johnson, like his previous exemplars, had to let patience
have her perfect work. He had to stoop to them in order to lift them up.
He even learned to outdo them in ostentation of etiquette, in rigid
adherence to form, in close attention to long speeches without
interruption, in convincing eloquence, in prolixity when it was
necessary to subdue the red man’s brain and flesh by the power of the
tongue, and in shine and glitter of outward display. Like a shrewd
strategist, this typical Irishman knew when to exercise his native gift
of garrulity in talking against time, and when also to condense into
fiery sentences the message of the hour.
One chief reason, however, why the Iroquois preferred to talk with him
more than with the average colonial grandee, was because they were not
when before him at the mercy of interpreters. Despite the fact that time
was of little value to the savage, it was rather trying to an Indian
orator, after dilating for an hour or two in all the gorgeous eloquence
of figurative language, to the manifest acceptance of his own kinsmen at
least, to have an interpreter render the substance of his oration in a
few sentences. Unaccustomed to abstract reasoning, the Indian was
perforce obliged to draw the images of thought entirely from the
environment of his life on land and water. Hence his speech
superabounded with metaphors. He thoroughly enjoyed the discourse of one
of his pale-faced brothers whose flowery language, while insufferably
prolix to his fellow-whites, ran on in exuberant verbosity. In such a
case, as Johnson soon learned to know, the sons of the forest felt
complimented and flattered. Rarely was a speaker interrupted. Extreme
rigidity of decorum was the rule at their councils. On great and solemn
occasions the women were called as witnesses and listeners to hold in
their memory words spoken or promises given.
There were other resources of human intercourse besides words. The
wampum strings that reminded one of rosaries, or the belts made of
hundreds and thousands of black and white shells, served as telegrams,
letters missive, credentials, contracts, treaties, currency, and most of
the purposes in diplomacy and business. The principal chief of a tribe
had the custody of these archives of State. A definite value was placed
upon these drilled, polished, and strung disks or oval cylinders of
shell. The Dutch soon learned to make a better fabric than the Indian
original, and they taught the art to the other colonists. Weeden, in his
“Economic History of New England,” has shown how great an aid to
commerce this, the ancient money of nearly all nations, proved in the
early days when coined money was so scarce. The belts used as
newsletters, as tokens of peace or war, as records of the past, or as
confirmations of treaties, were often generous in width and length,
beautifully made, and fringed with coloured strings. Schenectady was a
famous place of wampum or seewant manufacture; and Hille Van Olinda, an
interpreter, received in 1692 two pounds eight shillings for two great
belts. Two others of like proportions cost three pounds twelve
shillings. A large quantity of this sort of currency was always carried
by the French to win over the Indians to their side. The same commercial
and diplomatic tactics were also followed by the English, and especially
by Johnson.
The Iroquois had also a rude system of heraldry. A traveller over the
great trails or highways, or along the shores of the great water-ways
most often traversed, would have seen many tokens of aboriginal art. The
annals of the Jesuit missionaries and of travellers show that besides
the hideously painted or carved manitou or idols found at certain
well-known places, the trees and rocks were decorated with the totem
signs. The wolf, the bear, the tortoise, were the living creatures most
frequently seen in effigy on tent, robes, or arms. Or they were set as
their seal and sign-manual on the title-deeds of lands bartered away,
which the white man required as proofs of sale and absolute alienation,
though often the red man intended only joint occupancy. In the Iroquois
Confederacy there were eight totem-clans, which formed an eight-fold
bond of union in the great commonwealth. Less important symbols were the
deer, serpent, beaver, stone pipe, etc. In their drawings on trees or
rocks there were certain canons of art well understood and easily read.
A canoe meant a journey by water; human figures without heads, so many
scalps; the same holding a chain, as being in alliance and friendship;
an axe, an emblem of war, etc. A rude fraternity, with secrets, signs,
and ceremonies,—the freemasonry of the forest,—was also known and was
powerful in its influence. In family life, inheritance was on the female
side; and on many subjects the advice of the women was sought and taken,
and as witness-auditors they were a necessity at solemn councils, as
well as made the repository of tradition.
Exactly what the religion of the Indians was it would be hard to say. To
arrange their fluctuating and hazy ideas into a system would be
impossible. Whatever the real mental value of their words “manitou” and
“wakan,” or other terms implying deity, or simply used to cover
ignorance or express mystery, it is evident that the blind worship of
force was the essence of their faith. Living much nearer to the animal
creation than the civilized man, they were prone to recognize in the
brute either a close kinship or an incarnation of divine power. Extremes
meet. The current if not the final philosophy of the scientific mind in
our century, and that of the savage, have many points in common. All
animated life was linked together, but the red man saw the presence of
the deity of his conception in every mysterious movement of animate or
inanimate things. Even the rattlesnake was the bearer of bane or
blessing according as it was treated. Alexander Henry, the traveller
from Philadelphia, relates that on meeting a snake four or five feet
long, which he would have killed, the Iroquois reverently called it
“grandfather,” blew their tobacco smoke in puffs toward it to please the
reptile, and prayed to it to influence Colonel Johnson “to take care of
their families during their absence, to show them charity, and to fill
their canoes with rum.” When, afterward, they were on the lake and a
storm arose, Henry came very near being made a Jonah to appease the
wrath of the rattlesnake-manitou, but fortunately the tempest passed and
it cleared off.
The Indians invented the birch or elm bark canoe, the racket or
snow-shoe, the moccasin, all of which the white frontiersmen were quick
to utilize when they saw their value. They also taught the settlers the
use of new kinds of food, and how to get it from the soil or the water.
To tread out eels from the mud, catch fish with the hand or with
fish-hooks of bone, and to till the ground, even in the forest, for
maize, squashes and pumpkins, were lessons learned from the red man.
Frontier and savage life had many points in common, and not a little
Indian blood entered into the veins of Americans. There were hundreds of
instances of women as well as men rescued from their supposed low estate
as captives who preferred to remain with the Indians in savage life.
Often white settlers were saved from death by starvation by friendly red
men or half-breeds; while half the plots of the savages failed because
of the warnings given by friendly squaws, or boys who were usually not
full-blooded.
Great changes took place within the Iroquois Confederacy after the
advent of the white man. His fire-arms, liquor, fences, and ideas at
once began to modify Indian politics, hunting, social life, and
religion. The unity of interests was broken, and division and secession
set in, as steady currents, to weaken the forest republic. Large numbers
of the Iroquois emigrated westward to live and hunt in Ohio and beyond,
and joined the Ottawa confederacy. Others left in bands or groups, and
made their homes in Pennsylvania, Virginia, or the Southwest, to get
away, if possible, from the white man’s fences and fire-water. Others
followed their religious teachers into Canada, and made settlements
there. These losses were only in a measure made good by the addition to
the Long House of a whole tribe from the South, the Tuscaroras, whose
ancestral seats had been in the Carolinas.
North Carolina was one of the majority of the original thirteen States
first settled by a variety of colonists,—French, German, Swiss,
Scottish, and Irish, as well as English. At first red and white men
lived at peace; but soon the inevitable “question” came, and the Indians
imagined that they could show themselves superior to the pale-faces.
Making what white historians call a “conspiracy,” but striking what they
believed to be a blow for home and freedom, they rose, and in one night
massacred in or near Roanoke alone one hundred and thirty-seven of the
white settlers. Their murderous act at once drew out the vengeance of
Governor Craven of South Carolina, who sent Col. John Barnwell, an
Irishman, who marched with a regiment of six hundred whites and several
hundred Indian allies. Without provision trains, but subsisting as
Indians do in a wilderness unbroken by villages, farms, or clearings,
Barnwell struck the Tuscaroras in battle, and reduced their numbers by
the loss of three hundred warriors. Pursuing them to their fortified
castle, he laid siege and compelled surrender. By successive blows, this
“Tuscarora John,” by death or capture, destroyed one thousand fighting
men, and compelled the remainder of the tribe to leave the graves of
their fathers, and emigrate northward. Only a remnant reached New York.
The Tuscaroras joined the Iroquois Confederacy in 1713, and the
federated forest republic then took upon itself the style and title of
the Six Nations.
Nearly a century afterward, when the Iroquois Confederacy was a dream,
and the Southern Confederacy beginning to be woven of the same stuff,
the descendant of “Tuscarora John,” who had added a new tribe to the
Long House, gave at Montgomery, Alabama, the casting vote that made
Jefferson Davis President of a new one in the many forms of federation
on the North American continent. About the same time the great English
historian, Freeman, neglecting for the nonce the distinction between
history and prophecy, began his work on the “History of Federal
Government, from the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United
States of America,” only one volume of which was published, the events
of 1863–1865 compelling the completion of the work to be indefinitely
postponed.
How far the various attempts of the red man to combine in federal union
for common strength or defence, and especially those in the stable
political edifice in New York, were potent in aiding the formation of
the American Commonwealth, is an interesting question worthy of careful
study. That it was not without direct influence upon the minds of those
constructive statesmen like Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, who
came so numerously from States nearest the Long House, and most familiar
with Iroquois politics, cannot be denied. The men of the
English-speaking colonies which had been peopled from continental and
insular Europe, were inheritors of classic culture. They naturally read
the precedents furnished by Greece and Rome; but they were also
powerfully affected by the living realities of the federal republics of
Holland and Switzerland, as well as in the aristocratic republic of
Venice, while in the one nearest England many of them were educated. It
is not too much to affirm, however, that the power of this great example
at home, on the soil and under their eyes, was as great in moulding
opinion and consolidating thought in favour of a federal union of
States, as were the distant exemplars of the ancient world, or in modern
Europe. Though we give him no credit, and spurn the idea of political
indebtedness to the red man, with almost the same intolerant fierceness
that some of the latter-day New England Puritans deny obligations to the
Dutch Republic that sheltered and educated their fathers, yet our
government is in a measure copied from that of the forest republicans,
whose political edifice and conquests shaped the history and
civilization of this continent. In still retaining the sonorous names
given to our mountains, valleys, and rivers, and in transferring these
to our ships and men-of-war; in giving the effigy of the Indian a place
on our municipal coats of arms and seals of State, we are proving that
in our memory at least of the aboriginal dwellers on the soil they are
not wholly forgotten. These graphic symbols are, indeed, but shadows;
but beyond all shadow is substance.
While the white man’s gunpowder and bullets, war, diseases, fire-water,
and trade wrought profound changes for better or worse, usually the
latter, the Indians were not stolid or unreceptive to his religion. Both
the Roman and the Reformed teachers won many disciples in the Long
House. Almost as soon as the learned Domine Megapolensis arrived at Fort
Orange, he began to learn the language of the Mohawks. He was soon able
to preach to them and to teach their children. This was three years
before John Eliot began his work in Massachusetts. The pastors at
Schenectady did the same, translating portions of the Bible and of the
liturgy of the Netherlands Reformed Church, and of the Book of Common
Prayer. The missionary efforts of the Dutch Christians soon bore
definite and practical results. The Reformed Church records show large
numbers of Indians baptized or married or buried according to Christian
rites. There are also frequent instances of adult communicant membership
in the Mohawk, Hudson, Raritan, and Hackensack Valleys. Hundreds of
Indian children were trained in the same catechetical instruction, and
in the same classes with those of the whites. As a general rule, the
Hollanders and other peoples from the Continent lived in kindness and
peace with their red brethren. The occasional outbreaks of the savages
in massacre, fire, and blood were not by those of New York, but from
Canada. The Indians were set on like dogs by the French, who stimulated
the thirst for blood by political and religious hatreds; and the English
repaid in kind. Rarely was the peace broken between the people of New
Netherlands and New York except by causes operative in, and coming from
Europe.
The first Roman Catholic who entered the bounds of the State of New York
was Isaac Jogues, who was captured by the Mohawks while ascending the
St. Lawrence River. One of the sweetest spirits and noblest characters
that ever glorified the flesh he dwelt in, Isaac Jogues was brought
captive into the Mohawk Valley to be reserved for fiendish torture.
Ransomed by Arendt Van Curler, and assisted to France by Domine
Megapolensis, these three men of the Holy Catholic Church became ever
after true friends. The surface discords of church names were lost in
the deeper harmonies of their one faith and love to a common Saviour.
Bressani was later assisted in like manner. Returning willingly, by way
of Quebec, after his fingers, once chewed to shapeless lumps between the
teeth of the Mohawks, had been kissed by nobles and ladies in the court
at Versailles, Jogues reached, four years later (1647), the scene of his
martyrdom and nameless burial. His severed head, mounted upon one of the
palisades of the Indian castle, was set with its face to Canada, whence
he came, in insult and defiance.
Nevertheless, the French Jesuit missionaries, with unquailing courage
and fervent faith, persevered; and Poncet, Le Moyne, Fremin, Bruyas, and
Pierron passed to and fro through Albany to continue the work in what
they had already named as the Mission of the Martyrs. In 1667 St. Mary’s
Chapel was established at the Indian village which stood on the site of
Spraker’s Basin. In 1669 St. Peter’s Chapel was built of logs on the
sand-flats at Caughnawaga near Fonda, by Boniface. Here in 1676 the
Iroquois maiden Tegawita—the White Lily of the Mohawks, the now
canonized saint—was baptized by James de Lamberville. From 1642 to 1684
was the golden age of early missions of the Roman form of the Christian
faith in New York. Then it was abruptly brought to a close, not because
of Indian animosity or Protestant opposition, but by the Roman Catholic
Governor Dongan in the interests of British trade.
Perhaps this interruption was not wholly dictated by greed, but was
strongly influenced by political interests. This fact must be noted.
When Catharine Ganneaktena, an Erie Indian woman adopted into the Oneida
tribe, was led to serious thought by Bruyas, to whom she taught the
language in 1668, and with her Christian husband was persecuted by the
pagans, the couple left for Montreal. Here she was baptized and
confirmed by Bishop Laval. Instructed by Raffeix, who was somewhat of a
statesman, Catharine invited several of her family in New York to
Canada, and early in 1670 they founded the Indian village of La Prairie,
where members of the Iroquois Confederacy might come to settle.
According to the code of laws established in this Christian community,
every one must renounce belief in dreams, polygamy, and drunkenness.
This settlement was destined to be a powerful influence, not only in the
Christianization of the Indians, but upon the politics of New York. In
1674, the wife of Kryn, “the great Mohawk,” who had conquered the
Mohegans, became a Christian, and her husband abandoned her. Happening
in his wanderings to visit the Christian village of La Prairie, Kryn was
impressed with the peace and order reigning in it, and after a time
became a Christian.
Returning to his home on the Mohawk, Kryn told what he had seen, and
persuaded forty of his fellows from Caughnawaga (now Fonda, New York) to
follow him. They reached La Prairie on Easter Sunday, 1676. From this
time forth Kryn was an active missionary, on one occasion talking over a
whole party of sixty Mohawks sent by Dongan on a raid against the
French, and converting four of them to Christianity. He also persuaded
the Oneidas and Onondagas to keep peace with the French, and in this was
aided by the remarkable influence of Garakonthie, the Christian
protector of “the black coats.” It was Kryn who led, and it was these
“praying Indians” from Canada who with the French were sent by Frontenac
to destroy Schenectady in 1690; and it was he who just before the attack
harangued them to the highest pitch of fury. His especial pretext for
revenge was the murder of sixty Canadian Indians by the Iroquois about
six months previously.
For many years La Prairie was the gathering-place of seceders from the
confederacy who had adopted the religion of their French teachers. In
1763 the village had three hundred fighting men; during the Revolution
the number increased, and at present the Indian reservation at
Caughnawaga, about twenty miles from Montreal, contains about thirteen
hundred Roman Catholic Indians. These facts explain why the Mohawks and
others of the confederacy had so many relatives fighting for the French,
and why the political situation in New York, until the fall of French
dominion, was so complex. As a rule, the Iroquois preferred the more
sensuous religion of the French, while eager also for the strouds,
duffels, guns, and blankets of the Dutch. Under Gallic and British
influences, their hearts were as often divided as their heads were
distracted. They were like tourists from Dover to Calais, when in the
choppy seas which seethe between the coasts of England, France, and
Holland.
In 1684 Jean de Lamberville, the last Jesuit settler in New York among
the Iroquois, departed for Canada amid the lamentations of the Onondagas
who escorted him. In a few generations all traces of the work of the
French missionaries had vanished from the Mohawk Valley. In our days,
when under the farmer’s plough or labourer’s pickaxe, the earth casts
out her dead, the copper rings with the sign of the cross tell the
touching story of the Indian maiden’s faith. Under the eloquent pen of
John Gilmary Shea the thrilling story of labour and martyrdom glows. The
Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs at Auriesville shows that even modern
piety can find fresh stimulus in recalling the events which have made
the Mohawk Valley classic ground to devout pilgrims as well as to the
scholar and patriot.
For over a century—from 1664 until 1783—the diplomatic, military, and
eleemosynary operations of British agents and armies among the Iroquois
were actively carried on. These were prolonged and costly, and had much
to do with making the enormous public debt of England, still unpaid. The
effect was to affect powerfully the imagination of the British public.
It was not merely the fiction of Cooper which created the tendency of
the Englishman just landed at Castle Garden to look for painted and
feathered Indians on Broadway. The author of “Leatherstocking” did but
stimulate the imagination already fed by the narratives of returned
veterans. Thousands of soldiers, who had heard the war-whoop in forest
battles, told their stories at British hearthstones until well into this
century. They, with Cooper, are responsible for the idea that forests
grow in Philadelphia. The fear still possessing English children that
American visitors, even of unmixed European blood, may turn red or
black, is one prompted by tradition as well as by literary fiction.
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[4] Letter to the writer, Feb. 7, 1890.