IN Forest Hill Cemetery, at Utica, New York, a short distance from the
entrance, may be seen what is probably the most interesting historical
relic of the Iroquois--the Sacred Stone of the Oneida Indians. The legend
connected with this monument is as strange and poetic as any of those
given in the preceding pages, and quite naturally should have a place in
this volume. The story was obtained from the Indians by the late William
Tracy before their removal to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and as told by him
and by contemporary writers is as follows:
Two brothers and their families left the Onondagas and erected their
wigwams on the north shore of the Oneida River, at the outlet of the
lake bearing that name. They kept the celebrations commanded by the
Great Spirit and he was pleased with their obedience. One morning there
appeared at their resting place an oblong stone, unlike any of the rocks
in the vicinity, and the Indians were told that from it their name should
be taken, and that it would for all time be the altar around which their
councils and their festive and religious ceremonies should take place, as
it would follow them wherever they should go. So they took the name of
"The People of the Upright Stone," and kept their home beside this altar
many years. But finally they became so numerous that there was not room
for them here, and they builded their chief village upon the south side
of the lake, where a creek bearing the same name discharges its waters.
True to the promise, and unassisted by human hands, the sacred stone
followed and located once more in the midst of them.
Here the Oneidas flourished till the confederation of the Iroquois
was formed, and they became second in the order of precedence in the
confederacy. After many years it was determined by the chief men of the
nation to remove their council-fire to the summit of one of a chain of
hills about twenty miles distant--a commanding point before which is
spread a broad view of the fertile Stockbridge valley. And when the
council of the nation had selected this new home for its people, the
sacred stone once more followed in the train of its children. It rested
in a grove of butternut trees, from beneath whose branches the eye could
look out upon a landscape not equaled elsewhere in their national domain.
Here it remained to see the Iroquois increase in power and importance
until the name struck terror to their foes from the Hudson to the Father
of Waters. Around this unhewn altar, within its leafy temple was gathered
all the wisdom of the nation when measures affecting its welfare were to
be considered. Their eloquence, as effective and beautiful as ever fell
from Greek or Roman lips, was poured forth upon the ears of the sons and
daughters of the forest. Logan, the white man's friend, was there trained
to utter words that burned, and there Sconondoa, the last orator of his
race, the warrior chief and lowly Christian convert, with matchless
power swayed the hearts of his countrymen; there the sacred rites were
celebrated at the return of each harvest moon and each new year, when
every son and daughter of the stone came up like the Jewish tribes of old
to join in the national festivities.
This was the resting place of the stone when the first news came that
the paleface had come from beyond the bitter waters. It remained to see
him penetrate the forest and come among its children a stranger; to see
him welcomed by the red men to a home, and then to see its red children
shrink and wither away until the white man's sons plowed the fields
beneath whose forest coverings slept many generations.
At length the council-fire of the Oneidas was extinguished; its people
were scattered, and there was no new resting place for them to which this
palladium might betake itself and again become their altar. It was a
stranger in the ancient home of its children, an exile upon its own soil.
* * * * *
It was known to several of the trustees of the Forest Hill Cemetery
Association that when the Oneidas removed to Green Bay and broke up their
tribal relations they were very loath to leave their altar unprotected,
and when the association was formed in the spring of 1849, correspondence
was had with some of the head men of the nation, and consultations were
held with the few remaining in the vicinity of their old home. They were
most desirous that the stone should be protected, and were happy in
the prospect of its removal to some place where it would remain secure
from the contingencies and dangers to which it might be exposed in a
private holding, liable to constant change of owners. With the consent
of the owner of the farm upon which it was located, the huge boulder was
carefully loaded upon a wagon drawn by four horses, and in the autumn
of 1849, accompanied by a delegation of Oneida Indians and two of the
trustees of the cemetery association, it was conveyed with considerable
difficulty to its present site. It is said by some who remember the
occasion, that before the Indians departed from the cemetery, they
assembled around the stone and betrayed in their leave-taking pitiful
manifestations of grief, several of them kneeling beside the boulder and
kissing it.
Here this mass of white granite, which is unlike any of the stones or
rocks to be found south of the northern dip of the Adirondacks, or the
granite hills of Vermont and New Hampshire, remained on a grassy mound a
half century. Its weight is estimated to be about four thousand pounds.
In the spring of 1902 the cemetery authorities caused it to be placed
upon a base of Westerly marble, upon one side of which is fixed a bronze
tablet bearing this inscription:
SACRED STONE OF THE
ONEIDA INDIANS
------
THIS STONE WAS THE NATIONAL
ALTAR OF THE ONEIDA INDIANS,
AROUND WHICH THEY GATHERED
FROM YEAR TO YEAR TO CELEBRATE
SOLEMN RELIGIOUS RITES AND
TO WORSHIP THE GREAT SPIRIT.
THEY WERE KNOWN AS THE TRIBE
OF THE UPRIGHT STONE. THIS
VALUABLE HISTORICAL RELIC WAS
BROUGHT HERE FROM STOCKBRIDGE,
MADISON COUNTY, N. Y., IN 1849.
Many times during the first twenty-five or thirty years after the sacred
stone was deposited upon Forest Hill it was visited by members of its
tribe; and even now at occasional intervals the cemetery employees see
the figure of an Indian passing along the graveled paths to pause beside
this sole remaining monument of a broken race.
It is pleasing to know that this granite boulder will here forever
remain, a memorial to a people celebrated for their savage virtues,
and who were once by no means obscure actors in some of the stirring
passages of our country's history; a people who were happy in their homes
and who loved these fertile hills and valleys as we love them, but of
whose ownership and sovereignty, whose teeming life and undisputed sway,
there remains only this mute, unembellished monument.
Truthfully it may be said: "He-o-weh-go-gek"--once a home, now a memory.
_Notes to the Legends_