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THE OLD CANEADEA COUNCIL HOUSE,

AS IT NOW STANDS IN THE GROUNDS OF THE HON. WM. P. LETCHWORTH, PORTAGE, N. Y

V.

OLD CANEADEA COUNCIL HOUSE

AND

ITS LAST COUNCIL FIRE.

I. THE KEEPERS OF THE DOOR.

Three centuries ago, when the first pioneers of European emigration crossed the ocean to plant their homes in the New World, they found within the borders of what we now call the Empire State an extraordinary confederacy whose hereditary seats stretched from the Hudson to the Genesee. Here the "Five Nations," joined together in a federated government (the ancient League of the Iroquois), held an absolute and undisputed sway; their League remarkable alike for its ties of organization and the wisdom of its unwritten laws, as well as for the sagacity which marked their administration.

Proud and ambitious masters of the art of conquest, the strong arm of the League was felt far and near as their war parties fell upon other, ofttimes distant, tribes and, with the lust of empire, compelled them to subservience. In 1535, when Jacques Cartier first sailed up the St. Lawrence, their ancient enemies at the North had been driven down the river as far as Quebec. In 1607 Captain John Smith saw them on the upper waters of the Chesapeake sweeping down upon the tribes of Powhattan. Far westward upon the Mississippi the Spanish explorers met their warriors, and in 1609

Champlain encountered them as he passed up the lake which now bears his name.

The Dutch, with prudent forethought, made friendship with them when establishing the first trading post at Fort Orange (now Albany) in 1615, and when the Dutch rule yielded to that of England a half century later, this friendship was wisely fostered by the British, who made the Iroquois their allies in that long-continued struggle for the supremacy of a great continent.

They called themselves the Ho-de'-no-sáu-nee, the "People of the Long House," likening their confederacy to the form of their bark dwellings, which were often extended to a length sufficient for ten or even twenty families. Its easterly wardens were the Mohawks at the Hudson, while to the westward burned in succession the council fires of the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas and last of all that of the Senecas, the Ho-nan-ne-ho'-ont, the hereditary "Keepers of the door" of the Long House.*

With the Onondagas burned the central fire of the League, and there its general councils were held, when the assembled sachems from all the nations discussed with eloquence and grave dignity affairs of common interest, guarding each canton with jealous care against neighborly aggression, preserving for each its undisputed right of local selfgovernment and by wise counsels securing for all, harmony of purpose for the welfare of the League and united action for its protection.

Of these Five Nations the Senecas were the most powerful and warlike, as they were the most numerous. By 1651 they had conquered the Kah-Kwas or Neutral Nation, who had occupied the territory between the Genesee and the Niagara Rivers, and within five years thereafter had exterminated the Eries, who dwelt still further to the West and South.

At this time their four principal castles or palisaded villages were To-ti-ac-ton, on the Honeoye outlet, near the pres

*The Tuscaroras, who came in 1715 as refugees from the South, were at that time admitted to the League which was afterward known to the British as "the Six Nations."

ent site of Honeoye Falls; Gan-da-chi-o-ra-gou, near Lima, ten miles to the eastward; Gan-da-ga-ro, in the township of Victor; and Gan-dou-ga-rae, in that of East Bloomfield. In these "castles" the intrepid Jesuit fathers established their missions as early as 1656.

In 1687 all of these villages were destroyed by the French Governor, the Marquis de Denonville, and were abandoned by the Senecas, who gradually drifted southward and westward, finally establishing their homes in what they called the Gen-nis-he'-o, the "beautiful valley" of the river which we still know by their melodious name.

Here and there along its borders for nearly a hundred miles their villages multiplied and prospered. They were tillers of the soil as well as hunters, and summer after summer in these fertile meadows their corn fields blossomed, and autumn after autumn brought its plentiful harvests of maize and beans and pumpkins to be stored for winter's needs. Hiding in the sparkling brooks and the river riffles were abundant supplies of fish which they captured with their rude hooks and spears. From the great forests on either hand the timid deer came down to drink of those clear waters and their somber woodland depths teemed with game to be had for the seeking.

Here they planted their orchards and gathered the wild. grapes which fringed their wooded borders, and here, in the midst of their rich fields, they built their long lodges of logs and bark, which in the larger and more important towns were clustered about a central council house. Around its lighted fire the fathers of the people, old sachems and painted chiefs, gathered for grave and eloquent deliberation. Within its rude walls at the stated seasons, they met for those ceremonial festivals peculiar to their worship by which they marked the changes of the year; invoking the Great Spirit at springtime to bless the planting of their seed; rendering up thanksgiving for the berries of the fields, the fresh green corn or the ripened harvest, or ushering in each returning year with their supreme act of piety and devotion, the sacrifice of the white dog, their faithful messenger, whose spirit should carry their words of thanks and praise with their

humble petitions to the listening ear of the great Master of Life.

Here, too, as the years multiplied and generation after generation passed away, the graves of their fathers gave to their beautiful valley the hallowed associations of memory and filial love. It was to them their home, a veritable Garden of Eden, which they loved with an abiding affection that still lingers in the hearts of their scattered descendants, and like the dwellers in Eden of old, they were driven from it by the flaming sword.

They had been faithful brothers to the British, and when the war of the American Revolution began, although the counsels of the Ho-de'-no-sáu-nee were no longer united, and the Oneidas as well as a portion of the Tuscaroras remained neutral, the Senecas took the warpath with their allies and fought with their savage instincts of ferocity.

From Cherry Creek, from Wyoming, and from scores of border settlements to which had come the war-whoop and the scalping-knife, went up the cry of desolation. In August, 1779, General Sullivan with an army of 5,000 men was sent by Washington on his avenging errand. The retribution. was, as had been intended, swift and sure and fatal. The beautiful valley of the Genesee was swept with the besom of destruction and town after town of the Senecas was burned to the ground, their crops and stores of grain destroyed, their orchards of peach and apple and pear trees cut down, until the smiling land had become a scene of almost total devastation. From the ruin of their homes the dwellers fled in a confused and panic-stricken rout to the protection of the British at Fort Niagara; and when the war had ceased and the days of peace once more returned, only a remnant of the people came back to rebuild a few of their villages along the Genesee.

In these they lingered for half a century more, while the tides of immigration, attracted by the tales of wondrous fertility which were told by the soldiers of Sullivan's raid, swept around and beyond them; holding the small reservations which they had retained when they sold their wide domain at the Big Tree Treaty of 1797, until in 1826 they parted with

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