Onondaga signifies on the hills, as their principal village, at the time they became known, was upon an eminence overlooking a beautiful country.
The Oneidas were the granite people, sprung from a stone, and they, too, dwelt upon a hill, from which they could look far away through an extensive and fertile valley, on the borders of Oneida lake. The stone which was the rallying point of the people, is a great boulder, differing in geological formation from any within a hundred miles. In council, they came afterwards to be called the great tree people, from some occurrence in a treaty beneath a big tree. The original Oneida stone may be seen in the cemetery at Utica.
The first settlement of the Cayugas was at the foot of Cayuga lake, and they were called the people at the mucky land. In council they were called the great-pipe people. The tradition concerning them is explanatory of all Indian names. The ideal was seldom understood by those who interpreted them. When it is said, the man of this nation whose voice was first heard in council, was in the habit of smoking a great pipe, it is true, but conveys nothing to us, that it conveys to the Indians. When the chiefs and sachems were all seated in the council chamber, they commenced smoking, filling their pipes anew when a speech was about to be made, that they might listen without interruption. The Cayuga had a large pipe, so that his tobacco lasted longer than that of others, and he could, therefore, longer attend, and was better able to concentrate his thoughts; to say he was the great-pipe man, was the same [[37]]as saying he was more thoughtful, and listening more attentively, he was better able to judge.
The device of the Mohawks was a flint and steel, because they first proposed the formation of the league, and struck the first council fire. In Council they were called Da-de-o-ga, the people of the two policies, because a portion were in favor of the league, and a portion were not.
The Senecas being at the door, were called the first fire; the Cayugas, the second; and those next in order, the third and fourth, on to the Mohawks, who were the fifth. As they had no cisterns or wells, they built their habitations upon the borders of the rivers, near bubbling springs, and on the shores of lakes. The boundaries between the different nations were distinctly defined, and in their hunting excursions they confined themselves to their own territory, whilst within the limits under the jurisdiction of the league, but without their united borders, they roamed unrestrained, and all had equal liberty on the soil of their enemies.
It seems a curious problem now, how such a people were to be called together; but their runners were almost as fleet of foot as the deer in the forest, and their trails were the connecting links, not only between village and village, clans and nations, but stretched far away to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic ocean and the northern lakes. They were a mere foot-path, just wide enough for one to walk therein, but they were sometimes so deep by the myriad footsteps which traversed them for centuries, that the sides were several inches deep. And these trails have become the thorough-fare of our great nation. In them the Indians wound along beneath the mountains and through the valleys, carrying the light canoe upon their shoulders, in which they skimmed [[38]]the broadest lakes and deepest rivers, and were so familiar with all the connecting links, that the darkest recesses of the forest were threaded as easily as the streets of a village, and almost as quickly as the fiery engine wheels its way over the smooth iron pathway. I have heard a young Indian say, that his father had often run from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico, and for four or five days at a time, scarcely stopping to eat by the way. And I have heard an aged Indian say, that in the days of his youth, he would run the distance between certain boundaries, which must have included forty miles, returning the same day, and thought it no great feat. Only a few years ago there was a trial of speed between an Indian runner and several horsemen, or their caparisoned steeds, and the runner left the horsemen far in the rear. But it is not by these thoroughfares alone that the Indian is to be traced in all our borders. Their expressive and musical names are upon every hill-side, in every glen; in the foaming cataract and on the bosom of the broad lake,—from the mountain top to the green islet in the midst of the waves, we listen to their silvery voices.
“Ye say that all have passed away,
The noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave;