CHAPTER I
THE MOHAWK AND ITS IMPROVEMENT
The “great western” route through New York State to the Lakes has come under consideration in our study of highways in three places: as an Indian trail, as a portage path, and as a pioneer road. The old Iroquois Trail, as we have called it, ran up the Mohawk, which it crossed at Nun-da-da-sis, “around the hill,” (Utica); thence it made for the Genesee River and the Niagara frontier; an important tributary pathway led down the Genesee to Swa-geh (Oswego) on Lake Ontario. This was the landward route from the Hudson to the Great Lakes. As a thoroughfare in its entirety, it meant much to the Indians, but very little to the white men before the nineteenth century. Though the lower Mohawk Valley was sparsely settled early in the eighteenth century, white men did not build their cabins along the Iroquois Trail to the westward until nearly a century later, when the old Genesee Road was opened. Until then the country through which the Iroquois Trail ran had been a terra incognita where only Indian runners knew the way through the Long House of the Iroquois. Yet it was a pleasant country for all the forest shades; from Nun-da-da-sis the trail ran on, leaving the Mohawk River and Ole-hisk, “the place of nettles”—the famed battlefield of Oriskany—to the north, passing Ka-ne-go-dick (Wood Creek) and Ga-no-a-lo-hole (Lake Oneida), the “Lake of the Head on a Pole.”[1] To the southward, the path bore away toward Na-ta-dunk (Syracuse), the place of the “broken pine-tree,” and Ga-do-quat (Fort Brewerton). There were the silver lakes strung like white gems on wreaths of heaviest green. The low lands of the Genesee country, soon to see the great advances heralded by the famous purchases of land speculators, intervened; and straight beyond, far away across the pine-tree tops, gleamed the Great Lakes and the plunging river between them; the deep growl of Niagara seemed to warn voyageurs away to the forest trails on either side. Those falls were the only interruption in a water highway which in many aspects is, today, the most stupendous in the world.
Had this winding trail been the only means of communication between the rapidly filling Hudson River valley and the chain of lakes to the northwest, it is very probable that a Braddock or a Forbes would have built a military road even through that bloody Long House; but the Mohawk River, and the Oswego, offered a waterway which, though difficult and uncertain, was the white man’s route from the Hudson to the Lakes—the western war route of which the portage at Rome was the key. A clear picture of the old Mohawk would be a precious possession. The records, however, are so few and so general in character that one would be at a loss to supply an artist with his material. It is only in the staid reports of old navigation companies that we get any definite description of our old-time rivers. We know of the main obstructions to continuous navigation in the Mohawk; first there was the Ga-ha-oose Falls, or Cohoes Falls as we know them today. These were impassable for any craft, and made Schenectady the metropolis of the lower Mohawk Valley because it was the Mohawk terminus of the difficult portage to Albany through the pine barrens. Thus the old-time river traffic began at Schenectady. Proceeding northward by Te-hon-de-lo-ga, the famous lower castle of the Mohawks, and Ga-no-jo-hi-e, the middle castle, the traveler passed the present Fonda, which was Ga-na-wa-da, “over the rapids,” and came to the rocky confines of Ta-la-que-ga, the “place of small bushes”—the present Little Falls. Here the roaring rapids interrupted all navigation, empty boats not even being able to pass over them. The early portage of one mile here in sleds over the swampy ground has been described as it was in 1756, when enterprising Teutons residing here transferred all boats in sleds over marshy ground which would “admit of no wheel carriage.” In all of the military operations in the Mohawk Valley in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars this portage played a part. As early as 1768, Governor Sir Henry Moore suggested the improvement of the Mohawk at the Falls of Canajoharie. A route for a canal around Niagara Falls was surveyed in 1784. Travelers to Niagara with heavy baggage invariably went by way of the Mohawk batteaus. We have seen that in 1793 two of the commissioners to the western Indians, traveling light, went overland by horse to the Genesee, while General Lincoln went with the heavy baggage by way of the Mohawk.[2] From Schenectady to the Oneida Portage at Rome, Little Falls offered the only insurmountable obstruction; later on, about 1790, we find that the Germans’ sleds were out of use and that boats were transferred on wheeled vehicles appropriately fashioned to carry them without damage to their hulls. No great boats could be transferred by such means; this fact had a tendency to limit the carrying capacity of Mohawk batteaus to about one and a half tons. These boats were operated by three men, and a journey from Rome to Schenectady and return—one hundred and twelve miles—required, at the least estimate, nine days. Such was the high rate of freight that, if no return freight was secured, the cost of sending a ton to Schenectady equaled one man’s wages for eighteen days, about fourteen dollars.
The improvement of the Mohawk before 1792 was, without doubt, of no real consequence. Ascending boatmen and forwarding companies here and there of necessity made the river passable, otherwise there could have been no traffic at all. As one of our maps shows, as early as 1730 a neck of land, in one instance, was cut through.[3] The batteaus which carried provisions and ammunition northward to Fort Stanwix or Fort Schuyler probably often broke a new way through the dams of forest driftwood which the flood tides left; and at high tide there was, we know, good downward navigation. Elkanah Watson must be remembered as one of the pioneers in the improvement of the central New York waterway. In 1788 he made a western journey by way of the Mohawk, and his journal is full of observations which show him to have been a far-sighted man with correct ideas of the logical advance of commerce and the revolutions it would make.[4] Returning from his journey October, 1791, he prepared all the facts in favor of improving New York’s western waterway, in the form of a pamphlet which he presented to General Schuyler, then a member of the state senate. He also contributed an anonymous article to one of the papers in January, 1792, urging publicly the improvement of the Mohawk and Oswego Rivers.[5]
Public interest being awakened, in one way or another, as to the value of the river route westward, and the route up the Hudson and across to Lake George and Lake Champlain, a bill was presented to the New York legislature authorizing the formation of two companies to undertake the work of improving these strategic passageways between the country east of the state and the country west. Accordingly, on the thirtieth day of March, 1792, the following act was passed by the legislature: An Act for establishing and opening Lock Navigation within this State.[6] The legal name of the company which was to operate on the Mohawk was the “president, directors, and company of the western inland lock navigation in the state of New-York.” The word “northern” was inserted in the legal name of the Hudson-Lake Champlain company, which was otherwise the same. The two companies were chartered by one and the same act, on exactly the same basis; we will consider, however, only the one under discussion.
The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, to operate between the Hudson, and Lake Seneca and Lake Ontario, was to be capitalized at $25,000; one thousand shares of twenty-five dollars each, no stockholder being allowed more than ten shares. The subscription books were ordered to be opened at New York and Albany on the first Tuesday of May, 1792, and kept open until the last Tuesday. If five hundred shares were taken the organization became effective. Thirteen directors were to control its affairs and they were to be elected annually. Article VII authorized “... each of the said corporations ... [to] enter into, and upon all and singular the land and lands covered with water, where they shall deem it proper to carry the canals and navigation hereinbefore particularly assigned to each....” The stipulations usually made in such cases, as to the company’s right to enter land by paying damages, were nominated. The controlling officers were empowered to name the per cent of stock the stockholders were to be required to pay. They were also to decide upon the rates of toll to be charged to boats for the enjoyment of benefits of navigation; the one restriction was that the charge for one ton of freight from Ontario or Seneca lakes to the Hudson should not exceed twenty-five dollars, and other tolls were to be pro rata. The directors were to be allowed to increase the capital stock at discretion, and were ordered to make semiannual reports to the public. After ten years an abstract record was to be published for the inspection of the legislature, and if the profits were found to exceed fifteen per cent, the excess above this amount they were to turn over to the state treasurer. The act of incorporation also stipulated that the company’s charter became void if work was not undertaken in five years; if the work was not completed in fifteen years, all rights, so far as the residue was concerned, were to be forfeited. The state of New York promised to give, as a free gift, to both the Western and the Northern companies, $12,500 as soon as both had invested $25,000 in the work on which they were starting.