[15] See [General Clark's map] herewith printed.
[16] The castle of Caughnawaga at Fonda was also called Gandawague, long after its removal from Auries Creek. But it prevents confusion to give it always its more distinctive name of Caughnawaga.
[17] See [Appendix, Note A], Letter of June 29, 1885.
[18] See Cholenec, who mentions this fact in the "Lettres Édifiantes," translated by Kip in his work entitled "Early Jesuit Missions." What is said concerning child-marriage is from Chauchetière's manuscript.
CHAPTER V.
TEKAKWITHA'S UNCLE AND FORT ORANGE; OR THE BEGINNINGS OF ALBANY.
CHOLENEC, the more concise of the two contemporary biographers of Kateri Tekakwitha, in speaking of her early life says: "She found herself an orphan under the care of her aunts, and in the power of an uncle who was the leading man in the settlement." This brief expression gives us an intimation both of the character and the rank of Tekakwitha's formidable Mohawk uncle. He was stern, unbending, fierce; and like many another chief reared in the Long House, was proudly tenacious of the customs of his race. He was often on the worst of terms with the French blackgowns because they interfered with the beliefs and manners of his people; but always on the best of terms with the Dutch traders, who, in exchange for the rich furs brought in so plentifully to Fort Orange, supplied the Mohawks of Gandawague (or, as the Dutch wrote it, Kaghnuwage) with muskets, iron tomahawks, pipes, tobacco, copper kettles, scissors, duffels, strouds for blankets, and more than all, the keenly relished, comforting "fire water."
The influx of liquor to the Iroquois castles led to reckless debauches, fast following in the track of the small-pox, which stalked with unchecked violence through the Long House in 1660. During the course of the following year an important transaction took place between the white settlers on the Hudson and the Indians along the Mohawk, or Maquaas Kill. "A certain parcel of land," to use the words of the old deed, "called in Dutch the Groote Vlachte (Great Flatt), lying behind Fort Orange, between the same and the Mohawk country," was sold by Mohawk chiefs—Cantuquo (whose mark was a Bear); Aiadane, a Turtle; Sonareetsie, a Wolf; and Sodachdrasse—to Sieur Arent van Corlaer, July 27, 1661. "A grant under the provincial seal was issued in the following year, but the land was not surveyed or divided until 1664." The Indian name of the Great Flatt was Schonowe, and the new village of white settlers which soon sprang up on the south bank of the Mohawk was called Schenectady by the Dutch and English; though the French, who did not for some time learn of its existence, first knew this little outpost of Fort Orange by the name of Corlaer,[19] the earliest settler.