Second Moss Island Bridge
The first stick being properly placed, levers were applied to the rollers and the stick was run out until the small end reached an eddy in the water. Then another similar stick was run out in like manner, parallel to the first, and about six feet from it. A few light, strong planks were placed across and made fast. Two men were provided each with strong, iron-pointed pike-staffs, each staff having in its upper end a hole, through which was drawn some ten feet of new rope. Thus provided, they walked out on the timbers, drove their iron pikes down among the stones, and tied them fast to the timbers. Thus the whole problem was solved. Around these pike-staffs the first pier was built and filled with stone. Then other timbers were run out, all were planked over, and the first span was completed. The other spans were laid in the same way.
The great Indian chief and orator, Red Jacket, occasionally visited Judge and General Porter—the latter then living at Black Rock. Judge Porter told this anecdote of the chief: He visited the Falls while the mechanics were stretching the timbers across the rapids for the second bridge. He sat for a long time on a pile of plank, watching their operations. His mind seemed to be busy both with the past and the present, reflecting upon the vast territory his race once possessed, and intensely conscious of the fact that it was theirs no longer. Apparently mortified, and vexed that its paleface owners should so successfully develop and improve it, he rose from his seat, and, uttering the well-known Indian guttural "Ugh, ugh!" he exclaimed: "D——n Yankee! d——n Yankee!" Then, gathering his blanket-cloak around him, with his usual dignity and downcast eyes, he slowly walked away, and never returned to the spot.
Before parting with the distinguished chief, we will repeat after General Porter two other anecdotes characteristic of him. He lived not far from Buffalo, on the Seneca Reservation, and frequently visited the late General Wadsworth, at Geneseo. Indeed, his visits grew to be somewhat perplexing, for the great chief must be entertained personally by the host of the establishment.
Of course he was a "teetotaler"—only in one way. When he got a glass of good liquor he drank the whole of it. He was very fond of the rich apple-juice of the Geneseo orchards. Having repeated his visits to General Wadsworth, at one time, with rather inconvenient frequency, and coming one day when the General saw that he had been drinking pretty freely somewhere else, his host concluded he would not offer him the usual refreshments. In due time, therefore, Red Jacket rose and excused himself. As he was leaving the room the orator said, "General, hear!" "Well, what, Red Jacket?" To which he replied with great gravity: "General, when I get home to my people, and they ask me how your cider tasted, what shall I tell them?" Of course he got the cider.
His determined and constant opposition to the sale of the lands belonging to the Indians is well known. At the council held at Buffalo Creek, in 1811, he was selected by the Indians to answer the proposition of a New York land company to buy more land. The Indians refused to sell, although, as usual, the company only wanted "a small tract." To illustrate the system, after the speech-making was over, Red Jacket placed half a dozen Indians on a log, which lay near by. They did not sit very close together, but had plenty of room. He then took a white man who wanted "a small tract," and making the Indians at one end "move up," he put the white man beside them. Then he brought another "small-tract" white man, and making the aborigines "move up" once more, the Indian on the end was obliged to rise from the log. He repeated this process until but one of the original occupants was left on the log. Then suddenly he shoved him off, put a white man in his place, and turning to the land agent said: "See what one small tract means; white man all, Indian nothing."
Colonel William L. Stone, in his "Life of Red Jacket," relates the following: In 1816, after Red Jacket took up his residence on Buffalo Creek, east of the city, a young French count traveling through the country made a brief stay at Buffalo, whence he sent a request to the sachem to visit him at his hotel.
Red Jacket, in reply, informed the young nobleman that if he wished to see the old chief he would give him a welcome greeting at his cabin. The count sent again to say that he was much fatigued by his journey of four thousand miles, which he had made for the purpose of seeing the celebrated Indian orator, Red Jacket, and thought it strange that he should not be willing to come four miles to meet him. But the proud and shrewd old chief replied that he thought it still more strange, after the count had traveled so great a distance for that purpose, that he should halt only a few miles from the home of the man he had come so far to see. The count finally visited the sachem at his house, and was much pleased with the dignity and wisdom of his savage host. The point of etiquette having been satisfactorily settled, the chief accepted an invitation to dinner, and was no doubt able to tell his people how the count's "cider" tasted.
In 1819, when the boundary commissioners ran the line through the Niagara River, Grand Island fell to the United States, under the rule that that line should be in the center of the main channel. To ascertain this, accurate measurements were made, by which it was found that 12,802,750 cubic feet of water passed through the Canadian channel, and 8,540,080 through the American channel. To test the accuracy of these measurements, the quantity passing in the narrow channel at Black Rock was determined by the same method, and was found to be 21,549,590 cubic feet, thus substantially corroborating the first two measurements.