Thus much may be said, with certainty, of the name of this celebrated family of red men, by which they are identified and distinguished from other stocks of the hunter tribes of North America. Where they originated, relatively to their position on this continent, the progress of ethnology does not, at this incipient period of that science, enable us to determine, nor is it proposed, save with the merest brevity, now to inquire. Veiling their own origin, if anciently known, in allegory, or designing by fancy to supply the utter want of early history, to the intent, perhaps, that they might put forth an undisputed title to the country they occupied, the relations of their old sages affirm that they originated in the territorial area of western New-York. Their tradition on this point, as put on record by the pen of one of their own people, (see extracts from Cusic’s historical and traditionary tract, hereto appended,) fixes the locality of their actual origin at an eminence near the falls of the Oswego river. To cut short the narration, they assert that their ancestors were called forth, from the bowels of a mountain, by Tarenyawagon, the Holder of the Heavens. It represents them as one people, who moved first towards the east, as far as the sea, and then fell back, partly on their own tracks, towards the west and southwest. So far, and so far only, the tale appears credible enough, and as there is no chronology established by it, although dates are freely introduced, and consequently nothing to contradict it, their track of migration and countermigration from the Oswego, may be deemed as probable.
The diversities of language, and the separation into tribes, are represented to have taken place, according to known principles of ethnological inference.
Ondiyaka, an Onondaga sage, and the ruling chief of the confederacy, who died on an official visit to the Oneidas in 1839, at the age of ninety, confirmed these general traditions of the Tuscarora scribe. He informed Le Fort, who was with him in that journey and at his death, that the Onondagas were created by Neo,[13] in the country where they lived; that he made this island or continent, “Hawoneo,” for the red race, and meant it for them alone. He did not allude to or acknowledge any migration from other lands. This, Le Fort, himself an Onondaga, a chief, and an educated man, told me during the several interviews I had with him, the present year, at the Onondaga Castle.
[13] The term “Neo,” God, is generally used reverently, with a syllable prefixed in the different Iroquois dialects, as Yawa-Neo, in the Tuscarora, Howai-Neo in the Seneca, Hawai-Neo, Onondaga, Lawai-Neo, Mohawk, &c.
Ondiyaka proceeded to say, as they walked over the ancient ruins in the valley of the Kasonda,[14] that this was the spot where the Onondagas formerly lived, before they fixed themselves in the Onondaga valley, and before they had entered into confederation. In those days they were at enmity with each other; they raised the old forts to defend themselves. They wandered about a great deal. They frequently changed their places of residence. They lived in perpetual fear. They kept fighting, and moving their villages often. This reduced their numbers, and rendered their condition one of alarms and trials. Sometimes they abandoned a village, and all their gardens and clearings, because they had encountered much sickness, and believed the place to be doomed. They were always ready to hope for better luck in a new spot. At length they confederated, and then their fortifications were no longer necessary, and fell into decay. This, he believed, was the origin of these old ruins, which were not of foreign construction.[15] Before the confederacy, they had been not only at war among themselves, but had been driven by other enemies.[16] After it, they carried their wars out of their own country, and began to bring home prisoners. Their plan was to select for adoption from the prisoners, and captives, and fragments of tribes whom they conquered. These captives were equally divided among each of the tribes, were adopted and incorporated with them, and served to make good their losses. They used the term, We-Hait-Wat-Sha, in relation to these captives. This term means a body cut into parts and scattered around. In this manner, they figuratively scattered their prisoners, and sunk and destroyed their nationality, and built up their own.
[14] Butternut Creek, which runs through parts of the towns of Pompey, Lafayette and De Witt, Onondaga county.
[15] This remark must be considered as applied only to the class of simple ring forts, so frequent in western New-York. These forts are proved by antiquarian remains, forest growth, &c. to be the most ancient of any works, in Onondaga county, in the shape of forts.
[16] Colden represents them as driven by the Algonquins, on the discovery of Canada.
At what period they confederated, we have no exact means of deciding. It appears to have been comparatively recent, judging from traditionary testimony.[17] While their advancement in the economy of living, in arms, in diplomacy and in civil polity, would lead conjecture to a more remote date. Their own legends, like those of some other leading stocks of the continent, carry them back to a period of wars with giants and demons and monsters of the sea, the land, and the air, and are fraught with strange and grotesque fancies of wizards and enchanters. But history, guiding the pen of the French Jesuit, describes them first as pouring in their canoes through the myriad streams that interlace in western New-York, and debouching, now on the gulf of the St. Lawrence, now on the Chesapeake—glancing again over the waves of Michigan, and now again plying their paddles in the waters of the turbid Mississippi. Wherever they went, they carried proofs of their energy, courage, and enterprise.
[17] Vide Pyrlaus.