I found, on making the enumeration, 283 persons living in 53 families, of whom 151 were males and 167 females. These families cultivated the past year 2,080 acres of land, on which they raised 4,897 bushels of wheat, 3,515 of corn, 4,085 of oats, 1,166 of potatoes, besides limited quantities of peas, beans, buckwheat and turnips. They possess 336 neat cattle, 98 milch cows, making 7,537 pounds of butter, 153 horses, 215 sheep, and 596 hogs.
When it is considered that this enumeration gives an average of six neat cattle, three horses, (nearly) two milch cows, (nearly) 10 hogs, and 92 bushels of wheat, 966 of corn to each family, their capacity to sustain themselves, and their advance as agriculturists will be perceived. Fifty-nine ploughs were found amongst fifty-three families. They cut 195 acres of meadow to sustain their cattle. They have over 1,500 fruit trees, and dwell in excellent frame or square-timber houses, well finished, and for the most part well furnished. I noticed one edifice of stone, in the process of building, seated on rising grounds, amidst shade trees, which denotes both wealth and taste. Other results of civilization are to be already observed. Among these there are no slight indications of classes of society, arranging themselves, as rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, industrious and idle, moral and immoral.
Of the entire population, 63 are church members, and 231 members of temperance societies, which is a far higher proportion than is found in any other of the cantons.
[g.] Necariages.
The Tuscaroras were probably admitted into the confederacy about 1714. Nine years afterwards the Iroquois received the Nicariages. Under this name the long expatriated Quatoghies, or Hurons, then living at Teiodonderoghie or Michilimackinac, were taken into the confederacy as the Seventh Tribe, or canton. This act was consummated in the reign of George II., at a public council held at Albany on the 30th May, 1723, on their own desire. A delegation of 80 men, who had their families with them, were present. Of this curious transaction but little is known. For although done in faith, it was not perceived that a tribe so far separated from the main body, although now reconciled, and officially incorporated, could not effectually coalesce and act as one. And accordingly, it does not appear, by the subsequent history of the confederacy, that they ever came to recognize, permanently, the Necariages as a Seventh Nation. The foundation for this act of admission had been laid at a prior period by the daring and adroit policy of Adario, who had so skilfully contrived to shift the atrocity of his own act, in the capture of the Iroquois delegates on the St. Lawrence, on the Governor-General of Canada.
It has been mentioned, in a preceding page of this report, that the Iroquois recommended their political league as a model to the colonies, long before the American revolution was thought of. And it is remarkable that its typical character, in relation to our present union, should have been also sustained, in the feature of the admission, if not “annexation,” of new tribes, who became equal participants of all the original rights and privileges of the confederacy.
[h.] St. Regis Colony, or Band.
This community is an off-shoot of the Iroquois stock, but not a member of the confederacy. It originated in the efforts commenced about the middle of the 17th century, by the Roman Catholic church of France, to draw the Iroquois into communion with that church. It was, however, but a part of the public policy, which originated in the reign of Louis XV., to colonize the Iroquois country, and wrest it from the power of the British crown. When this effort failed,—replete as it was with wars, intrigues and embassies, battles and massacres, which make it the heroic age of our history, the persons who had become enlisted in the ritual observances of this church, were induced to withdraw from the body of the tribes, and settle on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in the area of the present county of St. Lawrence. It was, in effect, a missionary colony. Its members were mostly Mohawks, from Caughnawaga, with some Oneidas, and perhaps a few of the Onondagas, amongst whom there had been Catholic missions and forts established, at early dates.
The exertions made to organize this new canton were, politically considered, at direct variance with the colonial policy of New-York, and were therefore opposed by the persons entrusted by the crown with Indian affairs, and also by the councils of the confederacy.
Those persons who composed it assimilated in faith, and almost as a necessary consequence, they soon did so in politics.[43] They went off in small parties, secretly, and after they had become embodied and located, they were regarded, in effect, as foreign Indians, and were never recognized or admitted to a seat in the confederacy. The feeling caused by this separation, among the tribes themselves, amounted to bitterness, and it is a feeling which, I had occasion to observe on one occasion, is not forgotten by the existing cantons even at this day.