We can hardly realize that at that time there was here a widely extended forest, in all its loneliness and grandeur. Its first trees were cut down in the fall of 1788, soon after Mr. Phelps had concluded his treaty of purchase with the Indians. By means of them a log store-house was constructed, near the outlet of the lake. The family of a Mr. Joseph Smith took possession of it in the spring of 1789. Judge J. H. Jones, who in the fall of 1788, was one of a party to open a road between Geneva and Canandaigua, witnessed, on revisiting the latter place in 1789, a great change.
"When we left," he says, "in the fall of '88, there was not a solitary person there;—when I returned fourteen months afterwards, the place was full of people; residents, surveyors, explorers, adventurers; houses were going up; it was a thriving, busy place." During the following year quite a nucleus for a town had gathered here. In 1794, Mrs. Sanborne, an enterprising landlady, whose eye kindled with the recollection of those days, served up in a tea saucer the first currants produced in the Genesee country. [Footnote: Conversation of the author with Mrs. Sanborne.] Canandaigua at that time and for many years after was head-quarters for all who were making their way into what at that time was called the Indian country, and from the respectability and enterprise of its early inhabitants, it became attractive as a place of residence.
But though considerable improvements had been made here, the entire region was new, romantic and wild. Such was its condition at the time of the great Indian council that convened here in the autumn of 1794. Indians and deer, and wolves, and bear were very abundant and were mingled with the early associations of those who contributed to make this an abode of elevation and refinement. The cow-boy, often startled while on his way by the appearance of a bear, went timidly forth on his evening errand, inspired with courage by the thought that he might, for his protection, shoulder a gun. Bear incidents, narrow escapes from fighting with bears, and bear stories of every description, entered largely into the staple of their conversation, and many an evening's hour was thus beguiled away, around the huge and brightly blazing fire of the early pioneer.
"Did you hear," said a Mrs. Chapman to a Mrs. Parks, how neighbor Codding came near being killed yesterday?
"Mercy! no. How did it happen?
"Mr. Codding was in the woods splitting rails, and just as he was turning around to take up his axe to cut a sliver, don't you believe he saw a great bear sitting up on his hind legs, and holding out both fore paws ready to grab him."
"Mercy on us! What did he do?
"What did he do? He took up his axe, and instead of cutting the sliver, cut into the old bear's head. But the axe glanced and only cut into the flesh, without killing the bear, and he ran away with the axe sticking fast in the wound.
"Awful! Awful! How thick the bears are getting to be! Husband says they have killed off most all of our hogs.
"Your hogs! Just think once, there was a great bear came the other night and got hold of a hog in Asahel Sprague's hog-pen, and would have killed him, if Mr. Sprague hadn't shot the old fellow.