Proceedings of the New York Historical Association [1906]

by New York State Historical Association. Meeting

On the Mohawk.

[Mohawk,] the river so called—properly "the Mohawk's River," or river of the Mohawks—rises near the centre of the State and reaches the Hudson at Cohoes Falls. Its name preserves that by which the most eastern nation of the Iroquoian confederacy, the Six Nations, is generally known in history—the Maquaas of the early Dutch. The nation, however, did not give that name to the stream except in the sense of occupation as the seat of their possessions; to them it was the O-hyoⁿhi-yo'ge, "Large, chief or principal river" (Hewitt); written by Van Curler in 1635, Vyoge and Oyoghi, and by Bruyas "Ohioge, a la riviere," now written Ohio as the name of one of the rivers of the west, nor did they apply the word Mohawk to themselves; that title was conferred upon them by their Algonquian enemies, as explained by Roger Williams, who wrote in 1646, "Mohowaug-suck, or Mauquawog, from Moho, 'to eat,' the cannibals or men-eaters," the reference being to the custom of the nation in eating the bodies of enemies who might fall into its hands, a custom of which the Huron nations, of which it was a branch, seem to have been especially guilty. To themselves they gave the much more pleasant name Canniengas, from Kannia, "Flint," Which they adopted as their national emblem and delineated it in their official signatures, signifying, in that connection, "People of the Flint." When and why they adopted this national emblem is a matter of conjecture. Presumably it was generations prior to the incoming of Europeans and from the discovery of the fire-producing qualities of the flint, which was certainly known to them and to other Indian nations [FN-1] in pre-historic times. When the flint and steel were introduced to them they added the latter to their emblem, generally delineated it on all papers of national importance, and called it Kannien, "batte-feu," as written by Bruyas, a verbal form of Kannia, "a flint," or fire-stone, the verb describing a new method of "striking fire out of a flint," or a new instrument for striking fire, and a new emblem of their own superiority springing from their ancient emblem. The Delawares called them Sank-hikani, [FN-2] or "The fire-striking people," from Del. Sank or San, "stone" (from Assin), and -hikan, "an implement," obviously a flint-stone implement for striking fire, or, as interpreted by Heckewelder, "A fire-lock," and by Zeisberger, "A fire-steel."

The French called them Agnié and Agniérs, presumably derived from Canienga (Huron, Yanyenge). The Dutch called them Mahakuas, by contraction Maquaas, from Old Algonquian Magkwah (Stockbridge, Mquoh), Bear, "He devours, he eats." As a nation they were Bears, tearing, devouring, eating, enemies who fell into their hands. Bruyas wrote in the Huron dialect, "Okwari, ourse (that is Bear); Ganniagwari, grand ourse" (grand, glorious, superb, Bear), and in another connection, "It is the name of the Agniers," the characteristic type of the nation. They were divided in three ruling totemic tribes, the Tortoise (Anowara), the Bear (Ochquari), and the Wolf (Okwaho), and several sub-tribes, as the Beaver, the Elk, the Serpent, the Porcupine, and the Fox, as shown by deeds of record, of which the most frequently met is that of the Beaver. On Van der Donck's map of 1656, the names of four tribal castles are entered: Carenay, Ganagero, Schanatisse, and t' Jonnontego. In the recently recovered Journal of a trip to the Mohawk country, by Arent van Curler, in the winter of 1634-5, the names are Ouekagoncka, Ganagere, Sohanidisse, and Tenotoge or Tenotogehooge. In 1643, Father Isaac Jogues, in French notation, wrote the name of the first, Osseruehon, and that of the last, Te-ononte-ogen. Rev. Megapolensis, the Dutch minister at Fort Orange, wrote, in 1644, the name of the first Assarue, the second Banigiro, and the last Thenondiago. On a map republished in the Third Annual Report of the State Historian, copied from a map published in Holland in 1666, the first is called Caneray (Van der Donck's Carenay), and the second, Canagera. [FN-3] The several names refer in all cases to the same castles tribally, in some cases, apparently, by the name of a specific topographical feature near which the castles were located, and in some cases, apparently, by the name of the tribe. Cramoisy, in his Relation of 1645-6, referring to the visit of Father Jogues to the Mohawks, wrote: "They arrived at their first small village, called Oneugiouré, formerly Osserrion." (Relations, 29: 51), showing very clearly that those two names referred to one and the same castle. What Oneugiouré stands for certainly, cannot be stated, though it seems to read easily from Ohnaway (Cuoq), "Current, swift river," indicating that it may have referred to the long rapids. [FN-4] Chief W. H. Holmes, of the Bureau of Ethnology, wrote me: "According to our best expert authority, an Iroquoian, Onekagoncka signifies 'At the junction of the waters,' and Osserueñon, Osserrion, Assarue, etc., signifies 'At the beaver-dam.'" Accepting these interpretations, the particular place where the two names seem to come together is at the mouth of Aurie's Creek "where it falls into Mohawk's river." (See Oghracke.) As generic terms, however, they would be applicable at any place where the features were met and would only become specific here from other locative testimony, which we seem to have.

The first castle or town was that of the Tortoise tribe; the second, that of the Bear tribe; the third, that of the Beaver (probably), and the fourth, that of the Wolf tribe. On Van der Donck's map there are four, and Greenhalgh, in 1677, noted four. In a Schenectady paper of the same year the names of two sachems are subscribed who acted "for themselves" and as "the representatives of ye four Mohock's castles." The French invaded the valley in 1666, and burned all the castles of the early period, and the tribes retreated to the north side of river and established themselves, the first at Caughnawaga; the second about one and one-half miles west of the first; the third, west of the second, and the fourth beyond the third, in their ancient order as Greenhalgh found them in 1677. The French destroyed them again in 1693, [FN-5] and the tribes returned to and rebuilt on the south side of the river in proximity to their ancient seats. After the changes which had swept over the nation, three castles are noted in later records—the "Upper" at Canajohare, the "Lower" at the mouth of Schohare Creek, and the "Third" on the Schohare some sixteen miles inland.

While the early castles were known to the Dutch traders prior to 1635, and their locations marked, approximately, on their rude charts which formed the basis of Van der Donck's and other early maps, it was not until the recovery and publication in 1895, of Van Curler's Journal [FN-6]that much was known concerning them prior to 1642-44, when the Jesuit missionaries and the Dutch minister at Fort Orange, Rev. Megapolensis, went into the field. Van Curler's Journal, supplemented by the Relations of the Jesuit Fathers and Rev. Megapolensis's notes, enables us now to almost look in upon the early homes of the "barbarians," as they were called.

The Mohawks were the most important factor in the "Five [Six] Nations Confederacy," particularly from the standpoint of their proximity to and relations with the Dutch and the English governments, primarily in trade and later as alliants offensive and defensive under treaty of 1664 and more definitely under treaty of 1683. (Doc. Hist. N. Y., i, 576.) Their written history is graven in no uncertain colors on the valley which still bears their name, as well as on northeastern New York, marred though it may be by claims to pre-historical supremacy which cannot be maintained. When Van Curler visited them the nation was at peace, and the occupants of the towns and villages engaged in the duties of home life. He wrote that "Most of the people were out 'hunting for deer and bear"; that "the houses were full of corn and beans"; that he "saw maize—yes, in some of the houses more than three hundred bushels." He added that he was hospitably entertained, was fed on "pumpkins cooked and baked, roasted turkeys, venison and bear's meat," and altogether seems to have fared sumptuously. Rev. Megapolensis wrote of them, that though they were cruel to their enemies, they were very friendly to the Dutch. "We go with them into the woods; we meet with each other, sometimes at an hour's walk from any house, and think no more of it than if we met with Christians." The dark side of their character may be seen in a single quotation from Father Jogues's narrative, as related by Father Lalemant: "Happily for the Father the very time when he was entering the gates, a messenger arrived who brought news that a warrior and his comrades were returning victorious, bringing twenty Abanaqois prisoners. Behold them all joyful; they leave the poor Father; they burn, they flay, they roast, they eat those poor victims with public rejoicings." Gentle and affable in peace, with many evidences of a rude civilization, they were indeed "Demons in war."

Faithful in their labors among them were the Jesuit Fathers. They were men who were ready to suffer torture and death in the propagation of their faith, as several of them did. The conflict of those heroes of the Cross in the valley of the Mohawk, inaugurated by the capture and martyrdom of Father Jogues and his companion, Rene Goupil, in 1646, did not deter them; the wars of the nation with the French aided them. So successful were they that many of the nation were drawn off to Canada and became zealous partisans of the French and a scourge to English settlements, especially emphasized in the massacre at Schenectady in February, 1689-90. Those who remained true to the English became no longer "barbarians" in the full sense of that word, but "Praying Maquas." The subsequent story of the nation may be gleaned from the pages of history. At the close of the Revolution the integrity of the Six Nations had been effectually broken, and the castles of the Mohawks swept from the valley proper. The history, of the latter nation especially, needs to be studied, not in the wild glamour of fiction, but in the realm of fact, as that of an original people, native to the soil of the New World, clasping hands with the era of the origin of man; a people who, when they were first met, had borrowed nothing, absolutely nothing, from the civilizations or the languages of the Old World—the Ougwe-howe, the "real men" of the Mohawk Valley.

The locations of the castles or principal towns of the nation, as noted in Van Curler's Journal, has given rise to considerable discussion, particularly in regard to the location of the first of the series and its identity under the different names by which it was called. Van Curler was not an "ignorant Hollander wandering around in the woods," as one writer states; on the contrary, he was an educated man and one of the best equipped men then in the country for the trip he had undertaken, and instead of "wandering around in the woods," he was conducted by Mohawk guides. He wrote that he left Fort Orange in company with Jeronimus la Crock, William Thomasson, and five Mohawks as guides and bearers, "between nine and ten o'clock in the morning," December 12, 1634, and after walking "mostly northwest about eight miles" (Dutch), stopped "at half-past twelve in the evening" (p. m.) "at a little hunters' cabin near the stream that runs into their land, of the name of Vyoge." His hours' travel and his miles' travel to this point were either loosely stated in his manuscript or were misread by the translator. [FN-7] A Dutch mile is one and one-quarter hours' walk and the equivalent of three and one-half English miles and a fraction over. Van Curler no doubt estimated his miles by this standard and not as correct measurements of rough Indian paths. He certainly did not walk eight Dutch miles in three hours. Twenty-four English miles would have taken him to a point northwest of the later Schenectady stockade, which, in 1690, was counted as twenty-four English miles from Fort Orange by the road as then traveled. The "little hunters' cabin" at which he stopped and which he located "near the Vyoge," he explained in his notes of his second day's travel, as "one hour's walk" from the place where he crossed the stream, which would have taken him to a crossing place west of Schenectady, noted in a French Itinerary of 1757 as about one and one-quarter leagues west of the then fort at that settlement, and, presumably, by the canal survey of 1792, as at the first rift west of the beginning of deep water one and one-half miles (English) east of the rift referred to, from which point the survey gave the distance "to the deep water at or above the mouth of Schohare creek" as twenty-five miles. In going to, or from, the crossing-place he "passed Mohawk villages" where "the ice drifted fast," and gave his later travel as "mostly along the kill that ran swiftly," indicating very clearly that he passed along the rapids. Why he crossed the Mohawk when there was a path on the south side, is explained by Pearson's statement (Hist. Schenectady) that the path on the north side "was the best and most frequently traveled path to the Mohawk castles," and held that reputation for many years. It was a trunk line from the Hudson with many connecting paths. In considering his miles' travel the survey of 1792 may be safely referred to. [FN-8] His miles' travel, which he wrote as "eleven" (Dutch) he wrote on his return as "ten," which, counted as standard Dutch, would have been about thirty-five English miles; if counted by General John S. Clark's average of shrinkage, about thirty, which would have taken him from the hunters' cabin to a point two or three miles west of the mouth of Schohare Creek.

Referring particularly to his Journal: On the morning of the 13th, at three o'clock, he left the "little hunters' cabin" where he passed the night, spent one hour in walking to the crossing-place, crossed "in the dark," resumed his march on the north side "mostly along the aforesaid kill that ran swiftly," and after marching ten miles arrived, "at one o'clock in the evening" (p. m.) "at a little house half a mile" (Dutch) "from their First Castle." When he stopped he was so exhausted by the rough road that he could scarcely move his feet, and hence remained at the "little house" until the next morning, when he recrossed the Mohawk to the south side "on the ice which had frozen over the kill during the night," and "after going half-a-mile" (Dutch), or say one and one-half English, arrived "at their First Castle," which he found "built on a high mountain." It contained "thirty-six houses in rows like streets." The houses were "one hundred, ninety or eighty paces long," and were no doubt palisaded as he called the castle a "fort." The name of the castle, he wrote later, was Onekagoncka. The crossing was the only one which he made to the south side of the Mohawk in going west. Where, aside from a fair computation of his miles' travel, did he cross? Certainly he did not cross on the ice which had frozen over the rapids east of the mouth of Schohare Creek, for they were never known to freeze over in one night, if at all. Certainly he did not cross east of the rapids, for they extended three and one-half miles east of the mouth of the creek. Obviously, if he crossed Schohare Creek on the ice and "did not know it," as one writer suggests, he must have crossed it in going to the castle, which would surely locate the castle west of the stream. There is not the slightest notice of the stream in his Journal, nor is there any place for it in the harmony of his narrative. The tenable conclusion, from the comparison of his miles and from the natural facts, is that he crossed "on the ice" which had frozen over the deep water "at or above the mouth of Schohare Creek"; that his march took him to the vicinity of Aurie's Creek, or substantially to the castle which Father Jogues called Osseruenon, the site of which is now marked by the Society of Jesus with the Shrine, "Our Lady of Martyrs," whether that castle was east or west of Aurie's Creek, evidences of Indian occupation having been found on a hill on the west side of the creek as well as on a hill on the east side. [FN-9] These evidences, however, prove very little in determining the location of a particular castle three hundred years ago; they only become important when sustained by distances from given points or by natural features of record.

The locative conclusion stated above is more positively emphasized by counting Van Curler's miles' travel and his landmarks in going west from Onekagoncka, and by the natural features which he noted in his Journal. Leaving Onekagoncka, he wrote that he walked "half a mile" (Dutch) "on the ice" which had frozen over the kill, or say one and one-half English miles, and in that distance passed "a village of six houses of the name of Canowarode." It was near the river obviously. Walking on the ice "another half mile" (Dutch), he passed "a village of twelve houses named Senatsycrossy." After walking "another mile or mile and a half" on the ice, he passed "great stretches of flat lands" and came to a castle which he first called Medatshet, and later Canagere, which he denominated "The Second Castle." His distances traveling west "on the ice" were evidently more correctly computed than they were on his march on the rough path "along the kill that ran swiftly." His miles from Onekagoncka to Canagere are given as two and a half (Dutch) or about nine miles English. The actual distance is supposed to have been about eight. He found the castle "built on a hill without any palisades or any defence." He located it east of Canajohare Creek, a stream which has never lost its identity. When Van Curler visited the castle it contained "sixteen houses, fifty, sixty, seventy or eighty paces long."