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DE-GE-WA-NUS WATERFALL.

nor is it probable that its like will occur again. The circumstances gave to the meeting an interest so unique that perhaps the readers of SCRIBNER will not regret if some account of it, and of the edifice in which it was held, find a place in these pages, thence, it may be, to pass into the slender and almost completed volume of Indian history. But first a few words introductory, for the benefit of those to whom that volume is unfamiliar.

At the date of the advent of Europeans on this continent, the Five Nations, then composing the League of the Iroquois, had attained a development which in many respects distinctly differentiates them from the rest of their race. It is not too much to say that they presented the spectacle of a people slowly but surely progressing toward a kind of civilization. They had anticipated our motto, "E pluribus unum," and applied it in the formation of a federal government after a fashion of simple but sagacious statesmanship which might have suggested useful ideas to Jefferson. The Romans of their hemisphere, they understood not

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only the art of conquest, but also that of colonization and of assimilating to themselves the nations they conquered. Their policy aimed at universal sovereignty, and ultimately would at least have divided with the Aztecs the dominion of the continent. Already they had carried their arms as far south as Florida; nations north of the St. Lawrence acknowledged their sway, and their war-parties were met by the Spanish explorers west of the Mississippi. Although their hereditary residence was in New York, between the Hudson and the Niagara rivers, they granted or sold territory in what is now the states of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. As the allies of the English in the protracted struggle against the French,-if in no other connection, the Iroquois are certain of historic remembrance. For a century and a half they waged this war,-now invading Canada, and anon descending like a tornado on the French of Louisiana. To the young colony of New York they were a constant shield against destruction. Their valor and fidelity turned the scale, at last, in the long and often uncertain contest, and the continent speaks English to-day, and not French, because the Iroquois elected to champion the cause of the former.

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They have been called the Romans of the New World, but something of the | Anglo-Saxon character as well is strikingly mirrored in the Iroquois. Their federal system of government, albeit a pure oligarchy, ingeniously guarded against the concentration and aggressions of power. It recognized the principle of local self-government. Its paramount aim was to develop individualism in its subjects, and to preserve personal liberty. Even to woman, among the Iroquois, a potential voice was allowed in the affairs of government, and her rights were well defined and jealously guarded. Nothing less than a peaceful and harmonious union of the tribes of the continent was the objective point of the federal policy, and the confederation itself is per'haps without a parallel, in the fact that it secured to its people more than three centuries of uninterrupted domestic unity and peace.

The practice of agriculture had also begun to modify the life of the aboriginal hunters of New York. In 1687, the Marquis de Nonville invaded their country, and re

ported that he had destroyed, in their four principal villages, more than a million bushels of corn. A century later, the American general, Sullivan, performed in the valley of the Genesee a similar feat. In the midst of their fields they built their villages, some of which contained more than a hundred houses. Three sister divinities of their religion were the spirits of the maize, the bean and the squash. A fancy far superior to that of the average of savage peoples stamped their unwritten legends and mythology. They had even a rude astronomy, and had mapped the heavens, giving names to the principal constellations. Among them, also, the art of eloquence was cultivated as assiduously as that of arms. The parliament was an indigenous growth in the depths of the New York forests. Of the annual councils of the sachems, Governor Clinton wrote, that "in eloquence, in dignity, and in all the characteristics of personal policy, they surpassed an assemblage of feudal barons, and were perhaps not far inferior to the great Amphyctionic Council of Greece."*

Of the nations of the League, the most numerous, enterprising, and chivalrous were the Senecas. They sat at the "western door" of the "Long House" of the confederacy, and were its keepers, as the Mohawks on the Hudson were wardens of the east. Their canoes, anticipating the commerce of the great lakes, found haven in what was to become the port of Buffalo. Their villages dotted the banks of the Genesee River for a distance of nearly a hundred miles. Two centuries ago, this latter region had become their favorite and most populous place of settlement. It was the earthly paradise of the Seneca; its fertile fields and wild or lovely landscapes are wedded to the memory of his best deeds

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heart. Jenisheu-"the Beautiful Valley "was the suggestive appellation it bore in his geography. In the home it gave him, culminated his prosperity and happiness; and though more than half a century has elapsed since he was driven from its shelter, he and his children have not ceased to yearn for the lost Eden of their people. It was with such a sentiment in their hearts, and amidst such associations, that the Senecas-some of whom had left the banks of the Genesee in early childhood-gathered back from distant reservations to the Last Council in the Valley. And surely it is that valley's most beautiful region which opened before them, and on which hereafter the Seneca ghost may

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MONA-SHA-SHA, OR MIDDLE FALLS OF THE UPPER GENESEE.t

and days. A hundred melodious and po- | look regretfully down, from the threshold of

etic names, of which some mutilated syllables still remain, testify that its varied scenes had power to inspire his fancy and touch his

A curious work by the Jesuit Père Lafitau, published in Paris, 1724, is entitled "Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, Comparées aux Mœurs des Premier Temps." The Iroquois furnish the good father a large share of the parallels he establishes between our aborigines and the ancient Greeks and

Romans.

the Old Council-House in Glen Iris.

† A well-preserved Indian legend attaches to this fall, of an Indian who in some way became the victim of witchcraft and "the evil eye," so that he became estranged from his wife, whom he had previously loved with great tenderness. The latter, maddened by her husband's inexplicable ill-treatment, threw herself, with her child, over the falls, leaving to it her quite musical name of Mona

sha-sha.

The story of the venerable building is easily told. Its original site was in the Seneca village of Caneadea, about eighteen miles from its present location. When the first white settlers came in, at the beginning of the present century, it was already an antiquity, its erection doubtless antedating our Revolutionary war. Situated on the southwestern frontier of the Seneca territory proper, Caneadea was the convenient rendezvous of the warlike expeditions which ravaged Pennsylvania and Ohio, and the council-house was the frequent scene of their preliminary deliberations, as well as of the festivities attendant upon their victorious return. The war party of Senecas who concerted at Buffalo the famous massacre of Wyoming are believed by some to have made this their point of departure, and to have returned to the same spot with their bloody spoils. A little volume published in Western New York thirty years ago, and which recounts the life and adventures of Major Moses Van Campen, a Revolutionary hero, connects the council-house in question with a characteristic incident.

In the spring of 1782, Van Campen, then a young officer in the Continental army, was captured on the upper waters of the Susquehanna, by a party of Iroquois in command of a British lieutenant. Narrowly escaping the usual death of prisoners by torture, he and several of his soldiers were led by forced marches through the forest to Caneadea. Their arrival was the occasion of a savage jubilee, and the amiable villagers straightway demanded for themselves the customary privilege of causing the captives, in Iroquois fashion, to run the gauntlet. The course selected was about forty rods in length, and the council-house, as was usual on such occasions, was designated as the goal and place of refuge of the runners. Close behind them and on each side of their path crowded the population of the village, young and old and of both sexes, armed with cudgels and long whips, the warriors alone remaining dignified spectators of the scene. The signal was given, and the indomitable Van Campen darted off first, as nimble as a deer. The armed mob closed quickly upon him, and his case would have been desperate but for a bold coup to which he had resort. Directly in his track stood two stout young squaws, waiting their chance to strike the captive. Squarely at them, as if shot from a catapult, he threw himself, and with such effect that both were pitched headlong, and described several somersaults on their way to

the ground. The absurd spectacle was too much alike for Indian dignity and ferocity, and amidst yells of uncontrollable laughter on the part of the crowd, the captives made their way easily to the council-house.

Another mention in the scant chronicles of the frontier contributes still further to render Caneadea classic. It was the place where Mary Jemison, "the White Woman of the Genesee," a name famous in the early annals of Western New York,—halted for a day to rest in her weary pilgrimage to the Genesee country. Mary was the daughter of an Irish or Scotch emigrant, who, about the middle of the last century, settled at Marsh Creek, in Pennsylvania. In 1754, when about twelve years of age, the girl was captured by a party of Shawnees, and, amidst circumstances of frightful hardship, dragged away to the central wilds of Ohio. There she was adopted into a Seneca family by two women, sisters, who at the time were mourning for a warrior brother slain in battle, and who made of the pretty little white captive a sort of memento of their own grief, calling her De-ge-wa-nus-"two wailing voices." Some have thought, however, that the name describes rather the lamentation of the little maid, as uttered sometimes in her own quickly forgotten tongue, and anon in that of her savage captors. At any rate, it is that name which afterward became renowned in early New York history, and which the crystal stream already spoken of, with its own "two voices "- -one of the forest and another of the rock-preserves and commemorates.

Four years afterward her Seneca friends journeyed back to the land of their people on the Genesee, poor Mary Jemison trudging the whole wild way with them, a baby on her back. But, from the day of her arrival, heart-sick and travel-worn, at Caneadea, she rapidly became a prominent figure in the story of the Genesee region. Married to one of the most famous and blood-thirsty of the Seneca chiefs, she accepted her situation unreservedly, and even refused, like another Ruth, when the days of peace came and her release was offered, to leave the rough people of her adoption. The story of her life, as gathered from her own lips and long ago published, is an epic of womanly endurance that well deserves to be saved from forgetfulness, to the undying glory of her sex. The burden of toil and trouble she bore would have broken down the strongest man. Her every-day familiarity with deeds of violence and blood might

well have hardened the tenderest heart. | descry the river in its rocky inferno, and Yet, through all, her loving woman's nature hearken to its voice softened by distance to lived on unquenchable. The great influence a rustling whisper. About a mile from the which, in spite of her sex, she eventually middle fall the gulf partially relaxes its hold obtained over her nation, was constantly on the brawling prisoner, and the visitor wielded on behalf of the weak and the may make his way down a steep and thickly needy, whether Indian or pale-face. Her wooded bank to what are called the Lower house on the Genesee, built and maintained Falls of the Genesee. Here, in the midst by the labor of her own hands, was a place of a wilderness still virgin and primeval, the of asylum, a home of help and hospitality in waters shoot furiously down a narrow rock

LOWER FALLS OF THE UPPER GENESEE.

the wilderness, for forty years. Such worldly wisdom and thrift, too, were hers, that undoubtedly, had her life extended a generation nearer to the present, she would have re-issued into civilization one of the richest rural land-owners in the state.

I have spoken of the deep and winding cañon into which the Genesee rushes, below Glen Iris and the middle fall. Following its onward course, the tourist makes his way cautiously along the dizzy brink of the westerly wall of the gulf. Higher and higher, as he progresses, towers the perpendicular rampart on which he treads, until, soon, it is from a sheer height of about four hundred feet that he leans, shuddering, to

hewn flume, their descent being nearly a hundred feet, and the width of the torrent at some points scarcely more than the compass of a good running jump. From the somber chasm in which the cataract terminates, the cañon once more draws the river and repeats on a still more magnificent scale the scenery at which I have hinted above. A walk of four or five miles down the river from the lower fall, and along the westerly battlement of the cañon, brings us to a sudden opening and retrocession of the rocky walls, and here, a fertile expanse of bottom land extending from the river to the hills, are the Gardow Flats, the ancient home of the White Woman. Nearly eighteen thousand acres of this and the scarcely less rich soil of the plateau above it, were hers, the free gift of the Seneca nation to their once helpless girl captive. But the value of such an estate was not so evident in Mary's day as it would be now, and after her Indian friends had left" the beautiful valley" to go on the reservations, she yielded to the ceaseless importunities of her white neighbors, and sold her possessions to them for a song. Sadly and reluctantly she quitted her home on the

Genesee, for which, it is said, she never ceased to yearn, and went to the Buffalo reservation. There, in 1833, at the goodly age of ninety-one, she died and was buried.

About the year 1820 the Senecas abandoned the Genesee country, and the old council-house at Caneadea, which for more than fifty years had echoed the voices of the great Seneca orators, and in which so often had resounded the cry of the captive and the alternate clamor of Indian festivity and war, was left to the ownership of the white man. A utilitarian view was that which he took of the venerable relic, and for many years its walls of well-hewn logs afforded comfortable housing to the family of the farmer on whose land it stood. At

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last it was abandoned as a place of human habitation, and decay had begun to work havoc in its stout structure when its deliverance from premature ruin was effected by Mr. William P. Letchworth, of Glen Iris. With almost religious care the building was

taken down and its entire material conveyed to its actual site. There the timbers, duly marked, were re-erected in precisely their an ient order, and the edifice, carefully and exactly restored to its original condition, may easily survive another century. It is about fifty feet long by twenty wide, in accordance with the favorite design of the Iroquois, who saw in the form of their hall of council a symbol of the "long house," or territory, stretching from the Hudson to the Niagara, occupied by their confederacy. The same model was also at times adopted in the slighter structures used as dwellings and built of poles and bark, the great length of which frequently permitted five or six families to lodge, separated by partitions, under a single roof. The walls of the Glen Iris edifice, formed of pine logs, smoothly hewn and neatly dovetailed at the corners, are carried up to the height of twelve or thirteen feet, without windows, the only openings in the original building having been two doors, opening to west and east respectively, and two smoke-vents near the center of the roof. The roofcovering is of split "shakes," secured by transverse poles, which again are fastened at each end by twisted withes.

There is good reason to presume that some of the early Protestant missionaries, of whom one of the most devoted, the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, visited the Senecas in 1765, may have declared their message in the old council-house at Caneadea, and

the figure of a Latin cross, neatly carved on one of its logs, gives ground for the bolder supposition that long previous it had been visited by the Jesuits. Some Indian carvings, suggesting the idea of a rude kind of picture-writing, are also visible on the walls.

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INDIAN COUNCIL-HOUSE AT GLEN IRIS.

was represented at the council by a fullblooded Indian grandson, enjoying the alliterative cognomen of John Jacket. A grandson of the great Cornplanter, and bearing his name, was also present,-an elderly man,

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