The Indians of New York
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By Hon. Elliot Danforth
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Delivered before the Society, May 8, 1894
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When the learned men of Europe were told that the newly
discovered continent of America was peopled by a race of
men, " some of whom had
very good
features, whose bodies
and limbs were well-proportioned,
who had black
hair and
eyes, but
whose skin was yellow," the question arose, whether the ten
lost tribes of Israel had not been rediscovered, and much
ink was spilled in the
attempt to
prove or disprove the
descent of the American Indians from
the
children of
Israel. What I shall
tell you to-night, may help you to decide this
vexed
question, which you will be able to do when told,
that the
Indian tribes,
east of the Mississippi, must be
divided into twenty-nine linguistic families,
subdivided
into sixty-four dialects.
The Reverend Mr. Megapolensis, the first
minister of the
gospel at Albany, and a missionary to the
Mohawk Indians,
whose
language he studied, says of this
branch of Indian language: "When I first
observed that
they pronounced their
words so differently, words meaning the same
thing, I
asked the Commissary of the West India Company
here, what
it meant. He
answered that he did not know, but
imagined they changed their language every
two or three
years." I must ask you
to bear in mind, that in speaking tonight of
the Indians
of New York I shall divide them into two great
families,
distinguished from each other by their language,
the Algonquins, living formerly
in
the country east and
"west of the Hudson River, south of
Albany, and the
Iroquois, occupying the country
north, east and west of
Albany. The first of
these families had many subdivisions,
designated by the names of their
localities, they will be
called
local tribes of Algonquin race. The Iroquois of
New
York were divided into five tribes, each of which was
again divided into
local tribes. I have just now mentioned
the Mohawk Indians
as living near
Albany. They were, when this State was
first settled by Europeans, a
preeminently New York Indian
tribe,
but belonged to a confederation, which might
be
called the prototype of our great republic, the United
States. The first map
of the territory, now called the
State of New York, was
made in Holland in 1614,
not from an actual survey, but
from
information given to the mapmaker by three
Dutchmen,
who had been prisoners of the Indians for about three
years, and of
course had been obliged to accompany their
captors on
every hunting expedition.
This map of which a fac-simile
is
deposited in the State Library, at Albany,
calls Lake
Champlain the Lake of the Iroquois, that is the
confederation, to
which the Mohawks belonged. The lan'd
east of Lake
Champlain is called
Irocoisia, but the Mohawks sit on the
north side of the Mohawk River, not far
from its mouth,
while the Senecas,
another tribe of the Iroquois Confederation,
sit near the
heads of the Susquehannah. According to the
same map, the
country
on both sides of the Hudson River
between Albany and New York, was occupied by
the Mahicans,
the Manhates lived on
the island, which is now New York City, and
the Mahicans
on Long Island. The Iroquois Confederation,
consisting of
the
Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas,
and Senecas, were on all sides hedged in
by the great
Indian family, which
the French called Algonquin, and are now often
called the
Lenape. A tribe of the Iroquois, which later
joined the
Confederation
on New York soil, the Tuscaroras,
lived, also surrounded by Algonquins, in North
Carolina.
As the Algonquins were
numerically superior to the Iroquois, it is
perhaps
proper, that I should first speak of the New York
members
of this great
family. Beginning with the Manhates,
the predecessors of the inhabitants of New
York, we learn
from their traditions
the following account of the first arrival
of Europeans on
New York Island. They tell: "Along time
ago, when there
was no
such thing known to the. Indians as
people with a white skin, some of our men
who had been out
fishing where the
sea widens, saw at a great distance something
remarkably
large swimming or floating upon the water.
Hastily
returning ashore,
they informed their people what
had been seen. A great commotion arose, some
taking the
apparition for a large
fish or animal, others declaring it to be a
house. As the
thing moved towards the land, the Indians
prepared for the
reception of what they had concluded must
be a large canoe, carrying the great
Manitto, or God, who
was coming to
visit them. The floating house or canoe
stops, a
smaller one comes ashore with a man, dressed in
red, and
some others.
He of the red coat must be the great
Manitto, for the coat shone with something
the red men
could not account for,
namely, the gold lace, but why has he a white
skin ? A
large hockhack (bottle) is brought forward by one
of the
Manitto's
servants, and from this something liquid
is poured into a small cup, the Manitto
drinks, has the
glass filled again,
and offers it to the chief. The chief
receives the
glass, but only smells at it, and then passes
it to the
next chief,
who does the same. The glass thus
makes the round among all assembled, without
any one
having tasted its contents,
and it is about to be returned to the
Manitto, when one of
the chiefs, a spirited man and great
warrior, jumps up,
addresses the assembly on the
impropriety of returning the glass without doing
with the
contents what Manitto has
shown to do with them, and declares that,
since he
believed it for the good of the nation, that the
contents
offered them,
should be drank, and as no one was
willing to drink, he would, no matter what
the
consequences might be. It was
better in his opinion, for one man to die,
than a whole
nation to be
destroyed.
[Source:
"Transactions
of the Oneida
Historical Society at Utica" By Oneida Historical
Society
at Utica; Published by The Society, 1894.
Transcribed for
Genealogy
Trails by Patty Holgate]
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