It Happened Here -- Salt City

State Rte. 90, Montezuma

It was while father Simon LeMoyne was visiting the Onondaga in 1654 that his Iroquois hosts showed him a spring they said was "defiled by a demon." LeMoyne recognized it for what it was, a salt-brine spring that he mentioned in his report to the governor of New France. Two years later he returned to establish a mission to the Onondagas, Ste. Marie de Ganentaa. During their time there the Jesuit missionaries made salt, boiling the brine in kettles and sending samples back to Quebec. By 1658 relations between the Iroquois and the French had soured and the missionaries fearing they would be massacred if they stayed, made a precipitous nighttime escape, never to return. The Iroquois had little taste for salt* and after the flight of the French the salt springs lay largely neglected until after the Revolution when the first settlers began filtering into the area. Two escaped Negro slaves were first reported producing salt in kettles and selling it to local settlers. In 1788 Asa Danforth and Comfort Tyler established the first permanent salt works there. By 1790 over 600 bushels of salt were produced in and around the community that became known as Salt Point. (Tyler lived an interesting life. He served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. He participated in Aaron Burr's aborted expedition to New Orleans, for which Burr was tried for treason, and Tyler was indicted but never tried. He survived a rabid dog bite by immediately packing the the wound in salt--which may have dessicated and drew out the infected saliva. In 1811 he moved to Montezuma, NY where he set up salt production operations for the Cayuga Manufacturing Company. There he died in 1827.)

Very early on the state government recognized the importance of the salt springs and took over the Salt Point area springs to prevent them from falling into the hands of a small monopoly of owners. In 1788, as part of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Salt Springs Reservation was established and nine years later, the State assumed formal ownership of the springs. A Salt Springs Superintendent was appointed with a staff in charge of distributing brine to salt manufacturers, collecting fees and maintaining the equipment to erect wells and distribute brine through pumping stations, pipelines, and reservoirs.

A Reconstructed Salt Block on Onondaga Lake on

Early brine boiling operations which arranged a half dozen or fewer kettles in an arch, open to the weather were soon replaced by enclosed furnaces with their kettles arrayed in two rows on a second floor over a flue that led to a high chimney. 

Interior of the Salt Museum's Reconstruction

By the 1850's these "boiling blocks" or "salt blocks" would have contained fifty to sixty 120 gallon copper cauldrons which were supplied with brine from wooden pipes that carried the salt saturated water from state reservoirs to company cisterns to the individual kettles. (Wooden pipes were not subject to corrosion.) In the cisterns, impurities, including iron oxide and calcium chloride would settle out. Further settling out would occur in the boiling kettles which were supplied with a "bittern pan" which would be periodically removed and cleaned out.  Salt crystals formed at the top of the boiling brine and would be scooped out by workers and deposited in baskets made of ash splints, where the excess water was allowed to drain off. The baskets would be emptied into storage bins along the sides of the boiling block and the salt allowed to dry for 14 days before being packed in five bushel barrels.





 In an era before refrigeration, salt was crucial to food preservation. During the Civil War, Union Armies were usually well supplied with beef and pork, while southern armies, their salt works under the control of Union forces, often had to subsist on dried corn and peas and what they could forage. Salt was among the first commodities regulated by State government. The fourteen day drying period was mandated by law.  The Salt Superintendent or his staff inspected every barrel of salt produced.

State regulation, however, didn't extend to the well-being of the workers.  Most salt blocks ran day and night with two shifts of workers, working 12 hour shifts, splitting their days between feeding the fires in the furnace rooms and skimming salt crystals from the cauldrons. In summer the work was hellishly hot, but in the coldest winters, conditions might be even more unhealthful with workers alternating between the hot furnace rooms and the often drafty, freezing boiling lofts.  Then there were the dangers of working around floor level boiling cauldrons and in the constant steamy atmosphere of boiling brine. All too often horrific scalds and burns occurred and frequently pneumonia and other respiratory diseases incapacitated workers. It was not uncommon for workers wives and children to take the place of an injured worker to save his job while he recovered from a work related injury or illness.

A Mobile Drilling Rig at the Salt Museum

To get a good supply of high quality brine, early on, the State and private entrepreneurs began sinking brine wells.**

A Well site east of   
Fulton on Gilbert
Mills Rd, Oswego Co.

The Well Head --150 Years after the
well was drilled, grass refuses to grow on
the brine soaked ground
 

By 1848 the supply of firewood around Salt Point was running out. The rapid development of woodlands into farms throughout the region forced saltmakers to turn to coal, but after the Civil War coal became too expensive, as well.
From 1800 sea salt had been produced on Cape Cod by solar evaporation.  By 1822 the salt region around what became Syracuse had its first solar salt field. By 1888 solar evaporation operations dominated the salt industry around Syracuse. eventually covering the area with some 50,000 "salt rooms," evaporation troughs.
 




 A Model of Salt Producing Facilities, next to the Erie Canal.  White Evaporation Troughs or "Rooms" are flanked by grey Rain Covers.  Nearby are the older, Chimneyed Salt Block Buildings
   
Because salt was such a bulky commodity, transportation costs were a major expense in the production of salt. Prominent community leaders became vocal advocates of improved transportation. Comfort Tyler built some of the first sections of the Seneca Turnpike. A network of roads, followed by rails, began to radiate from Syracuse. Syracuse politicians were early supporters of the Erie Canal and the Seneca and Oswego Canals that would soon connect with the Erie Canal. James Geddes. an early advocate of the Canal, from Syracuse became the canal's four chief engineers. Salt became the major revenue generating commodity shipped on the canal. Cheaper transportation lowered the cost of salt, encouraging New York farmers to diversify from wheat production to pork and dairy production, which in turn, increased the demand for salt. In 1825 Salt Point after being known by several different names was incorporated as the village of Syracuse. In 1847 it merged with the nearby salt producing village of Salina to become the City of Syracuse.

At "Salt Road" and NY 90*** at Summerhill

*A decade before, during Father Jogues captivity the Mohawks teased him saying they had eaten the flesh of captives of other tribes, but had never tasted French flesh before and knowing that the French liked salted meat wondered, if when they boiled him, his flesh would taste salty.

**New Yorker, Edwin L. Drake adopted this technology when he first drilled for oil. See my post "It Happened Here--The Oil Driller" 6/9/13.

***Not to be confused with U.S. 90, the NY Thruway

It Happened Here --The Other French and Indian Wars --Part II The Jesuits and The Ordeals of  Fr.  Jogues

From their earliest efforts at settlement, the French were motivated not only to make a profit for their sponsors but also to save the souls of the indigenous people they encountered by converting them to Christianity.  Franciscan and Sulpician priests accompanied the first explorers and settlers, to be replaced by the Jesuit order in 1635/6.

In August of 1642 twelve canoes made their way upstream along the northern shore of Lac St. Pierre, a widening in the St. Lawrence River between Trois Rivieres and Montreal, near where the Richelieu River empties in. In the lead canoe was Father Issac Jogues, a Jesuit priest who had led missionary efforts among the Huron peoples and the Tobacco tribes of the Great Lakes for the last several years.  He was returning with critical supplies for the struggling mission in Huron territory--clothing for the priests, altar vessels, bread and wine for the Eucharist, and writing supplies*. With him were some forty Christian and non-Christian Hurons, and  Rene Goupill and Guillaume Couture, donnes of the Jesuits (layman who out of religious motives had volunteered for service to the order).  

Suddenly, the stillness of the lake was shattered by the crash of muskets and the war-whoops of attacking Indians. Most of Jogues' Huron party immediately jumped from their canoes and attempted to escape through the dense undergrowth along shore. The remaining Hurons and Jogues lay-assistants abandoned resistance when from both shores, canoes filled with Iroquois warriors appeared from their hiding places eliminating all possibility of flight. Jogues slipped into the bull-rushes and might have made his escape but when he saw his donne Rene Goupill, and several of his converts in the hands of the Iroquois, he returned to share their fate. So too did Guillaume Couture, but not before killing an attacking Mohawk that attempted to kill him. The Iroquois frenzied by the success of their attack and enraged by the death of one of their own, immediately began to abuse their white prisoners with tortures traditional among many of the eastern tribes. Jogues and Coture were beaten senseless by fists and war clubs. Their finger-nails were ripped from their fingers and the ends of their fingers chewed by their captors.

Immediately, with their captives, the the Iroquois war party began their return to the Mohawk towns, from where they had come, up** the Richelieu river, and up the lake known to the French by the name of its French discoverer (Champlain). After eight days they met an Iroquois war party heading north. The Iroquois celebrated and the captives were forced to run a gauntlet of warriors armed with sticks and clubs from both parties, suffering severe beatings. At night, young warriors kept up the tortures of their captives who were staked, hand and foot to the ground, reopening wounds on their captives fingers, burning them with firebrands and pulling hair from their heads and beards.

La Chute River falls, surrounded by the village of Ticonderoga

 Soon after, the French captives entered territory unknown to them, ascending a river, portaging around a falls and continuing up
a large and beautiful lake. From there they continued to the principal village of the Mohawks, Ossernenon.
                

The lake, (now called Lake George) looking South from Mt. Defiance

On Black Pt. Road, Ticonderoga

                             

Rt 5S, Auriesville

At Ossernenon the three frenchmen and several  Hurons of their party suffered their worst beatings as the whole town turned out to form a long gauntlet into the town. Afterwards, in the town they were strung up on scaffolds and Jogues and Goupill both suffered a thumb to be cut off.
After several days they were paraded to two other Mohawk towns where their tortures continued.



      
           ANDAGORON
          MIDDLE MOHAWK CASTLE
          OF THE BEAR CLAN 1642
          LOCATED ON HILL TOP.
          DESTROYED IN DE TRACY'S
          RAID OF 1666 Location: ON NYS 5S ABOUT 2 MIS. WEST OF FULTONVILLE
        (This NYSHM has disappeared.)

•  SITE OF
  T-CAN-DE-RO-GA OR
  TEN-ON-ON-TO-GEN. LOWER
  CASTLE MOHAWKS' WOLF CLAN
  LAST MOHAWK INDIAN VILLAGE
  IN VALLEY, 1700-1775Location: ON TOWN RD. AT FORT HUNTER

         (Ten-on-on-to-gen may have preceded T-can-de-ro-ga and thus been here in1642 when Jogues 
           was a captive. This NYSHM stood at Fort Hunter until it was undermined by flooding from     
           Hurricane Irene in 2011.  It had not been reset as of this posting.)
         






               Another town identified by Fr. Jogues
                  was Canagere, near the present-day 
                  hamlet of Sprakers








Eventually, after periods of severe torture, the young Couture, who was admired for his bravery in killing the Mohawk who had attempted to kill him, was adopted by an Indian family to replace a lost son; Goupill and Jogues became slaves, required to gather wood and do menial tasks.
The Jesuit and his donne took every opportunity to secretly practice their faith, baptizing and absolving Huron captives brought in and condemned to death by burning and the children of Mohawks who had became deathly sick. Goupil fell under suspicion of witchcraft for teaching little children to make the sign of the cross and when he was observed making the sign of the cross on a sick child's forehead, the child's alarmed grandfather had him murdered. Jogues, too, fell under suspicion and was warned if any of the Mohawks war parties failed in their raids or suffered losses of their warriors, he would be held responsible, and would suffer further torture and be burned at the stake. For months Jogues suffered the agony of watching war parties depart and return, knowing if they succeeded he would have to witness the torture and death of their French and Indian captives, and if they failed, he would face his own torture and death.

In July, the following year, Jogues captors required him to write them a note, to give to the French, requesting a parlay to talk peace terms. Jogues doubted the Indians' sincerity and in the note he composed, using a mixture of French, Latin and Huron,  he warned the French.

The next month, Jogues went with a group of his captors to fish on the Hudson, twenty miles below Ft. Orange and to trade with the Dutch, at the fort.  While there, news was received that the war-party carrying Jogues' note had delivered it, and that the French, after reading it had fired their cannon at the war-party. The Indians, suspecting treachery, were incensed and let it be known of their plans to surely torture and burn the Jesuit father when he returned to Ossernenon.

The Dutch at Ft. Orange had known for some time of Jogues capture and had offered the Mohawks a ransom for his release but now with the news that he would most certainly be burned at the stake when he returned to Ossernenon, Arendt Van Cuyler and other leaders of the Rensselearwyck community formed a plan.  Passage was arranged for him on a small Dutch trading vessel bound for France now lying at anchor in the Hudson below Fort Orange. Their guests, the Mohawks and their slave were given quarters in a farmer's house near the water, and a small skiff was left for Jogues to make his way, at night, to the ship anchored in midstream.  But Jogues was unsure if he should go.  Would leaving mean abandoning a mission God had selected for him? Or would staying be abetting his own murderers--in effect, committing suicide, a mortal sin?  After a sleepless night, he chose to go but his escape was plagued with setbacks. In the pre-dawn as he set out he was attacked by the farmer's dog who lacerated his leg. The farmer bound his wounds, but fearful of antagonizing his Indian guests tied the door latch.  The next night with the help of a hired man Jogues made his escape but found the skiff stranded in the mud at low tide and had to laboriously pole the boat across the mud to the anchored ship. The next several days the furious Indians raged through town demanding to know where he was and who was hiding him. The ship's captain, fearful of what the Indians might do, demanded the town's burghers take back their passenger. For six weeks, Jogues was hidden in the stiffling loft of the house of an old man, who ate most of the food the burghers brought to him.  Eventually the Indians left after accepting a cash payment for their loss and the Jesuit father was put on another boat leaving for England, only to suffer a final trial before crossing the North Atlantic. In the port of New Amsterdam, while the ship's crew was ashore carousing before embarking on their transatlantic voyage a gang of thieves boarded the boat and stole, among other things, Jogues' only suit of clothes, given to him by the burghers, which he was wearing. Finally, after many weeks the Jesuit father arrived home in his native France, destitute and nearly naked.

After a couple years, during which he regained his health and became something of a celebrity in France, Father Jogues returned to New France to continue his mission work among the Hurons.*** In the meantime, a fragile peace had been worked out between the Mohawks, and the French and their Algonquin neighbors.

Then, the Governor of New France asked something incredible of him; and more incredibly, he accepted! Issac Jogues knew and understood the Mohawks better than any other European. The governor asked him to return to the Mohawk villages as his ambassador to ensure the Mohawks honored the peace treaty, and as a Jesuit father to continue his mission to the Mohawks.  In May  1646 Jogues left Trois Rivieres with  two Algonquin ambassadors to begin his diplomatic and religious mission to the Mohawks, stopping along the lake he discovered four years before and taking some of its clear water blessing it for holy water and naming the lake Lac du St. Sacrement.
  

At Ossernenon members of the tortoise and wolf clans accepted his wampum belts and gifts and listened to his peace oratory but refused the gifts of  his Algonquin counterparts.  It was apparent the peace was coming apart! He was warned to depart with the Algonquins before the more conservative clans of the upper villages arrived.

Father Jogues left with the Algonquins and accompanied them back to their homelands before turning around and heading back to Mohawk territory.

In Jogues absence opinion continued to turn against the French and their Algonquin allies.  Some visiting Hurons attempting to ingratiate themselves with their hosts began telling stories how the Jesuits had brought spells that cause crops to fail and diseases that caused children to die. With caterpillars infesting their corn and diseases increasing that summer Mohawk fears were on the rise. A box left by Jogues with some common personal items in it became the center of attention and fears arose he may have left evil talismans.

In the forest south of Lac du St. Sacrement (Lake George) a war-party from the Bear clan, heading north, that had decided to break the peace treaty, ran into Jogues and his companion, a young donne named Lelande heading south.  They stripped and beat the pair, hustling them back to Ossernenon. There, members of the crowd shouted he would die tomorrow.  The next day Father Jogues was invited to a feast by a chief of the bear clan.  As he entered his longhouse he was cut down by a tomahawk. Lalande was killed the following day.

                                       Statue of Fr. Issac Jogues at the 
                                                head of Lac du St. Sacrement, in
                                                Lake George Battleground State Park

Jesuit Shrine of the North America Martyrs,
Ossernenon, Auriesville 







The death of Father Jogues, in 1646, followed by the destruction of the Huron mission towns and the destruction of the Huron nation itself in 1649, marked the nadir of the Jesuit missionary cause and would be followed by a period in which the Iroquois would wreak havoc on New France's closest allies, the Algonquin tribes along the St. Lawrence, and threaten the very existence of New France, itself.  A future post will discuss these developments, and the actions the French would take to counter the rampages of the Iroquois.

* For forty years the Jesuits would send annual narrative reports of their activities to the order's headquarters in Paris and their superiors would collect and publish them in an annual volume, The Jesuit Relations.  Along with Jogues' substantial correspondence they became primary source material for Francis Parkman's classic The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century.

**A geographical reminder--The Lake George, Lake Champlain, Richielu River watershed flow north into the St.Lawrence River. so "up" (upstream, to higher elevations) is to the south !

***Jogues was given a special dispensation by the Pope to say Mass and handle the sacramental bread with his mutilated hands.

It Happened Here -- The Other French and Indian Wars --Part I  Champlain

Americans, by tradition, have long called the wars for the colonial domination of North America, collectively, The French and Indian Wars--named for the French and their Indian allies arrayed against the British and American colonial forces.  But the title "French and Indian Wars" might be equally applied to the series of conflicts of the Iroquois Indians (Haudenosaunee) against the government and citizens of New France*.  Though these conflicts often ran concurrent with periods of British conflict with the French, the Iroquois usually fought independently of their sometimes allies;  they often declined to support the British,  and occasionally they acted contrary to the interests of their erstwhile allies. Also. because the Iroquois were a loose confederation of nations, while one nation was at peace with the French, another might be continuing to send out war parties. In duration, if not in scale, these French and Indian Wars dwarf all of the other wars of France excepting the Anglo-French "Hundred Years Wars".

  The conflict began almost inadvertently when  French explorer Samuel de Champlain agreed to  join a war party of Huron, Ottawa and Montagnais Indians in a raid into Iroquois territory in 1609.  Champlain hoped by participation in the raid he might strengthen his friendship with the tribes nearest his tiny outpost of Quebec and with the large tribes to the west, and that that relationship would aid him in one of his expedition's primary objectives, finding a route to China. He knew, also, that a dramatic demonstration of french arms would go a long way toward securing their alliance. With eleven of his countrymen in a small sailing vessel Champlain joined the party of some two hundred and forty Indians, but before they had gotten very far a quarrel broke out among the native Americans and some three quarters of them quit the expedition.  At what would become the village of St. John's, rapids prevented the boat from continuing so Champlain sent it back with all but two of his soldiers.  The three Frenchmen continued on with the Indians, by canoe, to the head of Riviere des Iroquois (Richelieu River) to where it opened up into the lake that came to bear his name.

Tercentenary Lighthouse at Crown Pt.

Champlain Bronze at the Lighthouse

Marker at Ticonderoga showing Champlain's sketch of the Battle

 On a point along the western shore (probably Crown Point or Ticonderoga) Champlain and his hosts ran into an Iroquois war party late in the day.  Through an exchange of insults and challenges the two war parties agreed to meet in battle the next day. The following morning the Hurons and Montagnais faced off against the Iroquois with Champlain in the middle of  his allies' line across from a group of Iroquois war chiefs.  On the flank were a smaller group Indians with his two soldiers. Champlain had loaded his arquebus with four balls.  As the chiefs moved to attack at close range, Champlain shouldered his weapon and fired. Two chiefs dropped dead and a third fell mortally wounded.  The explorer was engulfed in a hailstorm of arrows but good luck and his light armor and helmet preserved him from  injury.  As he reloaded, his soldiers discharged their arquebuses into the line of Haudenosaunee warriors. In a moment it was over. A few more Iroquois fell in the panicked flight that followed but though the casualties were few that day, the Iroquois would never forgive the French.

The following year, near the mouth of the Richelieu, Champlain and several of his men confirmed their hostility to the Iroquois by joining an attack on an Iroquois war party that had holed up in a barricade of downed trees and branches.  With their overwhelming firepower they, and a small group of traders who apparently joined the fray for the fun of it, slaughtered their cornered foe and only fifteen of some one hundred warriors escaped.

Then in 1615 Champlain while exploring in Huron territory was invited to joined in a raid into Iroquoia itself. With some 500 native warriors Champlain and his men crossed the Lake Ontario, intending to meet up with an equally large party of allies, (probably Susquehannocks).

 At the head of Henderson Bay, Lake Ontario
 (County Rte 178)

Some miles inland, a small fishing party of eleven Onondaga Iroquois were captured,  then outside of a large well pallisaded town, south of Lake Oneida, the younger warriors, surging 

US 11 Pulaski

ahead came upon a large group of Iroquois tending their fields of maize and pumpkins. Attacking wildly they were driven back when the Onondagas grabbed their weapons, counter-attacked, then successfully retreated into their town.

US 11 Brewerton

The "Indian Castle," as the Dutch and English called such places was heavily fortified with four rows of 30 foot tree trunk pickets surrounding it, inclined outward; galleries or shooting platforms along its top; magazines of stones; and water-filled troughs to counter any attempts to set fire to the walls. In the face of such defenses Champlain built a siege-tower with a platform that allowed four or five of his arquebusers to fire across at the defenders on the shooting platforms. The tower was brought forward and the battle commenced.  But to his dismay Champlain realized his Indian allies were  unprepared or unwilling to support him. Though he shouted until he was voiceless, among the cacophony of war-hoops and sounds of battle, they refused to follow him. Instead, rushing forward as individuals or small groups the Hurons spent their fury in futile attacks, shooting up against the defenders or in useless displays of bravado in front of the palisade.

County Rte. 57,  Phoenix

 At one point a fire was kindled against the wall, but on the leeward side and was quickly extinguished from above by the defenders. As casualties mounted, Huron enthusiasm waned, and a spontaneous withdrawal occurred. In the following days Champlain, though wounded, tried to rally his troops for another assault but they refused to budge until the arrival of reinforcements that never materialized.  After several days the war party returned to their canoes hidden on the shore of Lake Ontario.

For the next couple of decades an uneasy peace prevailed between the French and the cowed Iroquois as the Haudenosaunee focused their aggression against the Mahicans and other (Hudson) River tribes. By 1628, they had driven them east of the river and gained direct access to the other "tribe" of newcomers on the scene, the Dutch.  With the Dutch they established a fabulously profitable trade, acquiring all manner of, to them,  unimaginable, marvelously wonderful things-- iron axes and tomahawks, iron, copper and brass kettles, steel knives, wool strouds (blankets) and woven cloth shirts, beads and wampum, vermilion warpaint, brandy and rum; and most importantly, arquebuses, and soon, flintlock muskets. The Dutch, for their part, had no compunctions against selling the Iroquois firearms, especially since one arquebus could command a price of twenty beaver skins. By 1643 the French were receiving alarming reports from their missionaries that the Mohawks alone had in their possession over 300 muskets!

Meanwhile the Hurons had become the principal Indian beneficiaries of the French fur trade. With their land lying astride the trade routes between the French trading centers along the St. Lawrence and the rich beaver territories around the Great Lakes, on up into the far reaches of Hudson's Bay, the Hurons established themselves as middlemen.

While populations of beaver were soon decimated in Iroquois hunting grounds, the warriors of the Five Nations became excellent marksmen, developing new strategies for warfare from ancient hunting tactics. Gone forever were the bands of massed warriors sending up clouds of arrows and protecting themselves with wooden shields and wooden slat-armour, that Champlain encountered. Instead the Iroquois developed tactics of stealth and ambush and coordinated movement to surround their human prey. And they would use these tactics to intercept and attack Huron hunters in their territory or on their way to Montreal burdened with pelts.  To the increasing consternation of French authorities, French traders and isolated French farmers. too, became targets of such attacks.

Around 1645 Iroquois strategy changed from preying on Huron fur trappers and raiding their canoe convoys of furs heading for Montreal, to direct attacks on Huron villages themselves with the purpose of destroying the Huron nation and supplanting it as middlemen in the fur trade. Organizationally the Iroquois Confederacy changed as well, though how it changed and what leaders may have sparked these changes may never be known.  War parties increased in size from scores of warriors based in a single village or clan members from a couple villages to Confederacy-wide armies of 1500 or more warriors, from all five tribes.  And raids became coordinated with war parties heading out and returning continuously to keep up a constant pressure on their targets, not just in good weather but all year long.

In the summer of 1649 the Haudenosaunee launched attacks against the Huron towns of St. Ignace and St. Louis, mission towns on the shore of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The towns were overrun.  Their French Jesuit missions were destroyed and their missionaries killed.  Hundreds of Huron warrior captives were marched back to Iroquois towns across what would become New York State to be ritually tortured and killed and hundreds more Huron women and children would be marched back to become slaves or to be adopted into Iroquois families. The stunned Hurons abandoned fifteen other towns. By the winter of 1649 the Huron nation was no more, its people all captives or refugees starving in the wilderness, and hunted down like game by Iroquois war parties or throwing themselves on the mercy of neighboring tribes.

For the next couple of years the juggernaut of the Iroquois war machine continued to roll on.  In the winter of 1649-1650 they attacked and destroyed two small tribes, the Nipissing and the Petun or "Tobacco Nation", living north west, and south of the Hurons. In 1651 the Neutral Nation, living west of Lake Ontario was destroyed for its role in giving shelter to refugee Hurons.

Next week -- Part II   The Jesuits and the Ordeals of  Father Jogues


*In recent decades historians have begun referring to these conflicts, depending on whether their treatment of them has concentrated more on the Iroquois' conflict with the French or their struggle to dominate the fur trade, as the "French and Iroquois Wars" or the "Beaver Wars".

It Happened Here -- Tryon County's Women in War  (Continued)

Last week's post told the stories of two women of Tyron County, who despite their losses acted with courage and determination to protect their families and to carry on in the aftermath of the Tory/Indian raids of 1780.  This week's post tells the stories of two women, who in the same raids, with cold fury faced down armed Indian invaders of their homes to prevent the theft of, or to recover their prized possessions.

NY 29 and Halles Mills Rd., Johnstown

Southeast of Johnstown was the homestead of Lodowick Putnam and his family.  In May 1780 Sir John Johnson with a force of 500 Tories and Indians came down through the Champlain Valley, Lake George and Sacandaga to attack the eastern end of the Mohawk Valley.  Around midnight some Indians from Johnson's force entered the Putnam home and began to ransack it, grabbing clothes off of their wall hooks. Putnam's wife Elizabeth, threw herself at one of the Indians declaring she needed those clothes for her daughter Hannah.  The two wrestled over the garments* until the Indian gave up the fight.  The Indians killed and scalped Lodowick Putnam and their son Aaron but left Elizabeth unharmed. They set fire to the house and Elizabeth and her younger children made their way the several miles through the darkness to alert the garrison at Fort Johnson.

Up river in Canjoharie,  Nancy Van Alstyne led her neighbors in hiding their most valuable possessions on an island in the center of

Moyer St., Canajoharie

the Mohawk owned by her husband. When the raiders struck the town a few days later, she must have watched with mixed feelings of horror and relief when her neighbors' houses went up in flames while her own stone house was spared.  Her husband, Martin J. Van Alstyne had been friends with the Johnsons before the war, although he became active in rebel politics and had hosted meetings of the town's Committee of Safety in their house. Because of his former connections to the Johnsons the raiders were under orders not to disturb his property.

In the fall of 1780 the raiders returned.  This time the Van Alystynes were not so lucky.  Indians ransacked the house, but did not burn it.  Gone were many of the family's possessions, including cooking utensils and most of the family's horses. After the raid,  Johnson, the Tories and many of the Indians accompanying them returned to winter quarters in Canada, but a few Indian bands decided to over-Winter in their old homelands along the Mohawk valley. Building fortified encampments, they settled in for the winter.  The location of one of these camps, within two dozen miles of Canajoharie became common knowledge and Nancy urged her husband to mobilize the local militia to attack it. But local residents still reeling from the summer's raids, were in no mood to incur further losses.  By mid-winter still no action had been taken and Nancy obsessed with recovering her lost things decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking her sixteen year old son with her, she harnessed a horse to the family's wagon. Ignoring the pleas of her family to be reasonable, she set out down snow choked trails to the Indian encampment. After a difficult trip of some twenty miles she arrived at the door of a large hut in the encampment.  The camp was nearly deserted as most of the warriors were out hunting.  She found only an old Indian woman tending a fire, who looked up and demanded to know what she wanted.  Numb and exhausted from the cold. she mumbled "Food."  As the woman set about preparing her a portion, Nancy realized she was using her cooking utensils. When the woman was distracted, Nancy snapped up the utensil and threw them in her wagon.  Outside, in a stable, she saw her family's horses and they recognized her.  Cutting their halters she gave them a slap, sending them down the trail toward home.  Her mission accomplished, she and her son made a hasty escape.  Later, when a group of Indians returned to the Van Alystyne home to reclaim their spoils she turned them away with a fierce show of defiance and by reminding them of the protection Johnson had given them.

Based on family legends these stories of Tryon County women in war can never be documented, but how plausible are they?  Certainly, the independence and determination of Dutch women in colonial America borders on legendary. From the wives of patroons (see my post of 6/30/13) to the common Vrouw  Dutch women ran their households and often partnered in their husband's enterprises.  They often managed servants and slaves and regularly had business with Indians that frequented frontier towns (and generally didn't have a very high opinion of them.)  The Iroquois, for their part, were raised in a matrilineal society, where the matriarchy controlled most domestic affairs.  Clan matriarchs that spoke with authority were given a great deal of deference.  Additionally, warriors were brought up to respect both bravery and bravado. Given these sets of cultural factors it is easy to see how these exchanges could have occurred and played out as they were reported.
 

*This story bears a remarkable similarity to one from Greene County--see my post of 12/17/13

 Marker of the Week--If you think "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"... 

Traveling along today's roads the trip from
Plattsburgh to Sackett's Harbor is

Rt. 30A, Gloversville

about 176 miles. However, if you have to come by way of Johnstown, its a bit longer.

 In 1814 General George Izard had been assigned to the Northern Army defending Lake Champlain. What he found was an army of 4000 poorly trained volunteers and 7000 raw recruits and almost non-existent defenses. Over a period of months he worked to train his men and build defenses around Plattsburgh. In a masterstroke of poor planning and terrible timing Izard was reassigned to take 4000 of his men and take over command of facilities at Sackett's Harbor to begin operations on the Niagara Frontier. (Meanwhile, the British were in the process of sending 30,000 battle hardened veterans of the Napoleonic Wars to attack Plattsburgh!) But there were no roads across the New York north country, and of course sailing up the St. Lawrence was out of the question.The alternative was a 400 mile march over bad roads, down the Champlain/Lake George corridor, across to Johnstown, before heading up the Mohawk, portaging to Oneida Lake and on north to Sackett's Harbor.

It's no wonder that after peace was restored President Monroe issued a directive in 1817 for a road to be built across the northern part of the state that became known as "the Old Military Highway."  Constructed with military labor, the project dragged on until 1826, beginning in Port Kent and ending up east of Potsdam.

It Happened Here -- Tryon County's Women in War 

Though women in the American Revolution were usually "non-combatants" the Tory and Indian raids of 1778, 1780 and 1781 brought the war to their doorsteps forcing women into roles and committing them to actions far outside their everyday experience.  While countless acts of determination, courage and heroism have gone unrecorded, most of those that are recalled are those passed down by word of mouth, from grandmother to granddaughter, down through the generations,  not written down for 100  years or more and then recorded by Victorian chroniclers perhaps anxious to illustrate the "nobility of the American Frontier Woman" and not above embellishing skimpy facts or perhaps creating "a good story" out of whole cloth.   To professional historians used to dealing with participants' letters and diaries, account books, military unit returns and the works of some early writers that are based on participant interviews and battlefield observations, dealing with such unsubstantiated historical "facts" like these are likely to leave historians feeling a bit "queasy".  Be that as it may, these stories can illustrate some of the roles and actions women played in this period.  Most of the NYSHM's don't refer to these women, either, but  they at least identify the scene of their actions.

On Rte 30A Esperance

In 1778, 1780 and 1781  mixed forces of Tories, Indians and British Regulars raided first the Schoharie and then the Mohawk Valleys.  Militarily they hoped to terrorize the inhabitants of the valleys and tie up large numbers of patriot troops to protect the region; strategically they hoped to disrupt the harvests and destroy wheat production used to feed rebel forces; and personally many Tories hoped to exact revenge for their' expulsion from their homes. Indian forces were similarly motivated by the destruction of their towns across Iroquoia by the Sullivan/ Clinton campaign of 1779.

On Noeltner Rd, Auriesville

     
           

           From early in the Revolution, the mills and 

           wheat fields of the Mohawk and Schoharie 

           Valleys were crucial to provisioning the       

            Patriot's  forces. 

On Denice Rd., off of Ft. Hunter Rd.

The fate of many women in the Mohawk Valley was to deal with loss of a husband or brother or son and of carry on without their loved one's help and economic support. Many families lost members in the third summer of the war as hundreds of Valley menfolk marched off to Oriskany never to return. The burden for women like Elizabeth (Cline) Pettingill is difficult to imagine, running a small farm, alone, with thirteen children!  It became worse in the summer of 1780. As Indian raiders approached, she gathered up her brood and fled, finding refuge under the overgrown banks of the Chuctanunda Creek. As Indian warriors began to track down the family one of the younger children (probably three and a half year old Hendrick, born January 1777)  began to cry and could not be quieted.  Desperate with fear of discovery, Elizabeth stuffed her petticoat in the child's face to muffle its cries.   By the time the danger had passed the child was unconscious but by shaking it vigorously she was able to revive it.  The family emerged to find their house, barn and outbuilding burned to the ground.  Gradually they managed to rebuild, surviving the first winter on wheat that had been scorched but not destroyed in a corner of the barn that now lay in ruins.

On Rte. 334, Fonda

On Rte 30A, at Fairgrounds

Peggy Wemple had more time to adjust to life without a husband, before the Revolution intruded into her life.  Her husband, Barent Wemple, had been a fur trader.  He was fluent in the Seneca dialect and served as a translator in several of the treaty conferences at Johnson Hall in 1769.  In 1771 he was killed in dispute with Indian fur traders.

  Peggy ran a tavern on Cayadutta Street in Caughnawaga* and with her son, Myndert, ran a gristmill on the Cayadutta creek.  She was renowned  for both her beauty and her fierce determination and independence. In 1780, when Tory and Indian raiders rampaged through the town,  she probably met them at the door, barring their way! They forced her inside, barricaded the door and set fire to the building. From an upstairs window she could be heard yelling "Help, Help! Murder, Murder!" Her son was taken captive.  Peggy's brother, John Fonda, sent his slave to investigate but before a rescue could be undertaken the Fonda property was overrun and John and his family was forced to flee. Peggy, apparently, effected her own escape as the tavern and the mill burned to the ground.

Meanwhile, Peggy's father,  Douw Fonda, a local patriot leader and fur trader was apprehended. One of the Indians, "One armed Peter," who knew the elder Fonda from before the war, struck him down and scalped the old man, believing he was certain to be killed, and that being the case, he, Peter might as well reap the financial incentives for taking his scalp!

Following the raid, Myndert was released at Johnstown, and Peggy, determined to go on, began immediately to rebuild.  Money from Douw Fonda's estate and the bequest of three of Fonda's slaves (Africa, Jacob and Catherine) gave her the resources to proceed.  Soon the new mill was up and running and Peggy pushed its production.  By winter of 1780 it had ground and "boulted**" 2700 skepples (2025 bushels) of wheat to be used by the garrisons of Fort Ticonderoga, Fort Hunter, Fort Plank and Fort Stanwix.

*Caughnawaga was named for the nearby Indian town of Caughnawauga, abandoned in 1694. The town's name was changed to Fonda in honor of its founder, Douw Fonda.

**"Boulting" or sifting was the process of sifting out bran and larger particles out of the flour to lighten it and give it better baking qualities. Sieves were made of large wooden hoops covered with a very fine woven cloth, through which the flour was shaken.


Next Week --  Tyron County's Women in War--continues.

Marker of the Week --  He almost got it!                                                                                                                    

On Darrow Rd., Currytown

In 1831 Enoch Ambler devised one of the first mowing machines, to be pulled by horses. It had many of the features that would become standard in many of the mowing machines and reapers over the next 75 years--a long sickle bar that shuttled back and forth, powered by one or more wheels that supported the machine and turned as it was pulled forward by horses. Teeth guided the bar over the ground and channeled the grasses into the sickle.  A skid supported the end of the bar. The sickle-bar was razor sharp like the scythe-man's scythe  until it got dull after a few passes.  But unlike the scythe-er, the mower machine operator couldn't stop, reach into his back pocket and pull out his whet-stone to give his blade a few quick passes to keep it razor sharp. So Enoch Ambler's machine cut at first, then pulled, then jammed.  Ambler wasn't wealthy so it took him a few years to recruit a couple of backers to help him secure a patent.  By then several competitors were using versions of his innovations. Finally he sold his patent and all its rights to a man for $250, and retired from inventing to split shingles for a living.  After a long life he was killed in a shooting accident and was buried in a pauper's grave. The man who bought the patent combined Ambler's machine with a saw toothed scythe blade, which with Ambler-designed guide-teeth scissored off grasses or crops. He combined that with a platform and paddles that swept shocks of grain into bundles.  Cyrus McCormack's reaper made millions, and his company eventually formed the nucleus of International Harvester.