It Happened Here -- The People of the
"River that Flows Both Ways"

Main St., Catskill at the Marina

They called themselves the "People of the River that Flows Both Ways", or the Mohicannau*, and that river, of course, is the tidal estuary Hudson.** The Mohicans, or Mahikans as the Europeans called them had lived for centuries in the Hudson River watershed and the adjacent Housatonic River watershed, having separated from the Delaware Indian peoples, perhaps a millennium ago.

They lived in towns from present day Schaghticoke to the mouth of the Catskill Creek, settling in smaller numbers, as far west as the Schoharie Valley. On the eastern side of the Hudson were important settlements at Kinderhook and Schodack, and farther east and south to Taghkanic and Gallatin in present day Columbia County. In eastern Dutchess County they settled around what became Pine Plains and Amenia. In the Housatonic Valley there were settlements near Sharon Connecticut and Great Barrington and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Rte. 23B, Leeds

In pre-contact days the Mohicans lived a balanced and successful life with their fields and forests adequately, if not abundantly providing all their sustenance and material wants. Their populations grew.

With the arrival of Europeans came stresses that would ultimately result in the Mohicans near- extinction, and, with the exception of a few families, their removal from New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Pine Plains-Silvernails Rd. Gallatin

                                                                       The first of these stresses were European diseases--Small Pox, Chicken pox, Measles, and Diptheria. These diseases devastated Native American populations, because they had no natural immunities built up against them. The Mohicans in closest contact with the Dutch and English--those living in the Hudson Valley were decimated. In 1690 the Mohican village at Schaghticoke  was nearly wiped out by small pox.

Rte 23B, Jefferson Heights, Catskill

The second of these stresses were Colonial wars and Indian-Colonial wars that disrupted hunting patterns, causing food shortages and took the lives of unknown numbers of Mohican men.  Even though the Mohican peoples often tried to maintain their neutrality, as in the Esopus Wars between their neighbors, the Esopus Indians from the Kingston area, and the Dutch, they risked becoming involved if they ventured afield to hunt. Too often they discovered colonial militias could be remarkably inept at distinguishing Indian friend from foe; and persistent fear of attacks on their villages discouraged hunting parties from venturing far from home. Villages were fortified with stockades, built around them,  which the Europeans  called  "castles".  Even if they were never attacked, building a stockade was a labor-intensive activity that took hunters from the task of providing for their village.

The fur trade, itself, became catastrophically disruptive for all the Indian peoples involved. Hunting which heretofore had provided sustenance and clothing was substantially replaced by hunting for the fur trade.  To be successful at this, native-American hunters needed European guns, shot and powder.

Montgomery Co.Rte 33, Hickory Hill Rd., Fonda

In the scramble to control the declining stocks of fur-bearing game, and gain direct access to Dutch traders, the Iroquois used the power of their confederacy and their early access to firearms to attempt to dominate/intimidate their native-American neighbors. Beginning in 1663 a coalition of eastern Indian tribes, provoked by the bullying of the Iroquois began hostilities against the eastern-most Iroquois, the Mohawks. A truce was negotiated in 1666 by the new English government at Albany, but by 1669 war had broken out again as Indians from Massachusetts, Connecticut joined the Mohicans forming an army of perhaps 300, and attacking the new village of Caughnawaga.  The besieged Mohawks sent runners to summon reinforcements from the towns of Canagora, Canajora and Tionnontogen; they repulsed an assault, then sallied forth to engage the Mohicans and their New England allies in a sharp but inconclusive fight.                                                                               

The Caughnawaga village site, excavated by archaeologists 1945-1956, had post mold locations marked with stakes.
The common areas, recently mowed, reveal the size and position of three of the longhouses.
The foliage in the foreground marks the location of a double palisade.

   Following the fight, the Mohicans and their allies, with their ammunition and supplies depleted, withdrew along an ancient east/west trail leading to New England. The Caughnawaga Mohawks, supported by reinforcements from the neighboring towns, raced ahead of the retiring invaders and set an ambush, along a natural breastwork, caused by a fault in the earth.  Details of the battle are sketchy but the coalition army was defeated and broken up. Thereafter Mohicans came under intense pressure from the victorious Mohawks, leading Mohicans  to abandon their villages on the western side of the Hudson, and sell their lands to Dutch or English speculators.

Schenectady Co. Rte 40, Glenville

The coalition army most 
likely retired along
this trail

Hoffman Hill Rd, Co. Rte 59, Glenville

Trade goods--clothing, iron implements
and weapons quickly replaced  materials  Native Americans formerly produced themselves. In years when food stocks
ran short, food too was traded for furs.
Credit was often extended to the Mohicans, and other native Americans, in part, because some traders were sympathetic to the Indians' increasingly precarious existence; in part because it made good business sense to obligate Indian hunter-customers to continue to hunt for their trader-creditors; and in part because many traders cynically knew the growing cycle of debt and dependence could eventually be settled for something Europeans prized even more than furs--land.

Into the mix of the fur trade was added another devastating element, alcohol. Native Americans appeared to have a genetic intolerance for alcohol. They craved it, and binge-drank it. Beer, rum, and among French traders, brandy, became important trade goods. Alcohol may have accounted for 1/3 the value of all items traded to native Americans.  Alcohol and alcoholism clouded judgement, robbed native Americans of the ability to engage in sustained purposeful activities. It upset the social order of families and contributed to the impoverishment of the Indian peoples.

Ultimately it was this impoverishment combined with the Europeans insatiable desire for land that led to the Mohican's near-demise.  In a thousand land deals, large and small, Mohicans traded away their lands for food and European goods, and were often swindled, as well. Indistinct and often unsurveyed boundaries left room for interpretation. Land speculators and the colonial courts were only too willing to interpret in the white purchasers favor.  Robert Livingston***, the first Patroon's dealings were among the most egregious. Livingston purchased a tract of land along the Hudson from the Wappinger Indians and later another tract from the Mohicans in the Taconic hills. He applied for title  for both purchases and was given title for both and everything in between --nearly 2/3ds of all of what would become Columbia County!

 Along with Livingston,
and Jan Bronk were  
Abram Staats who had 
an early trading post at the
mouth of Kinderhook 
Creek and "Baron"Thomas

Ross who speculated in

land south of

Livingston's.There were

many others.


                                                                                                 
   *or Muhheakannuck. Because the Mohicans had no written language their words were often written down as Europeans thought they heard them. The result was there are often multiple spellings, recorded centuries before standardized phonetic conventions. With the exception of scattered phrases, object and place names the Mohican's language has been lost, so it is unlikely these differences will ever be resolved.

**The Hudson not only flows both ways as the tides surge in and out of it, but in some locations, as the tide is turning, may flow both ways at once, with the slower currents continuing to flow north, after the tide in main channel has turned and has started to flow south!

***see my post of June 30, 2013 "The Tough Wiley Scotsman and his Diligent Vrouw"


 Next Week--  (Part II)   It Happened Here--The Mohicans and the Moravians

Marker of the Week-- The "Comet-finder" and his Patron.

Castle Rd., Geneva

Since the first decades of the 20th Century we have become used to thinking of science as a big enterprise, funded by governments, research institutes or major universities, taking place in large laboratories, research centers, or observatory complexes.  But for most of the history of science, scientific observations have been largely a private affair, conducted by individuals in classrooms, basements, workshops, garages and backyards.  So it was when William R. Brooks began to study and observe comets, setting up his own observatory at his home in Phelps, NY, in 1881. That year he built his own telescope and discovered his first comet. In the next five years he discovered three more comets in his back yard observatory.

The Smith Observatory with Brook's home, in front

In 1886  he came to the attention of William
Smith a successful nurseryman and founder of Standard
Optical Company. Smith also dabbled in astronomy and astrology and had his own backyard observatory, in Geneva, New York.  In 1886 he had built for  him a much grander observatory equipped with a 10" refractor telescope.  Hoping to entice Brooks to join him, he offered the Phelps astronomer a position as Director of the Observatory, and built a substantial Victorian house for him (!) in front of the observatory.  Brooks accepted and came to Geneva. Working there he discovered sixteen more comets, a lifetime total of twenty seven--one short of the record number of twenty eight, discovered by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons (1761-1831).                                                                       

It Happened Here -- The Physicians wore Petticoats

In the Fall semester of 1847 the faculty of the Geneva Medical School was confronted with a situation that had them in an uproar. A prestigious Philadelphia physician, Dr. Joseph Warrington   had recommended a candidate for admission to the medical college. Normally, such a recommendation would have been greeted with a sanguinary acceptance, both as it held forth the promise of gaining an excellent student, and because it flattered the college that it, as a small, upstate medical school should merit the confidence of an such an important physician.  But there was a problem--the candidate was a woman!  No woman in modern times had become a physician. Victorian morality generally frowned upon gentlewomen working outside the home, and in polite society, people were scandalized by the notion of a women studying the human body, examining patients and treating diseases. It would not be until the Civil War with its horrific medical demands, that women would  be commonly recruited even for nursing duties, outside of the home.

The faculty were loathe to offend Dr. Warrington by rejecting his candidate but could not imagine a woman at their institution, so touting the virtues of "republicanism" they offered to accept Elizabeth Blackwell as a student if the entire 129 all-male student body voted to accept her. When the vote was proposed to them, the "boys" treated the proposition with hilarity. Many thought it was a hoax, dreamt up by a rival medical school; others realized it for what it was, a ploy to shift responsibility for rejecting the candidate, because she was a woman, from the faculty to the student body.  So, whether in an act of high spirits to go along with the "joke", or in an act of the defiance, refusing to do the faculty's dirty work, the students unanimously voted to accept Miss Blackwell.*

Park Place, Geneva

Gradually with studied seriousness, modesty, tremendous determination, and a keen intellect, the newest student won the respect of her fellow students.  The school itself was transformed as the ribald humor and general disorderliness in lectures was curtailed in the presence of this young women.  Even the physician-faculty were inspired to greater professionalism.  At the end of two years Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her degree, passing every course with honors and finishing at the head of her class.**

Elizabeth would continue to be challenged by a skeptical profession that was reluctant to employ her and by an incredulous public that was reluctant to accept her. To complete her residency she was forced to seek employment in Paris at La Maternite, a hospital that normally trained midwives. It was there that an accident intervened to prevent Elizabeth from pursuing her goal to become a surgeon. While treating a child with an infected eye some of the infected material splashed into her own eye. Her eye became so inflamed she lost sight in it and eventually had to have it removed. Later she worked in London before returning to the United States to establish her own practice. With her sister Emily (the 3d woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree) and Dr. Marie Zakrzewka, a German woman physician,  she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Within a decade it also had become a medical college offering training and medical clinical experience for women doctors and nurses entering the profession.

Church Street, Cortland

A few years after Elizabeth Blackwell received her degree in Geneva, NY,  Lydia Strowbridge received a medical degree in Cortland.  Unlike Dr. Blackwell who traveled to London and Paris and established her practice in New York City,  Dr. Strowbridge worked doggedly to establish herself in her own community, serving women and children.  In later years she became an outspoken advocate of a women's right to vote, traveling to conferences at Seneca Falls and heading the Women's Rights movement in Cortland.



*A lone student attempted to reject her but was forcefully prevailed upon by the others to change his vote.

**Even then, some of the faculty questioned if they needed to confer a degree upon her, but other faculty members came to her defense, reminding them she had paid her tuition, and completed all the required coursework with honors, and threatened that if they refused to matriculate her they would go to the medical journals and report their colleagues duplicity.

Marker of the Week -- 

With its quaint nickname, this little
stone cottage along along the
Hudson (Rte 9G, Clermont) looks
like it could have stepped out
of the pages of Knickerbocker's 
History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the End
 of the Dutch Dynasty, ostensibly
 written by Washington Irving                   

Wait-- do I see old Deidrich K. skulking
around back there among the trees?

It Happened Here -- In a "Cockpit" of History

In Albany in the late 1950's (and for many years before, and one and a half decades afterwards) there was a small park at the base of State Street hill, where it merged into lower Broadway. This park served as a major transportation hub in the city.  People would take a Traction Company bus to "The Plaza" and could transfer to one of a dozen or more buses going to different parts of the city, Schenectady, Troy or the suburbs. On nearby side streets were the terminals for the Adirondack Trailways Bus Company and Greyhound. Up until the first years of the 1950's, Union Station, on Broadway a block up from the Plaza provided passenger rail service. Up until a decade before that, travelers could purchase tickets at a ticket house at the end of the Plaza and board the Hudson River Dayline boats--side paddle-wheel steamers that plied the river providing overnight service to New York.

The park itself was a narrow elliptical island with Broadway running south in front of it, and a              smaller northbound road running a few feet from the imposing D &H  Railroad Headquarters                  building--a modern office building dressed with Gothic towers, windows and gargoyles to replicate a medieval guildhall in Ypres Belgium.  The park had the usual complement of medium size maple trees, park benches, tulip beds, pigeons, squirrels, etc.

• HENRY HUDSON
  EXPLORER, HERE ENDED THE
  VOYAGE OF THE HALF MOON
  IN QUEST OF THE INDIES
  SEPTEMBER, 1609
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.*
• FORT ORANGE                                                                                                                                                                SITE OF WEST INDIA COMPANY
  COLONY 1624. HERE WAS BORN
  SARAH RAPELJE, FIRST WHITE
  CHILD IN N. Y. STATE, 1625
  FORT STOOD S. E. BY THE RIVER 

            Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

What was unusual about this little  park was the sheer number of New York State Historical Markers it held.  Lined up from one end of the island to the other they even overflowed onto  the street corners opposite the park.

•  ALBANY

        CALLED FORT NASSAU 1614,
        FORT ORANGE 1624,
        BEVERWYCK 1652, ALBANY
        1664; CHARTERED 1686
        Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• COLONIAL WARPATH

          RENDEVOUS OF TROOPS IN
          FIVE WARS. HERE ARMIES
          UNDER ABERCROMBIE, LOUDOUN
          AND AMHERST MOVED TO THE
          CONQUEST OF CANADA 1756-60
           Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• IROQUOIS TREATY

           BASIC PEACE BY GOV. DONGAN
           GOV. HOWARD OF VA. AND
           FIVE NATIONS AT COURT HOUSE
          WHICH STOOD 100 FEET WEST
          Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF HUDSON AVE

• GENERAL BURGOYNE 

            OVER THIS ROAD ENTERED
            ALBANY WITH HIS STAFF AFTER
            THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA
            GOING TO SCHUYLER MANSION
            AS PRISONERS OF WAR - 1777
            Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST. 

• CLERMONT   
                                                                                                                                                                                             NEAR THE FOOT OF MADISON
  AVENUE ROBERT FULTON IN
  AUG. 1807, COMPLETED THE
  FIRST SUCCESSFUL
  STEAMBOAT VOYAGE
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.

• BIRTHPLACE OF
                                                                                                                                                                                    AMERICAN UNION
  NEAR THIS SITE, BENJAMIN
  FRANKLIN PRESENTED THE 1ST
  FORMAL PLAN OF NATIONAL
  UNION; CONGRESS OF 1754
  Location: PLAZA, BROADWAY AT FOOT OF STATE ST.
  

 
 For a certain nine or eleven year old boy the prospect of spending time in this park reading the signs and imagining the events that could have been witnessed from here, while he was awaiting  the bus home at the conclusion of a successful shopping trip with his mother was almost as exciting as the prospect of tearing into the cellophane wrapping enclosing the latest much-coveted plastic model airplane kit--a bribe for exhibiting patience and good behavior, on the trip. If the bus was late, and immediate interest waned in the historic signs, the history-charged youth could always imagine himself in the cockpit of a World War II fighter, defending his island-aircraft carrier from hoards of red and cream colored** enemy planes, dropping down the State Street Hill or coming in low, roaring down Broadway. Most would circle his island-carrier and return from whence they came, some slowing down to make their torpedo runs, before speeding up to make their escape; others hanging suspended along the curb as their bomb-bay doors, fore and aft, burst open and they disgorged their deadly ordinance in rapid regular succession. Usually, however, it wouldn't be long before a maternal hand would descend on the young aviator's shoulder--a reminder that spinning around and uttering airplane or even machine gun noises wasn't exactly acceptable public behavior.

In 1973 the D&H building was bought by the State University of New York at Albany and given an extensive renovation. The landscape architects determined the building needed a more suitable landscaped setting. No longer would the building's doorways open out onto the bare sidewalk, a  dozen feet from the curb.  The northbound lane was torn up and landscaped; ornamental trees replaced the native maples; the old park benches and old tulip beds disappeared.  And the New York State Historical Markers disappeared as well. To the University planners they probably seemed as quaint and unaesthetic as the rows of Burma Shave*** signs that sprung up along old route 20.

To my way of thinking, Albany is a little poorer for their disappearance.


*This, and the following seven markers are listed in "New York State Historical Markers,
www.nysm.nysed.gov/historicmarkers/hisaction.cfm

**Traction Company buses were painted red and cream colors, not the blue and white of today's CDTA bus fleet. 

***Burma Shave was a company that manufactured a brand of brushless shaving cream from 1927 until 1963. They advertised by posting series of roadside signs with a few words on each sign that taken together spelled out a short bit of doggerel that ended with the product name "Burma-Shave."  Often, each series promoted the Burma Shave product, or a traffic safety message. "If you think/ she like your bristles/ try walking barefooted/ through some thistles./ Burma-Shave" and "Dim Your Lights/ Behind a Car/Let folks see/ How bright/ YOU are./Burma-Shave" are two of several hundred produced.