VIII Topical Inquiries
The state of the book trade, and the importation of books into this country, but a few years ago, were such as to offer but scanty advantages to the pursuit of historical letters. There were but few libraries deserving of notice, and these were placed at remote points, spread over a very extensive geographical area, where access became often difficult or impossible. By far the largest number of American libraries were limited to a few thousand volumes, often a few hundreds only, and these were chiefly made up of common or elementary works on arts, sciences and general literature. Writers were compelled to consult works at second hand, and could seldom get access to scarce and valuable originals; and the difficulties of making original inquiries into archæology, antiquities, philology, and other more abstruse, or less popular topics, increased at every step, and were in fact insurmountable to men of ordinary means. This state of things will sufficiently account for the low state of historical letters up to within a comparatively short period, without impugning the judgment or sagacity of early observers, on our local and distinctive history; and offers also a rational plea why the aboriginal branch of our antiquities, and the just expanding science of ethnology, has been left enshrouded in so much darkness and historical mystery. We have, in fact, not had the means of making such inquiries. The libraries at Harvard, the public collection set on foot by Franklin at Philadelphia, the library of Congress, and that of the New-York Historical Society, and perhaps the growing library of the State Capitol at Albany, are some of the chief collections yet made in the Union; and these might be conveniently stowed away, en masse, in one corner of the “Bibliotheque Royal” at Paris, without exciting notice.
[A.] Who Were the Eries?
Louis Hennepin, who was a Recollect, remarks in the original Amsterdam edition of his travels of 1698, that Canada was first discovered by the Spanish, alluding doubtless to the voyage of Corte-Real and that it received its first missionaries under the French, from the order of Recollects. These pioneers of the cross, according to this author, made themselves very acceptable to the Hurons or Wyandots, who occupied the banks of the St. Lawrence, and who informed them that the Iroquois pushed their war parties beyond Virginia and New-Sweden, and other parts remote from their cantons. They went, he says, in these wars, near to a lake, which they called Erige or Erie.88 Now, if they went “beyond Virginia and New-Sweden,” they were very remote from Lake Erie, and the assertion implies a contradiction or some ignorance of the geography of the country. This name in the Huron language, he informs us, signifies the Cat, or Nation of the Cat—a name, he says, which it derived from the fact that the Iroquois in returning to their cantons, brought the Erige or Erike, captives through it. The Canadians softened this word to Erie. It would appear then, that the Eries either did not occupy the immediate banks of the lake, or else they lived on the upper or more remote parts of it. To be brought captives through it, they must have been embarked at some distance from its lower extremity. This vague mode of expression leaves a doubt as to the actual place of residence of this conquered and, so called, extinct tribe. Whether extinct or not, is not certain. The name is only a Wyandot name. They had others.
From inquiries made among the Senecas, they are, some believe, the same people whom this nation call Kah-Kwahs. But we do not advance much by changing one term for another. The inquiry returns, who were the Kah-Kwahs? Seneca tradition affirms that they lived on the banks of Lake Erie, extending eastward towards the Genesee river, and westward indefinitely; and that they were finally conquered in a war, which was closed by a disastrous battle, the locality of which is not fixed; after which they were chased west, and the remnant driven down the Allegheny river. [See the subsequent paper d.]
Cusick, the Tuscarora archæologist, who writes the word “Squawkihows,” intimates that these were an affiliated people, and that the remnant after their defeat, were incorporated with the Senecas. [D.]
Colden states that after the war with the Adirondacks broke out, say at the end of the 16th century, the Iroquois, to try their courage, went to war against a nation called Satanas,89 who lived on the banks of the lakes, whom they defeated and conquered, which raised their spirits so much, that they afterwards renewed the war against the Adirondacks and Hurons90 on the St. Lawrence, and finally prevailed against them. [Hist. Five Nations, p. 23, Lond. ed. 1767.]
Satanas, it appears from the same author, is a name for the Shaouanons, Shawanoes, or Shawnees, as the term is variously written; a tribe, it may be further remarked, who are called Chât by the modern Canadian French.
A letter of the missionary Le Moyne, published in the Missionary “Relacions,” and hereto appended, proves that the war with the Eries, whatever may have been its origin or former state, had newly broken out in 1653, and there are references of a subsequent date to denote that by the year 1655, this war had terminated in the disastrous overthrow of this people. They appear to have been then located where the existing traditions of the Senecas place them, namely, west of Genesee river, and at or near Buffalo. We may suppose that up to this period, the Senecas were limited to the eastern banks of the Genesee. And it was probably the results of this war that transferred their council fire from the present site of Geneva or Canandaigua to the Genesee valley.
When La Salle reached the Niagara river in 1679, but twenty-four years after the close of this Erie war, he found the entire country on its eastern or American banks in the possession of the Senecas. [J.] The history and fate of the Eries was then a tradition.
We may here drop the inquiry to be resumed at a future period.
[B.] Building of the First Vessel on the Upper Lakes
The enterprise of La Salle, in constructing a vessel above the falls of Niagara, in 1679, to facilitate his voyage to the Illinois and the Mississippi, is well known; but while the fact of his having thus been the pioneer of naval architecture on the upper lakes, is familiar to historical readers, the particular place of its construction, has been a matter of various opinions. Gen. Cass in his historical discourse, places it at Erie; Mr. Bancroft in his history, designates the mouth of the Tonawanda. Mr. Sparks in the biography of Marquette, decides to place it on the Canadian side of the Niagara. These variances result in a measure from the vague and jarring accounts of the narrators, whose works had been consulted in some instances in abridged or mutilated translations, and not from doubt or ambiguity in the missionary “Letters.”
Literary associations in America, who aimed to increase the means of reference to standard works, began their labors in feebleness. The New-York Historical Society, which dates its origin in 1804, and has vindicated its claims to be the pioneer of historical letters in America, published Tonti’s account of the Chevalier La Salle’s enterprise, in one of the volumes of its first series. It is since known, however, that this account was a bookseller’s compilation from, it is believed generally correct sources, but it was disclaimed by Tonti. It is at least but an abbreviation, and cannot be regarded as an original work.
In 1820, the American Antiquarian Society published in their first volume of collections, an account of Hennepin discoveries, which is known to bibliographers to be a translation of a mere abridgment of the original work, reduced to less than half its volume of matter. There was also an edition of this author, published in London in 1698; but still clipped of some of its matter, or otherwise defective; the tastes and wants of an English public being constantly consulted in the admission of continental books of this cast. The original work of Hennepin was published in French, at Amsterdam in 1698. Being of the order of Recollects, and not a Jesuit, there was much feeling and prejudice against him in France, of which Charlevoix, the accomplished historian of New-France, partook in no small degree. Yet whatever may have been the justice or injustice of these impeachments of the missionary’s veracity, there could be no motive for disagreement in a fact of this kind.
Hennepin was the camp missionary of the party on the way to Illinois, and the companion of La Salle and Tonti on the occasion. By adverting to his narrative, in the appendix, the most satisfactory and circumstantial details on this subject will be found. The vessel, according to him, was built “two leagues above the falls,” that is, about three miles above the present site of fort Schlosser, on Cayuga creek. There is no stream, at this distance, on the Canadian side. They reached the spot on the 22d of January, set up the keel on the 26th, and, after laboring all winter, amidst discouragements, during which the Senecas threatened to burn it, at one time, and refused to sell corn to support the workmen, at another, it was launched in the spring, and named the Griffin, “in allusion to the arms of the Count de Frontenac, which was supported by two griffins.” The figure of a griffin adorned the prow, surmounted by an eagle, the symbolic type of the embryo power, which was destined, in due time, to sway the political destinies of the continent. There were seven small cannon, and thirty persons, including the crew. With great difficulty, and by the use of the cordelle, they ascended the rapids, the present site of Black-Rock, and finally, after many delays, they set sail, freighted with merchandize, on the 7th of August, 1679, just six months and twelve days after they had laid the keel. Thus the honor of furnishing the first vessel on our great chain of inland lakes, above the falls, is due to the present area of Niagara county, New-York. How this initiatory step has been followed up, in the course of one hundred and sixty-seven years, until these lakes are whitened by the canvass of the republic, and decorated with its self-moving palaces of wood and iron, under the guise of steamboats, it would be interesting to note. But we have no statistics of this kind to turn to. As an increment in such an inquiry, I subjoin, in the appendix, lists kept at my office, in the west, of the various species of vessels, which entered and departed from the remote little harbor of Michilimackinac, during the sailing seasons of 1839 and 1840, respectively.
Notes
88 Vide Appendix.
89 This word appears to be an English soubriquet, derived from the Dutch language, and is from Satan, a synonyme for Duivel. [See Jansen’s new Pocket Dictionary, Dortracht 1831.] The plural inflection in a, if this derivation be correct, is duplicated in its meaning, by the corresponding English inflection in s, a practice quite conformable to English orthœpy, which puts its vernacular plural to foreign plurals, as Cherubims for Cherubim, &c.
90 Called Quatoghies by the Iroquois.