Indigenous Peoples of Garrett County: Iroquois

In the mid-seventeenth century, the Iroquois Confederacy launched a war for control of the burgeoning fur trade industry. These conflicts, known as the Beaver Wars, were among the bloodiest in North American history, and the resulting defeat of the Erie nation led to present-day Ohio becoming devoid of Indian inhabitants. Only in the first quarter of the eighteenth century did tribes begin to tentatively resettle the area. This book details the story of the Beaver Wars, the subsequent Indian migrations into present Ohio, the locations and descriptions of documented Indian trails and settlements, the Moravian Indian mission communities in Ohio, and the Indians' forlorn struggles to preserve an Ohio homeland, culminating in their expulsion by Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act in 1830.

A comprehensive reference work on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), containing over 200 entries covering Haudenosaunee history, present-day issues, and contributions to general North American culture. Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) is the name the Iroquois use for their confederacy (Iroquois is the name given them by the French). This encyclopedia surveys the histories of the six constituent nations of the confederacy (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora, adopted about 1725). Several entries also trace ways in which the practices of the Iroquois have filtered into general North American society.

A facsimile edition of Wilcox's classic 1933 pictorial survey of the Indian trails of Ohio Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Wyandot, Ottawa, Iroquois, and Mingo--tribes great and small, loosely confederated or warring with each other, pushed ever westward by the advancing white settlements--these were the native peoples of Ohio. They left behind little but their names, yet the trained eye can still discover the sites of their villages, the grounds where they fought, and the trails they used for trade, communication, war, and exodus. In this classic and coveted volume, artist Frank N. Wilcox tackles the difficult job of mapping the Indian trails of Ohio. Basing his work on the journals and records of early settlers and soldiers, his knowledge of Native American ways, and his intimacy with the Ohio landscape, he locates and documents the major Indian towns and trails that crisscross the state. His maps, drawings, and watercolors beautifully evoke the lives and cultures of Ohio's first peoples. A new introduction by historian Richard S. Grimes affirms Ohio Indian Trails' lasting contribution to our understanding of early Ohio.

The disastrous Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838 called for the Senecas' removal to Kansas (then part of the Indian Territory). From this low point, the Seneca Nation of Indians, which today occupies three reservations in western New York, sought to rebound. Beginning with events leading to the Seneca Revolution in 1848, which transformed the nation's government from a council of chiefs to an elected system, Laurence M. Hauptman traces Seneca history through the New Deal. Based on the author's nearly fifty years of archival research, interviews, and applied work, Coming Full Circle shows that Seneca leaders in these years learned valuable lessons and adapted to change, thereby preparing the nation to meet the challenges it would face in the post-World War II era, including major land loss and threats of termination. Instead of emphasizing American Indian decline, Hauptman stresses that the Senecas were actors in their own history and demonstrated cultural and political resilience. Both Native belief, in the form of the Good Message of Handsome Lake, and Christianity were major forces in Seneca life; women continued to play important social and economic roles despite the demise of clan matrons' right to nominate the chiefs; and Senecas became involved in national and international competition in long-distance running and in lacrosse. The Seneca Nation also achieved noteworthy political successes in this period. The Senecas resisted allotment, and thus saved their reservations from breakup and sale. They recruited powerful allies, including attorneys, congressmen, journalists, and religious leaders. They saved their Oil Spring Reservation, winning a U.S. Supreme Court case against New York State on the issue of taxation and won remuneration in their Kansas Claims case. These efforts laid the groundwork for the Senecas' postwar endeavor to seek compensation before the Indian Claims Commission and pursuit of a series of land claims and tax lawsuits against New York State.  

The era following the American War of Independence was one of enormous conflict for the Allegany Senecas. As the most influential Seneca leader of his time, Cornplanter led his people in war and along an often troubled path to peace. This incisive biography traces his rise to prominence as a Seneca military leader during the American Revolution and his later diplomatic success in negotiations with the Federal government. The book also explores Cornplanter's dealings with other Native American councils and with his own people. It explains how Senecas faced heavy pressure to sell their lands, and how they concurrently embraced a reformed and revitalized Iroquois religion, as inspired by Cornplanter's visionary half-brother, Handsome Lake. Thomas S. Abler skillfully weaves together previously discordant strands of the Chief Warrior's life into a concise, animated, and enlightening portrait. Even as Cornplanter examines a critical period in American history, it gives us a multidimensional knowledge of politics and diplomacy from the Seneca point of view.

In the summer of 1722, on the eve of a conference between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and British-American colonists, two colonial fur traders brutally attacked an Indigenous hunter in colonial Pennsylvania. The crime set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge, with many believing that war was imminent. Frantic efforts to resolve the case created a contest between Native American forms of justice, centered on community, forgiveness, and reparations, and an ideology of harsh reprisal, based on British law, that called for the killers' execution. In a stunning narrative history based on painstaking original research, acclaimed historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, taking us into the worlds of Euro-Americans and Indigenous peoples in this formative period. A feat of reclamation evoking Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale and Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town, Eustace's utterly absorbing account provides a new understanding of Indigenous forms of justice, with lessons for our era.

The Seneca language is a member of the Iroquoian language family. Seneca is a seriously endangered language spoken in upper New York State and Southern Ontario. This book consists of 3 parts. Section I, on orthography, describes a way of writing Seneca words consistently and without omitting features that are significant. Various spelling systems have been used, and are being used, for the writing of Seneca by missionaries, anthropologists, and the speakers of the language themselves. Section II, on grammar, is concerned with the structure of Seneca words. Section III is a brief glossary of the Seneca language.

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The Story of the Longest and Largest Forced Migration of Native Americans in American History The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the culmination of the United States' policy to force native populations to relocate west of the Mississippi River. The most well-known episode in the eviction of American Indians in the East was the notorious "Trail of Tears" along which Southeastern Indians were driven from their homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to reservations in present-day Oklahoma. But the struggle in the South was part of a wider story that reaches back in time to the closing months of the War of 1812, back through many states--most notably Ohio--and into the lives of so many tribes, including the Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, Ottawa, and Wyandot (Huron). They, too, were forced to depart from their homes in the Ohio Country to Kansas and Oklahoma. The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians by award-winning historian Mary Stockwell tells the story of this region's historic tribes as they struggled following the death of Tecumseh and the unraveling of his tribal confederacy in 1813. At the peace negotiations in Ghent in 1814, Great Britain was unable to secure a permanent homeland for the tribes in Ohio setting the stage for further treaties with the United States and encroachment by settlers. Over the course of three decades the Ohio Indians were forced to move to the West, with the Wyandot people ceding their last remaining lands in Ohio to the U.S. Government in the early 1850s. The book chronicles the history of Ohio's Indians and their interactions with settlers and U.S. agents in the years leading up to their official removal, and sheds light on the complexities of the process, with both individual tribes and the United States taking advantage of opportunities at different times. It is also the story of how the native tribes tried to come to terms with the fast pace of change on America's western frontier and the inevitable loss of their traditional homelands. While the tribes often disagreed with one another, they attempted to move toward the best possible future for all their people against the relentless press of settlers and limited time.

This reprint of Leo Cooper's, a Seneca Indian, children stories is a wonderful collection. The Seneca elders shared these cultural stories that are now preserved in this book. This collection is appropriate for all children of all cultures. In traditional times, the Senecas told these stories in the winter. Stories were not simply for entertainment, they also provided moral development of the younger generation. This book should be in all libraries and classrooms!

Collected here are the timeless Native American fables and legends handed down by noted Seneca anthropologist Arthur C. Parker. Growing up on the Cattaraugus Indian reservation in western New York, Parker knew the importance of the storyteller in Iroquois lives. The Seneca stories of animals, whose weaknesses and strengths are suspiciously like those of human beings, held a special place for Parker, who is considered by many as one of the greatest orators in any language. Oral traditions - whether myths, legends, or folktales - are more than just "stories." They are the way by which a society communicates to its members the order and meaning to be found in the world around them. Young adults and children, especially, will be captivated by these Seneca tales.

Gyantwachia, the Cornplanter, was a famous Seneca chief who lived during the time of the American Revolution. He fought with the French in the French and Indian War. As a result of his siding with the French, General George Washington dispatched troops to hold Cornplanter accountable for his choosing to support the enemy. A number of Seneca people were killed. When it came time to fight in the Revolutionary War, Cornplanter fought with Washington.After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). He helped gain Iroquois neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.In the post war years, he worked to learn more about European-American ways and invited Quakers to establish schools in Seneca territory. Disillusioned by his people's poor reaction to European-American society, he had the schools closed and followed his half-brother Handsome Lake's movement returning traditional Seneca way. The United States government granted him about 1500 acres of former Seneca territory in Pennsylvania in 1796 for "him and his heirs forever", which became known as the Cornplanter Tract. This land was flooded in 1965 by the Kinzua Dam and most of the remaining residents were relocated to the Allegany Reservation of the federally recognized Seneca Nation of New York.The setting for this novel is pre-revolutionary times when the Seneca travelled each spring to the Allegheny Mountains to await the return of the myriad passenger pigeons that migrated to the northern tier to roost. They celebrated spring by feasting on the pigeons and starting their new growing season in the land near the river. The pigeons were so plentiful they darkened the skies when in flight, but by 1912, the last bird died in captivity. In a little more than a century, settlers and other hunters killed so many birds they became extinct. The Native American world faced many changes and this was one of them. With the death of the pigeons, the influx of myriad settlers onto the land and the eventual destruction of the reservation, the Seneca people were reduced to living in a small part of southwest New York. This is a tragic tale of American history that must be told because it was a symbol of the reckless way we treated Native People in their own land.Perhaps by reading it, we can become more tolerant of other people in this land and around the world who do not share our belief in the principle of "Manifest Destiny".

Excerpt from Archaeological Studies of the Susquehannock Indians of Pennsylvania Society in 1924 undertook a study Of the situation. Members started a preliminary survey of the eastern Pennsylvania coun ties by letter and questionnaire. The purpose was to collect information on existing artifact collections, manuscript and printed accounts, knowledge Of sites, trails, and, in fact, any thing relating to the life Of the Red Man in our Commonwealth where he had played an important role in the pre-history of the country, and over whose mountains and wide valleys he had gradually been forced westward by the advance of the white man's civilization. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In 1761, at a boarding school in New England, a young Mohawk Indian named Joseph Brant first met Samuel Kirkland, the son of a colonial clergyman. They began a long and intense relationship that would redefine North America. For nearly fifty years, their lives intertwined, at first as close friends but later as bitter foes. Kirkland served American expansion as a missionary and agent, promoting Indian conversion and dispossession. Brant pursued an alternative future for the continent by defending an Indian borderland nestled between the British in Canada and the Americans, rather than divided by them. By telling their dramatic story, Alan Taylor illuminates the dual borders that consolidated the new American nation after the Revolution. By constricting Indians within reservation lines, the Americans sought to control their northern boundary with the British Empire, which lingered in Canada. The border became firm as thousands of settlers established farms, held as private property, all around the new reservations. This struggle also pitted the federal government against the leaders of New York, competing to control the lands and the Indians of the border country. They contended for the highest of stakes because the transformation of Indian land constructed the wealth and the power of states, nations, and empires in North America. In addition to land, the frontier contest pivoted on murders, which repeatedly tested who had legal jurisdiction: Indians or newcomers. To assert power, the contending regimes sought to try and execute Indians or settlers who killed one another. To defend native autonomy, however, the Indians asserted an alternative by “covering the graves” of victims with presents to console their kin. When the gallows replaced covered graves, the Indians lost their middle position as free peoples. Taylor breaks with the stereotype of Indians as defiant but doomed traditionalists, as noble but futile defenders of ancient ways. In fact, the borderland Indians demonstrated remarkable adaptability and creativity in coping with the contending powers and with the growing numbers of invading settlers. Led by Joseph Brant, the natives tried to manage, rather than entirely to block, the process of settlement. Taylor shows that they did so in ways meant to preserve Indian autonomy and prosperity. Rather than sell lands for a song to governments, the Indians sought greater control and revenue by leasing lands directly to settler tenants. But neither the British nor the American leaders could accept Indians as landlords, as competitors in the construction of power from land in North America. Once a “middle ground,” the borderland became a divided ground, partitioned between the British Empire and the American republic. 

This first volume in the new Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series describes the Native American presence in the Susquehanna River Valley, a key crossroads of the old Eastern Woodlands between the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay in northern Appalachia. Combining archaeology, history, cultural anthropology, and the study of contemporary Native American issues, contributors describe what is known about the Native Americans from their earliest known presence in the valley to the contact era with Europeans. They also explore the subsequent consequences of that contact for Native peoples, including the removal, forced or voluntary, of many from the valley, in what became a chilling prototype for attempted genocide across the continent. Euro-American history asserted that there were no native people left in Pennsylvania (the center of the Susquehanna watershed) after the American Revolution. But with revived Native American cultural consciousness in the late twentieth century, Pennsylvanians of native ancestry began to take pride in and reclaim their heritage. This book also tells their stories, including efforts to revive Native cultures in the watershed, and Native perspectives on its ecological restoration. While focused on the Susquehanna River Valley, this collection also discusses topics of national significance for Native Americans and those interested in their cultures.

In the thirty-five years since the publication of Barry Kent's seminal book, Susquehanna's Indians, new and novel technologies, interpretive perspectives, and archaeological data have led to a reassessment of many aspects of Susquehannock life. This book presents these developments, bringing the study of the Susquehannocks into modern anthropological context. An Iroquoian group that inhabited the lower Susquehanna River valley and portions of the Potomac River drainage, the Susquehannocks were key agents in the fur trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were consequently targets of sporadic warfare by the Iroquois Confederacy and attempted to seek refuge in a series of fortified villages near the Susquehanna River, but they were dispersed by the European colonizers, and in 1763 settlers massacred the remnants of the original nation. Drawing from evidence produced by new excavations, the eight essays in this volume provide original views on various aspects of the Susquehannocks' history, including their origins, geographical spread, and contact with nonnative cultures. An important update to the history of the indigenous people of Pennsylvania, this collection will be welcomed by professional and avocational archaeologists interested in contact and colonialism as well as enthusiasts of Pennsylvania Native American history. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Marshall Joseph Becker, April M. Beisaw, Jasmine Gollup, James T. Herbstritt, Lisa Marie Lauria, Dean R. Snow, Robert D. Wall, and Andrew Wyatt.