While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
"In the town of Cambria, six miles
west of Lockport, a Mr. Hammon, who was employed with his boy in hoeing corn, in 1824,
observed some bones of a child, exhumed. No farther thought was
bestowed upon the subject for a time, for the plain of the Ridge
was supposed to have been the site of an Indian village, and
this was supposed to be the remains of some child who had been
recently buried there. Eli Bruce, hearing of the circumstance,
proposed to Mr. H. that they should repair to the spot, with
suitable instruments, and endeavor to find some relics. The soil
was a light loam, which would be dry and preserve bones for
centuries without decay. A search enabled them to come to a pit
but a slight distance from the surface. The top of the pit was
covered with small slabs of the Medina sandstone, and was
twenty-four feet square, four and a half feet deep, planes
agreeing with the four cardinal points. It was filled with human
bones of both sexes and ages. They dug down at one extremity and
found the same layers to extend to the bottom, which was the dry
loam, and from their calculations, they deduced that at least
four thousand souls had perished in one great massacre. In one
skull two flint arrow-heads were found, and many had the
appearance of having been fractured and cleft open by a sudden
blow. They were piled in regular layers, but with no regard to
size or sex. Pieces of pottery were picked up in the pit, and
had also been plowed up in the field adjacent. Traces of a log
council house were plainly discernable. For, in an oblong
square, the soil was poor, as if it had been cultivated, till
the whites broke it up, and where the logs of the house had
decayed, was a strip of rich mould. A maple tree, over the pit,
being cut down, two hundred and fifty concentric circles were
counted, making the mound to be A. D. 1574. It has been supposed
by the villagers that the bones were deposited there before the
discovery of America, but the finding of some metal tools with a
French stamp, placed the date within our period. One hundred and
fifty persons a day visited this spot the first season, and
carried off portions of the bones. They are now nearly all gone
and the pit plowed over. Will any antiquarian inform us, if
possible, why these bones were placed here? To what tribe do
they belong? When did such a massacre occur?"
The above is taken from the writings of Mr. Schoolscraft. On
account of the questions above, I propose to give a tradition,
(which the Tuscarora have preserved,) to give the antiquarians
and critics a question to solve. Was the great massacre above
made in the circumstance of the tradition below, to wit: There
was a settlement or Indian nation where appeared several white
men under the cloak of missionaries, (the reason I use the term
cloak is by the way it terminated), and preached to them the
gospel of Jesus Christ, and the great love evinced by the Father
in sending his only son to suffer and die on the cross to redeem
the red children of nature, as well as the pale faces, from
their degradation, shame and woe, to that of endless felicity
beyond the shores of time. And that they wished to erect a house
of worship in their midst, in which they might do their oblation
to the Great Spirit, and that if they embraced the gospel they
would have annuities from the government, to all of which the
simple people of the forest made their assent. They immediately
went to work, dug for the cellar, and erected the building on
abutments of wood, and alleged that they would finish the cellar
afterwards. When the chapel was finished the Indians began to
worship in it. Now the time of the annuity arrived. The Indians
were told to all congregate and into the church, men, women and
children, and all those who refused to enter, should be omitted
in the distribution of the annuity. Consequently the building
was entered by them and filled jammed full. But there were two
suspecting Indians who kept a proper distance away, ambushed, to
see the result. After it was thought all had entered, there was
a company of soldiers with guns and burning faggots, surrounded
the building and set it on fire on all sides, after they had
fastened the door. In this condition they all perished within
the flames. I will not make any attempt to give a sketch or in
any way write in words the horrors
and heart-rendings cries and moans of the dying children of
nature in
the flames, through a disguise of sheep's clothing, but will
leave it to the conjecture of the reader.
After the flames had subsided, these two Indians repaired to the
doomed spot, and found a heap of bones hob-nob, and they
observed that some of the skulls and bones of the different
parts of the body were fractured and broke open, supposed to
have been done by, the falling timbers of the burning house. It
is said, "in one skull, two flint arrow-heads were found." How
easy for the artifice of the white men that accomplished the
massacre in the manner they did, to have sunk these two flint
arrows into one of those skulls, to leave the conjecture in
after times to have been done by an Indian war.
Mr. C. P. Turner, with an honorable age of 72 years, in 1878.
told me that he visited the deposit of these bones, the next day
after they were uncovered, saw the skull with the two flint
arrows in it, and saw the great deposit of bones in this mound,
and also said the pile was in hap-hazard, and not "in regular
layers," as stated above. He also saw bones which indicated
being those of a child about 20 inches in height.
The Tuscarora who preserve this tradition are located in the
vicinity in which this mound of bones were found. All historians
are very cautious to leave out or omit from the pages of their
history, any circumstance in the nature of the above tradition.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations and History of the Tuscarora Indians
