Early Struggles of Red Jacket
Early Struggles of Red Jacket
Rising up from the obscurity of the past, we find a people, singular in their habits and character, whose history has been strangely, and in some respects sadly interwoven with our own. They were the original occupants of the soil, claiming to have lived here always, and to have grown out of the soil like
Not long after the large sale of their domain to Robert Morris, which had been negotiated at Big Tree, the Seneca began to realize that they had committed a great mistake. The broad lands, mountain, hill, and valley, over which they had roamed, the springs and streams of water by whose side they had been
Before the discovery, by Columbus, the Tuscarora consisted of six towns, and they were a powerful nation, numbering over twelve hundred warriors, which, at a ratio according to the rule of estimating, would bring them at about five or six thousand souls. The Tuscarora had many years of enjoyment and peaceful possession of their domain,
And also in the treaty of Feb. 8th, 1838, we find, in enumerating the several reasons for effecting a treaty at the above date, the following, commencing at line 20,928, in the Revision of Indian Treaties, viz: “as well as for the purpose of settling the long existing dispute between themselves, and the several tribes
About the year 1800, a new religion was introduced among the Six Nations, who alleged to have received a revelation from the Great Spirit, with a commission to preach to them the new doctrine in which he was instructed. This revelation was received in circumstances so remarkable and the precepts which he sought to inculcate,
For the earlier part of the history of school operations among the Tuscarora Indians, I can do no better than to give the report of Rev. John Elliot to the Secretary of War, in the year 1832, viz.: “To the Secretary of War : “This will show the operations of the schools from their organization
“An act concerning the lands formerly occupied by the Tuscarora tribe of Indians lying in Bertie County, on the north side of Roanoke river. “Whereas the Tuscarora Indians have for more than a century been the firm and un-dividing friends of the white people of this country, insomuch that the people of North Carolina not
“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
About the year 1800 a new religion was introduced among the Six Nations, the exponent of which alleged to have received a revelation from the Great Spirit, with a commission to preach to them the new doctrine in which he was instructed. This revelation was received in circumstances so remarkable, and the precepts he sought
We again hear of the Tuscarora by history, concerning a massacre of the German Flats, N. Y., in November, 1757. A narrative communicated to the author of the Documentary History of New York, vol. 2, page 520, viz: A few days after this massacre and desolation had been perpetrated, Sir William Johnson dispatched Geo. Croghan,
In the year of 1850 there was another school house built by the natives under the proposition of Miss Mary J. F. Thayer. I have here a brief history of her labors among the Tuscarora, from her own writings, which is very interesting, to wit: At the invitation of Rev. G. Rockwood (then the ordained
The Captivity of Mary Jemison tells the story of Mary, taken captive by the Shawnee in 1755 and sold to the Seneca among whom she lived for almost 80 years. The story of Mary is like many other captivity stories, where the young captive is kept alive and sold into another tribe to replace a son or daughter who had died. Mary’s case was not common in the fact that when, after the death of her first husband, she was given a chance of freedom and returning to her white family, she chose instead to remain with the Seneca.