THE SETTLEMENT OF THE UPPER VALLEY OF THE CANISTEO.
A party of boatmen attached to General Sullivan’s
army in the invasion of the Genesee in 1779, while
awaiting in the Chemung River the return of their
commander and his column for the north, pushed up
the river as far as the Painted Post, out of curiosity
to know how the land lay on the northwestern branches
of the Susquehanna. Among the soldiers of Sullivan was
Uriah Stephens, Jr., a Pennsylvanian. He believing,
from the report of the boatmen, that some fertile flat
might lie among those northern hills where frontiersmen,
not bountifully provided for in the lower valleys,
might found settlements and thrive for a time on
venison and hominy, determined after the war to seek
such a place and to emigrate thither.
Mr. Stephens belonged to a numerous family of New
England descent, which had settled at an early day in the
Wyoming region; and they, with other families which
afterwards joined them in the settlement of the Upper
Canisteo, suffered in the attack of the Indians and
Tories on that ill-fated district in 1778. One of the
oldest surviving member of the family was carried in the
arms of a neighbor (James Hadley, also a settler of
Canisteo,) from the farm to the fort, and though almost
an infant at the time retains distinctly the impression
made by the night alarm, the terror, the flight and the
confusion. The wife of Col. John Stephens, a late
well-known citizen, was one captured by a party of
savages, and in the skirmish and rescue which ensued
upon the pursuit of her captors by the border-men (one
account says at the battle of the Hog-back) was wounded
by a rifle ball fired by one of her friends. The Stephens’,
after several removals from Wysox, Queen’s Flats, and
other localities, were living, in the fourth or fifth
year after the close of the Revolutionary War, at
Newtown.
Several families, relatives and acquaintance,
were found willing to engage in the enterprise of
further emigration. In 1788, Solomon Bennet, Capt.
John Jameson, Uriah Stephens, and Richard Crosby,
started upon an exploration. Passing up the Chemung
to Painted Post, they found there a few cabins, a
half dozen settlers, and Saxton and Porter, the
surveyors of Phelps and Gorham. Penetrating further
into the north by way of the Conhocton Valley, they
found no lands which satisfied their expectations. On
their return they struck across the hills from the
upper waters of the Conhocton, and after toiling
through the dense forests which crowded the shattered
region to the westward of that river, they came
suddenly upon the brink of a deep and fine valley
through which the Canisteo rambled, in a crooked
channel marked by the elms and willows which overhung
it. The prospect was singularly beautiful. The huge
barriers of the valley laden with that noble timber
which raftsman for half a century have been floating
through the cataracts of the Susquehanna, ran in
precipitous parallels at a generous distance for
several miles and then closing in, granted the river
for its passage but a narrow gorge made dark by
hemlocks. A heavy forest covered the floor of the
valley. Groves of gigantic pine stood with their
deep green tops in the midst of the maples, the white
sycamores. So even was the surface of the vale, so
abrupt and darkly-shaded the ranges that enclosed it,
that the explorers, looking down upon the tree tops
that covered the ground from hill to hill, seemed to
be standing above a lake of timber. At the lower
part of the valley there was an open flat, of several
hundred acres, overgrown with wild grass so high that
a horse and rider could pass through the meadow almost
unseen. It was like a little prairie, beautiful indeed,
but strangely out of place in the rugged region,--as
if some great Indian prophet had stolen a choice
fragment from the hunting grounds of the Missouri
and hidden it in the midst of mountains bristling
with gloomy hemlocks.
The explorers decided to purchase the two
townships on the river, which included the open
flats. Eight other men joined in the purchase: Col.
Arthur Urwin, Joel Thomas, Uriah Stephens, (father
of Uriah Stephens, Jr.,) John Stephens, his son,
William Winecoop, James Hadley, Elisha Brown and
Christian Kress.
In the summer of 1789, a company of men were
sent to the flats, who cut and stacked a sufficient
quantity of wild grass to winter the cattle that
were to be driven on. In the autumn of the same
year, Uriah Stephens, the elder, and Richard Crosby,
with portions of their families, started from
Newtown to begin the proposed settlement. The
provisions, baggage and families were carried up
in seven-ton boats, while four sons of Mr. Stephens,
Elias, Elijah, Benjamin and William, drove along the
shore the cattle belonging to the two families in
the boats, and to four other families which were to
join them in the spring. From the mouth of the
Canisteo to the upper flats, the movement was
tedious and toilsome. Frequent rifts were to be
ascended, and the channel was often to be cleared
of obstructions, the trunks of trees and dams of
drift-wood. On one day, they made but six miles.
However, as the destinies, after forty centuries
of hesitation, had decided that the Upper Canisteo
must be civilized, all obstacles were steadily
surmounted. At the rifts, where the nose of the
unwieldy boat, plowing under the water, at last
wheeled about in spite of setting poles and
swearing, and went down again to the foot of
the rapids, every human thing that could pull,
went on shore, took hold of a long rope, and
hauled the barge up by main force. Thus for some
three days the pioneers of Canisteo toiled up
the hostile current, probably not without some
little noise, as the shouting of boatman, or
the bawling of the youths on shore at the
straggling cattle, which sometimes got
entangled in the willow thickets by the little
river, sometimes scrambled up the hill sides,
sometimes stopped, shaking their horns in
affright, when the wolf or fox bounded across
the trail, or came racing back in paroxysms
of terror, making the gorge to resound with
strange bellowing, when they suddenly met the
ugly and growling bear, sitting like a foot-
pad upon his haunches in the middle of the path,
and so near to their unsuspecting nostrils,
that he might cuff the face of the forward
bullock with his paw, before the startled cattle
became aware that they had ventured into the
lurking-place of the shaggy brigand.
At length the persevering voyagers landed
on the upper flats. The astonished cattle found
themselves almost smothered in the herbage of
the meadows. The first thing to be devised was,
of course, a habitation. The bark hut of the
savage was the only structure which the
wilderness had yet beheld, and was undoubtedly
a sufficient house for cannibals or
philosophers; but the pioneers, who were
neither the former not the latter, were
straightway into the woods, cut down certain
trees, and built a luxurious castle of logs,
26 feet long by 24 wide. There was but one
room below. Four fire-places were excavated
in the four corners, and they who know what
caverns fire-places were in old times, can
imagine the brilliant appearance of this
Canisteo Castle at night, through the winter,
when the blaze of burning logs in all the
furnaces filled the cabin with light, and
glimmering through the crevices, was seen by
the Indian as he walked by on the crackling
crust of the snow toward his lodge in the
woods. In the following spring a family was
encamped before each fire-places, and occupied
each its own territory with as much good humour
as if divided from the others by stone walls
and gates of brass.
The two families passed here the first winter
very comfortably. In the spring of 1790 they were
joined by Solomon Bennet, Uriah Stephens, Jr., and
Colonel John Stephens his brother, with their families.
As soon as the weather permitted, they set about
preparing the ground for seed. Although the flat were
free from timber, this was no trifling task. The
roots of the gigantic wild grass, braided and tangled
together below the surface, protected the earth
against the plow with a net so tight and stout, that
ordinary means of breaking the soil failed entirely.
Four yoke of oxen forced the coulter through this
well-woven netting, and the snapping and tearing of
the roots as they gave way before the strength of
eight healthy beeves was heard a considerable
distance, like the ripping of a mat. The settlers
never learned the origin of these meadows. “Captain
John the Indian” said that he knew nothing of their
origin; they were cleared “before the time of his
people.” After the frosts, when the herbage had
become dry and crisp, the grass was set on fire,
and a very pretty miniature of a prairie-on-fire it
made. The flames flashed over the flats almost as over
a floor strewn with gunpowder. A swift horse could not
keep before them. The wild grass, by successive mowing
and burning, became less rank and more nutritious. In
time it gradually changed to “tame grass,” and at the
present day there are meadows on the Canisteo which
have never been broken by the plow.
After the sowing of Spring wheat and the
planting of the corn, the settlers constructed a log
fence on a scale as magnificent, considering their
numbers, as that of the Chinese wall. This ponderous
battlement enclosed nearly four hundred acres of land.
The flats were divided among the proprietors. From the
present site of Bennettsville down to the next
township, a distance of about six miles, twelve lots
were laid out from hill to hill across the valley,
and assigned by lot to the several proprietors. The
lot upon which the first house was built is known as
the “Bennet” and Pumpelly farm.” That part of it upon
which the house stood is upon the farm of Mr. Jacob
Doty. In the course of the same spring (1790) Jedediah
Stephens, John Redford, and Andrew Bennet, settled in
the neighborhood. Jedediah Stephens, afterwards well
known to the citizens of the county, was a faithful
and respected preacher of the Baptist denomination.
His house was for many years the resort of
missionaries and religious travelers who passed
through the valley, and indeed was said to be one
of the few places where pilgrims of a serious
disposition, and not inclined to join the
boisterous company of the neighborhood, could
find lodgings entirely to their satisfaction.
The harvest abundantly attested the fertility
of the valley. Seventy or seventy five bushels of
corn were yielded to the acre. Indeed, the timbered
flats have been known to yield seventy-five bushels
of corn, planted with the hoe after logging. They
sent their grain in canoes to Shepherd’s Mill, on
the Susquehanna, a short distance about Tioga Point,
and nearly one hundred miles distant from Canisteo.
A few random notes of the settlement of this
neighborhood may be added. Solomon Bennet was one
of its leading spirits. He was a hunter of renown,
and bequeathed his skill and good fortune to his
sons, who became well known citizens of the county,
and were famous for readiness with the knife and
rifle, and for “perhaps some shallow spirit of
judgment” (or better) touching traps. Mr. Bennet
built, in 1793, the first grist mill on the
Canisteo. It stood (and also a saw mill we are
told) on Bennet’s creek, about half a mile from
its mouth. It stood but a year or two when it was,
unfortunately, burned to the ground. Early
Settlers remember how the pioneer boys came over
the hills, through the unbroken woods, with their
ox-drays, and retain vividly the image of a
distinguished settler who came over from Pine
Plains with “his little brown mare and a sheepskin
to ride upon” after a bag of corn-meal to keep off
starvation. Flour was sometimes sent by canoes
down the Canisteo and up the Conhocton. After the
burning of the mill, the settlers were again
compelled to send their grain in canoes to
Shepherd’s Mill. Mr. Bennet went to New York
to purchase machinery for a new mill, but became
engaged in other business, and failed to minister
to the urgent necessity of his neighbors. George
Hornell (afterwards well known as Judge Hornell)
settled in Canisteo in 1793. He was induced to
build a mill on the site now occupied by the
present Hornellsville Mills. So impatient were
the settlers for the erection of the building,
that they turned out and prepared the timber for
it voluntarily.
The first goods were sold by Solomon Bennet.
Judge Hornell and William Dunn visited the
neighborhood at an early day for trade with the
Indians. James McBurney, of Ireland, first came
to Canisteo as a peddler. He brought Great Lot,
No. 12, in the lower township of Bennet, and
other lands; went to Ireland, and upon his return
settled some of his countrymen on his lands.
Christopher Hulburt and Nathaniel Cary
settled in 1795 at Arkport. The former ran, in
1800 or about that time, the first ark laden
with wheat that descended the Canisteo, and
about the same time John Morrison ran the first
raft. The honor of piloting the first craft of
the kind out of the Canisteo, however, is also
claimed for Benjamin Patterson.
Dr. Nathan Hallett, Jeremiah Baker,
Daniel Purdy, Oliver Harding, Thomas Butler, J.
Russelman, the Upsons, the Stearns, and the
Dykes also were among the earliest settlers on
the upper Canisteo.
The first taverns were kept in the year 1800,
or about that time, by Judge Hornell, at his mills,
and by Jedediah Stephens below Bennet’s Creek. The
first house in Hornellsville stood upon the site
of Mr. Hugh Magee’s Hotel..
Under the old organization of the County of
Ontario, the settlement of Canisteo was in the
town of Williamson, which comprised a large part
of what is now Western Steuben County, Allegany
County, and how much more we know not. Jedediah
Stephens was the first Supervisor of that town,
and attended the meeting of the Board at
Canandaigua. Town meeting was held at the home
of Uriah Stephens, and seven votes were cast.
Solomon Bennet is said by the settlers
of Canisteo to have been the Captain. John
Stephens, the lieutenant, and Richard Crosby
the ensign of the first military company
organized in Steuben County.
A large proportion of the first settlers
of Canisteo were from Pennsylvania, and had
within them a goodly infusion of that boisterous
spirit and love of rough play for which the free
and manly sons of the backwoods are everywhere
famous. On the Susquehanna frontier, before the
Revolution, had arisen an athletic scuffling
wrestling race, lovers of hard blows, sharp-
shooters and runners, who delighted in nothing
more than in those ancient sports by which the
backs and limbs of all stout-hearted youth have
been tested since the days of Hercules. The
eating of bears, the drinking of grog, the
devouring of hominy, venison, and all the
invigorating diet of the frontiers; the hewing
down of forests, the paddling of canoes, the
fighting of savages, all combined to form a
generation of yeomen and foresters, daring,
rude and free. Canisteo was a sprout from this
stout stock, and on the generous river-flats
flourished with amazing vigor.
Life there was decidedly Olympic. The old
Python games were revived with an energy that
would have almost put a soul into the bones of
Pindar; and although many of the details of those
classic festivals upon which the schoolmasters dwell
with especial delight were wanting--the godess, the
crowns of oak, the music, and so on--nevertheless,
one cannot help thinking that for the primitive
boxers and sportsmen of the old school, men who wore
lions’ hides and carried clubs, the horse-play of
Canisteo would have been quite as entertaining as
the flutes and doggerel of Delphi. Everything that
could eat, drink and wrestle, was welcome; Turk or
Tuscarora, Anak, or Anthropophagus, Blue Beard or
Blunderbore. A “back-hold” with a Ghoul would not
have been declined, nor a drinking match with a
Berserker. Since the Centaurs never has there been
better specimen of a “half-horse” tribe. To many
of the settlers in other parts of the county who
emigrated from the decorous civilization of the
east and south, these boisterous foresters were
objects of astonishment. When “Canisteer” went
abroad, the public soon found it out. On the
Conhocton they were known to some as the Six-Nations,
and to the amusement and wonder of your Europeans,
would sometimes visits at Bath, being of a social
disposition, and sit all day, “singing, telling
stories and drinking grog, and never get drunk
nayther.” To the staid and devout they were Arabs,
--cannibals. Intercourse between the scattered
settlements of the county was of course limited
mainly to visits of necessity; but rumor took the
fair fame of Canisteo in hand, and gave the
settlement a notoriety through all the land,
which few “rising villages” even of the present
day enjoy. It was pretty well understood over all
the country that beyond the mountains of Steuben,
in the midst of the most rugged district of the
wilderness, lay a corn-growing valley which had
been taken possession of by some vociferous tribe,
whether of Mameluckes or Tartars no one could
precisely say; whose whooping and obstreperous
laughter was heard far and wide, surprising the
solitudes.
The “Romans of the West” were not long in
finding out these cousins, and many a rare riot they
had with them. The uproars of these festivals beggar
description. The valley seemed a den of maniacs. The
savages came down four or five times in each year
from Squakie Hill for horse and foot-racing, and to
play all manner of rude sports. In wrestling, or in
“rough-and-tumble” they were not matches for the
settlers, many of whom were proficient in the
Susquehanna sciences, and had been regularly trained
in all the wisdom of the ancients. The Indians were
powerful of frame and stature. The settlers agree
that “they were quick as cats, but the poor critters
had no system.” When fairly grappled, the Indians
generally came off second best. They were slippery
and “limber like snakes,” oiling themselves freely,
and were so adroit in squirming out of the flinch of
the farms, that it was by no means the most trifling
part of the contest to keep the red antagonist in the
hug.
In these wrestling matches, Elias Stephens was
the champion. He was called the “smartest Stephens on
the river,” and was in addition claimed by his friends
as the “smartest” man in the country at large. No
Indian in the Six Nation could lay him on this back. A
powerful young chief was once brought by his tribe from
Tonewanta to test the strength of the Canisteo Champion.
He had been carefully trained and exercised, and
after “sleeping in oiled blankets” for several nights,
was brought into the ring. Stephens grappled with him.
At the first round the chief was hurled to the ground
with a thigh-bone broken. His backers were very angry,
and, drawing their knives, threatened to kill the
victor. He and his friend Daniel Upson, took each a
sled-stake and standing back to back defied them. The
matter was finally made up, and the unlucky chief was
borne away on a deer-skin, stretched between two poles.
In addition to this, Stephens once maintained the
credit of the Canisteo by signally discomfiting a
famous wrestler for the Hog-back.
Foot Races, long and short, for rods or miles,
were favorite diversions. In these the Indians met
with better success than in wrestling; but even in
racing they did not maintain the credit of their
nation to their entire satisfaction, for there was now
and then a long-winded youth among the settlers who
beat the barbarians at their own game. So for horse-
racing, this ancient and heroic pastime was carried on
with a zeal that would shame New-market. The Indians
came down on these occasions with all their households,
women, children, dogs and horses. The settlers found no
occasion to complain of their savage guests. They
conducted themselves with civility, generally, and
even formed in some instances, warm friendships with
the hosts.
Infant Canisteo of course followed in the
footsteps of senior Canisteo. When fathers and big
brothers found delight in scuffling with barbarians,
and in racing with Indian ponies, it would have been
strange if infant Canisteo had taken of its own accord
to Belles Letters and Arithmetic. The strange boy found
himself in den of your bears. He was promptly required
to fight, and after such an introduction to the delights
of the valley, was admitted to freedom of trap and
fishery in all the streams and forests of the
commonwealth. And for infant Canisteo, considering
that passion for wild life which plays the mischief
with the boys everywhere, even in the very ovens of
refinement, a more congenial region could not have been
found. The rivers and brooks alive with fish, the hills
stocked with deer, the groves populous with squirrels,
the partridges drumming in the bushes, the raccoons
scrambling in the tree-tops, removed every temptation
to run away in search of a solitary island and a man
Friday; while their little ill-tempered Iroquois
play-fellows, with their arrow-practice, their
occasional skirmishes, and their mimic war-paths
satisfied those desires to escape from school to the
Rocky Mountains and the society of grizzly bears and
Camanches, which so often turn the heads of
youngsters nurtured in the politest of academies.
This backwoods mode of education, through
by no means so exquisite as our modern systems, has
proved nevertheless quite efficient for practical
purposes. The boys who in early times played with
the heathen and persecuted raccoons, instead of
learning their grammars have, astonishing to see,
became neither pagans nor idiots. Some have become
farmers, some lumberman, some supervisors, and some
justices of the peace; and whether in the field or
in the saw-mill, whether in the county’s august
parliament, or in the chair of the magistrate, the
duties of all those stations seem to have been
performed substantially as well as needs be. For
the Robin Hoods of Canisteo could plow, mow, and
fell trees, if need be, as well as the best, and
did not hold laziness in higher respect than did
the other pioneers of the county.
The Indians made their appearance shortly
after the landing of the settlers--the Canisteo
Valley having long been a favorite hunting field.
The men of Wyoming found among them many of the old
antagonists. Tories never were forgiven, but the
proffered friendship of the Indians was accepted:
old enmities were forgotten, and the settlers and
savages lived together on the most amicable terms.
Shortly after their arrival an old Indian,
afterwards well known as “Captain John,” made his
appearance, and on seeing the elder Stephens,” went
into a violent fit of merriment. Language failed to
express the cause of his amusement which seemed to
be some absurd reminiscence suddenly suggested by
the sight of the settler, and the old “Roman”
resorted to pantomime. He imitated the gestures of
a man smoking--putting his hand to his mouth to
withdraw an imaginary pipe, then turning up his
mouth and blowing an imaginary cloud of smoke, them
stooping to tie and imaginary shoe, then taking an
imaginary boy in his arms and running away, and
returning with violent pearls of laughter. One of
the sons of Mr. Stephens, a hot and athletic youth,
supposing that the Indian was “making fun” of his
father, snatched up a pounder to knock him on the
head. Captain John was driven from the ideal to the
real, and made good his retreat. He afterwards
became a fast friend of the settlers, and explained
the cause of his merriment.
When Mr. Stephens lived near Wyoming, he was
one day going from his farm to the fort, with two
oxen and a horse, which were attached to some kind
of vehicle. His boy, Phineas, was riding on the
horse. Mr. Stephens was an inveterate smoker, and
walked by the side of the oxen, puffing after the
manner imitated by Captain John. While passing
through the woods near a fork of the roads, his
shoe stuck in the mud, and was drawn off his foot.
Just as he stooped to recover it, a rifle was
fired from the bushes, which killed the nigh ox,
by the side of which he had been walking. The alarm
of “Indians!” was sounded from the other branch of
the road, where some of his neighbors were killed.
Mr. Stephens started and ran, but his boy crying
out, “Don’t leave me, father!” he returned and took
him in his arms, and fled to the fort. The ambushed
rifleman was none other than Captain John, and he,
recognizing the smoker fifteen years after the
adventure, was quite overpowered at the recollection
of the joke.
Another meeting of two old enemies took place
on the banks of the Canisteo not long afterwards.
Major Moses Van Campen, (late of Dansville,
Livingston County,) well known to the Six Nations
as a powerful, daring and sagacious ranger in the
border wars of Pennsylvania, moved up the river with
a colony destined for Allegany County, and offered
to land at the settlement on Canisteo Flats. Van
Campen was especially obnoxious to the Indians for
the part he had taken as a leader of a bold and
destructive attack, made in the night, by himself
and two others, prisoners, (Pence and Pike by name,)
upon the party by which they had been captured in an
incursion against the settlements, in which Van
Campen’s father and young brother had been killed
before his own eyes. There were ten Indians in the
party. One evening, while encamped at Wyalusing Flats,
on their way to Niagara, Van Campen resolved to put
in execution a long meditated plan of estate. He
managed to conceal under his foot a knife which had
been dropped by an Indian, and this, at midnight, the
prisoners cut themselves loose. They stole the guns
from their sleeping enemies, and placed them against
a tree. Pike’s heart failed him, and he laid down just
as the two allotted to him for execution awoke and
were arising. Van Campen, seeing that “their heads
were turned up fair”, killed them with a tomahawk,
and three besides. Pence killed four with the guns.
Van Campen struck his hatchet into the neck of the
only remaining Indian, a chief named Mohawk, who
turned and grappled with him. A desperate and doubtful
struggle followed, one being sometime uppermost and
sometimes the other. Van Campen half blinded by the
blood of his wounded antagonist, who felt, as often
as he got opportunity, for the knife in his belt.
This would have soon settled the contest, and Van
Campen finally stuck his toes into the Indian’s belt
and hoisted him off. The latter bounded into the woods
and escaped.
The savages recognized Van Campen on his
arrival at Canisteo as “the man that lent John Mohawk
the hatchet.” Captain Mohawk himself was there, and
had a special cause of grievance to exhibit in a neck
set slightly awry from the blow of the tomahawk. The
settlers rallied for the defense of Van Campen. There
was every prospect of a bloody fight; but after much
wrangling it was agreed that the two parties should
divide while Van Campen and Mohawk advanced between
them to hold a “talk.” This was done, and in a
conference of considerable length between the two old
antagonists, the causes of difficulty were discussed,
and it was finally decided that each was doing his
duty them, but that now war being ended, they ought
to forget past injuries. Mohawk offered his hand.
The threatened fight became a feast. A keg of
spirits was broken and the hills rang with riot.
The Indians sometimes entertained the men
of Canisteo with a display of their military
circumstance, and marched forth on the flats, to
the number of three hundred warriors, in full
costume, to dance the grand war-dance. They made
a fire about eight rods long and paraded around it
with hideous chants and a great clattering of
little deer-skin drums. On one of these grand
field-days, the whole tribe, arrayed most
fantastically, was marching around the fire, and
with the flourishing of knives, the battering of
drums, and the howling of war songs, had worked
themselves up into a brilliant state of excitement.
The settlers, boys and men, were standing near
watching the performance, when a high-heeled young
savage stepped out of the line and inquired of one
of the bystanders--
“What’s your name?”
The settler informed him.
”D----d liar! d----d hog!” said the Indian.
Elias Stephens, who was a prompt and high
tempered youth, said, “Daniel, I wish he would just
ask me the question.”
The Indian instantly turned and said, “What’s
your name?”
“Elias Stephens,”
“D----d liar! d----d ----”
The sentence remains unfinished to the
present date. A well-planted blow of the fist knocked
the barbarian headlong over the fire, senseless. The
sensation for a moment was great. The dance was
stopped, the drums became dumb; tomahawks and knives
were brandished no longer, and the savages stood aloof
in such angry astonishment, that the bystanders
trembled for their skulls. The Chief, however, came
forward, and striking Stephens approvingly on the
shoulders, said, “Good enough for Indian.” He
expected his warriors to behave themselves like
gentlemen, and when cooper-colored gentlemen so far
forgot themselves as to use indelicate or personal
language, he would thank pale-faced gentlemen to knock
them over fire, or through the fire, or into the fire,
as it might be most convenient. The dance went on with
renewed vigor, but the punished pagan descended from
his high horse and sat aside in silence, volunteering
during the rest of the entertainment no more flourishes
not promised “on the bills.”
Sometimes the Indians treated the settlers to
a display of their tactics. Hiding behind a rampart of
roots or lying in ambush among the bushes, at a signal
given the whole party fired their rifles at certain
imaginary foes. The chief sprang up and raised the
war-whoop, and then the three hundred joined in the
frightful cry of the Six Nations, which, to use the
favorite phrase of the pioneers, “was enough to take
the hair off a man’s head.” Then, rushing out, they
tomahawked the pumpkins and scalped the turnips, then
dodged back to their covert and lay still as snakes.
Elias Stephens, for his prowess and resolution,
became an object of respect to the red gentry. Fourteen
men were working in Bennett’s millyard when sixteen
“Romans’ came down whooping furiously, and drove the
lumberman from their work, took possession of the mill,
and converted it into a dancing saloon. It was told to
Stephens. “What!” said he, “you fourteen let sixteen
of those critters drive you out of the yard! Lord! I
can whip a hundred Indians.” And taking the swingle
of a flail ran to the mill. The Indians were capering
about in high glee, brandishing their knives and
shrieking very like Mark Anthony and fifteen other
Romans, and indulging in all those antics with which
the barbarians of the Long-House were wont to divert
themselves.
“Put up those knives, damn you, and march,”
said Stephens. The diversions came to a sudden pause.
“Put up those knives, damm you, and be off, or I’ll
beat all your brains out!” The Romans said never a
word, but stuck their knives into their belts and
departed.