Johnson, Elias. Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations and History of the Tuscarora Indians. Lockport, New York: Union Printing and Publishing Co. 1881.
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, […]
In the year 1846, on the 16th day of May, about forty of the Tuscarora immigrated from the reservation to their new homes in the Indian Territory, and in one year about one-third of them died on account of the sufferings they endured. They were destitute of everything, and the Government was to have sustained
The Tuscarora tradition opens with the notion that there were originally two worlds, or regions of space, that is an upper and lower world. The upper world was inhabited by beings resembling the human race. And the lower world by monsters, moving on the surface and in the waters, which is in darkness. When the
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
In all the early histories of the American Colonies, in the stories of Indian life and the delineations of Indian character, these children of nature are represented as savages and barbarians, and in the mind of a large portion of the community the sentiment still prevails that they were blood-thirsty, revengeful, and merciless, justly a
There once lived a man who was a great hunter. His generosity was the theme of praise in all the country, for he not only supplied his own family with food, but distributed game among his friends and neighbors, and even called the birds and animals of the forest to partake of his abundance. For
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.
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,
I will now resume the history of the sixth and last family, the Tuscarora On-gwe-hon-wa, that were left at the Neuse river, or Gan-ta-no. Here they increased in numbers, valor and skill, and in all knowledge of the arts necessary in forest life. The country was wide and covered with dense wilderness, large rivers and
In giving the description of the condolence, I have chosen the following writings of Mr. G. S. Riley, of Rochester, to-wit: A grand council of the confederate Iroquois was held October 1, 1845, at the Indian council house, on the Tonawanda reservation, in the county of Genesee. Its proceedings occupied three days. It embraced representatives
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
“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
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 two above are the legends concerning the principal medicines used among the Iroquois. The ancient manner of administering them, was to take a small wooden goblet and go to a running stream, dipping toward the way which the stream ran, fill the goblet and return, place it near the fire with some tobacco near
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,
“Listen further to what the Great Spirit has been pleased to communicate to us. He has made us, as a race, separate and distinct from the pale faces. It is a great sin to intermarry and intermingle the blood of the two races. Let none be guilty of this transgression. “At one time the four
To animate a kinder feeling between the white people and the Indians, established by a truer knowledge of our civil and domestic life, and of our capabilities for future elevation, is the motive for which this work is founded. The present Tuscarora Indians, the once powerful and gifted nation, after their expulsion from the South,
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On long winter evening the Indian hunters gathered around their fireside, to listen to the historical traditions, legends of war and hunting, and fairy tales which had been handed down through their fathers and father’s fathers, with scarcely any variation for centuries, kindling the enthusiasm of the warrior and inspiring the little child some day
