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Orsamus Turner's

1851 History of Pioneer Settlement of
Phelps and Gorham's Purchase

-- Part Second --



Title Page  |  Preface  |  Contents  |  Part First  |  Part Second  |  Part Third
1849 Orsamus Turner book   |   1851 Orsamus Turner article

(under construction)

 

[ 85 ]





PART  SECOND.
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CHAPTER I.
________

OUR IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS -- THE SENECAS --
WITH A GLANCE AT THE IROQUOIS.
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It is not the design of this work to embrace a detailed account of the Five Nations. The Senecas, however, the Tsonnontouans of French chronicle, who guarded the western door of the Long House, looking out on the Great Lakes, demand a passing notice, as we are approaching a series of events connected with the "partition" of their wide and beautiful domain.

In common with the red races, they are the "autochthonoi" of the soil -- "fresher from the hand that formed of earth the human face," than the present rulers of the land that was once theirs. On their hunting grounds, the pioneers of the Genesee country, preparatory to settlement, kindled their camp-fires. Our clustering cities and villages are on the sites of their ancient castles, forts and places of burial. In the vallies where they lived, and on hills where blazed their beacons, a people with the best blood of Europe in their veins, at one and the same time, are founding halls of learning, and gathering in the golden harvests. The early annals of their occupation, to which the reader is soon to be introduced, are intimately blended with this once powerful and numerous branch of the Iroquois confederacy, that furnished under the totemic bond, at the era of confederation, two of the presiding law-givers and chiefs. *

An opinion prevails, that the guardians of the Eastern Door, the Mohawks; or, as called by their brethren, "Do-de-o-gah," or

__________
* Documentary History.
 





86                     PHELPS  AND  GORHAM'S  PURCHASE.                   


      

Pages 86-162 not yet not yet transcribed




Continue reading with:
"Part Third," (pp. 163-625)




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last revised Oct. 24, 2007