only be glanced at, but has some points of peculiar
intérest. They are the only tribe of the
ancient Konoshioni who adhered to us, at least
the better part of them, in our life and death
struggle of the revolutionary war, saving some
portion of the Tuscaroras; whose aid, however,
is justly due to the Oneida influence. It was
by the Oneidas that the Tuscaroras were brought
off from the south. The Oneidas had long distinguished
themselves in their war excursions
against the southern Indians». Their traditions
are replete with accounts of these war parties
against the Oyada, or Cherokee«. They had
found allies at the south in thnTuscaroras, who
were themselves engaged in desperate wars, at
various periods, against the Catabas, and Chero-
kees, and others. Besides this, Iroquois-tradition
elairns the Tuscaroras as one of their original
cantons, or rather as a band of the original
Eagwe He© we, who had, in early times- gone
south* And when a crisis happened in their
affairs, they nobly went to their relief, and seated
them on their western confines, between themselves
and the Onondagas, where they remained
during the revolution. The Oneidas bore their
full share in the long and bloody wars waged by
the Iroquois for more than two centuries, against
the French in the Canadas, and aganist the distant
Algonquins, Hurons and Illinese. And
he who scans the ancient . records of treaties
and councils, will find that their sachems were
Vide Cusick’s pamphlet.
represented in the conferences assembled on this
continent, by the kings and potentates of Europe,
who planted colonies at various times, between
thU respective gulfs of Mexico and the St. Lawrence.
After the flight of the Mohawks, in 1776,
they were in the van of the Konoshioni, and to
use their symbolic phraseology, stood in the
eastern door of the Long House. When the
mixed Saxon population of New York and New
England began, after the war of 1776, to move
Westward, the Oneidas first felt the pressure
upon their territory. By siding with the colonists,
they had secured their entire ancient domain,:
from whi eh they ceded to the state, from
time to time, such portions as/they did not want
for cultivation, taking in lieu money annuities.
Nor did they fail to profit, in a measure, by the
example of industry set before them in agriculture
and the ar t s .For a while, it is true, they
reeled before the march of intemperance, and
sunk in numbers, but many of them learned the
art of holding the plough. From the earliest
times they: were noted, along with their more
western brethren; for the cultivation of Indian
corn, and the planting of orchards. They also
became tolerable herdsmen, and raised in considerable
numbers, neat cattle, horses and hogs.
To preserve their nationality, their sachems,
about the year 1820, sent delegates west to look
out a location for their permanent residence.
They purchased a suitable territory from the
Monomonees of Wisconsin, a wandering and