Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1886 — INDIANS AT HOME. [ARTICLE]

INDIANS AT HOME.

■w Qa UeurrndanN »1 (lie Smeru Live mm Their licsprvallon - f urloim Sw|i«» in Ohn \oliaK»»—Mnrkrt Day at Salamanca— A Koirl Form of Covcriupent. *% ‘ Afew hours' ride through the pine forests of OjoAU.sk h env Valley, from Pittsburgh to dtie headwaters of the dashing river, will bring the traveler to the home of the t’ornplanter Indians. It is a locality fulLof intnest. The dusky descendants of the powerful Senecas own a large reservation there. It & distinctively an Indian territory, embracing live Indian villages, which •re quaint in, style, and where the old custom of the race are still retained to a largo orient. These settlements are peopled by •beat 2.&00 inhabitants. Besides their own fawns, they have leased from the white people ground upon which four other towns and villages are sitnated. The largest of these is the western half of Salamanca, New York, an important railJmed renter. The Cornplanter Indians are a direct hna£b«f the Seneca nation. They derive t (heir name from their famous leader. Chief Cornplanter. This man s real name was Captain John O’llail, or Abeel. Half white by blood, but thoroughly Indian by nature, he bad been one of the bravest and most • —cociafnl of Senecas during the early wars. He established his regal wigwnaa at the headwaters of the- Ailegheayliver, not fnr from where the city of Warrb, Pennsylvania, now stands. In the latter yean or his life he became noted throughout the civilized East as an enthusiastic advocate for the cause of temperance. His death occurred in the year 1832. By appropriation the State Legislature erected a fine monument at his grave, •u the top of a rising knoll, about two and a half miles from Corydon, Warren County, Pennsylvania. The shaft cost SIO,OOO. It is appropriately inscribed and the principal panel bears the legend: y

Sacred to the Memory oi C apt a nr Jomr (Chief Cornplanter).

▲lter the white man’s encroachments had begun to force the aborigines little by little westward, the States of Pennsylvania and Hew York apportioned off a reservation within their limits for Cornplanter and his followers. Since then a considerable •mount of this land has been taken from them by what they claim- to have been fraudulent legislation. Under this belief they still lay claim to all the ground on which Oil City, Pennsylvania, now stands. They, insist that it was a part of their original reservation, and even - few years they threaten to enter a big suit in ejectment for tike same. If was in the neighborhood of 1792 that the reservation was laid Out by the State authorities. Its present limits exhead ooer the State line into both "New York and Pennsylvania. It was at one time larger in the latter State, but this has been reversed and the greater part of the lend ties across in New York. In that State M embraces forty square miles, lying in Cattaraugus County. In Pennsylvania it takes in five square miles in Warren and McKean Counties, bordering on the State line. Bed House is the principal Indian village on the reservation. The other native •aftiomeals are Cold Springs. Quaker' Bridge, Onoville and State Line Town. The latter two are in Pennsylvania and the other three in New York. The white towns on the reservation are-West Salamanca, Carrol ton. Great Valley and Vandalia. all in New York. These towns are giVPn leases running for eight years only, but withtpe privilege of renewal. The rental each year amounts to quite a snng sum, $28,000 perhaps. ■*. v. „ A curious system of government is carried out. The affairs of the old reservation are managed by a council of sixteen Indians, over whom a chief precides. The members of this body are representative mm. They are chosen once every two years by a crude sort of an election, and they in turn elect a chief, who becomes the highest official in the community. The will of this Council is absolute. It owns all the land as the representative of the Seneca Nation, collects the rent of all the Jeaee-holds, directs the personal matters of tike subjects and regulates all business questions that may arise from time to time. Boone of the 2,500 inhabitants can hold property in his or her own name. Afamfly is simply allotted a piece of land—loaned —by the ruling Council. Whenever that family displeases the Council or misuses its trust the lot may be forfeited. Haydn the individual members of the tribe enjoy any rights of citizenship which the Council not the power to 6trip this system of equal rights the -question naturally arises. “Who gets the matter from the lease of white villages and «bj other emoluments that may accrue-to Om Reservation Council from business

•wires*?" Preanmahly, it is equally attributed among all the Indiana lii-ajly, its exact disposition is not kuown to the whits man. There are some state secrets with an Indtau government os we.’l ns »! Washington City, and this seems to be one 6t them. A white gentleman who ba» spent much of his time among the Conjp] ante re remarked in iny bearing:’ “I don’t know where-the luouey 'goe*, bnt the Indian has no doubt taken lessons in finnnye* from the white tnan nntl the Connell, gets all the mouey themselves. 1 * — yhe farttTnr trTWTrn irre TiuttCTitm' fnrttrß uniformity of style in all the dwellings. They are small siugle-slory frame houses, little better than shanties. There is a dingy look about all of them. They strongly resemble small and pour mining settlements in the hilflmlnons regions of Pennsylvania. The reason of this is the occupants of (he houses and lots do not make s any ThiprovcHienils ’br even take propet sore of the place, because they do not feel that it is theirs nn<l» that they can get another site from the Connell wheD that one becomes so dirly as to hi* untenantable. There are very few stores iii these communities and those few are kept by white persons who are permitted to dp so by the Council. It is n picture of old-time Indian life that the tourist beholds upon entering their cottages. Great oi>on firo-placiß, in which the wood-tire blazes cheerfully and where ■the kettle is hung over the tlames, very much as if it were at a camp-fire on tho hillside without. On the wall is generally to be found that relic of ancient barbarity, the bow and arrow, side by side with a Springfield rifie or a painted tomahawk. Although those wenpons are never used in these days, and the peaceably-disposed red man -never thinks of using them, still their presence in the houses, seems to he indispensable to the denizens as memoirs of the long-vanquished past, when they were tho glory of his forefathers and the terror of white invaders of Indinn domains in Northern Pennsylvania and New York. Aside from these wall adornments the rooms of the cottages contain but little in the way of ornamentation. Perhaps a cheap print of some picture has been pasted here and' there by the playfnl papoose, or a red blanket has been thrown across a broken window-pane, but that is all. The furniture is meagre and of a poor quality, and carpet is unknown to the floors. The squaws do all the work. Besides their household chores, they have to plant what few potatoes or hills of com are to be planted; then they have to hoe it afterwards, carry the product home, cook it, und in two instances that I was told about they had to feed it to their brave but lazy warrior husbauds. They nlso chop all the wood and perform much of the other manual labor necessary about the smallest house. There is no thrift or industry whatever about these Oornplantcr Indians. They live on the plainest and most easily obtained food.’imd it therefore costs them but little to get along. Although their possessions include some of the finest farming lands in either of the States, agriculture has been neglected and the wide acres of fertile soil are allowed to lie undeveloped year after year. What little garden truck women raise over and above the needs of their own family is marketed at Salamanca. It is an interesting spectacle that may be seen in that city on Wednesdays oi Saturdays, the market days. The Indians swarm in from all directions, both men and women, carrying baskets of vegetables on their heads and offering them for sale. They form a picturesque class when thus grouped together.' The men all dress in civilized style, bnt they are so striking in their dark complexions, wiry forms,andaboriginal cast of countenance that their dress counts bnt little in disguising them. The women have a weakness for highly-colored apparel. They wrap Wood-red shawls about themselves in old Indian fashion and generally appear on the sueets without hats or bonnets, their jet black - hair dropping down in long twists. They, of course, wear-huge -ear-rings of odd designs. The males are fine .specimens of physical manhood, sometimes even handsome; the children are eute and amusing, but the women are ugly and hideous, With all ftieir idle traits the Cornplanter Indians have developed one industrial habit to a high perfection. That is their ability to handle lumber rafts on the Allegheny river. They are notoriously good raftsmen. Lumber-dealers and wood-cutters in the timber regions hire them bv the hundreds in raftiug seasons to take charge of great fleets of rafts and float them down the river to Pittsburgh. In the spring and autumn, during; these rafting seasons, their tall figures and swarthy faces are familiar sights on the streets of Pittsburgh. They like rafting, principally because it is adventuresome arid wild, and then, too. it gives them an opportunity to come down to the “white man’s big village,” at the mouth of the Allegheny, and sequester some of the old Mononguhela “fire-water,” of which they seem to have pleasant recollections and experienced taste. They get so drunk in Pittsburgh shat if is not an uncommon thing to see'one of the police stations filled -with them. The provisions of the two States with Chief Cornplanter prohibited the sale of liquors on the reservation, but considerable is smuggled in by white settlers. John Halftown, Silver pels. Noah Two •Guns and' Harrison Eed House are the most intelligent representatives of the people. Education is at a very low ebb among the mass of residjenters. They have no schools, but whatever they desire they are privileged to send their children to white schools in neighboring villages. The reservation is Teached from Pittsburgh by the Allegheny ’’Valley Railroad and the Buffalo, New York and Philadelphia Line, from the East. —Philadelphia Times.