Mohawk people

“ There was nothing to be lost, and much to be gained on both sides by peace. The French could now increase their trade, and the Iroquois were glad once more to turn their arms against aggressive Indian neighbors. The Mohegans, or Loups, on the Hudson, uniting with those of New England, were growing haughty and insolent to the Mohawk people, making raids on their hunting-grounds, and taking advantage of their temporary distress to settle old scores ”

“ Oronhyatekha, the Mohawk referred to, who pursued his studies for a time in the University of Toronto, and to whom I have been largely indebted in this and other researches in Indian philology, not only rejects the six letters already named, but also c, g, l, z. The alphabet is thus reduced to seventeen letters. Professor Max Müller notes in passing, that the name “Mohawk” would seem to prove the use of the labial. But it is of foreign origin, though possibly derived from their own term: oegwehokough, “people.” The name employed by themselves is “Canienga.” ”

“ This Opinion, which they take Care to cultivate into their Children, gives them that Courage, which has been so terrible to all the Nations of North America; and they have taken such Care to impress the same Opinion of their People on all their Neighbours, that they, on all Occasions, yield the most submissive Obedience to them. I have been told by old Men in New England, who remembered the Time when the Mohawks made War on their Indians, that as soon as a single Mohawk was discover'd in the Country, their Indians raised a Cry from Hill to Hill, A Mohawk! ”

“ The vale of the Mohawk, including its intersecting valley of the Schoharie-kill, was among the most thickly populated and wealthy agricultural districts of the country at the commencement of the war. The productiveness of its soil, and the riches of its people, rendered it ever an inviting object of plunder to the enemy—especially to the savages, and the swarms of refugees who had fled from the country, and were sharing a precarious livelihood among the Indian wigwams and in the wilds of Canada. ”

“ There were certainly three principal fortified towns in the Mohawk Valley all through the early colonial days, built and occupied by the Caniengas (Kanienkehaka) , or "People of the Flint," as they chose to call themselves, but who were known to the Dutch as Maquaas, to the French as Agniés, and to the English as Mohawks. These people were divided into three clans or gentes, each named for a certain animal, and each governing a town or castle of its own. Their three towns varied in name and location, but seem always to have borne the same relation to one another. ”

“ It has been elsewhere stated, that the custom prevailed among the Mohawk nation, to maintain the number of the tribe, by taking captive a sufficient number to fill the vacancies caused by death of their people. The result was, that these captives marrying with Indians, they gradually underwent a change, and the original appearance of the Mohawk has lost its characteristic features. The circumstances of the Indians during the revolutionary war, and subsequently in settling in Canada, led to frequent unions between the white men of different nationalities and the Indian women. ”

“ Hall went, through the little town of Ancaster, to visit a Settlement of Mohawk Indians, on the banks of the Grand River. In the American war the Mohawks were strongly attached to the British interest, and first followed Sir William Johnson in Canada, under their chieftain, a celebrated warrior, whose name was Brandt. This man accustomed his people to the arts of civilized life, and made farmers of them. ”

“ Beyond, the amber waters of Canada Creek flow in from the north, giving the Mohawk a largely increased current, and the land becomes a region of gentle hills, with meadows and herds, a scene of pastoral beauty, the great dairy region of New York. Here is Herkimer, which was an Indian frontier fort, and a few miles farther is Utica, the dairymen's and cheese-makers' headquarters, a city of fifty thousand people. The whole Mohawk valley for miles has an atmosphere of peacefulness and content, innumerable cows and sheep grazing and resting upon the rich 343 pastures. ”

“ Within the present century, when the men of the Mohawk tribe were debased by Intemperance, and embroiled in sanguinary wars with their brother Indians, the females called a council, by themselves, and so did they protest against these giant sins, as, for a season, to bring sobriety and peace within the borders of their people. ”

“ Connected with this spring is the story of a short girl-life, pure, vigorous, sorrow-taught. It is written out in authentic documents; while Nature, also, has kept a record of an Indian maiden's lodge beside the spring. There on the banks of the Mohawk River, at Caughnawaga, now called Fonda, in Montgomery County, dwelt the Lily of the Mohawks two centuries ago, when the State had neither shape nor name. She saw her people build a strong, new palisaded village there. ”

“ The Mohawk Valley proper, during the Winter of 1780, had enjoyed a period of comparative repose—interrupted only by the common alarms incident to an unprotected border, at all times liable to invasion, and the people, as a consequence, feeling continually more or less insecure. ”

“ Their very name, as we learn from Colden, was a synonyme for cruelty and dread.25 No tribe, perhaps, on the continent, produced better warriors, or have ever more fully realized, as a nation, the highest measure of heroism and military glory to which hunter nations can reach.
25 The word Mohawk itself, is not a term of Mohawk origin, but one imposed upon them, as is believed, by the Mohegan race, who inhabited the borders of the sea. Among this race the Dutch and English landed, and they would naturally adopt the term most in vogue for so celebrated a tribe. ”

“ Brantford, also in Canada, contains the other half of the same nation,—the descendants of Sir William Johnson's Mohawk followers, who were stanch friends of the English. To us Americans, falling heir to their lands, these Mohawks have left no living trace of themselves, though some of their brothers, the Onondagas and Senecas, still dwell in our midst. The Mohawks have gone from us, indeed, leaving us only a memory, all inwrought in a thick array of Indian names. ”

“ The sight of the Mohawk women and young girls, arming themselves as best they could to resist the Mohegan attack, was in itself an irresistible appeal to their tribesmen to exert themselves to the utmost in defending them against the well-known horrors of captivity, which would undoubtedly come upon them if the castle fell into the hands of the enemy. ”

“ The design of the British government was to hold the Indians in a state of pupilage, according to the practice of the United States; and consequently to allow them merely the occupancy of lands of which the government claimed the title. But neither the Mohawks nor their indefatigable leader would listen to any such doctrine; always, on all occasions asserting their own complete and entire independence as a nation. They were an independent nation in the Valley of the Mohawk, argued the Chief in one of his speeches, [FN] and were the undisputed owners of the soil of their country. ”

“ Shortly before the execution, some Frenchman, less inhuman than his governor, threw a knife into the prison, and one of the Mohawks immediately dispatched himself with it: the other, expressing contempt at his companion’s mean evasion from glory, walked to the stake, singing in his death-chant, that he was a Mohawk warrior, that all the power of man could not extort the least expression of suffering from his lips, and that it was ample consolation to him to reflect that he had made many Frenchmen suffer the same pangs that he must now himself undergo. ”

“ The ties of blood are strong in a noble heart. Anastasia, her own good friend and instructress, was there at the Sault; the adopted sister was there, a relative in name if nothing more; the "great Mohawk" was there, and he was a host in himself. But after all, what a handful were these compared to the brave men and women of her tribe in the Mohawk Valley,—those who had shared in the defence of Caughnawaga Castle against the Mohegans, and who still dwelt in her native land, and were bound to her by so many ties! Her uncle, her kindred, her nation, were against her in her Christian faith ”

“ For some years after the war, it was still the beaver country of the aborigines, or the place of their wigwams; and the country round about, now stocked with villages, and without a red-face to be seen, was a hunting-ground, in which ranged bears, foxes, wolves, deer, and other game, the Indians themselves calling it couxsachraga, or the dismal wilderness. The town of Mohawk, where the tribe dwelt up to the year 1780, is but thirty-six miles west of Albany. ”

“ After the war of the Revolution, portions of all the Six Nations emigrated to the new Mohawk territory, although the majority of all the nations, except the Mohawks, remained within the United States—on their ancient territory. ”

“ All should assemble here, and on the Mohawk, and on the Schoharie; that no one should stay at home who could fire off a rifle, and that some should go to meet the French, and pay them back, in their own territory, what before and since they have done to us. Perhaps the old man was right, but nobody listened to him. Then came the year 'forty-six, when the French with their Indians swept through the valley of the Mohawk as far as Schenectady and Albany, and destroyed and robbed what they found, and killed and scalped what came in their way, and committed every conceivable horror. ”

“ On Friday the 6th we arrived in Brantford and had a meeting in the evening. The following day we walked out to visit the Mohawk Institution, supported by the New England Company; this institution has been, I believe, nearly thirty years in existence, and they have at present thirty-eight boys and forty-two girls. It was strange how shy our boys seemed of the young Mohawks, though making friends so readily with white boys. Mohawks and Ojebways were hereditary enemies, and, in days gone by, used to delight in scalping one another. ”

“ In Mohawk, Sandy Hill would probably be called Gea-di-go, "Beautiful plain," but it has no Indian name of record. The village stands upon a high sandy plain. It has its traditionary Indian story, of course; in this section of country it is easy to coin traditions of the wars of the Mohawks, the Hurons, and the Algonquians; they interest but do not harm any one. ”

“ But I think they will be here at the very time the Mohawk said. Indians are not like a regular force, that are liable to be impeded by a thousand things, under the command of several officers. Nothing stops an Indian on the war-path: there is but one leader and one mind among 'em."
As they assembled in the kitchen of the fort that night for supper, it seemed well-nigh certain that some of those seated at that table would never eat together again; yet the men ate heartily, and even cheerfully. ”

“ The warriors of the Mohawk nation were now all assembled to go in pursuit of the Mohegans. Every man was fully armed and equipped, and their deerskin pockets were well filled with the crushed corn. They put themselves under the leadership of the brave warrior Kryn, surnamed the "Great Mohawk." His home was at Caughnawaga, and his valor and good management on this expedition won for him a new title, that of "Conqueror of the Mohegans." He and his fellow tribesmen now hastily bade adieu to their families, who, together with the blackgown Pierron, were to remain at the castle ”

“ You forget that I have told you our guide is now a Mohawk, and that be serves with our forces as a friend."
"And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo," returned the other, positively. "A Mohawk! No, give me a Delaware or a Mohican for honesty; and when they will fight, which they won't all do, having suffered their cunning enemies, the Maquas, to make them women—but when they will fight at all, look to a Delaware or a Mohican for a warrior!" ”

“ He—the bloodthirsty, he—the Mohawk chief,
He—who despises pain and sneers at grief,
Here in the hated Huron's vicious clutch,
That even captive he disdains to touch!
Captive! But never conquered; Mohawk brave
Stoops not to be to any man a slave ”

“ The poor New England Indians immediately ran to the Christian Houses, and the Mohawks often pursued them so closely, that they entered along with them, and knocked their Brains out in the Presence of the People of the House; but if the Family had Time to shut the Door, they never attempted to force it, and on no Occasion did any Injury to the Christians. All the Nations round them have, for many Years, intirely submitted to them, and pay a yearly Tribute to them in Wampum [2] ; they dare neither make War nor Peace, without the Consent of the Mohawks. ”

“ The Onayiuts or Onoyders, were the first that join'd in the Confederacy with the Mohawks, by putting themselves under their Protection. He calls the Mohawk his Father, and in Return he is called a Son: The Mohawk used him for his Ambassador to the other Nations: In Council he is stiled Niharontaquoa, or the great Tree. ”

“ Will bite the dust—will lick the Mohawk’s hand;
Will kneel and cower at the Mohawk’s feet;
Will shrink when Mohawk war-drums wildly beat.
His death will be avenged with hideous hate
By Iroquois, swift to annihilate
His vile detested captors, that now flaunt
Their war clubs in his face with sneer and taunt,
Not thinking, soon that reeking, red, and raw,
Their scalps will deck the belts of Iroquois.
The path of coals outstretches, white with heat,
A forest fir’s length—ready for his feet.
Unflinching as a rock he steps along
The burning mass, and sings his wild war song ”