On January 20, 1830
Sagoyewatha
Red Jacket lived much of his adult life in Seneca territory in the Genesee River Valley in western New York
January 20, 1830: Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha) dies.
The Seneca chief, who was born around 1779, is respected as a great speaker and for his refusal to adopt white ways..nativevillage.org/...
Genesee River area
Western NY-
[ln history]:
Genesee
is a corruption of Chin-u-shio, the indigenous Seneca tribe's name for the river valley, originally Čunehstí • yu. • meaning "a beautiful open valley"The Genesee River is a tributary of Lake Ontario flowing northward through the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York in the United States..wikipedia.
The Seneca nation traditionally lived between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. The region was surveyed by Thomas Davies in 1766. The High Falls was then also known as the Great Seneca Falls, and the Genesee river was also spelled Zinochsaa by early writers.[10]
Historically, the river's gorge formed an clearly demarcated border between the lands of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, whose range extended east and the related tribes of the Erie people along the west side of the gorge. By the end of the Beaver Wars and the American Revolution, the lands in all of upstate New York into the Ohio Country were controlled by the Iroquois Confederation, but were also effectively depopulated, the tribes weakened in the Revolution. Subsequently, with most Iroquois having fled to Canada, the remnant tribal groups were in no position to further impede white settlers, so most of New York state west of the Genesee River became part of the Holland Purchase after the American Revolution. From 1801 to 1846 the entire region was sold to individual owners from the Holland Land office in Batavia, New York. The river demarcates the "Genesee Country" of New York to the west and the Finger Lakes geographic region, and heartland of the Iroquois to the east.en.wikipedia.org/...
An important transportation and trade route for the Seneca
By canoe, Native Americans could travel south through the Allegheny and Ohio River systems and north to Canada through the Great Lakes. Native villages could be found all along the Genesee, including important settlements near the present-day villages of Avon, Geneseo, and the hamlet of Cuylerville. After the American Revolution, land quickly changed hands due to the war and treaties, which displaced the Native population of western New York. However, the land still bears the marks of Native American settlement
livingstoncountyhistoricalsociety.com/...
Genesee river map
Map showing location of the Triangle Tract, the Morris Reserve, the Mill Yard Tract, and the Preemption Line.
More than 200 years ago, the area was largely unsettled;
Ridge Road, a mere 12 inches wide, was an Indian path through dense forests. The remaining section of the original Merchants Road, with its nine twists and curves in one mile, reflects its beginnings as the well-traveled Indian link between Canandaigua and the Genesee River. Early settlers included the Algonquin, who were later taken over by the Seneca. The Seneca, who joined the League of the Iroquois, were known as the “Keepers of the Western Door” and controlled trade in all directions. The Indian Landing in Monroe County’s Ellison Park marks where their major east-west and north-south routes intersected. Seneca struggled against both the French and British to retain possession of the area, but once Revolutionary settlers returned home with stories of the good soil available here, settlement began in earnest
www2.monroecounty.gov/...
Once known as Oak Hill, the land that bulges out at a bend in the Genesee River is a part of a string of glacial drumlins, mounds of sediment left by retreating glaciers, that stretch across Mt. Hope Cemetery to the east and to Cobbs Hill. The Algonkin (Algonquin) people were the predominant native peoples
nyhistoric.com/...
When the Europeans came to North America, they used the "right of discovery" to lay title to the lands inhabited by the native people. The original inhabitants, according to the legal theory that developed and was handed down to modern times, held the right of occupancy, or "Indian Title" to the lands where they lived. This title could only be extinguished by the sovereign power that held the right of discovery. So in this view there were two title holders to the lands of the Genesee Valley - the Seneca People and whatever sovereign power held claim to the land.
letchworthparkhistory.com/...
Native American Map
1786 December, Treaty of Hartford
In an agreement between states of Massachusetts and New York over the lands stretching from the Finger Lakes to Lake Erie. the Pre-Emption line was drawn from Lake Ontario through present day Geneva to the PA border. Lands east of the line went to New York State, while Massachusetts held pre-emption rights to the lands west. So the Genesee Valley was "part" of Massachusetts until sold to land speculators Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham in April of 1788. At that time Massachusetts gave up all rights to the lands and passed the right to extinguish the Indian claims to the two speculators. The future parks lands are now in New York State, but the Indian Title is intact.letchworthparkhistory.com/...
1826 August Treaty of Buffalo Creek
This treaty brought an end to the Genesee Valley Reservations. The agreement sold the Big Tree, Canawaugus, Caneadea, Squawkie Hill, and the remaining lands at Gardeau, in addition to parts of the Buffalo Creek, Cattaraugus, Tonawanda Reservations west of the Valley. According the Jennings book, this Treaty was never ratified by the US Senate. The Senecas tried to overturn in court, but failed..letchworthparkhistory.com/...
The River:
The Genesee
is the remaining western branch of a preglacial system, with rock layers tilted an average of 40 feet (12 m) per mile, so the river flows across progressively older bedrock as it flows northward:
It begins in exposing the Allegheny Plateau's characteristic conglomerates: sandstones and shales in the rock columns of the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods. Thereafter, further downstream as it traverses the area known as The Grand Canyon of the East,[3] where it falls (three times) through over 600 feet (180 m)[3] as to passes through the gorges in New York's Letchworth State Park, the river also often exposes older rocks such as shales(some rich in hydrocarbons[4]), siltstonesand some limestones of the Devonian period at Letchworth and, at other canyons with three more waterfalls[5][6][7]at Rochester cuts through the Niagara Escarpment exposing limestones and shales of Silurian age in the rock column. With cuttings in the geologic record showing so many early ages, the river area has a great variety of fossils for paleobiological and stratigraphic analysis.
en.wikipedia.org/...
During the past million years there were four glacial ages that covered the Rochester area with the southern edges of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and those advances were major impactors in the formation geology and geography of the area. The most recent glacier that left evidence here was about 100,000 years ago and it caused compression of the earth by as much as 2,500 feet (760 m).[8] About 12,000 years ago, the area underwent massive changes, which included the rerouting of the Genesee and other water bodies. The pre-Ice age eastern branch of the Genesee runs south of Mount Morris and was completely diverted by extensive terminal moraines in Livingston County with a key blocking dam just south of Dansville, so most of the upper section of the ancient river was diverted instead to fall the off Appalachian Plateau toward the Susquehanna River system (to an eventual destination well to the southeast).
Nowadays only a small creek flows
in what is left of this large paleogeologic valley.
.wikipedia.
The Seneca
are a group of indigenousIroquoian-speaking people native to North America who historically lived south of Lake Ontario.The Seneca traditionally lived in what is now New York state between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. The dating of an oral tradition mentioning a solar eclipse yields 1142 AD as the year for the Seneca joining the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee).[7][8] Some recent archaeological evidence indicates their territory eventually extended to the Allegheny River in present-day northwestern Pennsylvania, particularly after the Iroquois destroyed both the Wenrohronon and Erie nations in the 17th century, who were native to the area. The Seneca were by far the most populous of the Haudenosaunee nations, numbering about four thousand by the seventeenth century.wikipedia.org/...
[Photos by Angmar]
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