500 Senecas removed to Grand River. Others at an earlier date, settled at Sandusky, and were subsequently removed by the General government, west of the Mississippi. In 1820, the Oneidas purchased a tract on Green Bay, and a party removed thither. Among these Eleazer Williams, subsequently the soi distant Louis XVII, labored as an Episcopal missionary. A party of Senecas, Tuscaroras and Cayugas, about 1846, set out for the lands west of Missouri, were imposed upon, and nearly all perished. The survivors returned heart-broken to New York. In 1849, the Senecas abandoned the old Sachem system and adopted a constitution with elective chiefs, and both sexes adopted more closely the dress of the whites. At the same time, the state authorized each tribe to divide the land held in common among the individuals or families. Provision was also made for schools and for the education of Indian teachers at the State Normal School. The Catholic villages in Lower Canada have had an uneventful history. Caughnawaga, Aquasasne or St. Regis and Canasadaga or the Lake of the Two Mountains, are quiet villages, where the Indians live much like the whites around them, more indolent, but possessing churches, schools and council halls. Note 30, page ARNOUT CORNELISSON VIELE, the Government interpreter, figures frequently in accounts of this time. He was taken prisoner in 1687, by Denonville, on his expedition against the Senecas, and came on bearing a letter to Gov. Dongan. Having sided with Leisler he lost his office under Fletcher, but was restored by Bellomont and rendered good service. Note 31, page 69. MR. MILLER'S advice may seem strange, but its wisdom seems to have been admitted. The Bible has never been translated into any of the Iroquois dialects. In the commencement of the last century, the Rev. Mr. Freeman translated St. Matthew, a part of Genesis and Exodus, and a few Psalms. This was never printed; but in the Mohawk Book of Common Prayer, printed in New York, in 1715, Genesis I, II, III; Matthew, I (in part), II, V, and Psalms, I, XV, XXXII, appeared. The same parts of Genesis were reprinted with the prayer book at New York, in 1769. Not possessing a copy of the prayer book printed at Quebec in 1780, I can not say whether it contained any part of the Bible. St. Mark translated by Brant was printed with the Common Prayer, London, 1787, and reprinted at New York in 1829; St. John was printed at New York in 1818; St. Matthew in 1831; St. Luke in 1833; Acts and Romans and Galatians in 1835, and Isaiah in 1839. In the other dialects no part of the Bible has been printed except St. Luke which appeared in Seneca in 1829. Thus not only no Bible, but not even a Testament has ever been printed in any of the languages of the Five Nations, the rulers of central New York, although the Bible societies of New York have printed both in tongues of far distant nations. See Dr. O'Callaghan's Catalogue of American Bibles, pp. 26, 146, 201, 214, 228, 244-5, 263, and his History of the Translation of the Book of Common Prayer into the Mohawk Language, in the Historical Magazine, I, 14. END. BIBLIOTHECA AMERICANA. 3 T3 04 "We would seek to collect into a focus of irradiation these broken rays of intelligence that are dispersed through the chaos of literature, and which by their very dispersion lose their appropriate brightness.". ..Dublin Review, 1841. 66 History is a most improving part of knowledge, as well as an agreeable amusement; and a great part of what we commonly call Erudition, and value so highly, is nothing but an acquaintance with historical facts. An extensive knowledge of this kind belongs to men of letters; but I must think it an unpardonable ignorance in persons of whatever sex or condition, not to be acquainted with the history of their own country, together with the histories of ancient Greece and Rome. A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.". ....Hume. |