CHAPTER 7Haudenosaunee Settlement Patterns and Subsistence Strategies in the Late-Colonial Period, 1763–1783

During the American Revolution, Mohawk families from Tiononderoge and Canajoharie fled the violence in the Mohawk River Valley. Some families emigrated to kin along the Saint Lawrence River, whereas others found refuge in Seneca homelands to the west at British Fort Niagara. The most prosperous Mohawk men and women who fled documented the personal items they left behind, including products used for subsistence and market exchanges, hoping for British compensation. Captain John Deseruntyon, for example, left behind eighty-two acres of rich flat land, a variety of harvested grains, a house and barn, a plough and harrow, sleighs, and a variety of domesticated animals, such as horses, cows, and hogs. Deseruntyon also owned several suits, plain and finely decorated blankets, a bed, curtains, kettles, and more than 5,000 wampum beads fashioned into belts. Captain Daniel's widow, Margareth, left behind seventy-two acres of land, a plough, sleigh, house, barn, and a variety of harvested grains. In addition, when Margareth left the Valley, she lost her horses, cows, grown hogs, and young pigs.¹

Similarly, Aaron Hill (Kanonraron), David Hill (Karonghyontyee), and John Hill (Oteronyanente), war captains from Canajoharie, each claimed one hundred acres of land, houses, sleighs, harnesses, ploughs, wagons, and a variety of farming tools. All three men also owned horses, cows, sheep, and hogs. Aaron and David were building additional houses, and David claimed a variety of grains, including wheat, corn, peas, and oats. Furthermore, all three counted men's and women's suits, blankets, beds, curtains, tables, chairs, as well as teaspoons, pewter dishes, and kettles among their personal and household possessions. Although John was deceased by the time of the claim, his brothers submitted his inventory to gain reimbursement on his behalf.²

Four Mohawk individuals stand out for the monetary value of their war loss claims. Mary, or Molly, Brant (Gonwatsijayenni), her brother Joseph (Thayendanegea), Captain Isaac (Anoghsoktea), and another female named Mary each documented more than 1,100 pounds in personal losses. Molly Brant claimed the largest loss at more than 1,200 pounds. Land, houses, and barns provided the greatest source of income as each owned more than one hundred acres of land, with Joseph Brant claiming more than six hundred acres. In addition, each owned a variety of domestic animals, fine clothing and blankets, household luxuries, and hundreds of silver broaches or their cash equivalent. Not all Mohawk men and women, however, documented a long list of personal possessions and improvements. Many residents claimed only a house and fewer than ten acres of land. Others listed a small number of domesticated animals, blankets, and beaver traps, without mentioning a house or land.³

Oneida and Tuscarora men and women who supported their American neighbors in the war made similar calls for reimbursement and their claims likewise reflected the incorporation of European material goods and domestic animals. Nearly ninety men and women from Oneida and Tuscarora communities filed claims for lost household items, like pewter dishes, kettles, pots, cups, and porcelain saucers for tea. Clothing losses included a mix of blankets and items of European manufacture to decorate cloth and clothing. Oneida and Tuscarora men and women also documented lost domestic animals, such as cows, pigs, and horses. Their claims for lost homes reflected a blending of housing styles that included glass windows and framed doors into structures with bark roofs.⁴

The war loss claims of Mohawk, Oneida, and Tuscarora communities highlight several of the ways Haudenosaunee men and women incorporated items of European manufacture and products of European agriculture to enhance their lives and to fulfill individual, family, and community needs. As colonial settlements pushed west, following in the wake of an expanding market economy, growing colonial populations, homes, and farms challenged long-standing Haudenosaunee settlement patterns and subsistence strategies. The colonial settlement template and the growing number of settlers, for example, constrained available Mohawk homelands along the Mohawk River, making it increasingly difficult for Mohawk families to relocate after depleting environmental resources or houses fell into disrepair. In addition, new agricultural pests spread far in advance of westward expanding colonial farms and could devastate Haudenosaunee fields, precipitating widespread subsistence distress. Mohawk communities in the direct path of market and settler expansion up the Mohawk River developed innovative responses to these multiple challenges by the early 1710s. Mohawk men and women, for example, shifted to smaller and more dispersed housing structures that sheltered fewer people. Their move away from extensive longhouses redirected subsistence responsibilities to individual family members with nuclear families cultivating their own farmsteads rather than large groups performing communal labor in extensive fields. Men and women, however, retained the gendered division of subsistence labor as men hunted and fished throughout their larger homelands and women gathered subsistence resources near their homes in small groups or in larger collaborative efforts.

Mohawk men and women incorporated aspects of colonial modes of agricultural production as they fulfilled their subsistence labor responsibilities. Colonists, for example, practiced pastoral farming that combined agriculture with the raising of domesticated animals. Pastoral farming required more dispersed settlements because the domesticated animals often roamed the neighborhood for subsistence. Pastoral farming also made use of agricultural lands not as productive for subsistence farming, such as wet soils in swampier topographies. Mohawk men and women began to cultivate more grains and grasses for an external market and utilized colonial farming implements like the plough. The new crops fed their growing herds of domesticated animals, and new crops and animals offered dietary alternatives when hunting or agricultural productivity failed to meet family needs. Furthermore, Mohawk men and women understood that colonists believed pastoral farming reflected active land use, rather than unused land open for settler expansion. As a result, when eastern Haudenosaunee men and women, beginning first in Mohawk communities and expanding west to Oneida residents, engaged in pastoral farming that mirrored the colonial template, their new agricultural practices reinforced Haudenosaunee claims to the environmental spaces of their homelands and blocked colonial expansion into, or colonial claims of, those spaces. Subsistence agriculture moved to family plots, and owners fenced in gardens to protect growing crops from free-ranging cattle, swine, horses, and sheep.

Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca communities farther removed from the pressures of colonial settlements, farms, and domestic animals retained long-standing mixed subsistence economies that combined hunting, fishing, gathering wild flora, and extensive agricultural production of corn. Soldiers in the American military encountered these subsistence practices during three expeditions in 1779 into southern and western Haudenosaunee homelands. These military expeditions followed the same water arteries along which hundreds of Haudenosaunee families and displaced migrants had relocated. Indigenous settlements along water arteries successfully blocked colonial intrusion into, and geographic knowledge of, these critical environmental spaces. Major General John Sullivan underscored Indigenous control of geographic spaces when he complained that maps for his expedition offered little clarity on the region and only served to create greater confusion. Major Jeremiah Fogg agreed, noting the maps worked “rather to blind than enlighten a traveller.”⁵

In the three American military expeditions, General James Clinton marched from the Mohawk River south toward the Susquehanna River to rendezvous with Sullivan, who ascended the Susquehanna River. Sullivan and Clinton joined forces on August 22, 1779, at Tioga, the fork of the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers, and marched up the Chemung River into Seneca homelands. As early as 1750, Haetwe, a Cayuga leader at Ganatocheracht near the fork of the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers, had described the Chemung River path into Seneca territory as dotted with Indigenous villages for a distance of four days, or approximately two hundred miles. Generals Sullivan and Clinton had clear orders from George Washington, general of the American Continental Army, to attack and destroy all Indigenous communities and their agricultural produce, growing and stored, along the water routes and throughout Cayuga and Seneca territories. Washington explicitly directed the expeditions “to lay waste all the settlements around, with injunctions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” Sullivan followed those demands with his own statement: “The Indians shall see that there is malice enough in our hearts to destroy every thing [sic] that contributes to their support.” Colonel Daniel Brodhead received the same instructions for his expedition into the Allegheny River Valley.⁶

Washington's orders marked a new phase in colonial warfare and signified the American goal to remove The People of the Longhouse from their homelands. Although the French had turned their military forces against noncombatants, specifically the productive and reproductive labor of women, in their 1666 invasion of Mohawk homelands and their military campaigns of the 1680s and 1690s, those tactics evolved after French commanders failed to engage Haudenosaunee fighters on the battlefield. Consequently, the destruction of women's agricultural labor and violence against the land was a secondary French strategy to achieve victory, not an articulated effort to sever women's connections to the land. The French hoped that burning food stores would produce the victory they wanted over time. During the American Revolution, however, the Continental Army focused first and foremost on destroying the subsistence labor of women and burning their homes, rather than engaging men on the battlefield. The American military expeditions of Sullivan, Clinton, and Brodhead laid waste to dozens of Indigenous communities, including homes and food stores, in the Susquehanna, Allegheny, and Seneca River Valleys as well as throughout the Finger Lakes region. Survivors faced imminent death from starvation and exposure during the harsh winter that followed. As American invaders chronicled the housing and agriculture of the communities they destroyed, they revealed the blending of Haudenosaunee and colonial subsistence strategies and the productivity of women's labor. American troops spent days burning extensive fields of corn and destroying large orchards of fruit trees. Soldiers also noted roaming domesticated animals at every village and feasted on them in between their scorched-earth campaigns. Although Haudenosaunee communities had struggled to feed themselves during the previous decade of imperial warfare and environmental crises, by 1779, long-standing agricultural practices once again fulfilled village dietary requirements and promised to generate a surplus to guard against future crop failures.⁷

Haudenosaunee war loss claims reflect the acquisition and incorporation of aspects of the colonial settlement template and desirable consumer goods, but they also demonstrate an uneven distribution of wealth and an accumulation of private property that challenged long-standing cultural practices of gift-giving, reciprocity, and the Great Law principle of the Dish with One Spoon. In the 1650s, for example, visiting missionaries remarked on the character and customs of The People of the Longhouse. “Their kindness, humanity, and courtesy,” the Jesuits claimed, “not only make them liberal with what they have, but cause them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn, before any individual can be obliged to endure privation. They divide the produce of their fisheries equally with all who come.” In the 1720s, Cadwallader Colden repeated these cultural practices in his comments about village leaders. “Their Great Men, both Sachems and Captains,” he wrote, “are generally poorer than the common People, for they affect to give away and distribute all the Presents or Plunder … so as to leave nothing to themselves. If they should once be suspected of Selfishness, they would grow mean in the opinion of their Country-men, and would consequently loose [sic] their Authority.” Colden's comment, coming after a century of sustained contact and exposure to colonial practices in a global market economy, underscored the importance and longevity of this core Haudenosaunee custom. Although community members shared food with fellow residents, visitors, and prisoners, not everyone enjoyed equal access to prized environmental resources. Families held garden plots in private and individuals managed access to productive fishing runs and well-traveled trade routes. In addition, Haudenosaunee communities recognized uneven social distinctions whereby some families, the agoianders, monopolized access to hereditary leadership positions.⁸

Successful participation in the market economy and access to cash opened the door for an uneven distribution of wealth. The market increasingly rewarded individual achievement, for example, rather than benefiting the entire community. Exchanging physical labor or military skills for cash also improved one's ability to purchase food, clothing, and trade goods. At the same time, the refusal to provide military assistance or to participate in the market economy closed those same doors. By the mid-eighteenth century, the escalation of imperial warfare allowed young fighting men to increase their personal prestige and material possessions through military service. Fighting men and military allies then redistributed valuable items to cement their loyal following and exploited their skills and connections to powerful colonists to win benefits and security for their community. During a 1762 conference with Superintendent William Johnson, for example, Seneca fighting men explained to Johnson, “We are in fact the People of Consequence for Managing Affairs, Our Sachems being generally a parcell of Old People who say Much, but who Mean or Act very little, So that we have both the power & Ability to Settle Matters.” This comment absolved village leaders from the violent engagements of fighting men and allowed leaders to remain the voice of peace for their communities. Seneca fighting men, however, articulated an alternate path to power and consequence. When some individuals or families gained uninterrupted access to goods, while others did not, a new system of class stratification developed. Fighting men and their families who had connections to powerful colonials, most notably to Superintendent Johnson, sat atop this new economic elite.⁹

In the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War, France surrendered its colonial claims to territory in Canada and the Great Lakes region west of the Appalachian Mountains. Americans believed the French defeat opened the door for successive waves of westward migration onto Indigenous homelands. Great Britain attempted to prevent their American colonists from encroaching on Indigenous lands with the Proclamation Line in 1763 that marked the western limit of colonial settlement along the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. Indigenous leaders agreed that a boundary line “would be for our mutual advantage if it were not transgressed,” but they remained skeptical that colonizers would observe boundary lines or that officials would enforce them. As one leader noted, “dayly experience teaches us that we cannot have any great dependence on the white People, and that they will forget their agreements for the sake of our Lands.” When Great Britain failed to provide the troops necessary to enforce the boundary, colonists and land speculators repeatedly ignored settlement limits and Indigenous-white violence reigned in the backcountry.¹⁰

Colonists feared their rapidly growing population had surpassed the carrying capacity of lands east of the Appalachian Mountains. They considered the fertile western lands of the Mohawk, Allegheny, Susquehanna, and Ohio River Valleys as the logical space for expansion, as well as their reward for defeating the French in the long imperial contest for control of North America. As the colonial population in New York surged from approximately 20,000 people in 1700, to 65,000 in 1740, and to 160,000 by 1770, that population pushed up the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and directly onto Mohawk homelands. For generations, however, colonial settlements had engulfed the scattered homes of the two Mohawk River Valley community clusters as well as the homes of Mohawk families along Schoharie Creek. By the end of 1767, Johnson noted, the Mohawk River was “already settled in length above 100 miles west of Albany.” Moreover, Johnson believed the productive and valuable land along the Mohawk River would encourage further settlement and the territory would become “within a few years a very thick settled and valuable country.” New York documented this expansion west up the Mohawk River in a map that locates multiple settler communities along Schoharie Creek, north of the Mohawk River, and, most dramatically, far west of Mohawk homes around Canajoharie (figure 7.1). The map illustrates growing colonial knowledge of Mohawk homelands and critical environmental resource spaces with the detail of rivers, small lakes, and the numerous and overlapping footpaths connecting these spaces. By 1771, Tryon County, which encompassed all territory west of Albany County, contained approximately 10,000 inhabitants.¹¹

FIGURE 7.1. N.W. parts of New York, no. 156 [between 1750 and 1768] (1750). Used with permission, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/75693009/.

Haudenosaunee leaders persisted in their efforts to control the scale and scope of European intrusion into critical ecosystems, particularly throughout southern Haudenosaunee homelands. Johnson enumerated two hundred fighting men from Conoy, Nanticoke, Saponi, and Tutelo communities throughout the upper Susquehanna River Valley in 1763. In October 1766, the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger returned to the community complex of Otsiningo, north of the fork of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers. Although he had described “many deserted Indian camps” between Owego and Chugnutt during his 1753 visit, Zeisberger now found the route “generally very well populated by Indians.” Furthermore, the Otsiningo complex had grown from three to four villages in the intervening years. By 1766, Onondaga men, women, and children had joined Nanticoke, Conoy, and Mohican families along the Chenango River and built a community at the mouth of the Tioughnioga River.¹²

Migrating Indigenous groups also continued to settle in the fertile agricultural valleys throughout southern and western Haudenosaunee homelands. In 1766, for example, a Lenni Lenape council arrived at the Cayuga capital at Great Gully to discuss their new village within the southern Cayuga territory. The Lenape migrants wished to remain near the fork of the Susquehanna and Wyalusing Rivers, where they had already built housing for their 150 inhabitants and enjoyed easy access to hunting resources. Through Togahaju, who claimed to control all the lands on the Susquehanna River, Cayuga women granted the Lenape newcomers a large tract of land from the Wyalusing River to near Owego, a distance measured by the journey of two days, and allowed them full subsistence use of the geographic space for hunting, fishing, extensive agricultural fields and gardens, and housing. Lenape men fenced in any personal gardens to protect women's produce from roaming domestic animals. Although Lenape migrants could begin a new community in a new territory, Togahaju reminded them of their subordinate position and expected they “will not turn your faces anywhere except to my fire; and you do well thereby.” Instead of looking to Pennsylvania for protection or material benefits, Togahaju required the Lenape community to defer to him.¹³

Soon after Togahaju consented to Lenape families remaining at Wyalusing, he received repeated messages that the newcomers and their Moravian missionaries intended to permit trading houses in and around Wyalusing. Trade posts brought manufactured goods closer to Indigenous communities, but European traders and their posts represented the first assault on Indigenous sovereignty and portended colonial settlement. Togahaju responded to these rumors with a clear warning to his Lenape guests: “I have given you the land, but not for the purpose of allowing the white people to build storehouses thereon …. Do not give the traders a place among you, and do not permit them to build any houses.” Togahaju tolerated Lenape trade with colonials, but he prohibited them from allowing trade posts that would serve as a foothold for colonial expansion into this southern environment and its critical ecosystems.¹⁴

As colonial pressures persisted, Haudenosaunee leaders continued to work to block colonial expansion into their homelands. By 1768, Indigenous and colonial leaders had agreed to a new, more western, boundary line from the Susquehanna River at Owego that extended south and west into Cherokee territory. The tentative agreement, however, did not outline any territorial limits north of Owego. Given the westward advance of colonial settlements up the Mohawk River Valley, as well as the location of numerous Haudenosaunee and multinational villages north of Owego, Haudenosaunee leaders wanted the boundary line to continue north to address the Mohawk Valley. William Johnson proposed running the line from Owego north to the mouth of the Oswego River on Lake Ontario. Four Oneida leaders, Tyarunuante, Canaghquiesa, Tyeransera, and Tagawaron, conveyed the vehement objections of The People of the Standing Stone to a boundary line that would subsume their homelands within the colonial limits of New York. After much negotiation, and counteroffers that included five hundred dollars and presents, Oneida leaders agreed to a proposal that placed the boundary line closer to Fort Stanwix, but east of the Great Carrying Place, the portage between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek. Guy Johnson, Sir William's nephew, and son-in-law, drafted a “Map of the Frontiers of the northern colonies” to reflect the new boundary line (figure 7.2).¹⁵

FIGURE 7.2. Map of the frontiers of the northern colonies (1768). Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public Library.

The People of the Standing Stone insisted on retaining the Great Carrying Place as a source of income to transport traders’ goods over the portage for a fee. The commander at Fort Stanwix, Lieutenant Galland, however, explained to Johnson that “no Indians have either offered themselves or their Horses neither have they been employed in the Transportation of Goods or peltry over this Carrying place.” Since Galland's June 1767 arrival to the fort, local settlers had performed the task. Oneida leaders admitted the young men had neglected carrying the traders’ goods for many years but claimed they hoped to return to the service because “game began to grow scarce in their neighbourhood.” As market and subsistence opportunities through hunting disappeared, Oneida men looked to exchange their physical labor for cash to purchase subsistence and material items. More important, the Great Carrying Place represented an entry point into Oneida territory and controlled who could access the fishing and gathering resources along its water routes and who could travel west into Wood Creek and Oneida Lake. Consequently, management of this strategic geographic space restricted the flow of colonial expansion into vital Oneida subsistence environments. Oneida leaders spoke of the economic value of the portage to earn cash wages and material possessions, but control of critical resource environments also influenced Oneida decisions. Oneida leaders acquiesced to extending the boundary line west of Wood Creek only after they gained the promise of equal access with colonists to the portage.¹⁶

After setting the new boundary line of the 1768 Fort Stanwix treaty, Oneida communities faced the immediate threat of colonial expansion up to the eastern edge of their homelands. To meet this challenge, Oneida headmen and women renewed the practice of inviting displaced nations to relocate within their homeland. Survivor populations of Mohegan, Montauk, Narragansett, and Pequot families, collectively known as “praying Indians” or “Brothertown Indians,” found a new home in Oneida homelands on the eastern edge of their territory. New families began to arrive in the late 1760s and then settled on a ten-mile tract of land in 1773 that expanded to about thirteen miles in 1774. The relocated families used the designated land deed for farming and housing and had “full Liberty of Hunting all Sorts of Game throughout the whole Oneida Country, Beaver Hunting only excepted.” Oneida and Brothertown residents had both incorporated domestic animals into their subsistence economies and market exchanges, thus reducing the competition in hunting. The singular restriction on beaver hunting highlighted an awareness of the reduced number of beavers in Oneida homelands. Oneida hunters may have wanted to relieve hunting pressures on the animal to allow populations to rebound, or they sought to monopolize access to this limited and valuable market item.¹⁷

Although Oneida men and women had incorporated domestic animals into their daily diet and labor, they remained committed to long-standing subsistence strategies. Men, for example, continued to follow the spawning migrations of fish and to engage in hunting expeditions for deer. When the missionary Samuel Kirkland began his forty-year residence among Oneida families in 1766, he documented long-standing subsistence practices that continued to vary with the seasons. His early experience at the newer Oneida community of Kanowarohare only reinforced European perceptions and criticisms of seasons of plenty and seasons of want. In December 1766, for example, Kirkland blamed his poor health on the constant threat of famine. In the summer of 1767, Kirkland joined his Oneida neighbors when they moved to their summer fishing camps. Unsuccessful fishing brought no relief to his subsistence distress and Kirkland consumed meat or bread on only one occasion in six weeks. The missionary complained to his superiors in New England that he “lived and fared as [the Oneida] did and was a lousy as an Indian.”¹⁸

Kirkland failed to recognize extenuating circumstances that contributed to his hunger. In a matrilineal society where women's productive labor supported and fed the household and the community, Kirkland's home lacked proper connections to Oneida matrilineages that precipitated the Dish with One Spoon and reciprocity. He lived in a home with six other adult men and only one female, Hannah Nonesuch. Hannah was the wife of one of the male members of the house, David Fowler. As a Mohegan Christian convert living in Oneida homelands, Hannah lacked kinship connections to assist her with the subsistence and household labor. Moreover, Kirkland and the other adult males, who also lacked connections to Oneida matrilineages, failed to provide sufficient hunting or agricultural support, which only increased the demands on Hannah's productive labor. Given the number of mouths Hannah had to feed, and without the assistance of successful hunters, sisters, aunts, or mother, it is no surprise Kirkland complained of his hunger and lowly condition.¹⁹

Kirkland compared his difficult early years at Kanowarohare with his hungry experience at the eastern Seneca community of Kanadesaga in 1765. While living at Kanadesaga, Kirkland noted that most residents spent the early 1760s near Fort Niagara, where the British provided daily provisions to their military allies. When the military demands of war disrupted the subsistence labor responsibilities of men and women, Haudenosaunee allies turned to fort commanders and expected subsistence relief in exchange for their loyalty and military support. Successive years of low agricultural yield from delayed plantings and unseasonable weather exacerbated subsistence distress for multiple years. Kirkland claimed Cayuga neighbors charged extravagant rates for corn and profited from Seneca agricultural shortages. Because Cayuga crops would have experienced agricultural distress at similar rates to Seneca shortfalls, Kirkland may have misunderstood Seneca demands for rations at Fort Niagara or exaggerated the profit motives of Cayuga residents, among whom Kirkland did not live or proselytize.²⁰

Oneida families suffered subsistence privation from a combination of unfavorable environmental conditions and settler advancement. Agriculture failed in 1766 because of an early frost and in 1767 from a caterpillar infestation. In 1767, after two consecutive seasons of crop failures, Kirkland joined his hungry Oneida neighbors as they dispersed to seasonal acquisition sites for fishing and hunting, including migratory birds. Kirkland, however, reported an unusual scarcity of pigeons, a mainstay in avian hunting, and claimed, “seldom a wild fowl or Beast is killd under 70 miles,” and “good fishing not under 70 or 80” miles. As the hardships of consecutive crop failures shifted Oneida men to their secondary subsistence cycles two years in a row, they extended their hunting and fishing seasons deep into the summer months. Hunting and fishing during the wrong seasonal cycle can account for the inability to find game and fish “under 70 or 80” miles. Although Haudenosaunee men fished throughout the summers, spring and fall spawning migrations generated the most successful yields. Hunting expeditions throughout the fall and early winter seasons also brought in the largest animals with the thickest hides. Summer hunting, on the other hand, resulted in thinner animals and less marketable hides. Moreover, repeated years of extended hunting and fishing seasons reduced both subsistence resources and led to Kirkland's comment about the scarcity of birds, fish, and game. At the same time, an expanding colonial frontier of settlers who fished and hunted, troops stationed at nearby British forts, and traders moving between the Mohawk River Valley and Fort Ontario, at the mouth of the Oswego River, increased subsistence and market competition among colonial and Haudenosaunee men for available game and fish. To find viable hunting and fishing, Oneida men had to travel ever greater distances from their villages.²¹

To survive the pressures of colonial expansion, Kirkland argued, Oneida families needed to adopt colonial modes of agriculture, husbandry, artisanry, and Christianity and had to give up alcohol. Upon his arrival to Kanowarohare, Kirkland built a small log cabin with a cellar and cleared a plot of land to supplement his diet with garden produce. He adopted and cultivated the crops of his neighbors: corn and beans. He also grew potatoes and drank the milk of his free-ranging cows. The missionary hoped to set an example for his Oneida neighbors to emulate. During his early years at Kanowarohare, however, Kirkland struggled to grow sufficient food and suffered hunger. Nonetheless, his superior in New England, the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, remained resolute that “Indians begin to be convinced of the Necessity of Agriculture in order to [provide] their Subsistence when their Resources from the Wilderness fail.” Wheelock's comment dismissed the agricultural expertise of Indigenous women who already knew the value and “Necessity” of their labor. Wheelock also ignored the destructive damage domesticated animals caused to women's agricultural fields. Instead, Wheelock expected a complete cultural change in the gendered division of subsistence labor, with men engaged in agriculture and the raising of domestic animals. To Wheelock and Kirkland, expanding colonial settlements made it imperative that Indigenous communities adopt the colonial mode of subsistence.²²

Kirkland's early efforts to demonstrate the benefits of colonial agriculture failed to impress his Oneida neighbors or persuade them to change their subsistence strategies and labor responsibilities. He labored tirelessly in his garden yet suffered subsistence hardships. Kirkland often complained of his “extreme poverty and lowly way of living,” and claimed he “lived more like a dog than a Christian minister.” He concluded that his time spent on manual labor harmed his missionary efforts because Oneida men and women developed a low impression of his religion and of colonial modes of subsistence. Therefore, Kirkland decided to end his manual labor and to focus strictly on educating and preaching to his Oneida neighbors. In turn, Kirkland claimed, his neighbors promised to attend to his subsistence needs. After redefining his focus, Kirkland recalled, he “seldom visited a house but such as they had was immediately set before me … tho the poor creatures have not half enough for themselves.” Kirkland insisted that the number of his Oneida adherents, as well as his influence, now grew with every sermon.²³

Although Kirkland stated that Oneida neighbors handled his subsistence needs, he also regularly documented providing provisions to visitors and families who suffered personal hardship. During the winter of 1770, for example, Kirkland took two sleighs down the Mohawk River to the German Flats for provisions and thanked Wheelock for the timely supply of much-needed assistance. For visitors who traveled more than ten miles to hear his sermons, Kirkland fed them when Oneida residents could not perform the task. This food assistance added to the cost of his missionary efforts. As he explained to Wheelock, “the extraordinary Expence of gitting a fresh Supply [of provisions] …—with what I have advanced to the Indians has involv’d me considerably.” In addition to food for the hungry, Kirkland supplied families with clothing and blankets. Oneida men, women, and children creatively adapted to Kirkland's Sunday demands on their time and attentiveness to his religious messages to gain desired manufactured goods.²⁴

Moreover, Kirkland procured the tools necessary for colonial modes of agriculture, such as working cattle, ploughs, yokes, sleighs, iron-toothed harrows, spades, grubbing hoes, axes, pickaxes, shovels, scythes, handsaws, chisels, and augers to assist with farming, fencing, and construction projects. Kirkland hoped these farming utensils would push Oneida agricultural fields and pastures to mirror their colonial counterparts. In addition, Kirkland oversaw the building of a new meetinghouse and church, sawmill, gristmill, blacksmith shop, and a school. By October 1770, Kirkland reported, “the Indians are much ingaged in husbandry” and he predicted the tools would be worn out within one or two years because Kanowarohare residents used them in common.²⁵

Kanowarohare Oneida residents developed and manipulated their relationship with Samuel Kirkland to gain the material benefits and personal prestige they struggled to acquire at their former village. At the older Oneida village of Oneida Castle, hereditary village leaders managed access to manufactured goods, as well as to colonial and imperial officials, and they used both to redistribute goods and favor, build a loyal following, and smooth the path for village consensus. Young men who were left out of these gift-giving and reciprocal arrangements grew frustrated with their restricted access. As community and generational discord simmered, many residents relocated to newer multinational communities along the Susquehanna River, especially at Oquaga. Other young men and their families remained within the central Oneida homeland, but built the new community of Kanowarohare, at the mouth of the Oneida River. Young men who lacked hereditary access to leadership found in Kirkland a new way to gain the goods and prestige hereditary leaders had denied them at Oneida Castle.²⁶

Kirkland's sermons, religious practices, rituals, and theater also fulfilled an important social role within a Haudenosaunee culture that valued oratory skill and community gatherings. Many congregants traveled several miles to hear his sermons and to participate in the singing. They remained at Kanowarohare throughout the weekend to continue religious and political discussions and to participate in community fellowship. During February 1770, for example, visitors from five villages who spoke three different dialects attended a three-hour sermon. The audience exceeded the capacity of the church and about twenty attendants had to watch and listen from outside, standing in the snow. Eight months later, Kirkland claimed visitors from seven villages attended his sermons, and they all required food and lodging. Between February and October 1770, Kirkland reported to Wheelock, his expenses had greatly increased because Oneida families were unable to “support the Strangers who came 12–18 & 23 miles for six months past—my House has been like an Inn especially from Saturday Night to Monday noon. I judge they have eat me up a half years Provision.” In 1771, Kirkland again defended his expenses to his new supervisors, the Board of Correspondence in Boston. “I am very seldom a Sabbath,” Kirkland explained, “without 4-6-8- or 10, or more who generally eat, at least once at my house.” Although Kirkland emphasized the religious interests of the visitors, his sermons provided much more than Christian guidance. The sermons offered Haudenosaunee men and women from distant communities the opportunity to join for a weekend of entertainment and escape, political and religious discussion, food, and visiting with friends and kin. Although Kirkland claimed he and his Oneida neighbors struggled to feed the guests, their efforts followed long-standing Haudenosaunee ethics of the Dish with One Spoon and hospitality toward visitors and also underscored continued geographic mobility. Community leaders, both Indigenous and colonial, frequently professed food scarcity as a tactic to gain greater generosity from benefactors.²⁷

Individuals also often appealed to Kirkland to relieve their hunger and poverty. Throughout the summer of 1771, for example, several families begged for Kirkland's assistance, telling him “ye last mess of Corn they had in ye world, was already in the kittle over the fire—we know not where to go for subsistence tomorrow, unless you can relieve us.” In addition, Oneida men and women took advantage of Kirkland's conversion goals to gain immediate and continued support “lest our souls should unexpectedly leave both you & us, before you have time to set them in the right way.” Hungry Oneida residents reminded Kirkland that they adhered to his Christian message, and extended charity and hospitality to religious visitors. Because Kirkland's superiors supported his subsistence needs, loyal Christian Oneida followers expected Kirkland to extend to them that same generosity.²⁸

More important, as New York's colonial population continued to swell and to encroach upon the eastern margins of Oneida territory, The People of the Standing Stone needed a colonial benefactor to rival the patronage Sir William Johnson provided his Mohawk neighbors and a political ally to help them defend their remaining homelands. In addition to bringing religious instruction and salvation, Kirkland supplied medicine for the sick, settled family disputes, collected and distributed provisions for the hungry, gave clothing and blankets to the needy, and opened his home regularly as a storehouse for the poor. Oneida families hoped their steps taken to convert to Christianity and attempts to emulate colonial modes of living through new agricultural practices and buildings reflecting colonial structures would stave off settler encroachment. They turned to Kirkland to represent their interests to New York governors and to the Board of Correspondence in Boston.²⁹

As Oneida residents adjusted to the challenges of settler expansion and worked to block colonial encroachment into their homelands, New York colonizers had already infiltrated Mohawk subsistence spaces and communities for more than two generations. Consequently, many Mohawk residents lived very much like their colonial neighbors and blended colonial housing, agricultural practices, diet, and personal dress into their daily lives. By September 1770, for example, Mohawk residents at the community complexes of Canajoharie, around the mouth of Schoharie Creek, and farther up the creek, lived in homes of approximately five people each. In 1773, Jabez Maud Fisher traveled throughout the Mohawk Valley and described Mohawk settlement patterns and subsistence strategies. In the Fort Hunter area, Fisher noted, Mohawk families “all live by farming,” including pastoral farming, on a large tract of land along a southwest branch of the Mohawk River. The community had thirty-two houses, a school, and a church. These early 1770s observations captured the blending of Haudenosaunee and colonial material cultures as Mohawk families lived in much smaller houses and had their own churches and schools. Extensive fields continued to cover fertile alluvial floodplains, but agricultural production now included cultivating grains for a growing number of domesticated animals and an external market.³⁰

During the mid-1760s, Joseph Brant embodied the blending of Haudenosaunee and colonial material cultures. He lived at Canajoharie in a home near a well-traveled road with his mother Margaret, his wife Peggy, and his newborn son Karaguantier. Although a matriarch resided at the home, Margaret did not reflect the long-standing practice of adult sons living in the homes of their wife's mother. Instead, Peggy and Karaguantier lived in the home with Brant's mother. The change in the household gender dynamic reflected the colonial patriarchal relationship and power structure and challenged the matrilineal descent of Haudenosaunee households. Brant's home also mirrored the layout of his colonial neighbors, including a cellar that measured fourteen feet by sixteen feet, and a fireplace. The living area of the home, however, required a larger area to accommodate the residents and their material possessions and extended beyond the exterior boundaries of the cellar. Brant furnished the home with at least two beds, twelve chairs and a table, and a liquor cabinet. In addition, Brant owned two large tracts of land, including eighty acres of the Canajoharie Flats. He had also cleared 40 acres of his 512-acre tract along the north side of the Mohawk River, opposite his Canajoharie tract.³¹

Brant and the women in the household blended long-standing Haudenosaunee subsistence practices with the subsistence modes of their colonial neighbors. In their agricultural production, for example, they grew the three sisters of corn, beans, and squash, along with other garden vegetables. Like their colonial neighbors, the Brant family also grew extensive fields of wheat on the Canajoharie tract with the aid of a plough and harrow and transported the produce with a wagon and hauling sleigh. Although Brant used colonial implements to plow the fields, he did not replace the female household members in their agricultural responsibilities. Instead, he focused on producing a crop for the external market while the women retained their focus on subsistence crops. In addition, Brant claimed twelve sugar kettles, and the women of the house tapped the maple trees in the spring, boiled the sap down to sugar, and marketed the excess. On the north side of the Mohawk River, separate from the agricultural fields, Brant's inventory of domestic animals, including at least seven horses, sixty-four cattle, fifteen sheep, and thirty hogs, roamed free. With the animals on the north side of the river, the family did not need to worry about them consuming the subsistence crops. The family's grains fed their domestic animals, and Brant sold the surplus in the market economy. He fulfilled any remaining dietary requirements through seasonal hunting and fishing expeditions.³²

In addition to adopting elements of the colonial mode of agriculture, Joseph Brant actively participated in the market economy. He held accounts at Robert Adems's store in Johnstown, as well as Daniel Campbell's store in Schenectady. Between January 1769 and May 1773, for example, Brant purchased on credit nearly 150 pounds worth of goods from Adems. He bought a saddle and bridle for his horse, a mattress and bedding, shoes, and other outerwear as well as paper and reading materials. Brant's war loss claims also highlight his incorporation of colonial material culture through fashion and apparel with two plain suits, one scarlet suit, six fine cloth blankets with ribbons, twelve linen shirts, and a silver watch. Brant, however, combined these colonial material possessions with distinctly “Native” items, and thereby blended Indigenous and colonial material cultures. Alongside his colonial apparel, for example, Brant recorded two suits of “the Best Old Indian Fashion Dress,” six stroud blankets, and two pair of “Fine Leggens” to complement his linen shirts as among his inventory of personal losses. With this array of Mohawk and colonial apparel, Brant moved between two cultures and fashioned himself as each situation demanded. For everyday dress, he combined the colonial linen shirt with leggings. But he wore one of his two suits of the “Best Old Indian Fashion” when colonial-Indigenous diplomacy required Brant to present himself as the visual counterpart to colonial officials. A scarlet suit permitted him even greater access within colonial circles. The women in the Brant household also blended Indigenous and colonial material culture in their dress. Brant's account with Robert Adems reflected the purchase of numerous clothing items, such as yards of broad cloth, silk, linen, and flannel. Peggy and Margaret also purchased thread, binding, ribbons, fancy buttons, and mohair to sew the yards of cloth into fashionable apparel and to sell surplus material to other Mohawk families who, in turn, fashioned their own dress. In addition, Joseph, Peggy, and Margaret wore European-manufactured jewelry, hats, and shoes.³³

Joseph Brant's sister Mary, or Molly, occupied a unique position in this cross-cultural Mohawk Valley world. Around 1759, Molly Brant moved to Fort Johnson after giving birth to her first child with Sir William Johnson. She returned to Canajoharie after Johnson's death in 1774. Molly purchased items from colonial traders, shopped in colonial stores, and had daily contact with both Indigenous and white men and women. Her Revolutionary War loss claims reflect a high degree of cultural blending as she owned a variety of trunks, three new and two old feather beds, large blankets, and sets of sheets as well as other bedroom and kitchen furnishings. She also incorporated a variety of European-manufactured clothing into her dress, including velvet leggings and blankets, long gowns, cotton and silk stockings, hats, and bonnets, as well as silk handkerchiefs and gloves. Some of her inventory, however, remained undeniably Indigenous, even if Europeans manufactured it. For example, Molly owned French blankets, a large beaver blanket, cloth and leather shoes, and overcoat blankets of a variety of colors. Although her clothing consisted of more expensive European materials, she forged her dress into a distinctly Mohawk fashion. Molly Brant also redistributed goods to her community and wielded respect and power in diplomatic discussions. These visible traits of wealth and power challenged the norms of colonial men and women who expected women to avoid participating in public settings and to submit to the demands of men.³⁴

Many Mohawk men and women also combined elements of colonial attire with long-standing styles of dress, not just the well-connected siblings of the Brant family. In 1769, while traveling throughout eastern Haudenosaunee homelands, Richard Smith described the common fashion of many Indigenous inhabitants. “Cloathing they use but little,” Smith noted, “sometimes a shirt or shift with a blanket or coat, a half-gown and petticoat, and sometimes the latter only without linen.” Haudenosaunee women often wore blankets or large pieces of cloth wrapped around their shoulders and over a skirt or leggings, and they preferred colored or patterned overcoat cloth. As a result, colonial traders provided the checkered, striped, and calico prints, as well as the linen, silk, velvet, or broadcloth material their customers demanded.³⁵

As colonial communities surrounded Mohawk families, Mohawk men and women witnessed colonial modes of living, subsistence practices, and material culture and incorporated items according to personal taste and to fulfill individual needs and desires. Haudenosaunee communities more distant from the Mohawk Valley did not escape settlement expansion for long, as colonists viewed Haudenosaunee territory between the Mohawk and upper Susquehanna River Valleys with particular interest. By 1765, several colonial families had already settled throughout the Cherry Valley east of Otsego Lake and south of the Mohawk River. In 1769, as Richard Smith traveled the Susquehanna River to survey a new 69,000-acre land grant, the Otego Patent, near Otsego Lake and the headwaters of the Susquehanna River, he encountered residential structures that ranged from extensive longhouses filled with multiple families to smaller homes that more closely modeled the colonial template. Smith also described communities that combined mixed-subsistence economies with colonial modes of agriculture.³⁶

A mile above the confluence of the Unadilla and Susquehanna Rivers, for example, Smith visited a small Mohican community. The village contained two houses on the north side of the river and three on the south side. Smith found only women and children living in what he called “wretched” huts. The absence of men reflected their continued engagement in seasonal hunting and fishing. Smith also noted the presence of a “cow and hogs and a little land cleared with a garden fenced in and the Indian corn planted very slovenly.” The adoption of domestic animals warranted fences to protect gardens and Europeans routinely criticized the lack of straight rows in Indigenous fields, convinced that organization in the field was the only marker of agricultural productivity. Continuing down the Susquehanna River to below the mouth of the Unadilla River, Smith encountered an Oneida village at Cunnahunta. Smith described the four or five houses located on the north side of the Susquehanna River as “great old barns,” highlighting the large and open floorplan in their interior layout. These “open barns,” however, may have served for community storage or meeting space, rather than open housing. Below Cunnahunta, Smith noted “several single huts” and many new “huts” under construction, reflecting smaller housing structures that sheltered fewer inhabitants and, perhaps, nuclear families.³⁷

Farther down the Susquehanna River, Smith visited the multinational community at Oquaga. He counted “15 or 16 big houses” along the east side of the river, and a few other large houses along the west side. Oquaga residents blended long-standing settlement patterns and housing design with colonial modes of living. Oquaga longhouses, for example, retained significant cultural elements as they sheltered between six and eight matrilineal families. In addition, residents preserved interior design with storage space at both ends of the structure as well as above the sleeping quarters. Families resided in raised living spaces opposite one another along a central aisle with a shared fire pit and a hole in the roof for smoke to escape and light to filter in. Although Smith counted three or four apartments on each side of the central aisle, he also estimated each “stall,” or living space, as “8 feet long and 5 deep and the whole house perhaps from 30 to 50 feet in length by 20 wide.” Given these measurements, the sectioned spaces were too small to shelter an entire family. Moreover, Smith's claim of six or more families in each house would reflect a housing density of about thirty people per house. His population estimate of 140 villagers, however, meant that fewer than nine people lived in each house, many houses were not filled to capacity, and entire families did not occupy all apartment spaces. Families most likely used multiple apartments for their daily needs, such as sleeping, personal and family storage, preparing meals, and enjoying the company of friends and family. Oquaga residents also incorporated colonial manufactured products into the construction of their homes. Residents used nearby sawmills and built their homes with hewn timbers, boards, and planks. Squared logs, planked siding, and pitched roofs replaced the sapling posts, bark sheets, and arched roofs of the extensive longhouses of earlier generations. Split logs secured the roof more tightly and floorboards covered the dirt of the living quarters. Although Oquaga men and women adopted aspects of the colonial settlement template and built their homes with the products of colonial sawmills, they incorporated these changes and materials into long-standing settlement patterns, and their new homes did not reflect fundamental changes to housing and community.³⁸

Throughout Smith's survey of the land grant, he seldom missed an opportunity to criticize Oquaga homes or the Indigenous inhabitants. He described the exterior arrangement of hewn timbers as “clumsy” and compared the interior apartments to horse stables. In sum, the houses were “placed straggling without any order” along the riverbank, their interiors were as “open as a barn,” the lack of chimneys and windows made them “dark and dismal,” and the living spaces were “too often filled with squalor and nastiness.” In addition, Smith claimed the residents were “extremely lazy and indolent, take little care today for the sustenance of Tomorrow and are therefore often in want of food and other necessaries for which their idleness makes them always dependent on their more provident [colonial] neighbors.” As with many other colonial critics, Smith misrepresented the seasonal cycle of Haudenosaunee subsistence patterns and saw only laziness. He ignored environmental factors that destroyed successive years of women's productive labor as well as intercolonial trade that helped to feed hungry colonists when they, too, lost crops. Most important, Smith viewed colonial modes of living, including the construction and layout of their homes and agriculture, as the only proper model. As a result, only colonists who implemented those settlement patterns deserved to occupy and work the land. Euro-American views about who had legitimate right to and claim of valuable environmental spaces played out in the American Revolution, particularly in the military campaigns to destroy by fire all Indigenous communities and agricultural production. By destroying homes and fields, the campaigns aimed to sever Indigenous connections to the land and precipitate Indigenous removal. Colonial criticisms were part and parcel of efforts to replace Indigenous men, women, and children from the land they belonged to, with Euro-American settlers, colonial homes, and symmetrical fields worked by male labor.³⁹

During the early 1770s, the emerging conflict between American colonists and imperial officials spilled over into western colonial communities and eastern Haudenosaunee villages. Most Haudenosaunee leaders looked to the long-time superintendent, William Johnson, for political information, guidance, and reassuring stability. Continued access to fur-trade market exchanges most concerned Haudenosaunee hunters. Eastern Haudenosaunee hunters struggled to find sufficient game unless they traveled great distances from their villages, whereas western hunters enjoyed greater access and success. Nonetheless, Haudenosaunee hunters everywhere found it difficult to exchange their furs for manufactured goods. As Johnson explained, “Many of them have brought down their peltry & returned almost naked, and full of resentment” because they could not acquire desired goods. Johnson blamed colonial committees of “non-importers” for his struggles to procure trade items from colonial stores within one hundred miles of his home. As a result, colonial economic boycotts of British manufactured goods affected Britain's Covenant Chain allies.⁴⁰

As domestic strife increased in New York and reverberated up the Mohawk Valley, Guy Johnson struggled to fill the leadership void left after the untimely death of his uncle and father-in-law, Sir William Johnson. Many Mohawk families sought escape from the growing political and military violence and relocated west to villages of friends and family or headed north to join kin along the Saint Lawrence River. Other Mohawk men and women, steadfastly loyalty to Johnson and the British, relocated to Oquaga on the Susquehanna River. The temporary relocation of families followed normal seasonal subsistence practices or the emergency concerns of men and women during periods of impending violence, not the abandonment of homelands. The large number of pro-British men, including colonial and Indigenous fighting men, who relocated to Oquaga turned the community into a recruiting base and a staging point for raids on Rebel settlements. By the summer of 1778, hundreds of fighting men living at Oquaga targeted colonial farms in southern New York and northern Pennsylvanian, destroying grain and cattle that supplied the Continental Army. These raids made Oquaga a principal target of American military forces.⁴¹

In October 1778, Colonel William Butler led an American expedition against Oquaga and the nearby community at Unadilla. When his force arrived at Oquaga, Butler described a village much different from the community Richard Smith had visited nine years earlier. Butler estimated the residents, who fled before the advancing army arrived, had left behind “2000 bush’ls of Corn, a Number of Horses, Cattle, Poultry, their Dogs, household furniture …. It was the finest Indian Town I ever saw; on both sides the River; there was about 40 good houses, Square logs, Shingles & stone Chimneys, good Floors, glass windows.” Butler claimed he and his men “faired sumptuously, having poultry and vegetables in great abundance” at Oquaga. He also estimated that his troops burned nearly 4,000 bushels of grain in the combined destruction of Oquaga and Unadilla.⁴²

In less than a decade, the community that Richard Smith had criticized as “filled too often with squalor and nastiness,” had become “the finest Indian Town” Butler had ever seen as residents replaced roofs of tree bark with shingles, relocated their open central fire pits to an exterior wall with a stone chimney, covered the exposed dirt ground along the central aisle with wooden floors, and installed glass windows to allow natural light into the once “dark and dismal” open barns. In addition, Butler described an abundance of Oquaga provisions that contradicted Smith's description of distress. In 1769, for example, Smith encountered many Oquaga residents who spent their Fort Stanwix settlement monies to purchase necessary provisions after consecutive years of agricultural failures. By 1778, however, the agricultural production of Oquaga women and domestic animals provided plentiful subsistence to the community, allowed the women to provision fighting men, and attracted the wrath of American military forces.⁴³

After leaving Oquaga and Unadilla, displaced families removed farther to the west where many spent the remainder of the war among the British near Fort Niagara. Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Mohawk men, along with pro-British colonists, continued their raids on New York and Pennsylvania frontier communities, especially those that provisioned the Continental Army. George Washington ignored the role colonists played in backcountry violence and placed all blame on Haudenosaunee men for the raids and settler deaths. Washington then used the violence as a pretext for retaliation, although his desire to lay waste to Haudenosaunee homes and food stores predated the raids. Washington ordered the American military into Haudenosaunee homelands to locate and destroy every Indigenous community encountered. In April 1779, Goose Van Schaick moved swiftly to burn Onondaga homes, fields, and crops and to attack Onondaga women. Two months later, in June 1779, General James Clinton's troops began their slow march from the Mohawk River towards Otsego Lake, then down the Susquehanna River to Tioga. At the same time, Major General John Sullivan and his men moved even more cautiously up the Susquehanna River from Easton, Pennsylvania. The two military forces joined at Tioga on August 22, 1779, and proceeded to march through Seneca and Cayuga homelands. Simultaneous to the Clinton-Sullivan expeditions, Colonel Daniel Brodhead targeted Indigenous villages from the fork of the Ohio River up the Allegheny River.⁴⁴

Participants in all three campaigns vividly described the settlement patterns and subsistence strategies of southern and western Haudenosaunee communities. Officers documented the number of houses in each community, their construction, design, proximity to one another, estimated age, and importance of each village. They also listed the variety of domesticated crops and the size of agricultural fields. This information provided an immediate inventory and appraisal of the agricultural productivity of environmental spaces where Haudenosaunee settlement and control had thwarted colonial access and survey. General Sullivan calculated his campaign destroyed forty communities and numerous scattered houses. He also claimed that “the quantity of corn destroyed, at a moderate computation, must amount to 160,000 bushels, with a vast quantity of vegetables of every kind.” Although the journals emphasize the strength of long-standing Haudenosaunee housing design and the continued dependence on extensive agricultural fields of corn as the primary food source in western Haudenosaunee subsistence economies, they also highlight the blending of Haudenosaunee and colonial settlement patterns and subsistence practices. American troops regularly documented the roaming cattle, horses, and hogs, as well as the hours required to round them up and consume what they could. The adoption of domesticated animals required higher yields of English grasses to feed and precipitated the shift of some agricultural spaces to the production of hay, principally along the Chemung River from Newtown to Painted Post, and at Kanadesaga.⁴⁵

General Sullivan illustrated his route and the villages he encountered in a map that outlined his path up the Susquehanna River into Cayuga and Seneca homelands, a route that followed well-worn Indigenous trails (figure 7.3). Beginning at the fork of the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers, with the community of Tioga, several multinational villages dotted southwestern Haudenosaunee homelands. About twelve miles above Tioga, the community of Chemung straddled both sides of the river. Approximately four miles above Chemung, men constructed the new village of Newtown. Communities farther up the river included Kannawaloholla, and then Painted Post, at the fork of the Chemung and Cohocton Rivers. North of Newtown, numerous Seneca and multinational communities dotted the east side of Seneca Lake and west into the Genesee River Valley. Sheaquaga, or Catharine's Town, lay a few miles above the head of Seneca Lake. The town was named after Catharine Montour, a relocated Indigenous woman with French lineage who had married a Seneca leader. About sixteen miles north of Catharine's Town, several Seneca families resided in the small village of Kendaia, which Americans renamed Apple Town for its large apple orchard. Seneca families continued to inhabit the old settlement of Kanadesaga at the northwest end of Seneca Lake, as well as the community at Canandaigua, northwest of Canandaigua Lake. West of Canandaigua Lake Seneca men, women, and children filtered into the fertile Genesee River Valley and closer to trade goods at Fort Niagara. Moravian missionaries encountered many of these new communities near the northeast end of Honeoye Lake and the south end of Conesus Lake during their travels in the 1750s. By 1779, The People of the Great Hills had established their largest community along a bend in the Genesee River. This new village replaced the former western capital of Chenussio and absorbed many new residents.⁴⁶

FIGURE 7.3. Map of Gen. Sullivan's march from Easton to the Senaca & Cayuga countries (1779). Used with permission, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71002211/.

After Sullivan's forces destroyed these Seneca communities, Lieutenant Colonel John Butler marched a force to the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, while Lieutenant Colonel Henry Dearborn headed along the west side of Cayuga Lake. On the east side of Cayuga Lake, Cayuga residents continued to locate their main communities along Great Gully Brook. This scattered complex contained three separate towns, including Cayuga Castle with fifteen houses, Upper Cayuga with fourteen houses, and Cayuga with thirteen houses. About five miles south of the Great Gully complex, Cayuga families established the town of Chandot, or Peach Town, a name that reflected generations of peach orchards women maintained. Although The People of the Marshy Area built their main villages east of Cayuga Lake, residents also lived in small communities along the western and northwestern shore. In addition, Tutelo migrants still resided at Coreorgonel, about three miles above the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. Coreorgonel and its “suburbs” contained twenty-five houses as well as another dozen dwellings scattered between the main community and the lake.⁴⁷

Seneca and Cayuga men constructed “neatly built and finished” homes with “split and hew’d timber,” or a combination of squared timber planks and rounded logs in most of these communities. Although residents shifted away from sapling posts to frame their homes, bark continued to serve as the roof. The central fire pit also remained the most prominent feature of the new homes and Seneca men did not build chimneys. Dr. Jabez Campfield complained that “the Indian houses might have been very comfortable, had they made any convenience for the smoke to be conveyed out, only a hole in the middle of the top of the roof of the house” allowed for escape. Invading soldiers also lamented that without chimneys and flooring, the houses “were very dirty and smookey.” Their criticisms belied their desire to possess and occupy the homes themselves. Other American descriptions of Seneca housing templates demonstrated the retention of familiar longhouse construction design and space usage. Dr. Campfield observed, for example, that “most of their houses have a small additional place, built at one end, from which, they have a dore into ye large house—they build two tier of births one above the other, on both sides, and have a fire in ye center.” Although the journals do not provide size estimates, they make clear that by the late 1770s, Seneca homes blended long-standing and colonial settlement templates, yet retained significant features of the traditional longhouse.⁴⁸

A few Seneca homes, however, more fully incorporated colonial housing design and layout and included chimneys. At the small community of Kendaia, for example, one of the thirteen large houses had a chimney and a few of the nearly thirty homes at Canandaigua had “very neat chimneys.” Lieutenant Charles Nukerck, however, doubted that Indigenous families inhabited these homes because of their preference for centrally located fire pits. Instead, Nukerck argued, the design and layout of the buildings suggested Euro-American residency. At Kashong, on the west side of Seneca Lake, soldiers falsely claimed that the new and very neatly built houses indicated that whites inhabited the town. Burning Indigenous homes erased evidence of Haudenosaunee presence on the land as well as their incorporation of construction practices and material culture that exceeded the expectations and lived experiences of invading American settlers and soldiers.⁴⁹

Seneca and Cayuga women also blended familiar crops with more recent European additions into their seasonal subsistence practices. At each of the villages encountered, the army spent days burning women's agricultural fields of corn, beans, and squash. But Seneca and Cayuga women had long incorporated new crops, including cucumbers, watermelons, muskmelons, potatoes, and turnips to supplement the “three sisters.” The size of agricultural fields impressed invading soldiers, and their productivity astonished them. As Dr. Campfield noted, “the quantity of corn in the towns is far beyond what any body [sic] had imagined.” William Hart also recorded his amazement to a superior officer. “The quantity of corn, beans, etc., exceeds all description, you cannot conceive of its extent. The entire bottoms [along the river] are filled with it,” he proclaimed. “The whole army have been all day employed in cutting down the corn and have not done it above half yet.” Corn stalks measured between sixteen and eighteen feet in height and produced cobs nearly eighteen inches in length. The productivity of women's agricultural labor made the military campaigns possible. As troops fed themselves on the food women produced and carried away what they could, they reduced reliance on slow and long military supply lines. Women also cultivated numerous apple, peach, and plum orchards. The Seneca community of Kendaia, for example, contained an estimated “eighty large apple trees,” and Thomas Grant noted that the Cayuga village of Chondote, was “remarkable for a large peach orchard containing … fine thriving peach trees.” George Grant estimated Cayuga women cultivated 1,500 peach trees in the Chondote orchards. Following the familiar seasonal subsistence cycle, fresh fruit fulfilled summer subsistence needs and dried fruit supplemented winter provisions.⁵⁰

Women's agricultural production remained the most important dietary source, and men continued to meet their subsistence obligations through hunting and fishing. The location of communities along the alluvial floodplains of creeks, rivers, and lakes not only maximized agricultural production but also facilitated ease of access to fishing. Seneca and Cayuga Lakes abounded in a great variety of fish, including perch, salmon, trout, and eel. Seneca and Cayuga men constructed fishing ponds on the rocky beds of streams. These thirty- to forty-foot-diameter stone structures allowed water and fish to enter the “pond,” but the fish could not escape over the elevated stone wall. Seasonal hunting expeditions provided an additional food source as well as hides for the fur-trade economy. These market exchanges allowed men and women to purchase household furniture, blankets, and feather beds as well as a variety of kitchen items, including kettles, plates, and pewter utensils. When Haudenosaunee men, women, and children fled their homes before the army's advance, they often left behind hundreds of prepared deer and bear skins. Fleeing residents also could not shepherd all their domesticated animals to safety and thus left many behind. In the empty villages, American troops carried away plunder; feasted on cattle, hogs, and chickens; and rounded up remaining horses.⁵¹

The genocidal campaigns of the American military destroyed Haudenosaunee homes, agricultural fields, and stored provisions and despoiled the land. Haudenosaunee scouts, however, tracked the movements of the invaders and provided timely intelligence to evacuate communities before soldiers arrived. Survivors initially flocked to British protection at Fort Niagara, but slim rations, the spread of disease, and unwelcoming hosts forced thousands of men, women, and children to suffer the harsh winter that followed without sufficient clothing, food, or shelter. An exceptionally cold winter in 1779 into 1780, with deep and heavy snows, drastically reduced the success of hunting, fishing, and gathering expeditions. Snow buried animals and nuts, while extreme cold froze rivers and lakes. Consequently, hundreds of men, women, and children perished in the aftermath of the military campaigns. Yet the destruction of Haudenosaunee homes, agricultural produce, and the land did not sever the connection of men, women, and children to their land. As the seasonal subsistence cycle began anew in spring 1780, survivors returned to their homelands and into the agricultural spaces and ecosystems that had always sustained their families. By 1781, for example, Seneca families had returned to the Genesee River Valley, while others filtered into Buffalo Creek, Tonowanda Creek, Cattaraugus Creek, and farther south along the Allegheny River, returning to familiar and new environmental spaces along critical water arteries to rebuild their lives.⁵²

By the late 1770s, Haudenosaunee communities had adopted multiple aspects of the colonial settlement template. As Haudenosaunee men and women became more enmeshed in a global market economy, and colonial settlements followed in the market's wake, they increasingly incorporated new modes of living that centered around the nuclear family dwelling and acquired personal property of European manufacture. Men with greater exposure to and experience with colonial neighbors reframed extensive longhouses of sapling posts, sheets of bark, and central fire pits on dirt floors into smaller homes of hewn timber or planks, shingled roofs, stone chimneys, cellars, wooden floors, and glass windows. Even the more western Seneca and Cayuga homes incorporated elements of the colonial model. Men and women incorporated these new construction practices into their homes to fulfill long-standing social and cultural practices, not to fundamentally alter ways of living. Squared timber planks, for example, provided better home insulation than round sapling posts but did not significantly alter the purpose and function of the home. Western communities also retained important traits of the extensive longhouse. For most families, the rooms of the home focused on the central fire pit, which remained the most prominent feature of the home. Residents also continued to store their belongings and supplies at the ends of the house and not in a cellar or separate building. Some villages also constructed larger community buildings for diplomatic meetings and visitors.

Subsistence practices among eastern Haudenosaunee communities reflected greater incorporation into colonial economies as men and women in Oneida, Mohawk, Oquaga, and other upper Susquehanna River Valley villages dedicated more of their agricultural production to new colonial crops, especially grasses to feed growing herds of domestic animals and wheat to sell on the colonial market. Although residents throughout western and southern Haudenosaunee homelands had incorporated domestic animals, particularly cattle, sheep, hogs, and chickens into their diet, they had not shifted their agricultural production to a heavy emphasis on grasses or export grains. Instead, villages to the west and southwest sustained the “three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash while adding select European produce to complement and fulfill village subsistence needs rather than market demands.

The expanding market economy, along with the subsequent and rapid westward migration of the colonial population, however, dramatically altered the environment and challenged long-standing Haudenosaunee subsistence practices. Diseases impaired the ability of men and women to perform their subsistence labor, and parasites that accompanied new colonial crops devastated women's cornfields. Settler competition for game and fish also made it more difficult for Haudenosaunee men to find food in the forest and fish in the rivers when agricultural production failed. Most important, colonial terraforming produced a denuded environment. Colonists clear-cut vast tracts of woodland for timber and a booming potash market as well as to grow their agricultural produce. This stripped landscape made the environment less inviting to the deer and bear upon which hunters depended. To survive in the altered environment, eastern Haudenosaunee men and women adopted some of the subsistence practices of their colonial neighbors to sustain and enhance their lives.

With the loss of viable hunting in the east, Mohawk men struggled to find and offer furs of high market value in their economic exchanges. Instead, their market exchanges increasingly involved wheat, domestic animals, and physical labor. In 1700, for example, fur-trade exports represented 25 percent of New York's export economy. By 1750, those fur-trade exports declined to only 16 percent, and dropped to about 2 percent by 1775. Although the fur trade declined in proportion to New York's total exports, it continued to provide an avenue to needed goods for western nations. Consequently, Seneca and Cayuga men, farther removed from the environmental disruptions of settler expansion and colonial terraforming, maintained a fur-trade economy and did not shift to an export economy of colonial grains and grasses.⁵³

Some eastern Haudenosaunee men who successfully participated in the agricultural export economy dramatically increased their personal wealth and made up a new elite. In this market-based system of class stratification, personal status and power rested on material wealth and the accumulation of private possessions. New elites revealed their economic and social success through their dress and material possessions. In 1769, for example, Joseph Brant and his wife impressed Richard Smith with their personal displays of wealth. “Some of the chiefs,” Smith explained, “imitate the English mode and Joseph Brant was dressed in a suit of blue Broad Cloth as his Wife was in a Callicoe or Chintz Gown” with broaches amounting to nearly fifteen pounds attached to her dress. Smith incorrectly referred to Brant as a “chief” because he equated Brant's style, dress, and wealth with leadership and social status. But Smith recognized the source of Brant's wealth when he described Brant as a “considerable Farmer possessing Horses and Cattle and 100 acres of rich land at Canajoharie.” In addition to these agricultural possessions, the Brant family filled their home with household furniture and feather beds as well as pewter and porcelain kitchenware. Other Mohawk families who enjoyed success in the agricultural export economy dressed in comparable fashion and accumulated similar personal material items.⁵⁴

Not all Mohawk families, however, shared in the new wealth. Many families owned only one or two domestic animals, a couple of blankets and clothing items, and a few beaver traps. The wide economic range in Mohawk war loss claims revealed this uneven distribution of wealth. Poor and hungry Mohawk men and women often turned to colonial patrons for assistance. In the 1770s, for example, William Johnson provided cash to Mohawk men and women who were too sick to care for themselves, and he buried several others “not having any friends.” Johnson also claimed to support “the Oldest Sachem of the Mohawks” and his family.⁵⁵ But at the Upper Mohawk community of Canajoharie, Joseph Brant represented a rising group of Haudenosaunee men who adopted many aspects of colonial material culture and cultivated close relationships with powerful colonists. These new relationships represented a social stratification not previously present in Haudenosaunee communities. New elites, however, manipulated and exploited their access to powerful colonials to extend benefits and security to their families and their communities. As a result, they continued to fulfill the long-standing Haudenosaunee ethic of gift-giving and reciprocity and cemented their position as leaders of their communities, regardless of their hereditary lineage to leadership.