CHAPTER 5Protecting Haudenosaunee Mobility, Autonomy, and Ecosystems

In May 1750, Hahotschaunquas, along with his wife, Gajehne, her fourteen-year-old son, Tagita, and her four-year-old daughter, Gahoea, arrived by canoe to Wyoming, a Nanticoke town on the Susquehanna River. Hahotschaunquas had agreed to serve as a guide for two Moravians, John Christopher Frederick Cammerhoff and David Zeisberger, on their trip to the Central Fire of the Iroquois Confederacy at Onondaga. Cammerhoff was on an errand to renew the friendship and peace between the Moravian Brethren and the Haudenosaunee and to gain Confederacy permission to allow a few of the Brethren to live in Onondaga and Cayuga villages to better learn their language. Lenni Lenape (Delaware) and Shawnee residents, also living in the vicinity of Wyoming, learned of Cammerhoff's errand and joined their Nanticoke neighbors in asking Cammerhoff to relay their request to Haudenosaunee leaders for an English blacksmith at their village.¹

During the days, Hahotschaunquas guided the group up the difficult passes of shallow waters and rapids on the Susquehanna River. With four adults and two children, luggage, provisions, and gifts necessary to fulfill diplomatic protocol, the group required two canoes. Zeisberger and Cammerhoff traveled with Tagita and Gahoea in their larger canoe, while the Cayuga husband and wife traveled in their smaller, hunting canoe. Hahotschaunquas and Gajehne's familiarity with the route allowed the group to pull ashore at numerous Indigenous huts and larger communities for meals and rest as well as for occasional visitation with acquaintances during the day. Hahotschaunquas also chose safe locations for overnight shelter. Zeisberger, who had traveled to the Onondaga capital in 1745 on a previous Moravian mission and had resided a few months among Mohawk peoples to learn their language, assisted Hahotschaunquas and Tagita with daily fishing and hunting, repairing damage to the canoes, and constructing overnight shelter to provide protection from the frequent rains. At these stops, Gajehne fulfilled the responsibilities of women who traveled with male family members on hunting expeditions. She gathered firewood and water and cooked meals based on hunting or fishing success. If the group rested in a village for multiple days, Gajehne prepared loaves of bread or packs of cittamun, a flour made from roasted and pounded corn and a staple in long-distance travel because of its lightweight and need only to add water to reconstitute it. When paired with fish or meat, cittamun served as a filling meal. In addition to these subsistence responsibilities, Gajehne looked after her young daughter.²

At the main fork of the Susquehanna River at Tioga, about twelve days distant from Wyoming by water, Hahotschaunquas led the group up the northwest branch where they soon passed a few Lenape houses and then entered a beautiful plain before reaching Ganatocheracht, a Cayuga town. After refreshing for several days at Ganatocheracht, the group began the five-day overland trip north with horses to the main Cayuga communities near the foot of Cayuga Lake, calculated at 180 miles. Cammerhoff and Zeisberger left their canoe and some of their luggage, including gifts and provisions, with Haetwe, their host and one of the village leaders. Haetwe offered the Moravians use of his wife's storehouse, and she ensured the security of their belongings. The children also remained in Ganatocheracht, reflecting the kinship connections and frequent trips Gajehne made to the Susquehanna Valley Cayuga village, as well as the difficulty of the overland route. Cammerhoff described part of the journey through a forest so dense and trees so tall that he “could scarcely see daylight” or clouds for three consecutive days. In addition, the route involved trails along steep and rocky hillsides, paths obscured by numerous fallen trees and roots, and marshy wetlands that made walking unsteady, difficult, and dangerous for horses and humans. In a testament to Hahotschaunquas's geographic knowledge, Cammerhoff and Zeisberger recalled “how wonderfully we had been led over strange and difficult paths” once they reached the end of the “wilderness” above the head of Cayuga Lake.³

The group then traveled along the entire east side of Cayuga Lake, passing numerous huts, small communities, and warrior's posts until they reached the larger Cayuga villages near the lower end of the lake. At the main Cayuga village, where the nation's leaders lived, Hahotschaunquas escorted Zeisberger and Cammerhoff to his grandmother's house. The next day, they proceeded another ten miles to Ganiatarage, near the foot of Cayuga Lake, where Hahotschaunquas left the Moravians in the care and residence of his mother. Hahotschaunquas did not have long to remain in the homes of friends or matrilineal kin because he needed to deliver the Moravians to the main Onondaga village. When diplomatic affairs at Onondaga progressed slowly, the Moravians asked Hahotschaunquas to take them to the large western Seneca village at Chenussio, about five days from the foot of Cayuga Lake. After a very brief stay at Chenussio, the Moravians headed back to Onondaga to complete their mission before retracing their route to the main Cayuga villages and then south to Wyoming. Hahotschaunquas did not accompany Cammerhoff and Zeisberger on the second trip to the Central Fire, but he agreed to meet them in Ganatocheracht, the Cayuga village near the fork of the Susquehanna River and where the Moravians had left their canoe and luggage in the care of Haewte's wife. In total, Hahotschaunquas traveled on foot for most of the more than 1,000 miles from Wyoming to the foot of Cayuga Lake, northeast to the Onondaga village, then west to Chenussio and back to Cayuga villages, and then south to Ganatocheracht. For two months, Hahotschaunquas guided the Moravians deep into Haudenosaunee homelands, introduced them to important community leaders, and fed and housed them through the labor and care of his female relations. Although French militaries and Jesuit missionaries, as well as a small number of New York diplomatic representatives, had firsthand experience traveling into Haudenosaunee territory, much of the environment remained unknown geographic space for Europeans and thus required Indigenous guides. Despite offering gifts to female and male hosts and presents to village leaders to pave the way for their diplomatic business, Cammerhoff made no mention of providing any gifts or presents to Hahotschaunquas for his extensive services.⁴

Hahotschaunquas guided the Moravians through the vast expanse of Cayuga homelands and beyond by day, and he revealed far greater geographic and spatial knowledge in conversations with them over travel breaks and at night. During a period of rest in the dense forest, for example, Hahotschaunquas centered the main Cayuga villages near the foot of their lake within the larger context of imperial neighbors, recognizable environmental features, and important waterways that connected Cayuga people to human and other-than human inhabitants and to the land. Cayuga men and women could reach the French by traveling northwest around Lake Ontario for four days, and in another five days, they could reach the large river of Cataraqui, the Saint Lawrence River. Hahotschaunquas described the Cataraqui River as “wider than the Delaware at Philadelphia” to help his new Moravian friends visualize its size, and he traced its source to above Niagara Falls, a place he had visited four times. He recounted the overland route to Niagara Falls, eight days distant from his home, as well as the shorter but more dangerous water route that required crossing lakes in strong winds. He also provided a visual representation of this cartographic information when he drew a map on the back of a piece of dry bark. Farther to the west, Hahotschaunquas relayed his familiarity with the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and equated the width of the Ohio River to that at Harris's Ferry, another point on the Susquehanna River that the Moravians would recognize. Hahotschaunquas had also visited Québec, about nine days from Cayuga villages, and noted that it took several hours to travel around the city's defensive walls that protected farmers, stables, and the French governor. It required ten days from Québec to reach Schenectady, the Dutch and English settler community on the Mohawk River within a day's journey from Tiononderoge, the Mohawk settlements at the mouth of Schoharie Creek. Finally, Hahotschaunquas discussed the source of the Susquehanna River as originating from numerous small creeks that gradually flowed together, rather than from the outlet of larger lakes. Travelers could follow the path of the northern branch up to Otsego Lake, deep within the homelands of Mohawk peoples.⁵

In addition to his extensive geographic knowledge, Hahotschaunquas highlighted his awareness of imperial competition for Haudenosaunee homelands. Amid rumors of western Native nations planning attacks on Seneca villages, Hahotschaunquas informed the Moravians that “the cause of the war was because the French … wanted Ohio and all the land there belonging to the Five Nations.” Hahotschaunquas, however, did not single out the French for their desire for more land. “Whites in general,” he explained, “coveted so much the possessions of the Indians, and were greatly increasing in numbers in this region. In the beginning they would bring only a calf, and in a few years they would have a herd of cattle, and this was the same case with the white people.” As Hahotschaunquas equated the proliferation of domestic animals, such as cattle, to the rapid population growth and settlement expansion of imperial neighbors, he alluded to the challenges Haudenosaunee peoples faced in accessing critical environmental resources. As a male with subsistence responsibilities, Hahotschaunquas paid particular attention to imperial encroachment, in the form of humans and other-than humans, into hunting spaces in the Ohio country south of Lake Erie.⁶

Although Cammerhoff emphasized the struggles the Moravians endured along the difficult path up the Susquehanna River to the Central Fire of the Iroquois Confederacy, and he outlined the trials Moravians faced and would continue to face living in Indigenous villages, his journal also underscored widespread geographic mobility and environmental knowledge among the entire demographic range of Haudenosaunee peoples. Male hunters, fishers, and warriors; female agriculturalists and gatherers; young children traveling with their mothers, uncles, and aunts; elder residents visiting friends and kin; and village leaders and common residents all traveled by foot, by horse, and by water along east-west as well as north-south routes to fulfill subsistence, military, cultural, diplomatic, economic, and personal objectives. As Cammerhoff noted, and Hahotschaunquas and Gajehne demonstrated through their lived experience, Haudenosaunee men, women, and children were constantly on the move. Cammerhoff and Zeisberger encountered numerous residents and Indigenous travelers who had been to colonial communities in Pennsylvania, had stayed overnight in the homes of fellow Moravians, or knew by personal acquaintance or family connections many of the same people the Moravians knew.⁷

As Europeans began to travel the Susquehanna River, they encountered numerous Indigenous communities along the water and especially at key junctions of the river. In 1749, the surveyor and geographer Lewis Evans produced a map of his route up the Susquehanna River to Onondaga after he traveled with John Bartram, a botanist, and Pennsylvania's Indian Agent Conrad Weiser to the Onondaga capital in 1745. Lewis placed many Indigenous communities along the Susquehanna River, identified difficult days in “endless” mountains and dense woods, provided additional geographic detail, and outlined more eastern paths into Haudenosaunee homelands (figure 5.1). Occupying spaces along the river secured fishing and transportation routes that were critical features of male subsistence and cultural activities. But the forks of rivers, and the many banks along winding rivers, offered flatlands and agriculturally productive plains that served as essential spaces for women's subsistence responsibilities. The banks of rivers and nearby woodlots also provided essential gathering resources. Cammerhoff, Zeisberger, and Hahotschaunquas commented on the age of different towns they encountered, whether they were “old” or “new,” and pointed out the remains of numerous abandoned communities. Establishing Indigenous villages in these locations reflected the importance of these critical ecosystems and the role of women in subsistence production to the survival of the community.⁸

FIGURE 5.1. Lewis Evans and L. Hebert, “A map of Pensilvania, New-Jersey, New-York, and the three Delaware counties” (Philadelphia, 1749). Portion of map shows Wyoming at the bottom, Cayuga Branch due north (location of Ganatocheracht), and the route directly to Onondaga at the top. Huntington Digital Library Maps. Used with permission from the Huntington Library.

Although European travelers interpreted the growth of Indigenous villages along the Upper Susquehanna River as recently developed settlements reflecting a new diplomatic, economic, and military focus on the region, Haudenosaunee men and women had extensive environmental knowledge of the territory south of their main village corridor along the Seneca and Mohawk Rivers. Men passed through the region as they engaged in mourning war campaigns against Catawba and Susquehannock enemies. In addition, numerous salt licks attracted deer and bear, and the extensive river systems provided bountiful fishing stations. Haudenosaunee men, however, did not hold a monopoly on environmental knowledge of these southern spaces because women grew crops in the fertile agricultural plains and harvested wild nuts, tubers, fruits, and berries along the numerous creeks and rivers of the Susquehanna Valley. The abundance of other-than human kin in the river valleys welcomed and sustained human populations. Archaeological evidence locates the Thomas/Luckey site in the same vicinity as Ganatocheracht, along the Chemung River above its fork with the Susquehanna River at Tioga. Multiple occupations of this environmental space provide one possible explanation for the long-range use of the location from approximately AD 900 to at least AD 1500. Mourning war violence of the 1660s and 1670s depleted the Susquehanna Valley of inhabitants as warfare destroyed communities and displaced survivors. In addition, endemic violence made the environment unsafe for daily residential life and subsistence use. Those same decades of warfare reduced hunting demands on local wildlife and allowed animal populations to increase. Just as mourning war success against northern and western enemies precipitated new Haudenosaunee villages along the northern shore of Lake Ontario, mourning war victories against Susquehannock enemies offered an incentive for Haudenosaunee men and women to solidify their control of southern environmental resources through permanent villages.⁹

During the early 1680s, the new colony of Pennsylvania raised concerns among Albany officials about settler advancement and economic competition into these southern spaces. In 1683, Albany officials questioned Aekontjaekon and Kaejaegoeke, two Cayuga men, and an unnamed Susquehannock man adopted into the Onondaga Nation, about the environment and water routes between Haudenosaunee villages and the main Susquehannock community along the Susquehanna River. Albany officials ordered a map drawn of this unknown geographic space and believed that it reflected an accurate representation of village and river locations (figure 5.2). Cayuga and Susquehannock geographic knowledge provided a glimpse into and beyond the environment of southern Haudenosaunee homelands and the distance, measured in the number of days, needed to travel throughout this vast region. Residents in Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga villages traveled less than two days and Seneca peoples traveled three days by land to reach water routes that drained into the Susquehanna River. After one or two days on feeder systems, travelers reached the main branch of the Susquehanna River and then floated downriver to the main Susquehannock village. The map highlights the wealth of subsistence resources far distant from colonial centers as the routes traversed multiple hunting and fishing spaces, and much of the floodplain adjacent to the Susquehanna River offered excellent soil fertility for women's agricultural production.¹⁰

FIGURE 5.2. Settlements along the Susquehanna River (1683). Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC03107.01923. North is to the left. Used with permission.

The Indigenous informants asked Albany officials why they wanted this cartographic information and inquired if English settlers would soon arrive in the region. According to Albany officials, the three men stated they would be “verry glad” if “Christians” would settle near the Susquehanna River because that would bring trade goods closer to their villages and eliminate long trips to Albany. Travel on the water routes to the Susquehanna River were much easier than the mostly overland path to Albany, and canoe transportation facilitated larger fur-trade exchanges because travelers packed canoes with peltry loads heavier than they could carry on their backs.¹¹

Trade prospects in the southern Haudenosaunee homeland piqued the concerns of Albany officials who had grown increasingly worried about a drop in fur-trade volume and feared competition from William Penn in his new colony. In a meeting with Albany officials regarding this geographic space, Cayuga and Onondaga speakers revealed that Penn's agents wanted to purchase the Susquehanna lands, “which we won with the sword.” The speakers made clear that the land belonged to “Cayugas and Onnondages alone; the other three Nations vizt the Sinnekes, Oneydes and Maquaas have nothing to do with it.” They reminded the Commissioners, however, that they had “given” the land to the governor of New York four years earlier and refused to entertain Penn's interests without Albany's intervention and approval. In speaking to New York Governor Thomas Dongan in the summer of 1684, Onondaga and Cayuga leaders again reiterated that “we have given the Susquehanne River … to this Government,” and prohibited any of “Penns people” to settle along it. Onondaga and Cayuga leaders stressed their disapproval of Pennsylvania's expansion into their southern homelands, but they put the burden on Albany to restrict Pennsylvania's settler expansion. Albany officials did not miss the underlying threat that William Penn posed to New York's economic fortunes, warning Governor Dongan, “if Wm Penn buys [the Susquehanna] River, it will tend to ye utter Ruine of ye Bevr Trade, as ye Indians themselves doe acknowledge.” Albany officials had long considered the French an incremental threat to New York's fur-trade ambitions. They now feared that economic competition from Pennsylvania would “cut it all off at once.”¹²

Governor Dongan attempted to enlist the aid of his Covenant Chain allies to police trade activity throughout southern Haudenosaunee homelands. At a conference in late summer 1686, Dongan informed Haudenosaunee representatives that anyone trading along the Susquehanna River in Haudenosaunee territory required a special pass from the governor. If individuals lacked the pass, Dongan requested Haudenosaunee intervention to confiscate the manufactured goods and bring the trespassers to Albany where they would be punished accordingly. Each of the Five Nations repeated the refusal of Cayuga and Oneida speakers who first responded to Dongan's request. The speakers informed Dongan that they “dare not meddle” in such affairs because “a man whose goods is taken from him will defend himself which may create trouble or warre.” Haudenosaunee leaders not only wanted to keep their southern homeland free from unwanted settler intrusion but also wanted access to multiple trade partners and trade goods in convenient proximity to their villages.¹³

Although the Grand Settlement of 1701 ensured peace and open trade with New France and New York, generations of simmering hostilities and open violence against New France and her Indigenous allies complicated economic relationships toward northern markets. In addition, Haudenosaunee warriors and diplomats worked before and after the formal peace to clear the path for Indigenous traders from the west to pass through Haudenosaunee homelands to English markets at Albany. Leaders hoped this diplomatic maneuvering would increase access to necessary and desired goods at beneficial rates. Haudenosaunee leaders, however, routinely expressed frustration with the high prices for goods and the low exchange rates for their hunting labor. As a result, high prices on items like powder, ammunition, and cloth plagued economic partnerships with Albany.¹⁴

Village leaders employed a variety of strategies with Albany officials to gain more favorable trade rates for the goods they wanted and needed. By the early 1710s, for example, Onondaga and Oneida leaders reminded Albany officials that the Covenant Chain alliance was “Chiefly grounded upon Trade” and its continuation depended on the “prices of goods.” Blankets and cloth were critical trade items for women because they replaced the furs previously used for clothing and warmth but now exchanged in the market. Men also needed powder and ammunition to hunt for subsistence and the market, to protect their communities, and to engage in mourning war campaigns. In early exchanges, Onondaga speakers recalled, one beaver pelt purchased one “stroud water” blanket or two “duffel” blankets. By 1712, however, Onondaga leaders lamented that the “Pouder we now buy for a Bever is scarce worth naming” and Oneida leaders warned that high prices would ruin them. Haudenosaunee leaders also tied religious and missionary efforts to economic rates. When Albany officials suggested sending a missionary to reside near each nation, leaders responded that they would gladly accept missionaries when they could afford fine Sunday clothing. New York officials often blamed the high prices on warfare and markets, rather than on private individuals setting the rates or the profit motives of the fur trade, in general. As a result, governors claimed they could not intervene to adjust prices or rates.¹⁵

After repeated complaints failed to bring more favorable rates, Haudenosaunee leaders highlighted the potential fallout of New York's inaction. Leaders exploited the economic fears of Albany fur traders when they threatened to take their furs north to New France. Oneida leaders, for example, reminded Albany officials of their trade loyalties to New York, but also stated they could easily reestablish trade networks north if they did not receive better exchange rates. Onondaga headmen went beyond verbal threats in 1711 when they allowed the French to begin construction of a trade post amid their main village. As Colonel Peter Schuyler maneuvered to tear down the French structure, Onondaga headmen articulated their frustration with New York traders because they knew the pelts they provided earned the English “a great deal of Money.” Yet, the critical trade item of powder remained too expensive for hunters and fighters. Haudenosaunee leaders also informed Governor Hunter in their first meeting with him that the “traders gave so little for Bever that it was scarce worth their while to go out a hunting for it.” Haudenosaunee leaders linked the success and profits of Albany's fur-trade economy to more favorable rates and proper incentives for hunters, and they hoped the new governor would act on their concerns.¹⁶

Most important, Haudenosaunee leaders underscored the connections between economic and military alliances that made up the Covenant Chain alliance. Economic partners were also military partners, and New York depended on loyal Haudenosaunee villages and male fighters to insulate and defend exposed colonial settlements and to provide intelligence on French and Indigenous activities and impending invasions. Although the Five Nations agreed to remain neutral in imperial conflicts, this did not prevent the English from working tirelessly to enlist Haudenosaunee fighters for planned invasions of Canada in 1709 and 1711. During Queen Anne's War, for example, Haudenosaunee speakers underscored New York's dependence on their Covenant Chain allies. They repeatedly complained to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs about the high price for lead and powder, noting “we so frequently desire to have Powder & Lead cheaper yet they grow Dearer & Dearer & the Bags of Powder are now less than ever.” Without sufficient means to defend themselves, leaders predicted their villages would fall victim to enemy attacks and warned the Commissions, “Your turn will be next.” A few years later, leaders made clear that if the governor would ensure more favorable rates, their “old & young Men will wholly devote themselves to her Majesty.” But, they feared, if the governor did not lower the cost of key trade items, particularly powder, communities would disperse, and village leaders would lose their ability to “keep up their Authority over their young Men.” Village leaders needed dependable access to dry goods like cloth, blankets, guns, ammunition, and powder to redistribute to favored friends and kin to maintain community prestige and loyalty. If the items did not come to the community as gifts, then leaders needed to ensure access to traders who would provide the items at favorable rates. Leaders made clear, “in the most moving Terms,” the dire consequences for New York's security if Albany officials did not improve trade rates. If village leaders lacked the ability to cement a loyal following through the redistribution of goods, young men would ignore their recommendations, pursue access to manufactured goods elsewhere, and leave Albany to fend for itself.¹⁷

The Susquehanna River Valley attracted Indigenous groups looking for new trade markets and access to more abundant hunting resources. By the turn of the century, the ebb and flow of mourning war violence had allowed animal populations to rebound in the Susquehanna Valley. The prolific wildlife attracted displaced and relocating Indigenous peoples who may have exhausted, or at least significantly reduced, animal numbers in their homeland after years of overhunting to fulfill subsistence and market needs. Susquehannock families who remained in the Valley, for example, joined with recent Shawnee emigrants from the Ohio Country to the west and Haudenosaunee migrants from the north to form a new village at the mouth of Conestoga Creek, along the Susquehanna River. During the first decades of the 1700s, the Philadelphia merchant James Logan developed a fur-trade network centered around the Conestoga area, with his trading post located next to one Indigenous village and on the site of a former community. Logan's account books recorded dry goods, such as cloth and blankets, and decorative items like beads, rings, and gartering, as well as guns, ammunition, and knives necessary for a fur trade that revolved around deer skins rather than beaver pelts. Logan advanced manufactured goods, on credit, to his traders. His traders then advanced those goods, on credit, to Indigenous customers. In this cycle of extending credit and paying off debt, traders depended on Indigenous men to return with the fruits of their hunt, hunters depended on traders to provide desired manufacture goods, and both depended on Logan to continue the cycle.¹⁸

The Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs began to document the southern villages and migrating populations. In May 1712, they estimated the fighting capabilities of their Covenant Chain allies at 1,800 men within villages along the Mohawk-Seneca River corridor and south of Lake Ontario. “This is besides,” the Commissioners informed Governor Hunter, “a considerable number of said 5 nations who live neer Canastoge upon a Branch of ye Susquehanne River.” They also noted a Haudenosaunee community at “onnochquage upon a branch of Delawar River,” reflecting the ongoing migration farther south of the Mohawk River and into resource acquisition spaces. In addition, the Commissioners claimed, “There are above 2000 Indians to ye Southward & westward who are Tributaries of ye Sd. 5 nations & under their Command,” outlining an expansion of Confederacy control over displaced or relocated Indigenous groups in distant spaces.¹⁹

When Albany officials focused exclusively on the economic threat of William Penn and his colony to New York's fur-trade ambitions, they ignored the main concerns of Haudenosaunee speakers. In the 1680s, Onondaga and Cayuga leaders clearly explained they did not wish for any of Penn's people to settle along the Susquehanna River because “we have no other land to leave our wives & Children.” Their anxieties regarding future access to and control over critical environmental resources, particularly the gendered spaces of agricultural productivity, predated Hahotschaunquas's criticisms of rapidly expanding settler communities by two generations. Expanding colonial communities posed significant challenges to Haudenosaunee subsistence practices and underscored the need to block settler expansion into crucial ecosystems through Indigenous occupation. In many cases, this involved Haudenosaunee families removing from their long-standing homelands and transforming seasonal resource acquisition sites into permanent villages. When French forces burned the main Onondaga community in 1696, for example, Father Jacques de Lamberville noted that residents fled to the Susquehanna River Valley, where they already had a village and planted fields. By the 1710s, Oneida and Mohawk peoples joined together with new Tuscarora arrivals along the upper Susquehanna River at the new community of Oquaga, in southern Oneida homelands.²⁰

FIGURE 5.3. Village locations in Southern Haudenosaunee homelands (ca. 1730s to 1750s). Bill Nelson.

By the 1720 and 1730s, Pennsylvania traders and diplomats encountered Haudenosaunee villages in spaces far south and west of their long-standing settlement corridor. When Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania's Indian Agent, traveled to Onondaga in 1726 and 1737 on diplomatic missions, his course followed the Susquehanna River. Weiser recorded Cayuga settlements at Tioga, near the fork of the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers and the area of Ganatocheracht (figure 5.3). When Cammerhoff visited Ganatocheracht in 1750, Haetwe, his host and one of the village leaders, explained that Indigenous villages dotted the banks of the Chemung River for a distance of four days, approximately two hundred miles, to the large western Seneca community of Chenussio, along the Genesee River. As Weiser continued his trip, he found Schoharie Mohawk and Cayuga families living around Owego, about one day farther up the river from the Chemung fork. Several Onondaga families also lived east of the Susquehanna and Owego Rivers, whereas more resided a few days farther up at Otsiningo, along the Chenango River. Seneca men and women had also started moving farther west into the Allegheny River Valley and south of Lake Erie into the Cuyahoga River Valley, where they joined Lenni Lenape and Shawnee migrants, as well as other Indigenous groups relocating from the west. By 1743, French traders reported nearly 2,400 inhabitants in the Cuyahoga, upper Allegheny, and upper Ohio River Valleys, most of them Seneca men, women, and children.²¹

In addition to Haudenosaunee families relocating into more southern and western spaces within their homelands, displaced Indigenous groups fleeing colonial expansion and violence migrated into southern Haudenosaunee territory and along the extensive Susquehanna River system to establish their own villages. During Weiser's 1737 trip to the Central Fire, his Onondaga guide, Owisgera, escorted the group overland to Shamokin, where the Susquehanna River divides into a northern and a western branch. Here they found Shawnee, Lenni Lenape, Nanticoke, and Conestoga families in multiple communities. Shikellamy, an Oneida, served as a diplomatic representative for Shamokin residents and joined Owisgera for the remainder of the trip to Onondaga. They proceeded up the western branch and encountered another multinational community at Otsquaga, near the fork with Lycoming Creek. After an overland portage, the group regained the northern branch of the Susquehanna River, traveling up to the Chenango River. Along the Chenango River, Shawnee families had joined Onondaga settlements in the dispersed Otsiningo community. Weiser had visited the location in 1726, but he found his “old acquaintances of that period partly absent, partly dead,” a reflection of the decade that had passed since his earlier visit and ongoing Indigenous mobility. By 1750, more internal movement led Lenape migrants to join Cayuga families near the Susquehanna fork at Tioga, while Tutelo men, women, and children relocating from North Carolina and Virginia, began settling across the Chemung River. Other Tutelo migrants continued their northward journey to the head of Cayuga Lake.²²

In May 1753, when David Zeisberger returned to the Central Fire at Onondaga, he encountered the familiar Indigenous communities along the Susquehanna River, including dispersed multinational villages at Tioga, Owego, and at the mouth of the Chenango River. In addition, he noted several old and abandoned communities, reflecting a long occupation of the area. But on this journey, Zeisberger witnessed and recorded the formation of a new town. For part of the trip, Zeisberger joined a large convoy of Nanticoke families busy relocating from the Wyoming Valley, several days north of Shamokin, to a new home along the Chenango River. “As far as the eye could reach,” he described, “you could see one canoe behind the other along the Susquehanna …. There were 25 canoes and we were the 26th. Three canoes were still behind and would follow.” When the group stopped for a meal, Zeisberger described “the whole company, with all their utensils and cattle, … presented quite a lively appearance, not at all like a scene in the wilderness, but like one in a large city.” When they reached their destination, Nanticoke men quickly erected housing structures and within “an hour's time a whole city had arisen.” Soon after they pitched their town, Nanticoke men and women entered a council with Tuscarora representatives from Oquaga and Oneidas from Anajot, their main village south of Oneida Lake, and a Mohawk man from Oquaga served as the speaker. After formally welcoming the Nanticoke newcomers to the area, Tuscarora representatives informed them “that the land lay open to them from their Fork [Chenango Forks] up as far as the old Indian town. There they could live and plant where it suited them best.” Tuscarora women then presented Nanticoke women with several sacks of corn to assist with their planting.²³

A few days after the diplomatic exchange, Zeisberger's traveling companion, Henry Frey, assisted Nanticoke men and women as they prepared forty acres of new agricultural fields. Frey described the collective nature of “all working together, old as well as young, the men howing and the women planting after them. They work in this way, so that none may remain idle and neglect to do their planting. When all had been planted each one receives his piece of ground, allotted to him to be tilled. This suffices for all their wants.” Although men typically assisted with the labor-intensive tasks of preparing new fields, planting, and harvesting the crops, Frey misplaced the gendered assignment of land and labor. After the initial planting, men's subsistence labor shifted to hunting and fishing expeditions, and women worked together throughout the agricultural season in communal fields and individual family garden allotments. Consequently, women worked the land, female labor produced the agricultural harvest, and men received no “piece of ground” to till. In addition to the mainstay crops of corn, beans, and squash, women continued to gather wild tubers, roots, berries, and nuts. They also cultivated a variety of fruit trees, particularly apple, peach, and plum.²⁴

The Nanticoke relocation illustrated the critical role agricultural continued to play in Indigenous subsistence practices. The extensive stretch of agricultural space and the present of sacks of corn that Tuscarora and Oneida women granted to the Nanticoke newcomers also underscored the importance of women and their subsistence labor to the survival of the community. In addition, men continued to catch a variety of fish, most notably eel and trout, and to hunt deer, bear, and elk as well as a variety of birds and waterfowl. The domestic animals that joined the migration also reflected decades of Indigenous involvement in the market and the adoption of colonial modes of subsistence to supplement hunting and fishing. For Nanticoke migrants fleeing settler expansion and violence, the loss of hunting lands from colonial terraforming, as well as declining deer populations from hunting competition and loss of habitat, precipitated the shift to keeping cattle. Domesticated animals, however, presented new challenges for Indigenous settlement patterns and subsistence practices because, unless fenced out, the animals threatened women's agricultural fields and required land for grazing.

When Haudenosaunee families removed to southern spaces, into land they had “won with the sword,” this relocation reflected similar shifts in village formations of previous generations, particularly along the north shore of Lake Ontario, rather than a novel development. In addition, when Haudenosaunee leaders and village residents allowed displaced Natives fleeing colonial expansion and settler violence in the east and south to relocate into southern Haudenosaunee homelands, this continued a long-standing practice of incorporating non-Haudenosaunee peoples into the figurative Longhouse. These practices shifted over time, from the forced adoption of defeated captives to replace the dead and regrow population, to emplacing survivors in separate villages near larger Haudenosaunee communities, to inviting displaced Natives to relocate into the periphery of Haudenosaunee homelands. During the seventeenth century, incorporating new groups replenished Haudenosaunee population losses. In the eighteenth century, however, displaced migrants and survivors developed communities in critical environmental landscapes and blocked colonial expansion into Haudenosaunee homelands.²⁵

As displaced families filtered into southern Haudenosaunee homelands and formed new communities, the documentary record suggests that Haudenosaunee leaders worked to enhance the power of the Confederacy by controlling the newcomers. Haudenosaunee leaders, for example, dictated where migrating Indigenous groups lived. Relocating Lenni Lenape and Tutelo families developed villages at the fork of the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers, next to Cayuga families. Displaced Nanticoke peoples relocated to the Chenango River, where Onondaga families already lived and on land granted by Tuscarora and Oneida women. In addition, Indian Affairs officials in Albany routinely noted Haudenosaunee sovereignty over the migrating groups and the dependent or subservient status of the newcomers, especially when estimating population or warrior counts. Moravian missionaries and Pennsylvanian diplomatic representatives obliged this power structure during their travels to the Central Fire at Onondaga when they resided in the homes of Cayuga or Onondaga village leaders, rather than in the homes of Lenape or Nanticoke families. Moreover, Lenape, Nanticoke, and Shawnee residents living at Wyoming sought permission from the Iroquois Confederacy for a blacksmith, and they accepted the response denying their request. Finally, Confederacy leaders appointed representatives of the Five Nations to supervise the new multinational communities and to represent them at Confederacy councils. Conrad Weiser and Moravians knew these Confederacy-appointed leaders personally and specifically called on them when traveling. One notable example was Shikellamy, an Oneida, who presided over relocated Shawnee, Nanticoke, Lenape, and Conestoga peoples at Shamokin. Shikellamy traveled to the Central Fire at Onondaga and to Philadelphia to communicate the interests of Shamokin residents and then relayed Confederacy and Pennsylvania messages back home. He also hosted colonial officials and traders when they came to the Valley, and he served as a guide and escort for Pennsylvanian representatives traveling to Haudenosaunee communities.²⁶

As the Iroquois Confederacy extended the Covenant Chain alliance and its hegemony over the Susquehanna River Valley and west into the Allegheny River Valley, colonial and imperial agents and Haudenosaunee leaders interpreted the shift in spatial relations in ways that best served their individual interests. William Johnson, for example, a Colonel to the Six Nations and New York's Indian Agent before his appointment as the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, supported Haudenosaunee sovereignty over the new villages because any expansion and enhancement of the Covenant Chain alliance boosted New York's position in intercultural diplomacy. From the Haudenosaunee perspective, expanding the Covenant Chain to include Indigenous newcomers as well as the colonial governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia enhanced their power in intercultural diplomacy. Haudenosaunee leaders demanded that colonial officials deal with Haudenosaunee diplomats regarding any relocated Indigenous groups within their territory. In June 1753, for example, Confederacy headmen at Onondaga clearly articulated to Pennsylvanian and Virginian officials that they did not approve of those colonies making separate treaties with relocated Indigenous groups in Ohio because they were “Hunters, and young and giddy Men and Children.” Furthermore, they demanded, “if the English wanted any thing from these childish People they must first speak to their Fathers” at Onondaga. Scarouady, an Oneida leader of a Shawnee village at Loggstown near the confluence of the Ohio and Beaver Rivers, played the appropriate role in appeasing Confederacy leaders. At the end of a summer 1753 conference, Scarouady appealed to Pennsylvania officials to “lay all our present Transactions before the Council of Onondago, that they may know We do nothing in the dark.” Scarouady placed responsibility with colonial officials to transmit the details of the conference to Confederacy leaders, thereby absolving himself of any blame for delayed or miscommunicated information.²⁷

Distance from the Central Fire at Onondaga and rapidly developing imperial encroachments into critical hunting and trading spaces, however, complicated efficient communication and challenged centralized Confederacy control over distant spaces. Village leaders needed flexibility to make decisions based on the daily needs and security concerns of their communities. When the French announced plans to build forts at critical junctures south of Lake Erie along the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, for example, Scarouady conveyed his security concerns to Pennsylvanian and Virginian officials and articulated a position more independent from the Central Fire at Onondaga. He informed Virginia “that our Kings [Haudenosaunee and Confederacy leaders] have nothing to do with our Lands; for We, the Warriors, fought for the Lands and so the right belongs to us, and we will take Care of them.” Despite the Confederacy's attempt to oversee the region's inhabitants, relocated Indigenous groups increasingly sought control over their own affairs and worked to assert their independence from Confederacy decisions at Onondaga. In addition, New York's colonial competitors often embraced the autonomy of the new communities and the independent decisions of their leaders. When it served Pennsylvania or Virginia's economic or military interests, their colonial officials and traders bypassed Albany and Confederacy councils to deal directly with village leaders throughout the Susquehanna and Allegheny River Valleys. Leaders in the distant villages also worked with competing colonial and imperial authorities, including the French, to maximize the personal and community benefits of individual economic, diplomatic, and military alliances. As a result, Confederacy leaders struggled to manage thousands of newcomers and failed to control events in these diverse and distant communities.²⁸

Confederacy councils also struggled to assert their authority in new villages composed of diverse Haudenosaunee families who removed from their long-standing settlement corridor. The new community of Oquaga, about one day farther up the Susquehanna River from the Chenango fork, included Tuscarora migrants who ended their northern journey short of the main Tuscarora villages deep within Oneida homelands. At Oquaga, they joined Oneida and Mohawk residents along a strategic waterway and within easy reach of Albany and Fort Hunter merchants. Previous economic relationships with Albany traders may have made Oquaga an attractive destination for relocating Tuscarora men and women. As the community developed, the heterogeneous residents established and strengthened ties directly with powerful colonists, most notably William Johnson, rather than through Confederacy leadership at the Central Fire at Onondaga or their former villages. Johnson arrived in 1738 to manage his uncle's lands south and east of the Mohawk River and Schoharie Creek. Johnson and Oquaga residents recognized the economic potential of a trade post at Oquaga because it would avoid the competition at Fort Oswego and Albany and intercept Indigenous customers traveling to those markets. In addition, Johnson built his own trade network on the north side of the Mohawk River, working directly with New York merchants at the mouth of the Hudson River and in London to bypass the traders operating out of Albany. On occasion and when market competition demanded, Johnson also traveled to Haudenosaunee villages to trade directly with his Indigenous suppliers. Johnson's economic ambitions, in part, earned him the name of Warraghiyagey (doer of great business).²⁹

Settlement pattern changes had also unfolded in long-standing village locations along the Mohawk-Seneca River corridor. As early as 1700, when Robert Livingston visited Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga communities, he expressed grave concern over the village arrangement he encountered. Instead of extensive and consolidated longhouses, he found much smaller housing structures dispersed over the landscape. He immediately advised his Haudenosaunee neighbors to return to their former mode of living and to “make your dwellings and habitations compact together, that upon occasion they may be secured and not straggling to and again.” After this initial recommendation, however, New York officials showed little concern with the new trend until the resumption of European warfare in the early 1740s rekindled memories of devastating French and Indigenous raids against isolated frontier settlements. In a June 1742 conference, for example, Lieutenant Governor George Clarke noted that “most of the Six Nations have of late years dispersed themselves forgetting their Antient Custom of dwelling together in Castles.” Two years later, Governor George Clinton pleaded with Haudenosaunee leaders to live in more densely settled communities around their castles. As in the late 1690s and early 1700s, New York officials believed that compact and fortified Haudenosaunee villages not only provided the colony's best defense against enemy invasion but also insulated exposed settlements.³⁰ Although village leaders listened to governor requests and promised to return to their former settlement pattern, residents did not revert to previous housing arrangements. The decades of peace that followed the Grand Settlement of 1701 eliminated a primary need for consolidated villages, while population losses made it more difficult to fill extensive longhouses with matrilineal kin. In addition, in communities that prized consensus and leaders retained authority because of their ability to build and maintain harmony, residents with beliefs or views in the minority often relocated or developed new communities of like-minded individuals, thereby creating a new common consent. Albany officials despaired the departure of Haudenosaunee families to New France because they viewed the relocations through the lens of imperial competition for Indigenous allies. Although the loss of community members may have disrupted some patterns of everyday life for friends and kin who remained, relocations reflected Indigenous mobility, served temporary needs, often included family or larger kinship units, and reduced prolonged disagreements within communities.

During the first half of the eighteenth century, Mohawk families in the Mohawk River Valley continued to reside in dispersed households. Residents of Tiononderoge, or the Lower Castle, remained near the mouth of Schoharie Creek, while western residents maintained two distinct village clusters about twenty miles upriver, with one grouping near Otsquago Creek and another opposite East Canada Creek. By the mid-1740s, the archaeological record locates a second Oneida community, Canowaroghere (Kanonwalohale), along Oneida Creek and above Oneida Lake. Tuscarora families settled into two communities south of Oneida Lake and between Chittenango Creek on the west and Cowaselon Creek on the east. By the 1750s, the eastern community of Ganatisgoa contained “almost thirty houses, large and regularly built, with a wide street through the middle of the town,” while residents to the west in Ganochserage lived in more scattered homes.³¹

To the west of the Oneida and Tuscarora villages, visiting missionaries and diplomats noted the dispersed settlement pattern of Onondaga residents. In 1743, for example, the naturalist John Bartram explained, “the town in its present state is about two or three miles long, yet the scattered cabins on both sides of the water [Onondaga Creek] are not above forty in number, many of them hold two families, but all stand single, and rarely above four or five near one another.” Bartram also described the main Onondaga community as a “strange mixture of cabins, interspersed with great patches of high grass, bushes & shrubs, some of peas, corn & squashes,” highlighting the shift away from consolidated and organized communities with streets running through the town and housing structures separate from agricultural fields. Just over three miles east of the main Onondaga settlement, some residents continued to live in a smaller, satellite village of about a dozen cabins at Tiatachtont. When Cammerhoff visited the main Onondaga community in 1750, he noted that it “consists of five small towns, beside the single scattered huts” within three miles of the west side of Onondaga Creek. The main Onondaga community had moved away from the compact settlement pattern in favor of a more scattered and decentralized community arrangement.³²

Cayuga peoples also began to disperse into several villages along the east side of Cayuga Lake, as well as into more western spaces along the western shore of Cayuga Lake and closer to Seneca Lake. The shift west brought Cayuga men and women closer to French traders at Fort Niagara and Irondequoit Bay, and they could access individual trading houses along footpaths to both stations. Cayuga women chose the mouth of Great Gully Brook, about one day south of the foot of Cayuga Lake, as the location for their main village. During his 1750 visit, Cammerhoff explained that this main community contained “about twenty huts altogether, most or [sic] them large and roomy, with three or four fireplaces; they are well built and waterproof. They have small entrance buildings on both sides, and four or five families can lodge in every cabin. The chiefs of the Gajuka [Cayuga] Nation live here, and many other people also.” Cammerhoff's remarks highlighted the continuation of the extensive longhouse design, but also hinted that those structures were not filled to capacity. According to custom, each fire pit served two families. Therefore, longhouses with “three or four fireplaces” would shelter six or eight families, and not the “four or five families” that Cammerhoff had recorded. He also described longhouses as “large and roomy,” offering further evidence of low occupancy. Because the community housed the “chiefs of the Gayuga Nation” and “many other people,” some structures served diplomatic or security needs and provided additional space for important visitors.³³

At the western door, Seneca families continued to reside in multiple communities west of Seneca Lake. By the 1750s, some village relocations began shifting to the west of Canandaigua Lake, where the more rugged and mountainous terrain offered excellent hunting of elk and buffalo and shorter routes to traders at Fort Niagara. Moravian missionaries passed through several Seneca communities in June 1750, including a newer village at the foot of Honeoye Lake and a large settlement in the Genesee River Valley. Chenussio straddled the Genesee River and was the most extensive Seneca settlement with forty large huts. The headman of the community, Garontianechqui, lived in the most substantial house in town, and his longhouse served as the meeting place for important diplomatic business and the community's fortress.³⁴

By the mid-eighteenth century, as the imperial contest for control of North America intensified, John Mitchell produced a map of North America that illustrated French and British efforts to extend their territorial claims with settler occupation of territory they knew by personal experience and through economic and military alliances with Indigenous groups in more distant and unknown environments. In addition to the imperial perspective, Mitchell also captured the new Haudenosaunee settlement pattern that shifted away from compact communities along the Mohawk-Seneca Rivers to more dispersed communities in spaces far distant from their long-standing settlement corridor. As the colonial population in Pennsylvania grew rapidly and traders pushed into the western Susquehanna and Allegheny River Valleys to reach old and new Indigenous clients, the French constructed forts and trade posts at important forks and passes between the upper Ohio River and Lake Erie. In 1753, for example, they built Fort Presque Isle and Fort Le Boeuf at both ends of the portage from Lake Erie to the Allegheny River. In 1754, they moved farther south with Fort Machault, or Venango, at the fork of the Allegheny River with French Creek, and Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River. These forts blocked British economic and settler expansion, solidified French ties with Indigenous communities, and connected New France's thinly populated colonial possessions in an arc from the Saint Lawrence River to the Mississippi River.³⁵

FIGURE 5.4. John Mitchell, Thomas Kitchin, and Andrew Millar, “A map of the British and French dominions in North America, with the roads, distances, limits, and extent of the settlements, humbly inscribed to the Right Honourable the Earl of Halifax, and the other Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Trade & Plantations” (London: Sold by A. Millar, 1755). Used with permission, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/74693173/.

Mitchell, along with many other British colonial and imperial officials, grew increasingly alarmed with French activity south of Lake Erie, particularly into the fertile Ohio Valley. Although trained in medicine and interested in botany, Mitchell redirected his energies to expose the French threat to the British imperial project. He combined official colonial cartographic records and reports to produce a detailed map of Canada and the Atlantic colonies that reflected British perceptions of the contested continent. Mitchell marked a circumference of “Six Nations Iroquois” territorial control that included conquered spaces and hunting lands north and east of Lake Huron and east of Lake Michigan, southwest along the Illinois River to its fork with the Ohio River, and then north and east to Montréal (figure 5.4). Once the map established Haudenosaunee possession of this environment through conquest during the Beaver Wars, the British could claim this territorial space by way of their Covenant Chain alliance. To further enhance British claim to contested spaces and landscapes they did not know, Mitchell falsely labeled many Indigenous communities in the western Susquehanna, Allegheny, and upper Ohio River watersheds as English settlements. As Mitchell erased the Indigenous inhabitants and replaced them with English colonists, the contested geographic space became the English terra cognita and land known to the English through occupation.³⁶

Although Mitchell relied exclusively on secondary colonial accounts of the geographic spaces he mapped and he had no personal experience in the terrain, his map assimilated Indigenous environmental knowledge. The gently curved lines of rivers and oval- or tadpole-shaped lakes with smooth coastlines reflected Indigenous cartographic features present in the colonial and official records. In addition, Mitchell's inclusion of rivers, critical portages, the distance traveled on footpaths, and the location of prominent salt licks or ponds that attracted wildlife and hunters underscored the critical role of water in Indigenous land use practices and the intimate connections of Indigenous peoples to their land. As Mitchell mapped these principal components of human and other-than human inhabitants, he illustrated the vast environmental knowledge of the Indigenous inhabitants, the geographic reach of their seasonal life, and their continued practice of mixed subsistence economies. Mitchell's projection of rivers appealed to a male audience interested in military, economic, and settler expansion. Rivers and water sources, however, were also essential to women's subsistence responsibilities in agricultural production and gathering environmental resources as well as to the survival of the community. Along these critical water arteries, Mitchell superimposed the colonial boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania over numerous relocated Indigenous settlements in southern and western Haudenosaunee homelands. Despite granting vast swaths of land to the control of colonial governments, Mitchell's map highlighted the limits of colonial knowledge of the interior of the continent and reflected the border between landscapes of settler occupation and the environmental spaces over which colonizers could only project their claims because the map lacked cartographic specificity and geographic accuracy the farther one traveled into Haudenosaunee homelands.³⁷

The shift of Haudenosaunee residents to develop more dispersed and undefended communities of smaller houses sheltering only one or two families represented an innovative and purposeful adaptation to the environmental and subsistence challenges of settler expansion, rather than a collapse of communities or the breakdown of long-standing structures of village authority and community consensus. As Hahotschaunquas and Gajehne demonstrated, men and women continued to visit family and friends near and far. Consequently, more dispersed and distant communities did not lead to isolation or restrict Indigenous mobility. Moreover, frustration with Albany traders often prompted residents to relocate and explore new trade partners. Village headmen had long complained to Albany officials of the predictable consequences of unfavorable trade rates on their ability to restrain young men. When young men and their families established new communities, they enhanced their position in the growing market economy by courting new trade partners, bypassing hereditary leaders who managed access to traders and trade goods, and gaining their own needed and desired trade items. The departure of young men to new communities farther west and south also allowed them to continue their mourning war raids on southern enemies. Colonial officials called on Haudenosaunee village leaders to keep their young men at home and prohibit attacks on Catawba families, who were fellow British allies. Residents of new villages, however, followed their leaders and did not always adhere to the decisions of Confederacy councils. In addition, when it served the purposes of hereditary village leaders and Confederacy councils, they confessed they had little authority over young men living in distant communities. As a result, many of the new villages in southern and western Haudenosaunee territory provided easy access to southern enemies, allowed young men to fulfill important social and cultural practices, and insulated hereditary leaders from responsibility for the violence and retribution from Albany officials.³⁸

Most important, the numerous villages that developed throughout southern and western Haudenosaunee homelands, as well as the more dispersed settlements along the Seneca-Mohawk River corridor, reflected a strategy to protect access to the environmental resources that were essential to the subsistence practices of men and women. Permanent occupation along winding rivers provided year-round fishing and gathering along the banks. Fishing supplemented daily meals; fulfilled dietary needs during travel; and, in times of drought or agricultural crisis, provided the main source of subsistence. Annual flooding along the river replenished nutrients to the soil and created alluvial floodplains that provided excellent agricultural spaces and were essential to the health and success of the community. Both colonists and traders repeatedly noted the excellent quality of Susquehanna Valley crops. Nearby forests offered wood for homes and fuel; bark for canoes; abundant gathering resources, including fruits from planted trees; and year-round hunting of small and large mammals, especially elk, deer, and bear. These fur-bearing animals fulfilled subsistence as well as market needs. Traveling Europeans favored the water route between Owego and Onondaga because “there is no dearth of food there, the game being always abundant,” and they repeatedly commented on bear hunts, the presence of salt licks that attracted deer and elk, and wild pigeons crowding the trees. In the dense forests covering the overland route, by contrast, game animals proved to be more elusive, at least to Europeans unfamiliar with the environment. For Indigenous men and women familiar with the landscape, however, the environment proved bountiful for subsistence needs.³⁹