by Frank H. Severance

In the summer of 1915 I was invited to speak at the annual picnic on the Tuscarora Nation. I was met at the Suspension Bridge station by a committee from the reservation and after a drive of a few miles through a well-farmed region was set down in a fine grove of old maples. Many people were there, perhaps as many whites as Indians, and the road was crowded with buggies, farm wagons and motor-cars. The somewhat renowned. Tuscarora brass band was playing, on a platform. A row of booths "hot dog" stands, amusement outfits, and vendors of fans7 ice cream, etc., drew crowds; and by the time the president of the day was ready to introduce me for the talk, a baseball game was called in a neighboring field. It is a misguided speaker who would compete with a baseball game, on a pleasant summer holiday. However, there gathered on the plank seats in front of the platform a few hundred auditors; and I was much interested in noting the wrinkled, kindly countenances of the old folks, whose memories reached back to more primitive days on his reservation. But for their presence and courteous attention I should have hesitated to speak on a theme of such limited appeal, as history.

Thus it was with genuine gratitude that I tried to thank them for there friendly welcome, for it was indeed a privilege to meet with them. Could I have commanded the beautiful, figurative, strongly expressive language of the old times, I might have symbolized the cordiality of their greeting by saying that they had swept the path clean between our lodges; That after my journey they had drawn the thorns from my feet, and bathed them, and given me soup; and that now the fire burned clear and we smoked the peace-pipe together. Instead of that, I told them, I had come to them part of the way by train, they had met me with an automobile, and welcomed me with a brass band. "My word to you," I said, "is chiefly one of greeting. We are neighbors, and en this your holiday you have invited me as a neighbor, to share your pleasures. Like most of your neighbors in Western New York, I have long known something of yon, and wish for a better acquaintance," and I went on to recall how, years ago, on the occasion when I was adopted by the Senecas, that it was Mrs. Mountpleasant known among the whites as "Queen of the Tuscaroras " who pinned an ancient silver brooch on my coat, and otherwise shared in the ceremony of adoption; she herself, though married to a distinguished Tuscarora, being a daughter of a long-prominent Seneca family" (She was sister of Gen. Ely S. Parker, of Gen. Grant's staff in the Civil War)

It has often happened more often than not, perhaps, in recent years that the white speaker at these annual gatherings of the Tuscaroras, has been same prominent man of Western New York who spoke to them of farming or patriotism or polities. In trying to speak to these people of their own history I explained that my business was not farming, or polities; that my business at least a part of it was to study the records of the past and put them in order for others to study. Then I went on and sketched as well as conditions allowed, the story of the Tuscaroras.

It was not, I am sure, a very adequate review that I made; but the occasion awakened an interest in the subject which has led me into some further study; so that what here follows is not so much the address given in the maple grove on a hot summer afternoon, as it is a fragmentary record of Tuscarora history as I have found it in scattered but authentic documents.

Like most Indian records, it begins in the middle No book, no writer, preserves for us the beginning chapters of the Indians' history. Their traditions for the most part are of a fantastic sort which cannot be correlated with facts which begin as definite records with the coming of Columbus. As regards the Tuscaroras, we know that in 1708 they lived in North Carolina, whither they are said to have gone from the North----from the land of the Iroquois, of which federation they had been a part. I do not know of any page in history, any document that tells the story of their going. (There is a tradition that they went first to the Mississippi, then turned back reaching North Carolina. But it is only a tradition)

The story of their return can be told, in some measure I attempt here only a contribution to the subject. Most writers who allude to it at all dismiss it by saying that the Tuscaroras returned to New York in 1715. They were indeed ninety years in coming back! There's a true American odyssey, for the wanderings of Ulysses are surpassed. by the experiences of these people a handful of whose descendants are today our thrifty, progressive, self-respecting neighbors of he Tuscarora reservation.

When the first white settlers appeared in North Carolina, they found certain settlements of Indians with characteristics different from the neighboring tribes. They were of Iroquoian stock, as we know them today, bat no attempt is made to fix the date of their going into the South. Their villages were on the lower Neuse, the Trent, the Tar, the Pamlico and other streams-in general, they were scattered through the region south of the present Raleigh. There were at least fifteen Tuscarora towns, with a population,. as given in 1711, of 4,000. Now begins the familiar story. The white settlers appropriated their lands, kidnapped their children and sold them into slavery, Here is a fine theme for the Unpopular History of the United States!

Naturally enough, Tuscarora enmity was aroused; a con-spiracy was formed, and massacres occurred. In the years 1711 to 1713 there were two outbreaks, which are spoken of as the two Tuscarora wars. The first "war" began with the capture of Lawson, surveyor-general of North Carolina, and of the Baron de Graffenried, by some 60 Tuscaroras. Lawson was given a trial before an Indian council and was put to death. This was in September, 1711. In the same month they, and. several neighboring tribes, massacred about 130 of the whites Colonel Barnwell came from South Carolina to help tile suffering colonists, and drove the Tuscaroras into one of their palisade towns about 20 miles from present Newbern. Here there was a battle, in which the Tuscaroras got the worst of it, so that they accepted terms of peace as offered by Barnwell terms which, according to the Indians, he at once broke. Certain it is that some of the Tuscaroras, falling at this time into the hands of the whites, were sent away into slavery.

Under this new provocation, the Tuscaroras appealed to neighboring tribes, planning a wholesale attack on the whites; meanwhile the settlers again called on South Caro-lina, which colony sent Colonel James Moore with a body of militia and some 900 Indians who professed hostility to the Tuscaroras. These were in fact, by this time, a tribe at bay Reduced in numbers, scattered, feeling that they had no friends, They had, even the year before, made appeals to neighboring governments, for some measure of justice.

The Tuscarora wars in North Carolina were brought on by the whites. Characterized by barbaric and cruel acts, as was to be expected in the warfare of an uncivilized folk, even their white enemies recognized that these wars were waged in defense of home and rights as the Indian knew them. The peace-loving, diligent Tuscarora farmers and fruit growers of Niagara County today should be proud, and not ashamed, of their fighting forefathers of the Tuscarora wars.

End part one.