The Cayuga Nation

The region around Cayuga Lake was once home to the Cayugas or "People of the Mucky Land". Their initial presence here is estimated around the 13th century. The Cayugas were one of five, later six, nations in the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the League of Six Nations. Sometime between 1400 A.D. and 1600 A.D., the peacemakers Deganawida, a Huron mystic, and the Onondagan Hiawatha inspired five Iroquois tribes - the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga and Cayuga - to create a Peace council and end their intertribal warfare. In the 1700's, the Tuscarora joined as the sixth nation. The example of their organized confederacy undoubtedly influenced later colonial efforts to form a confederacy and draft the Constitution.

The influence was perhaps not wide enough. Iroquois women held substantial political power. The elder women chose the male delegates or 'chiefs' for the council, 50 in all. Delegates met on Onondaga land every 5 years, or more frequently if necessary. The Iroquois were also a matrilinear culture; the clans followed the mother's line, not the father's. Anthropologists consider the Iroquois as having one of the most egalitarian cultures known.

The Cayugas, like other Iroquois, possessed a highly developed agriculture. They grew three main crops: beans, corn, and squash, often referred to as the 'three sisters'. Other crops included watermelons, cucumbers, and peaches. Agriculture was primarily the domain of the women, while the men were responsible for hunting, trade and travel. They traveled by foot or horse on an extensive trail network, and by elm-bark canoe on water. Like the longhouses they lived in, the elm-bark canoe was an impressive technology made from local resources. It was the typical canoe type for the Iroquois (see photo) and could be quickly made. The explorer Des Groseilleurs once observed a Mohawk hunter strip the bark of an elm tree and make a canoe in under two hours.

Elm bark canoe. Elm bark canoe. This photo is of a four foot model elm bark canoe made before 1825.

Cayugas At the Waterfront

The closest major Iroquois village to the waterfront was Coreogonel, about three miles away from the head of the lake, at the foot of Buttermilk Falls. This village consisted of 25 dwellings and was home to the Tutelo Indians, a small tribe adopted by the Iroquois. The Tutelos were absorbed in Cayuga territory after they lost their land to white settlement in Virginia and were forced north in the early 1700's. The main large Cayuga settlements were further north along the lake, closer to present day Cayuga, Union Springs and Aurora.

There may have been Cayuga settlements - certainly often-used camp sites - closer to the waterfront than Coreogonel. Sources conflict on this. A 1920 map concerning the archeological history of New York shows a village site at the south west corner of Cayuga Lake and states " the Cayuga Indians had a village of adopted Tegarighroones settled at this place and the site has been described as Totieronno." Notes from the Sullivan campaign indicate that a few Iroquois homes along the Inlet were destroyed. We do know that Hog's Hole, at the southwestern corner of Cayuga Lake, was an excellent eel-fishing site where Cayugas camped, and that land on the flats, later inhabited by white settlers, was first tilled by Cayugas.

Cammerhof and Zeisberger

In 1750, the United Brethren missionaries John Cammerhof and Zeisberger traveled through what is now Ithaca, led by the Cayuga guide Hahotchaunguas. They were by no means the first whites to have contact with the Cayugas. French Jesuit priests had visited the area in the 1600's. In addition, Cayugas had significant contact beyond this region with Dutch, British and French fur traders. Cammerhof and Zeisberger are important to local history because they left a good account of their visit. They traveled on foot through the Inlet Valley, along a trail that is now Linn Street, and stayed the night at a campsite at the southeast shore. (The historian W. Glenn Norris painted his interpretation of their campsite in the 1930's - see picture). They observed their Cayuga guide walk along the sandbars to Hog's Hole, where he visited other Indians camped there at the popular eel-fishing site. They were struck by the natural beauty of Ithaca, noting that the water of the lake was "clear as crystal, and the Indians say deeper than they can tell". They were also impressed with the knowledge of their guide, who was familiar with the geography of the continent from the Mississippi to Quebec, indicating the extent of travel by the Cayugas.

The Sullivan Expedition

The most notorious travelers here were the soldiers of the Sullivan expedition of 1779. The division led by Colonel Henry Dearborn marched south along the west side of Cayuga Lake in late September and destroyed all the crops and settlements they found along the way, including the village of Coreogonel and "two huts and a cornfield" as they crossed the flats.

The Sullivan expedition was a military action of the American Revolutionary War. Which side to support in the war was a divisive issue for the Iroquois confederacy; their Council originally advocated remaining neutral. However, in the end, most Onondagas, Mohawks, Seneca and Cayugas sided with the British, whom they believed were stronger, while Oneidas and some Tuscarora sided with the Americans. Over the course of the war, the British and Iroquois raided frontier settlements in Schoharie Valley and Cherry Valley in New York State, as well as in parts of Pennsylvania, killing many settlers and laying waste their homes. On the basis of strategy and retaliation, General George Washington ordered the destruction of Iroquoia. He wrote to Sullivan on September 15 1779 to remind him of "the necessity of pushing the Indians to the greatest practicable distance from their own settlements and our frontiers, to throwing them wholly on British mercy ...", and of "... making the destruction of their settlements so final and complete as to put it out of their power to derive the smallest succor from them in case they should attempt to return this season".

Most historians report that almost all Iroquois abandoned their villages before the campaign reached them. Despite some pleas for mercy for the Cayugas, some of whom claimed neutrality, Washington's orders were carried out to the greatest extent possible. In the end, Sullivan reported forty villages and numerous isolated houses burned, 160,000 bushels of corn, and other vegetables and orchards destroyed.

Early White Settlement

The bountiful lands and desirable locations in Iroquois territory left an impression on the soldiers of the Sullivan expedition, and no doubt influenced some of them and others to venture here to settle. Thomas Grant, a soldier who crossed Coreogonel with William Butler's troops, noted this description in his journal.

"The town was situated on a rising ground in a large beautiful valley. The soil is equal to, or rather superior to any in the country. Through which runs several fine streams of water, the first a creek about four poles wide which falls from the mountain on the east side of the valley about 120' perpendicular, into which creek three other fine streams empty. The second creek is the principal supply of the Cayuga Lake, navigable for large canoes or boats to the town."

By 1789, the first white settlers had moved in. Former soldiers Jonathan Woodworth and Robert McDowell built cabins near what is now DeWitt Park. The Yaple, Hinepaugh and Dumond families settled at the foot of State Street and on Linn Street, taking advantage of land cleared by the Indians for agriculture, and the proximity of waterpower. Jacob Yaple built the first waterpower mill on Cascadilla Creek, and could grind 20 to 25 bushels of wheat to flour per day.

In 1790, Military Tract lands were awarded to soldiers as payment for their service in the Revolutionary war. The Military Tract divided the former Iroquois territories into 28 townships, and subdivided them into 600 acre parcels. Many soldiers were established elsewhere by this time and were as likely to sell their parcels as move to them. State Surveyor General Simeon DeWitt acquired much of the land that is now downtown Ithaca, buying some of it from Abraham Bloodgood. Of interest to the history of the waterfront, soldier Andrew Moodie sold his land parcel at the southeastern shore of the lake to James Renwick.

Ithaca's First 'Store'

A man named Lightfoot traveled here by canoe in 1790; he used a waterway route from Albany that had only 23 miles of portage. He set up a trade post at the junction of the Inlet and Cascadilla Creek. In Horace King's Early History of Ithaca (1847), he described Lightfoot's enterprise:

He "came up the lake with a boat-load of goods; and entering the inlet, landed near the present steamboat landing. Here he put up a shanty, in which he displayed and disposed of his goods and wares. His stock in trade consisted of a chest of tea, a sack of coffee, some crockery and earthen ware, a very small quantity of dry goods, a little hardware and cutlery, some gun-powder and lead, and a barrel or two of liquor. These articles he exchanged principally for maple sugar and furs; the furs being, marten, otter, beaver, fox, bear, and deer skins. He continued this species of traffic, for ten or twelve year; and his was the only trading house here within that period."