THE LEGEND of BLOSSOM FALLS While Our Thoughts Are in the Big
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THE LEGEND OF BLOSSOM FALLS While our thoughts are in the Big Indian Valley let us consider a much longer tale as also told by Lionel DeLisser. This story is considerably closer to "Indian mentality" than that of Lotowana, and might well contain some germs of truth. It is well to remember the political situation between Mohawk. Iroquois and Mohegan as described in our chapter on Indian Period history. In the winter of 1890, late one afternoon, I found myself astray after a fruitless bear hunt over the Big Indian Mountain. I had followed the tracks since daybreak and with the coming of night was searching for the trail that leads from Dry Brook in Hardenburgh to the Big Indian valley in Shandaken. Unable to find it, I was prepared to pass the night in the woods, when I was more than delighted to see a light glimmering through the trees. Making my way to it through the deep snow, I found a rough bark shanty into which I was made welcome by the tenant, an old man. He was engaged through the day, he said, in cutting hoop poles. The straight black hair, high cheek bones and coppery complexion of my host attracted my attention and excited my curiosity. After supper I learned that the old man was nearly, if not, a full blooded Iroquois Indian, the last descendant of a tribe that had formerly occupied this region for a time. I found him an interesting companion around the fire that night, full of the weird stories and legends of his people. One of Blossom Falls told to me before the dying embers of the open wood fire, late into the night seemed worthy of record, so after looking up the historical parts, I present it to the reader. At the time of the discovery of the Hudson, that part of the present counties of Greene and Ulster which borders on this river was inhabited by the Mingua Indians, a mixed band composed of branches or clans of the Minnisinks, Nanticokes, Mincees and Delawares. They had emigrated from the upper valley of the Delaware, a region known to the early Dutch settlers as the "Land of Baca," and following the Neversink River and the Esopus Creek had reached the banks of the Hudson. Here they were classed and known to the settlers as the "seepus" or River Indians. Their principal village and fort was located at Wiltwyck, a spot lying a little to the west between the sites of old Kingston and Rondout. Along the east bank over the river, resided the Mohicans or Mohekander Indians. More inland and extending from Castle Island northward to the lakes on the east side, were the Maguaas or Mohawks and the Iroquois. The Mohawks and the River Indians were bitter enemies, numerous battles being fought between them for the supremacy, victory in wanton fickleness smiling first on one and then on the other. Brown, in his history of Schoharie county, and Rev. Charles Rockwell ‘The Dutch Dominie of the Catskills’ in his "Catskill Mountains and The Region Around," as well as other early historians, relate that the final battle was fought on an island near the mouth of the Catskill Creek for the honor of naming a head chief from their own tribe to preside over all. The battle raged for a whole day with changing fortune until evening, when the Mohegans obtaining the advantage, the Mohawks retired to another island and resorted to stratagem. They built numerous fires and hanging their blankets upon the bushes, draped them so as to represent men on guard, and dressing the fallen trees and logs in the same manner to represent a sleeping army, they awaited in ambush the expected attack. The Mohegans falling into the snare and believing the Mohawks to be off their guard and sleeping, dropped quickly into the river and silently swam to the island of their enemies, forming on the dark beach and with hideous yells and whoops, making a terrific onslaught upon the supposed sleeping camp. The trap laid for them by the Mohawks was successful, the bright fires disclosing them plainly to their foes, who shot from their ambush and then fell upon them with knife and tomahawk. The Mohegans were defeated with severe loss, and finding themselves unable to continue the struggle further, a treaty of peace was made by the terms of which the Mohawks were to elect the King, whom the Mohegans were to reverence and furthermore to call them, as a title of honor, "Uncle," for evermore. The war chief of the Mohegans, he who had led his tribe to victory in the earlier battle and headed them in their disastrous attack upon the sham camp, was called "Wanatuska," or Black Thunder. He was an old warrior long respected in his tribe for his wisdom and bravery, and loved for his misfortunes and sorrows, his wife and three sons having been killed in a night raid and surprise upon the village by their fierce neighbors, the Iroquois. Not only had they been killed, but their scalps had been torn from them and carried off by their exultant enemies. The old chief had refused to be comforted or select a new wife from either the many maidens offered from among his own tribe or neighboring ones, preferring to share his wigwam alone with his only remaining child, a boy who bid fair to inherit all those qualities of bravery in the field and wisdom in the council that had so endeared the father to his tribe. Wanatuska was the sole tutor of his boy, perfecting him in the use of such simple instruments of war-fare as was then employed, and ever instilling in his young mind a hatred for the destroyers of his home. In the morning when the old chief arose, he would say to the sleeping boy beside him, "Arise Lotowanka, the moon has gone to sleep deep in the great salt water. The sun is here. Many scalps are swinging from the scalp pole of our lodge, but I see none of the dogs of Iroquois among them." In the evening as they sat before their humble meal, he would say, "Our wigwam is empty. Old age comes upon me with each night. The leaves are dropping from the tree and soon the blasted trunk will fall and you will be alone. Then when the soft spring winds blow so still and warm and melt the snow upon the Onteoras, our mountains of the sky, thy heart will melt beneath the warm love light of some dark eyed maiden of our tribe, and yearning in thy solitude for love and home, you will forget as does the mountain brook its course when filled with winter's melting snow, the trail that leads towards the setting sun. The dower for thy wife should be four scalps torn from the Iroquois with thy own hand. My son, let no maiden raise the curtain of thy lodge till then, for I shall watch thee from the spirit land." It is not to be wondered at, that the young Lotowanka grew up full of hatred for the despoilers of his home and with a firm resolve of fulfilling his father's commands and his own desires. The old chief had taught his son to shoot the arrow and wield the tomahawk and knife, and with knee pressed hard upon the prostrate body of a fallen foe, the grim old chief had taught his boy to tear the reeking scalp from bleeding crown. Instructed by his father he had passed through the trying ordeal deemed necessary to prove a warrior and awaited with impatience the opportunity to win the eagle feather of a brave. The dispute between the Mohegans and Mohawks over which tribe should elect a common King or Sachem had waxed warmer and warmer, until the hot bloods of each tribe resolved on war. The tomtom had been beaten and the weird scalp dance had been danced in the Mohegan village. The war party formed with Black Thunder as chief, included Lotowanka and nearly all of the best warriors of the tribe. One by one they had fallen into place and bedecked in feathers and painted with all the hideous arm of savagery, had wended their way from out the little clearing that surrounded the village and silently treading in each other’s footprints, disappeared in the dark foliage of the surrounding forest. We will not follow them on their way as they moved like a huge serpent in and out among the trees along the trail that led to the river. Arriving there they found their enemies encamped and waiting for them on Wanton Island, near the present village of Catskill. Crossing the river in canoes some distance below and passing through the woods along the west bank until they reached a spot some distance above the island, they threw themselves into the river, and taking advantage of the current soon effected a landing, and a terrible battle ensued in which the Mohawks were beaten and fled at nightfall to a neighboring island. There they plotted and carried out the stratagem told in the opening notes. Young Lotowanka had fought with great bravery, earning from his old father a grunt of satisfaction, accompanied by the single word, "Good," and exhausted by the long march and struggle that had followed, had sought a place to rest amid the slain that lay upon the battle field. In the distance could be plainly seen the camp fires of the Mohawks, and by the light they shed could faintly be discerned the forms of the sleeping warriors as they lay shrouded in their blankets, while here and there the upright, motionless figure of a sentinel silhouetted against the light.