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2-^ Fig. 5. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE ITHACA REGION. Idealized Cross-Section Diagram Relations of Showing Preglacial, Glacial Erosion, Interglacial and Post Glacial Channels of Side Valley in the Ithaca Region Fig. 6. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE ITHACA REGION. (See page 21) I Photograph of relief models showing creation of proglacial lakes in the Cayuga Inlet and Six Mile Valleys by the ice carrier to North flowing drainage. From left to right: (a) Position of Ice Front at time when Morainic Loops- were being built on the East-West Divides, (b) Slight retreat of ice and development of Separate Proglacial Lakes, (c) Further melting back of ice and development of Combined Lake Ithaca outflowing through the Six Mile Valley. NUMBER )% 1815THE ITHACA JOURNAL CENTENNIAL 1915 COREORGANEL: THE FALL OF THE LONG HOUSE A STORY OF 1779 Revolution- = By Wm. Elliot Griffis, D.D., L.H.D., Author of The Pathfinders of the Even men and girls knew why. pelt, kept in the council hall, sacred to young THERE was disquiet in the Long the Spirit ancestor, declared. Before its Scarcely a score of moons had waned, HoUse, that stretched from the suspended on two poles, were the since the runners from Oriskany hfought Hudson to the Niagara. Some door, bodies of two white dogs. Spotlessly the tidings of the great slaughter of braves in the faces of mothers and old men thing Herkimer's riflemen. Even clean, save for the gash of the sacrificial by yet, the told the little ones of anxiety and fear knife of the medicine man, these were Long House re-echoed the woe of mothers, for the absent fathers and sons. The victims for the propitiation of the Great widows and daughters. They mourned village of outside the Coreorganel (just ' Spirit. Out of their snow white skin, he for sons, husbands and brothers slain in limits of the present city of Ithaca) was would make a poUch for his tobacco, the ravines of the Mohawk Valley; while stripped of its braves, for all able to bear daily burned in the sunset fires, which women, desolate and childless", yearned arms were away over the hills to the his children nightly saw in the west. fiercely.for white pappooses to adopt and southwest. A great host of pale faces Haply in its soothing smoke, Manitou rear in their place. Besides, had not were coming with shining muskets, each might forget his anger and in complacency King George, the Great Father over the with a death-dealing lance at the end hear the warrior's prayer and drive back sea, sent word, with m&ny a gift to re called a bayonet. Big guns, drawn by the white invader. inforce his decree, to destroy his rebellious horses and on wheels, that spoke thunder Who and whence were these pale faced children ? Had not his commands been and scattered iron, were with them. The children, who had already forgotten their accompanied with barrels Of fire water, Long House was to be forced open. Per cradles, and the faces and bosoms, of heaps upon heaps of guns, and hatchets haps its hearthfires were to be put out, their own mothers? They remembered for the braves, and mirrors, beads and leaving only cold ashes; forever. From now naught of fathers or kin. In trinkets for his forest daughters ? Were wrathful happy the Great Father,_ Washington, oblivion of the past, they had responded not all the warriors of* the Six Nations had gone out the decree, that the Iroquois quickly to the new environment of ele loyal, as were their ancestors, to "the castles must be destroyed and their corn Corlaer" mental life in the forest, so rich in. childish covenant of and the Great fields made desolate. Weeks before, joys. How near to the primitive is the Father beyond sea ? swift runners had borne the news. heart of the< child! So, late in the month of flowers, in Sultry was the long summer day of the Who ? The bloodspotted trees and June, 1778, after uprearing .the sacrifice white man's Sabbath, the 29th of August, grass of Wyoming and Cherry Valley of the white dogs to Manitou and d long 1779, but to the red child it was one like could tell. If rustling leaves could trans and exhausting War dance to fire the pas all the others. The corn was in the milk mute whispers, or soughing boughs sions of hatred and inspire courage, the and the children were playing beneath forfes^ become articulate speech, the story would braves slept till the sun lit again the the long green streamers of the leaves. be quickly told and the mystery solved- valley. After morning food, the women Yet at the first rising of the afternoon No old home could tell the tale, for roofs more insistent than the men, they all lake breeze, the Tuscarora village (where and walls had long since disappeared from moved to the grove of birch: Skilfully today stands the Fleming school house, earth in fire, into invisible ether. Many the young athletes climbed the trees to near the tracks of the Lehigh Valley rail a grass ' blade was incarnadined, on those girdle with knife or hatchet the trunk, road) was already in cooling shadow. fateful days when the tomahawk cleft while below near the ground they made Shafts of golden sunlight lay level, from its way into the brain. Many a leaf, the corresponding circlet. Sliding slowly hill-crest to hill-crest, over-roofing the clipped by stray bullets fell, while those down the face of the tree, lowered with shaded valley as with rafters of gold. The left unscathed on the parent trunk looked strong rope of twisted thongs by two pumpkin blossoms had passed their glory down on flames and fields dotted with strong-armed comrades from above, the and had shrivelled up, giving place to the dead. Yet good Mother Nature, slit the bark along and down. the deep green globes, now already older even than flesh and kind to Squaws chanted a song as they peeled touched with flushes of bright yellow. blood, the human babe, as to the whelp and the silvery skin of the tree, leaving the The children, white and red, had come fledgling, sang new lullabies. Orphans trunk naked and bleeding. Already in out from the leafy aisles of the corn fields, were quickly soothed in the Indian's! the the men had driven double where tassels and silk were in amorous earth, home and the little white captives lines of stakes, a boat's width apart and maturity. Though they had cast aside promptly responded to new joys. twenty feet in length, tapering at the ends. their green garlands and sashes, the Odd or grotesque seemed the spoil from In this bed. and enclosure, throwing the youngsters were still playing. Alike the homes on the Susquehanna, once i bark up and it around, as boys and girls practised the pageant of joyous, belly folding even though scant with the comforts of one would a bed blanket, reversing the returning victorious warriors met by wel | civilization. The butt of a jibe of old relations of outer and left squaws. Old men looked ^many inner, they coming on, ordain-' Bquaw and warrior, even a horse might' the curly and silvery fibre their redstone while the inside, smoking pipes, trees' laugh at the oddity of a gridiron hung! ing the smooth side of the cuticle women prepared the evening meal of fish, cheek by jowl with a gold laced a to glide over the waters. Then they parched grain and tender herbs. coat, woman's garment with a crockery quickly wrought to change birch bark, How and why were pale-faced little pitcher, bhat had survived all accidents of pack- from the tree's immovable integument, folks blossoming in the wilderness ? Why dorse, forest and canoe journey. to the most mobile of all primitive craft. here boys and girls baptized at Christian Only one white maiden, already sought for The women and the common workmen Fonts, now shod with moccasins and ar wifehood by a brave now on the of the fitted in the pole frame, rayed in fringed buckskin and bead- war-path, tribe, long was old enough to remember dimly her fixed the sewed them up with decorated garb ? Why here a white girl thwarts, "" rirlhood's sunny days/now into! fibres furnished the forest and smoothed of maturer The receding by yeafs7 ^wearing beaded had1 the deeps of memory. she the gunwales. The rounded the fillet and feather of marriageable maiden Already experts for seven years worn both the moccasin with prow and stern un hood ? A score of captives from the set double-ender, \ and the forehead band of Indian together the tlements had made their home in this virginity distinguished, and stitched dead' V And why that ghostly array of jointures. With guns melted in the fire, valley-village, of twenty long houses of trees the river side in the forest en waterproof their by caulked and .made timber and bark, which had sent out they virons of the village ? Their trunks in craft. a of it was able in six-score fighting men now on the war Now, thing life, Bpectral white and the dead birch leaves the master's hands to dance on the bil path. The community boasted in all of above, like funeral trappings, the the shoot over rapids, seven hundred souls. So the notched hanging lows, float with tide, once fair trees were now only timber. or bear of pelt, sticks and fringed lines on the painted freight, warriors, game, Not skinned had been the old, but alive, they or spoil, while ever responding to murdered in their prime.

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