NEW YORK STATE “I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902 “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New York State HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 440,000,000 BCE Origin of the Taconic chain of mountains that now lies to the east of the Hudson River valley. This chain of mountains would be named by Ebenezer Emmons in 1844 — and his correct explanation of this early origin of these mountains would eventuate in his being driven from the state of New York. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT New York State “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1100 In what would become upstate New York, by this point, longhouse construction had begun. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. New York State “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1300 Maize agriculture would be being introduced in what would become upstate New York during the 14th century, producing a population surge in the longhouse villages, and bringing other changes as well. The 14th Century would suffer from four periods during which summer temperatures were markedly cooler than average. (The longest of these four cold spells would last for a couple of decades, from about 1343 to about 1362.) Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The first such overwash fan that has been revealed dates to the period HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1295-1407. NEW ENGLAND CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT New York State “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1350 By this point the longhouse villages in what would become upstate New York had due to the adoption of maize agriculture become considerably larger, and due to increased warfare had needed to be fortified. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New York State HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1400 In what would become upstate New York, ritual cannibalism began (according to newspaper reports this is no longer a local practice). THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New York State HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1450 At some point between this year and 1475, upon a merger between two villages, the Onondaga would become the first recognizable Iroquois tribe of the area that would become upstate New York. All the Iroquoian confederacies (Neutrals, Susquehannock, Huron, and Iroquois) would be in place prior to the first contact with Europeans. The Iroquois were still threatened by the Adirondack, but their bigger problem would be their own constant internal blood feuds and vengeance slayings. NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New York State HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1451 It was possibly in about this year that the Iroquois tribes of the area that would become upstate New York were tugged out of their incessant internal struggles by the appearance of Deganawida (Two River Currents Flowing Together), a Huron who would become famous as the “Peacemaker.” This negotiator apparently was hindered, like Moses, by some sort of language or speech difficulty, but eventually won the support of Ayawentha (He Makes Rivers), an Onondaga who became a war chief among the Mohawk (and who would achieve a posthumous poetic fame as “Hiawatha”).1 The distinguished duo were somehow able to convince the other Iroquois tribes that in order to achieve ascendancy over other redskins, they needed to bring their own incessant internal strugglings to an end. Since the legend has it that Deganawida produced a miracle of blotting out the sun, and since we know that a solar eclipse would have occurred in upstate New York in 1451 if it wasn’t too cloudy that day to be seen, this would be a possible year for the conciliation work that would bring peace and unprecedented prosperity, and political unity and unprecedented military power. At first, the Iroquois would function as two related alliances: the Seneca, Cayuga, and, to a lesser extent, the Onondaga would merge as the western Iroquois while the Mohawk and Oneida would merge as the eastern Iroquois. 1.The life of this politician has been cartoonized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem of 1855, which is approximately as historical as the more recent Disney biography of Pocahontas. Longfellow and Disney were strangely alike: each, pretending to build bridges to understanding, built only walls. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE (Deganawida’s “Great Peace” would never be extended to anyone outside the Ongwi Honwi, superior people, of the Five Nations. From the outside, this “Great Peace” would more resemble a “Great War.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1524 April 17, Thursday: Giovanni da Verrazano entered New York bay to explore the Hudson River. He met a party of natives; relations were amicable. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project New York State HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1525 Portuguese navigator Estêvão Gomes (in Spanish, Estéban Gomés or Gómez, in French, Etienne or Étienne Gomez), explored in his La Anunciada from Cape Charles to Cape Cod and the Hudson River, Delaware River, and Connecticut River. Along the coast he captured enough natives that at least 58 would survive, although the Spanish would criticize these slaves as too thin to be of much use to anyone. He sailed up the Hudson far enough to be certain that it would not lead to China. CAPE COD: The “Biographie Universelle” informs us that “An ancient manuscript chart drawn in 1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmographer, has preserved the memory of the voyage of Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by Charles the Fifth]. One reads in it under (au dessous) the place occupied by the States of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Terre d’Etienne Gomez, qu’il découvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne Gomez, which he discovered in 1525).” This chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar in the last century. The manuscript diary of his voyage would be published in 1529 by Diego Ribeiro of the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, with a map in which the present seaboard of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island is marked “Land of Esteban Gomez, discovered by him in 1525, by order of His Majesty; abundance of trees, game, salmon, turbot, and soles, but no gold is found.” HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1565 In what would become New York, this is the approximate point at which the Seneca in the western Finger Lakes began branching off, and migrating both to the northeast and the northwest. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1570 In what eventually would become upstate New York, the Huron prophet and philosopher Deganawidah, assisted by Ha-yo-went’-ha (Hiawatha), united the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca tribes into an Iroquois Confederacy. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1600 New York: Population of Algonkin (Algonquin) tribes was about 6,000. The approximate total population of Paumanok Long Island’s Metoac tribes was 10,000. A total of 13 tribes lived on the island. The population of the five nations of the Iroquois was somewhere under 20,000. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1603 While bands of runaway slaves in Colombia were well armed with arquebuses, Spanish soldiers report that they were more dangerous when armed with bows. HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1604 King Henry of Navarre granted to a favorite all North American lands north of the 40th parallel (New France). HDT WHAT? INDEX NEW YORK STATE NEW YORK STATE 1606 July 15, Tuesday (Old Style): Rembrandt van Rijn, painter, was born in Leiden, Netherlands.