Three Years on the Plains | Page 3

should kill and eat them, so the beaver is hunted for his skin, and his meat is eaten as often as he suffers himself to be caught.

DESPOILING THE GRAVE OF AN OLD ONONDAGA CHIEF.
On-on-da-ga was the name of an Indian chief, who died about the year 1830, near Elbridge, a town lying north of Auburn, in the State of New York. This Indian belonged to the Onondagas, one of the tribes called "the Six Nations of the IROQUOIS" (E-ro-kwa), a confederacy consisting of the MOHAWKS, ONEIDAS, SENECAS, CAYUGAS, ONONDAGAS, and TUSCARORAS or CHIPPEWAS. I was a lad at the time of this chief's death, having my home in Auburn, New York, where my father was the physician and surgeon to the State prison. My father had a cousin, who was also a doctor and surgeon, a man of stalwart frame, raised in Vermont, named Cogswell. He was proud of his skill in surgery, and devoted to the science. He had learned of the death of the Onondaga chief, and conceived the idea of getting the body out of the grave for the purpose of dissecting the old fellow,--that is, of cutting him up and preserving his bones to hang up on the walls of his office; of course, there was only one way of doing it, and that was by stealing the body under cover of night, as the Indians are very superstitious and careful about the graves of their dead. You know they place all the trappings of the dead--his bow and arrows, tomahawk and wampum--in the grave, as they think he will need them to hunt and supply his wants with on his journey to the happy hunting-grounds. They place food and tobacco, with other things, in the grave.
Dr. Cogswell took two men one night, with a wagon, and as the distance was only twelve miles, they performed the journey and got back safely before daylight, depositing the body of the Indian in a barn belonging to a Mr. Hopkins, in the north part of the town. It was soon noised about town what they had done, and there lived a man there who threatened to go and inform the tribe of the despoiling of the chief's grave, unless he was paid thirty dollars to keep silence. The doctor, being a bold, courageous man, refused to comply with a request he had no right to make, because it was an attempt to "levy black mail," as it is called.
Sure enough, he kept his word, and told the Onondagas, who were living between Elbridge and Syracuse. They were very much exasperated when they heard what had been done, and threatened vengeance on the town where the dead chief lay.
The tribe was soon called together, and a march was planned to go up to Auburn by the way of Skaneateles Lake,--a beautiful sheet of water lying six miles east of Auburn. They encamped in the pine woods,--a range called the "pine ridge,"--half-way between the two villages, and sent a few of the tribe into Auburn for the purpose of trading off the baskets they had made for powder and shot; but the real purpose they had in view was to find out just where the body was (deposited in the barn of Mr. Josiah Hopkins), intending to set fire to the barn and burn the town, rescuing the dead chief at the same time.
For several days the town was greatly excited, and every fireside at night was surrounded with anxious faces; the children listening with greedy ears to narratives of Indian cruelties perpetrated during the war with the English about Canada, in 1812; and I remember how it was told of a cruel Indian named Philip, that he would seize little babes from their mothers' arms and dash out their brains against the wall! No wonder we dreamed horrid dreams of the dusky faces every night.
At that time the military did not amount to much. There was a company of citizen soldiers there, called the "AUBURN GUARDS," numbering about forty men, with a captain whose name I forget, but who became suddenly seized with the idea of his unfitness to defend the town against the threatened Indian invasion, and did the wisest thing he could, and resigned his commission on a plea of "sudden indisposition." The doctor walked the street as bold as a lion, but acting also with the shrewd cunning of the fox. And now, my young friends, instead of weaving a bloody romance in the style of the "Dime Novels," depicting the terrible massacre, which might have happened, with so great a wrong to provoke the hostility of the poor Indians, I am about to tell you how the town was saved, and how the doctor outwitted them. If you pause here, and guess, I think you