Has the information you have read thus far changed, in some way, your view of native communities? Provide at least one specific example and citation from the M1 Online Resources to support your opinions.
Yes and No about the changes of native communities. After watching "Oren Lyons the Faithkeeper" I really was able to understand and reflect back. Living in upstate NY my grandmother told me that where I lived Cohoes, NY was named after an Indian tribe the way she explained the story was very interesting I cant remember all of it and I cannot ask again she has passed but the way she said the city I lived in was of how an Indian would talk almost and it opened my eyes because honestly if anyone is around where I live in NY from Cohoes, to Schenectady, to Johnstown if you were to go up RT.7 names of streets Algonquin,
Mohawk, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga is in Cohoes and it is Cayuga Plaza a place for the elderly to reside on their own, and Seneca. Cayuga is right near the Cohoes Falls where the story that my grandmother told me the Indian was in a canoe and named my city. Even turning stone casino it seems no matter where I have traveled in NYS Indians have made their mark and I knew of the story from my grandmother because like I said previously I have some sort of Indian in me but I really never stopped and thought until I entered this class. Honestly and I know we can all say this we all have something we want to learn more about but with our busy, and hectic lives it doesn't happen so taking this class has opened my eyes on all types of views and one happens to be the amount of area they covered here in NY and how I never stopped to think about it.
Oren Lyons the Faithkeeper. Films on Demand.
Films Media Group, 1991.
http://fod.infobase.com.library.esc.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=6775
Oneida Indian Nation. The Oneida Connection. http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/home/content/The-Oneida-Connection-114822254.html
I grew up in Waterford on the other side of the Cohoes falls, and now I currently live on the island of Cohoes. I have heard the same story and found a link that tells the story of a your princes that went over the falls.
ReplyDeleteCity of Cohoes, NY
http://www.cohoes.com/cit-e-access/webpage.cfm?TID=34&TPID=6432 Print | Close
Cohoes Falls
"THE COHOES FALLS"
When looking at the magnificence of the Cohoes Falls one is taken back to a time of grandeur once present in the time of the Iroquois Confederacy . There remains a remnant of their admiration for the Falls in an Indian legend, one of the Hiawatha tales, which is related thusly:
"Once long ago before the White Man came, the land of the trees and rivers was free to all Red Men. Life was good, the Great Spirit smiled, peace reigned in the Wilderness of the Savage. The braves hunted, the squaws labored, as was the way.
Once a young maiden, the beautiful daughter of a chief and the pride of the tribe, was working at the river's bank. She tired in the heat of the day and sought the shade of one bark riding at the water's edge. She sat, and quickly fell into a deep sleep from which no motion of the craft would wake her.
The canoe slipped from its mooring, was caught quickly by the river's swift current, and glided silently toward the white water at the brink of the Falls. The rapids and the tumbling water's roar woke the slumbering maiden. She screamed to no advantage, attempted unsuccessfully to right the bark's course and finally resigned herself to her fate, death at the Fall's edge. The mists covered her, the Falls claimed her, and no remains were ever found.
The Tribe mourned its loss and all Red Men marked this place, for a princess...daughter of a warrior, died there. All called the place Coho, the place of the Falling Canoe."
This legend of the Falls, however, does seem to have some basis for verification. In 1655, a famous Dutch explorer, Adriane Vander Donck, in his Description of New Netherlands retells the incident:
In the area of the great falls of the Macques Kill (Mohawk River) which the Indians name the Cahoos Falls...An occurrence of this kind took place here in our time. An Indian whom I have known accompanied by his wife and child with sixty beaver skins descended the river in his canoe in the spring when the water runs rapid and the current is strongest... This Indian carelessly approached too near the Falls before he discovered the danger, and notwithstanding his utmost exertions to gain the land, his frail bark with all on board was swept over by the rapid current and down the Falls; his wife and child were killed, his bark shattered to pieces, his cargo of furs damaged. But his life was preserved. The Cohoes Falls is one of the Iroquois most sacred sites due to the Peacemaker's miraculous emergence after his plunge into the Falls.