_CHAPTER I._


The territory comprised within the present boundaries of the town of
Oneonta, previous to the war of the Revolution, was little known
except as the scene of many a sanguinary conflict between different
Indian tribes which contended with each other for its possession. The
Delawares, whose home was on the river bearing their name, had been in
peaceful possession of the upper Susquehanna valley from time
immemorial; but long before the outbreak of hostilities between
England and her trans-Atlantic colonies, the Tuscaroras, a warlike
tribe from Virginia, wandered up the Susquehanna from Chesapeake Bay
and laid claim to the upper portion of the valley as their
hunting-grounds. From that time, with brief and uncertain intervals of
peace, up to the close of the Revolutionary struggle, the war between
the contending tribes was waged with relentless fury. Many a proud
chief and valiant warrior fell beneath the tomahawk and became the
victim of the merciless scalping-knife.

Eventually the strife between these aboriginal tribes terminated in
favor of the invaders, or Tuscaroras, who thereupon allied themselves
with the Six Nations occupying the more northern and western portions
of the state. They formed small settlements, one within the present
town of Oneonta, at the mouth of the Otego creek, and another at or
near the mouth of the Charlotte. The former was on the farm now owned
and occupied by Andrew Van Woert; the other on what is known as the