Hamilton Spectator
July 2, 1932
In February of this year an exhibition was held in the Ridpath Galleries in Toronto in which among many other relics of the past was shown an ancient stone axe recovered from the soil of a field at Burlington beach (Deonasadeo “where sand forms a bar”) where tradition holds that a sanguinary struggle took place very long time ago between Indian tribes that had lived hitherto in comparative amity in this region. The possessor of this ancient implement of war is John Cartwright Secord, a name, by the way, that recalls, the family that carried on the milling industry of the patriarch William Davis where the water '; falls from the heights at Mount Albion.
One cannot help regretting greatly the lack of foresight on the part of collectors of Indian remains in this district that these were not retained in the community giving housing and guarded afterwards with jealous care. We have it from reliable authority that the late Benjamin E. Charlton (who was an indefatigable collector of relics of the redmen) that he disposed of a roomful of valuable Indian implements and remains to an enterprising American visitor for the sum of five hundred dollars! What those mute memorials of a dead and gone civilization would be worth in cold cash to-day, we do not venture to suggest. Any curator of any museum would mortgage his home to purchase them were they in the market, at this late date.
The showing of the ancient axe, and the specimens thereon in the public press some months ago, led your reviewer to make some investigations with the aid of the capable young ladies in the reference department of the Hamilton public library, and through unearthing elsewhere a measure of material to build up an article or two on what has been called in story and legend The Grasshopper Battle of Burlington Beach.
We have stored in our memory the impression of having seen years ago painting of another traditional conflict between the redmen, from the brush of the imaginative youth who after-wards became one of the noted painters of his time— the late William Blair Bruce, son of the late venerable William Bruce- artist son of an artistic father. It was through the munificence of the Bruce family that this city was made the recipient of the valuable canvasses done by the artist which are hung in the rather shabby rooms of the art gallery of Hamilton, just in rear of the Sun Life building. Some time we hope to be able to present a plate of the picture for the benefit of our readers.
The Legend of the Beach, as the Rev. T. Webster entitled the Grasshopper Battle in his Early Scenes in Canadian Life (contributed to the New Dominion Monthly of 1869), is one that ought to be rehearsed from time to time for the benefit of those who take more than a passing interest in the folklore of what is supposed by the majority of people to be a matter-of-fact countryside. Any who will take the time to delve in the records of the past of this district and province, to say nothing of Canada at large, will soon discover that we are not wanting in authenticated tales of romantic and tragic interest but also in traditions of the aborigines and pioneers that ought to be recalled and stored as rich material for the writers who shall come along in due time and weave them into tales that will put some Canadian man of letters in the same class as the Wizard of the North—Sir Walter Scott. Far off fields of as venture are not laden, of necessity with more wealth than the very acres about us which the redman of old trod before Canada's history was begun and afterward when the stouthearted pioneers laid low the forests and set up their homes and hearths in the wilderness of the Niagara peninsula.
We have told in earlier articles how LaSalle, Dollier and Galinee came to the golden sands of Deonasadeo in the month of September 1669, and how autumn put on her glorious garb to welcome them to the fair waters of Macassa in that memorable year. Long before any white man beached his canoe yonder by the great lake or paddled it to the landing hard by Oaklands generations of redmen had lived and hunted, fought and died in the vicinity of the little lake where nature was open-handed and game abounded, on land, in lake as well as in air. One ought not, ever though he were, able, to offer a learned dissertation, on the Indian tribes who held sway in this territory in the mists of the past. We are told that the great Neuter Nation held the balance of power in the Niagara district were the savage Iroquois utterly destroyed them in succession to the over¬throw of their Huron enemies.
We know that LaSalle was guided hither in 1669 by an Iroquois picked up by him after his visit to the Senecas in what is now New York State. These "wolves of the forest" (as they have been style by some of the severe critics of civilization to which we are such strangers), after the annihilation of the Neuters, had maintained a sort of colony at the head of the lake and came here periodical to hunt and fish when desire of necessity moved them.
The "beach" that separates the great lake from the lesser was a favored place on which to set up the wigwams of the redmen as may be imagined, especially in heated period of midsummer. To this place this place the Indians came in numbers from outlying villages to spend days of rare delight and nights feasting in what was indeed “the happy hunting grounds”. From generation to generation they came as to a sportsman’s paradise to lay low the lordly deer, to possess the slothful bear and to net the magnificent salmon that abounded in the neighborhood. An arrow shot almost at random at a cloud of wild pigeons would be sure to bring birds to the pot of the bowman. Coote's Paradise, in particular, must have been as thickly populated with feathered inhabitants at this time as a congested tenement house in a center of over-population.
Year after year the tribes came up hither to enjoy nature's benefits and share in her manifold bounties and keep the peace between warrior and warrior. One of these held sway over the north shore of the great lake from Deonasadeo to the river we call the Credit—the other occupied the lands that stretched southward from the "beach” to the mouth of the Twenty Mile creek near the village of Jordan. The wives of the hunters dwelt side by side in toler¬ance and the children of the "northerners" and the "southerners" played their Indian games peaceably, while the fathers hunted in the forest or paddled the waters nearby for fish and fowl or, if the weather were hot, slept the sleep of the well-fed under the shade of the abundant trees that skirted the shores of the great and little lakes.
As fate would have it this spirit of neighborliness that had existed between the Indians was to be rudely broken through the spontaneous decision on the part of the chiefs of the two tribes to transfer their habitation for a time to the shining sands of Deonasadeo. The old camping grounds were, therefore, abandoned for the time being and a movement of the occupants made by foot and canoe to the "beach.” As the canoes of the two advancing fleets descried one another there must have been many a guttural exclamation from the paddlers as they drew nearer and nearer. However, there was no overt act committed and the rivals took up by tacit consent camping grounds with a sort of no man’s land between them. The gnarled oaks, that had for long years stood the battle of the elements that from time to time sweet over the prehistoric sands of Deonasadeo afforded some protection from the elements and furnished ample supplies of wood for the cooking and or the great bonfires that made daylight of night.
(Cont.)
July 2, 1932
In February of this year an exhibition was held in the Ridpath Galleries in Toronto in which among many other relics of the past was shown an ancient stone axe recovered from the soil of a field at Burlington beach (Deonasadeo “where sand forms a bar”) where tradition holds that a sanguinary struggle took place very long time ago between Indian tribes that had lived hitherto in comparative amity in this region. The possessor of this ancient implement of war is John Cartwright Secord, a name, by the way, that recalls, the family that carried on the milling industry of the patriarch William Davis where the water '; falls from the heights at Mount Albion.
One cannot help regretting greatly the lack of foresight on the part of collectors of Indian remains in this district that these were not retained in the community giving housing and guarded afterwards with jealous care. We have it from reliable authority that the late Benjamin E. Charlton (who was an indefatigable collector of relics of the redmen) that he disposed of a roomful of valuable Indian implements and remains to an enterprising American visitor for the sum of five hundred dollars! What those mute memorials of a dead and gone civilization would be worth in cold cash to-day, we do not venture to suggest. Any curator of any museum would mortgage his home to purchase them were they in the market, at this late date.
The showing of the ancient axe, and the specimens thereon in the public press some months ago, led your reviewer to make some investigations with the aid of the capable young ladies in the reference department of the Hamilton public library, and through unearthing elsewhere a measure of material to build up an article or two on what has been called in story and legend The Grasshopper Battle of Burlington Beach.
We have stored in our memory the impression of having seen years ago painting of another traditional conflict between the redmen, from the brush of the imaginative youth who after-wards became one of the noted painters of his time— the late William Blair Bruce, son of the late venerable William Bruce- artist son of an artistic father. It was through the munificence of the Bruce family that this city was made the recipient of the valuable canvasses done by the artist which are hung in the rather shabby rooms of the art gallery of Hamilton, just in rear of the Sun Life building. Some time we hope to be able to present a plate of the picture for the benefit of our readers.
The Legend of the Beach, as the Rev. T. Webster entitled the Grasshopper Battle in his Early Scenes in Canadian Life (contributed to the New Dominion Monthly of 1869), is one that ought to be rehearsed from time to time for the benefit of those who take more than a passing interest in the folklore of what is supposed by the majority of people to be a matter-of-fact countryside. Any who will take the time to delve in the records of the past of this district and province, to say nothing of Canada at large, will soon discover that we are not wanting in authenticated tales of romantic and tragic interest but also in traditions of the aborigines and pioneers that ought to be recalled and stored as rich material for the writers who shall come along in due time and weave them into tales that will put some Canadian man of letters in the same class as the Wizard of the North—Sir Walter Scott. Far off fields of as venture are not laden, of necessity with more wealth than the very acres about us which the redman of old trod before Canada's history was begun and afterward when the stouthearted pioneers laid low the forests and set up their homes and hearths in the wilderness of the Niagara peninsula.
We have told in earlier articles how LaSalle, Dollier and Galinee came to the golden sands of Deonasadeo in the month of September 1669, and how autumn put on her glorious garb to welcome them to the fair waters of Macassa in that memorable year. Long before any white man beached his canoe yonder by the great lake or paddled it to the landing hard by Oaklands generations of redmen had lived and hunted, fought and died in the vicinity of the little lake where nature was open-handed and game abounded, on land, in lake as well as in air. One ought not, ever though he were, able, to offer a learned dissertation, on the Indian tribes who held sway in this territory in the mists of the past. We are told that the great Neuter Nation held the balance of power in the Niagara district were the savage Iroquois utterly destroyed them in succession to the over¬throw of their Huron enemies.
We know that LaSalle was guided hither in 1669 by an Iroquois picked up by him after his visit to the Senecas in what is now New York State. These "wolves of the forest" (as they have been style by some of the severe critics of civilization to which we are such strangers), after the annihilation of the Neuters, had maintained a sort of colony at the head of the lake and came here periodical to hunt and fish when desire of necessity moved them.
The "beach" that separates the great lake from the lesser was a favored place on which to set up the wigwams of the redmen as may be imagined, especially in heated period of midsummer. To this place this place the Indians came in numbers from outlying villages to spend days of rare delight and nights feasting in what was indeed “the happy hunting grounds”. From generation to generation they came as to a sportsman’s paradise to lay low the lordly deer, to possess the slothful bear and to net the magnificent salmon that abounded in the neighborhood. An arrow shot almost at random at a cloud of wild pigeons would be sure to bring birds to the pot of the bowman. Coote's Paradise, in particular, must have been as thickly populated with feathered inhabitants at this time as a congested tenement house in a center of over-population.
Year after year the tribes came up hither to enjoy nature's benefits and share in her manifold bounties and keep the peace between warrior and warrior. One of these held sway over the north shore of the great lake from Deonasadeo to the river we call the Credit—the other occupied the lands that stretched southward from the "beach” to the mouth of the Twenty Mile creek near the village of Jordan. The wives of the hunters dwelt side by side in toler¬ance and the children of the "northerners" and the "southerners" played their Indian games peaceably, while the fathers hunted in the forest or paddled the waters nearby for fish and fowl or, if the weather were hot, slept the sleep of the well-fed under the shade of the abundant trees that skirted the shores of the great and little lakes.
As fate would have it this spirit of neighborliness that had existed between the Indians was to be rudely broken through the spontaneous decision on the part of the chiefs of the two tribes to transfer their habitation for a time to the shining sands of Deonasadeo. The old camping grounds were, therefore, abandoned for the time being and a movement of the occupants made by foot and canoe to the "beach.” As the canoes of the two advancing fleets descried one another there must have been many a guttural exclamation from the paddlers as they drew nearer and nearer. However, there was no overt act committed and the rivals took up by tacit consent camping grounds with a sort of no man’s land between them. The gnarled oaks, that had for long years stood the battle of the elements that from time to time sweet over the prehistoric sands of Deonasadeo afforded some protection from the elements and furnished ample supplies of wood for the cooking and or the great bonfires that made daylight of night.
(Cont.)