On a
pleasant, warm day, June 29, 1912, Buffalo's mayor, other city
officials, a trustee of the Thomas Indian Orphan asylum; the NYS
archaeologist (who was a full-blooded Seneca}. John D. Larkin, Sr. and
a handful of others assembled at the Seneca Indian burial ground
located on Buffum Street, off Seneca Street, three miles from the
Larkin Soap Company. A chorus of Indian children sang and speeches were
made.
The occasion was the
dedication of this almost two acre parcel of land in the midst of a
residential neighborhood . It had been the burial ground for the
Buffalo Creek village of Indians. The village had originally been
settled by Senecas in 1780. Most of the village land had been lost to
the whites in a treaty signed in 1838, in a transaction that Mayor
Grover Cleveland later, in 1882, opined was likely illegal. Famous
orator and Seneca Chief, Red Jacket, had been furious, believing that
the Christian missionaries who had come to the village to establish a
school, had misled and influenced the Senecas to give up their land in
the WNY area and move to land in Cattaraugus County.
History of Indian Tribes in NA
Nevertheless,
the land was sold to the Ogden Land Company in 1842. The Senecas were
given two years to relocate after receiving what was a pittance for the
value of their homes. A runaway black slave, Humphrey Tolliver, with
his Irish wife became the only remaining residents. It was Tolliver who
took a proprietary interest in what remained, the small burial ground,
maintaining it and doing burials of white people, though not in a way
approved by the Dept. of Health.
A lovely, but disturbing, description of the cemetery was published in
the " New York Evening Post", May 24, 1852 as quoted by Glenn R.P.
Atwell in his article entitled "The Indian Church Cemetery" (WNYGS
Journal, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3):
"By
perseverance ... I succeeded...in getting to the old burial place
of the Senecas, for I had nearly missed it. .. Jumping over a
broken rail fence, and following a little foot-path running by the
side of a potato patch, a few steps brought me to one of the most
beautiful sites in the world for a quiet rest 'after life's fitful
fever:' a pleasant opening rather more elevated than the other
part of the field...here and there were
scattered large oaks, which under a high wind were swaying their
branches to and fro ... Graves were thickly sown about: some
marked by boards, others by the swelling of the turf; four had
marble slabs ... The most prominent of all, and standing
unenclosed - was "In memory of the white woman, Mary
Jemison"... A little beyond ... was that of Red Jacket, the
celebrated orator and chief. I had been told that the stone was very
much mutilated by visitors, who were carrying it away piecemeal, but
its actual condition showed a stretch of this feature of Vandalism in
our American manners, I was totally unprepared for."
Ogden Land Co. sold the
burial ground for $500 to William Little in 1887, who, in turn, sold it
to Allen Strickler I 1894. By then both of its famous
permanent "residents", Red Jacket, who died in 1830, and Mary Jemison,
who died in 1833, had had their graves plundered by "souvenir
collectors." Many other Seneca's graves had been dug up. Red
Jacket's remains had been exhumed in 1852 and laid in the attic of the
home of Red Jacket's stepdaughter for many years, till eventually
recovered in 1883 by the Buffalo Historical Society which had them
stored in a vault at Western Savings Bank for five years till reburied
at Forest Lawn .
William Letchworth. The
Polyman
Jemison, who had been a
neighbor and friend of Buffalo industrialist and philanthropist,
William Letchworth , (who owned a large amount of property spanning the
Genesee River and its three water falls and who had built a home there)
had returned to the Buffalo Creek community before she died, suffered
her remains removed from the Buffum Street site in 1874 and reburied
near Letchworth's home, Glen Iris. The exhumation of bodies of about
700 other Senecas that had been buried at the Buffalo Creek cemetery,
had been ordered by Mr. Strickler, who then owned that property. They
were reinterred in 1893 at Howard Cometary on Ridge Road.
John Larkin had been horrified by this history, and was very concerned
that the Seneca's legacy in their Buffalo Creek community not be
entirely lost. Why did he care?
First of all, the horror of such lack of respect being shown to the
Seneca's who had lived so near to what had become the Larkin Soap Co.
and the likely news of Strickler's removal of the graves and his
activity selling off parcels of the village land for residential
development, may well have motivated him. An article in the Buffalo
Express in 1897 had urged the City of Buffalo to procure the cemetery
and incorporate it into the Buffalo Park System., arguing, " No other
place in Buffalo rivals this in the wealth and significance of early
associations." No action was taken. Further attempts were made in 1902
and 1905, to no avail. Fearing that, with the graves gone, Strickler
might begin selling cemetery land, John, quite likely aware of the
earlier attempts to protect the burial site, purchased it, cleaning up
and grading the site.
John may also have been troubled from a more spiritual base. He may
have been aware of the sacred nature that Indian beliefs gave to
particular places like landscapes, geological formations, bodies of
water, and animals as well as to burial sites. Jake Page, in his
article, " Sacred Grounds: Landscapes as a Living Spirit," published in
"Native Peoples Magazine," May-June 2007 issue, notes:
"There is a long history of heedless despoliation of
sacred Native lands...While all land is
sacred, ancestral grounds are particularly so and now are
oft 'smothered by cities, housing tracts and highways or
fouled by strip mines, chemical plants, clear cut forests and polluted
streams...Tens of thousands of such holy places are gone, but
thousands remain- modest little shrines here and
there...including ancient burial sites."
(Interestingly, and as a
side note, Page cites as an example of hope given by the state and
federal statutes enacted in the 1960's, the designation of Bear Butte
in S. Dakota as a National Monument. The extraordinary stone walls of
the butte bearing ancient carved petroglyphs had been a sacred site to
several tribes whose members made treks to visit it frequently year
round. Its status has now been wiped away in a moment with the
scrawling signature of a President hell bent to please the mining
industry.) Forgive me, I digress, but the rage I feel made me do it.
Just maybe John was sympathetic to that ethic of native
Americans.
A more likely motivation may have been the history of his wife,
Frances' family with the Senecas. John's biographer, his grandson,
Daniel Larkin, writes that John and "Frank," as his wife was called,
had a keen interest in the early history of Buffalo. Frank's mother,
Juliana, had taught Indian children at the mission school at Buffalo
Creek Indian Reservation. Frank's father, Silas Hubbard, was a
physician who regularly drove his buggy out the unpaved Seneca Street
to care for his patients on the reserve.Dan Larkin says that "the
stories of Red Jacket and Mary Jemison were a part of the lore" that
both John and Frank would have grown up hearing. Even though much of
the desecration of the graves had occurred years before, according to
Dan, both felt strongly that the site should be set aside as a
memorial. Both executed the Deed conveying the site to the City of
Buffalo with the proviso that it maintain the site as a public park
honoring the Senecas.
Though Frank did not attend the dedication ceremony, it may have been
that she sympathized with the Senecas, many of whom were still angry
about the removal of their ancestors' bodies. The few Senecas who
attended the dedication ceremony mostly stood apart from the rest of
the attendees and did not actively participate.
Another consideration that may have influenced the Larkins to make this
extraordinary gift might be the history of the Irish immigrants who had
populated what are now the First and Fourth wards. Catholic Irishmen
had escaped from their homeland in droves because of persecution by the
Protestants, arriving on the shores of the U.S. beginning in the early
1800's.
latinamericanstudies.org
Many literally dug their way
to Buffalo as laborers manually excavating the Erie Canal. Once in
Buffalo penniless, they took whatever work they could find. With the
canal in place in 1825, boats bringing grain from the Midwest required
unloading here. Soon grain elevators were erected which required labor
as well in the form of grain-scoopers. Jobs involved hard work, long
hours, danger and low pay. Making their lives even more miserable, most
jobs were handed out day by day by reporting to a tavern where
assignments were given out on a 'merit' system, i.e. how much money of
your day's pay did you drink before heading home. What little was left
was often stolen by thugs who preyed on the drunken workers. It took
the Great Strike of 1899 where the Irish strikers were supported by
Bishop James Quigley, to stop such predation.
Since John had been born and raised at 13 Clinton Street (later became
the location of the Lafayette Hotel), and later lived on Oak and then
Elm Streets, till about 1865, he was close enough to the old city line
to have likely become aware of the Irish who lived just east of him,
and learn their history of hardship and the help given them by the
Senecas. This would have sensitized him and engendered compassion
The Irish were considered the worst kind of human being. Timothy
Shannon, in his historic fiction trilogy, writes, "To be Catholic in
Buffalo was a burden and to be Irish Catholic was a damnable blight."
The Irish immigrants were forced to live outside of the then city
limits. Heading east, the boundary was a few blocks from Main Street,
so they built cabins initially and then modest homes along the dirt
Seneca trail that led to the Buffalo Creek Seneca reserve. As the
population grew, they spread out to what is now N. Division and to
Exchange Street and over the old bed of the Buffalo River to the marshy
area towards the docks.
Timothy Shannon, in his well-researched historic fiction trilogy, Vol.
I, "Da's Shillelagh: Tale of the Irish in the Niagara Frontier
Frontier," describes the heartbreak of life for these Irish immigrants.
As they first settled in what was then woods along the Seneca trail,
they had little money, no food, no gardens nor livestock and no hope..
It was the Senecas who came to their rescue, bringing them baskets of
food, helping them plant gardens of corn, beans and other vegetables.
They helped build their cabins and cared for them when they were ill.
Mary Jemison had been known to these families.
Black Rock
Historical Society
When the War of 1812 broke
out and Buffalo was invaded from Canada by the British and Canadian
Mohawk Indians, the Senecas initially took the position that they would
stay neutral rather than fight their "brothers", the Mohawks. But when
Buffalo had been burned and the blood-hungry enemy started down the
Seneca trail to burn homes and kill families, the Senecas came to their
aid' fighting off the enemy and providing food and shelter to the
decimated families who had lived along the Seneca trail.
The great potato famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1855 brought 10,000
more Irishmen to Buffalo, many of them settling in the areas of those
Irish who had come before. They and the Germans who followed a few
years later provided a vast reservoir of workers upon which the LCO
drew beginning when the company began business in 1875. As John built
up his company buildings on over 60 acres of land between Seneca, Swan
and Exchange Streets beginning in 1897, he surrounded himself with
hard-working Irish people, both men and women, unskilled and skilled,
who reminded him of the hardships they and their families before them
had endured. Perhaps it was that knowledge that drove a compassionate
John to provide so many benefits for his employees that were unheard of
till then. And made him feel kindly towards protecting the Seneca
legacy three miles away on Buffum Street.
I cannot resist inserting here a story included in an article by Dick
Burke published in the Buffalo Evening News on August 25, 1972. It is
about an incident occurring (supposedly) right outside our
building. "No story of the Hydraulics would be complete
without the one about the old Irish cop who found a body on Van
Rensselaer near Seneca. He went to the call box and told his Seventh
Precinct desk lieutenant about it. Stumped when asked for the spelling
of Van Rensselaer Street, he hung up and, as the story goes, carried
the body down to Larkin Street, not only reaching a name he could
manage but adroitly dropping the mystery in the old South Division
Precinct."
One other factor may have influenced John. Buffalo has always been a
"small town," and by that I mean, people are apt to know or be aware of
each other. William Letchworth was a wealthy industrialist who
co-owned Pratt and Letchworth and Buffalo Malleable Ironworks. As
mentioned previously, he had been a neighbor and friend to Mary Jemison
and had had her remains reburied near his home in what is now
Letchworth State Park. His life was quite involved with the
Senecas both in Buffalo and in the Castile area. One of his
major philanthropic ventures was supporting the Thomas Indian Orphan
Asylum on the Cattaraugus Reservation until Letchworth's death in 1910.
Interestingly, at the 1912 ceremony dedicating the Buffum Street park,
a chorus of Indian children sang and Henry R. Howland, a trustee of the
Thomas Indian Orphan Asylum spoke..
Both Letchworth and Larkin were simultaneously members of the Ellicott
Club, a businessman's social organization.
Letchworth had been very concerned about the welfare of immigrants
settling near his factory in N. Buffalo and monitored conditions in his
factory and in the community, making changes to ease the plight of
these newcomers.
Though I am unable to find a direct link between these two wonderful
men, it is unlikely that they did not know each other. It is highly
likely that Larkin viewed the older gentleman as an example of a great
and socially conscious business man, a community leader, a
philanthropist. Letchworth mat have become John's role model. Like
Letchworth, who had donated his thousands of acres land including the
Genesee River's three water falls to be held in perpetuity by the State
of New York as a park for the benefit of everyone; Larkin donated the
Seneca burial site to the City of Buffalo to be maintained as a park in
honor of the Senecas.
So why did John make this wonderful gift? We will never know for sure.
But on that day, June 29, 1912, a small group of people hovered around
a huge boulder that John had had brought from his property in
Queenston, Ontario on which was affixed a bronze plaque in the shape of
a wolf hide. As the mayor, Henry Howland, and other dignitaries spoke,
that day. John stood behind everyone, quiet and unobtrusive. As was his
character, he never sought the limelight.
The plaque read:
"SENECA INDIAN PARK. In this vicinity from 1780 to
1842 dwelt the larger portion of the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois
League. In this enclosure were buried Red Jacket, Mary Jemison, the
White Woman of the Genesee and many of the noted chiefs and leaders of
the nation whose remains have been removed and buried elsewhere. To the
generosity of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Larkin who presented it to the City
of Buffalo is due the preservation of this historic site."
Vandalism did not stop here,
though. In 1990 the plaque was stolen off the stone. On October 22,
1992 another ceremony was held, rededicating the park and the monument,
now graced with a plaque much more securely pinned to the stone.
This ceremony was attended by Larkin grandchildren and Seneca
family members .