hv_sansomj_letters_1796_045

Canadarquai, 7th. Mo. My dear Friends, We arrived here on the 12th. and the next day but one I wrote you the particulars of our journey from Oneida Farm, in great haste, to go by the celebrated Land Jobber Phelps, who was setting out directly, but he is not gone yet: for as the Indians say, once he was a light Man, and could go over the mountains from Conewaugus to Jenuchshadega but now he's grown so fat and heavy there's no moving him from home. The Country surrounding the beautiful Lakes that connect these Parts with the Mohawk and the Susquehanna, abounds with Sugar Maple and almost every Family making sugar supplies itself with ease in early in the Spring with very little labour; They are also and is plentifully supplied with salt from a marshy Lake near Onondago, where several hundred bushels are made in a day, and sold at the moderate price of five shillings. It is also remarkable for the remains of extensive Fortifications, inclosing several acres with mounds of earth, overgrown with the largest timber, which bespeak a degree of labour antiquity and population unaccountable upon the present circumstances of the Natives, who can give no account of their origin. Their mode of carrying on war was by surprise and retreat, in which they often suffered amazing extreme hardships to gratify prove their courage, or gratify their revenge. The Five Nations have been in the practice time out of mend, untill a few years since, of going almost every summer several many hundred miles against the Cherokees, on the borders of Carolina and Georgia, to signalize their valour Some old Men have been pointed out to us who have been on this bloo