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The Oneida Carry: A Timeline of a Portage Trail in Colonial and Revolutionary New York
The Oneida Carry connected the Mohawk River, which runs east to the Hudson, with Wood Creek, which runs west into Oneida Lake and, through the Oswego River, to Lake Ontario. It was the second shortest route from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes, after the St. Lawrence, which the French held until 1760. A National Park Service article from Fort Stanwix National Monument walks through its history.
A sculpture at the center of the Oneida Carry honors the early Oneida inhabitants (National Park Service).
The place
The headwaters of the Mohawk flow south and then east; where the river joins the Hudson it forms the only natural break in the Appalachian Mountains. Wood Creek flows south, then west into Oneida Lake. The gap between them became known as the Oneida Carry, in reference to the local people, and to tell it from another large portage near the Champlain Valley. Other names were the Carrying Place, the "Trow Plat" in Dutch, and the Great Carry. The portage was short when spring floods filled both streams and much longer in a dry fall, when a traveler might have to walk miles to find water deep enough to launch a bateau. Early roads were mere ruts, so rivers were the main highways, and bateaux could carry several tons. Evidence suggests Native Americans moved into the area around 800 C.E., and oral history says the Oneida became the leading people there in the late 1500s.
A projectile point from the Archaic period, found in an excavation in 2003, shows Native use of the land before European contact (National Park Service).
A timeline
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1614 | The Dutch build Fort Nassau, replaced by Fort Orange in 1618, to control trade into the Mohawk Valley |
| 1634 | A Dutch trading party of three men, led by Harmen Meyndersten van den Bogaert, reaches the Oneida's main village, the first recorded European journey into the center of what became Rome, New York |
| 1655 | A French Jesuit mission opens in Onondaga territory; it is abandoned in 1658 after Mohawk threats |
| 1664 | The Dutch colony becomes British New York, leaving the Carry a loose border with New France |
| 1705 | The Oriskany Patent grant of 32,000 acres mentions the "Oneida Carrying Place," the first record of the name Oneida Carry |
| 1713–1722 | The Tuscarora move near the Carry and are accepted as the "Sixth" nation |
| 1755 | During the French and Indian War, British forts rise along the Carry, among them Fort Williams and Fort Bull, with 500 to 1,000 troops posted there. Fort Bull is destroyed in a French raid on March 27, 1756, and in August 1756 the British destroy their works and retreat |
| 1758 | Brig. Gen. John Stanwix is ordered to build a larger fort at the Carry. The first log of Fort Stanwix is laid on August 26, and it is defensible by November. William Johnson promised the Oneida that it would be torn down after the war |
| 1768 | A congress at Fort Stanwix moves the colonial boundary far west of the line royal authorities had drawn, opening more Native land than most nations would accept |
| 1776 | American troops reoccupy the site. The new fort is named Fort Schuyler in August |
| 1777 | A British, German, Mohawk, Seneca and Great Lakes force of about 2,000 under Brig. Gen. Barry St. Leger marches on the fort, but trees felled across Wood Creek, a failed militia relief attempt that cost many lives, and word that more Continentals under Benedict Arnold were coming made it retreat in late August |
| 1779 | An expedition from the fort destroys the Onondaga's principal village; many flee to Oneida territory as refugees |
| 1781 | The garrison is withdrawn, ending the Revolutionary military use of the Carry |
| 1783 | George Washington tours the Carry |
| 1784 | After a council at the ruins, a treaty recognizes the Six Nations as sovereign, honors the Oneida and Tuscarora as allies and takes land beyond the 1768 line; only the United States ratifies it |
| 1786 | New York sells land from the Oriskany Patent to Dominick Lynch, the seed of the village that became Rome |
| 1796 | The Inland Lock Navigation Company starts a canal between the Mohawk and Wood Creek |
| 1817 | The first shovelful for the Erie Canal is turned in Rome, at the Carry's west end. The canal opens in 1825 |
A map of the Oneida Carry, about 1757.
One of several axes found in excavations at the fort, some of which may have helped build the original fortifications (National Park Service).
What the Carry meant to the people on it
For the Oneida the Carry sat in their territory, and from the 1720s British officials received 47 complaints from merchants accusing them of exploiting their location. Between about 1750 and the 1770s European settlers set up inns, taverns and hauling businesses along it, and in the 1760s an Oneida village grew nearby selling food and hauling goods, though only about half of its 90 or so residents were Oneida. A Presbyterian minister, Samuel Kirkland, preached among the Oneida from 1761 and helped persuade most Oneida and Tuscarora to side with the Americans in the Revolution.
A mortar bomb fragment from a 2013 dig; the park holds over 100 such fragments, likely from the 1777 siege (National Park Service).
The landscape
The land around the Carry was a patchwork: sandy plains and pine barrens, swampy bogs to the south, shale and clay to the north and east with Adirondack foothill forest beyond. Its wildlife fed the fur trade: beaver were nearly wiped out in the mid to late 1600s and again in the 1700s, and wolves, elk, wolverines, fisher and marten declined or disappeared in the 1800s. The passenger pigeon, now extinct, was so common that soldiers at Fort Schuyler netted them from its walls, and the colonel in command wrote that he lived very well on pigeons and fish. Atlantic salmon runs to Oneida Lake ended in 1856.
Sources
- National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument, A Timeline History of the Oneida Carry; rewritten in hubnx's own words.