Goshen Central High School - Yearbook (Goshen, NY)

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18 THE PIONEER On the whole, the Iroquois were of all the Indian tribes of North America not only the most powerful, but also the highest developed, and some of their leaders, as, for instance, Red Jacket of the Seneca tribe and Brant of the Mohawk, were men of valor, understanding, and eloquence. The enmity of the Iroquois towards the French had its origin in a little skirmish they had in 1609 with Champlain, when a few of their chiefs were slain. But there was another cause. The Iroquois and the Algonquins were deadly, hereditary enemies, and so they had been from time far back, beyond the coming of the white man to North America; and the intimacy between the Algonquins and the French proved a serious barrier to the latter when they sought to make friends of the Iroquois. For a quarter of a century the French made every effort to win the Six Nations, and they would doubtless have succeeded but for the counter influence of one man, William Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs. Johnson spent many years among the Iroquois, knew their language as he knew his own, married a Mohawk squaw, sister to Joseph Brant, and was a Sachem of their tribe. It was through the influence of Johnson, who was a royalist, that Brant cast his lot and that of the Iroquois with Great Britain. During the Revolutionary war, Brant attacked and nearly destroyed by fire and sword the settlements of Cobleskill, German Flats, and Andrewstown. During this same war Brant committed the massacre of Minisink, and made depredations into Wyoming and Cherry Valley. But in the next year of the war the Americans retaliated, and General Sullivan nearly broke the power of the Confederation. The Iroquois present a remarkable exception to the supposed general law of decrease amnog the American Indians, they having increased at every enumeration since the year 1812, when they reached their lowest point of numbers. Nearly one-half of the Iroquois, have removed from New York to points farther west. The largest reservation is that of the Mohawks, on the Grand River in Ontario, one hundred fifty miles west of Niagara. The Mohawks of Grand River number nearly two thousand, with these are now three hundred Tuscaroras and a few individuals from the other tribes. Five-sixths of the Oneidas, or about one thousand five hundred, live on a reservation on Green Bay, Wis., and some two hundred fifty Senecas reside in the Indian Territory. The Six Nations, having long since sold all their lands in New York, they are scattered among the sister tribes, with whom they have intermarried. All the Six Nations have enjoyed the benefits of missions from an early period in the century, and for twenty years past their schoools have been supported by the State, the teachers being mainly natives. Three hundred years have now elapsed and the war whoop of the Iroquois now ceases to turn the white man s blood cold as it did in the days of the pioneer. The territory once traversed by a score of thousand Indians is now populated with two million souls of a different race and color. May the successors of the Iroquois observe the saying that Right makes might,” therefore bringing a reign of peace instead of war over our Empire State. PAUL R. SCHRIVER. Our New High School • w ' 'I OSHEN is to have a new high school VJ building.” The heart of every pupil and graduate and of every friend of public education was made glad when at the special election, held early in the spring, the voters decided by a splendid majority that the time had come for our village to make the move that would put it in line with the other up-to-date villages and cities in the matter of school buildings. This district will spend about $70,000 on the building'and its equipment, and this, with our present splendid high school building, which will be used for a grammar school when the new building is occupied, will give Goshen one of the finest school plants in this part of the State. The Noah Webster building, which is now used as a grade school, will probably be abandoned for school purposes. The site chosen for the new building is an excellent one. It is in a conspicuous part of the town and its close proximity to the old high school will render the management of the schools much less difficult then if they were at a considerable distance from each other. The lot is directly in front of the present high school, measuring about 190 ft. on Main St. and 340 on Erie St. The board of education and principal Smith have devoted a great deal of time to the study of school house architecture and building plans. The plans of nearly all of the new school buildings in this part of the State have been investigated and the type of building that has finally been selected was chosen after consulting with many of the best architects and school authorities in the State. Mr. Wm. T. Towner, of New Rochelle, who is at present at work on his one hundred and fifteenth school building, was selected to draw the plans. Mr. Towner is one

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THE PIONEER 17 the chase and when waging war upon his fellow men. His religion, however, was grossly corrupted with superstitions. He believed that spirits dwelled in animals, in trees, and in everything about him. His imagination peopled the air and the water and the forests with living, invisible creatures, and often filled him with superstitous dread. He worshipped the Great Spirit; he worshiped the sun and the stars, the rivers and the mountains, but he did not bow down to that which he had made with his own hands. In one respect the religion of the Iroquois differed from that of almost all other people. He did not look upon himself as a sinner in the sight of the Great Being. His tribe may have offended as a whole, but he did not feel a personal responsibility, nor did he believe that his future happiness depended in any way upon his actions in life. He followed the dictates of his own conscience with the utmost exactness; and while his conscience, which was based on tribal custom and not upon religion, bade him to be honest and kind in his dealings with his own people, it permitted him to steal from his enemy, to destroy his property, and to torture him to death. The dwellings and works of defense of the Iroquois were far from contemptible, either in their dimensions or in their structure. Along the banks of the Mohawk, among the hills and hollows of the Onondaga, in the forests of Oneida and Cayuga, on the romatic shores of Seneca Lake, and the rich borders of the Genesee, surrounded by waving maize fields, and encircled from afar by the green margin of the forest, stood the ancient strongholds of the confederacy. The clustering dwellings were encompassed by triple rows of palisades, pierced with loopholes; furnished with platforms within, for the convenience of the defenders; with magazines of stones, to hurl upon the heads of the enemy; and, with water conductors to extinguish any fire which might be kindled without. The area which these defenses enclosed was often several acres in extent, and the dwellings, ranged in order within, were sometimes more than a hundred feet in length. Posts, firmly driven into the ground, with an intervening frame-work of poles, formed the basis of the structure; and its sides and arched roof were closely covered with layers of elm bark. Each of the larger dwellings contained several distinct families, whose separate fires were built along the central space, while compartments on each side, like the stalls of a stable, afforded so me degree of privacy. Here rude couches were prepared, and bear and deer skins spread; while above, the ripened ears of maize, suspended in rows, formed a golden tapestry. In the long evenings of midwinter, when in the wilderness without the trees cracked with biting cold, and the forest paths were clogged with snow, then around the lodge-fires of the Iroquois, warriors, squaws, and restless, naked children were clustered in social groups, each dark face brightening in the fickle firelight, while, with jest and laugh, the pipe passed round from hand to hand. The chase, the warpath, the dance, the festival, the game of hazard, the race of political ambition, all had their votaries. When the assembled Sachems had resolved on war against some foreign tribe, and when, from their great council-house of bark, in the valley of the Onondaga, their messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to arms, then from east to west, through the farthest bounds of the confederacy, a thousand warlike hosts caught up the summons with glad alacrity. With fasting and praying, and consulting dreams and omens; with invoking the war god, and dancing the frantic war-dance, the warriors sought to insure the triumph of their arms; and, these strange rites concluded, they began their stealthy progress, full of confidence, through the devious pathways of the forest. For days and weeks, in anxious expectation, the villagers await the result, and now, as evening closes, a shrill, wild cry, pealing from afar, over the darkening forest, proclaims the return of the victorious warriors. The village is alive with sudden commotion; and snatching sticks and stones, knives and hatchets, men, women and children, yelling like fiends let loose, swarm out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the miserable captives a foretaste of the deadlier torments in store for them. And now, the black arches of the forest glow with the fires of death; and with brandished torch and firebrand the frenzied multitude close around their victim. The pen shrinks to write, the heart sickens to conceive the fierceness of his agony, yet still, amid the din of his tormentors, rises the captive’s clear voice of scorn and defiance. The work is done, the blackened trunk is flung to the dogs, and with clamorous shouts and hootings, the murderers seek to drive away the spirit of their victim. The Iroquois reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite enjoyments, and yet they had other sources of pleasure, which made up in frequency and in innocence all that they lacked in intensity. Each passing season had its feasts and dances, often'mingling religion with social pastimes. Foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, foremost in their savage arts of policy, stood the fierce people called by themselves the Hodeuosaunee, and by the French the Iroquois. They extended their conquests and their depredations from Quebec to the Carolinas; and from the western prairies to the forests of Maine; on the south, they forced trouble from the subjugated Delewares, and pierced the mountain forests of the Cherokees with incessant forays. On the north, they uprooted the ancient settlements of the Wyandots. On the west, they exterminated the Eries and the Andastes, and spread havoc and dismay among the tribes of the Illinois; and on the east, the Indians of New England fled at the first peal of the Mohawk war-cry. Nor was it the Indian race alone who quailed before their ferocious valor. All Canada shook with the desolating fury of their onset, the people fled to the forts for refuge; the blood-besmeared conquerors roamed like wolves among the burning settlements, and the youthful colony trembled on the brink of ruin.

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THE PIONEER 19 of the best known school architects in the country and has built many of the best buildings in New Jersey and Eastern New York. The building provides for four grade rooms and the high school department as well as for several unassigned rooms which will later be used as the growing needs of the school may require. An auditorium seating five hundred is provided for and also a gymnasium with locker rooms, etc. The gymnasium, which is de-signed for physical training classes, will also be adapted for basket-ball and other indoor games. The building will be built entirely above ground, and the first floor, or basement floor, will thus be available for school purposes. The main entrance will be on Main St., with two entrances at the sides, one for the boys on Erie St. and one for the girls on the side next to Music Hall. The side entrances, which will be the ones used by the students, will let into a long corridor extending through the center of the building. At either end of this corridor stairs will lead to the floors above. As one enters the main entrance in front, he will find himself in a lobby room from which opens the Board of Education office and the teachers’ room. These rooms will be large and well equipped for their purpose. On the basement floor are the lockers and toilet rooms for the entire building, two unassigned class rooms for future expansion and the big gymnasium, whose dimensions are about 45 ft. x 70 ft. From the front lobby a broad flight of stairs leads to the first floor above. The corridor on the first floor above the basement, running the entire length of the building, is sixteen feet wide, and an inlaid mosaic floor is planned for. On this floor the four corner rooms are to be primary grades rooms. The libraries are to occupy the space in the center front, and in the center rear and extending back about forty feet beyond the rear wall of the building proper is the auditorium, which is directly over the gymnasium. The auditorium projection is to be but one story above the basement, while the main part of the building is to be two. The entrance to the au' ditorium will be from the corridor on the fiirst floor directly in front of the main entrance-The grade class rooms arranged for on this floor are designed to accomodate forty pupils each, and from each class room will open cloak locker rooms. On the second floor (above the basement) the high school department will be cared for. A center corridor, narrower than the ones on the two floors below, runs the entire length of the building. This floor provides for a large academic study hall seating one hundred twenty-five, where no recitations will be held; four high school recitation rooms, one of which will be fitted up for a music and drawing room; two science laboratories with the necessary supply room and apparatus closets, and a science lecture room. There will also be provided for this floor a reference library reading room, a small office and emergency toilets. This building follows the general line of many of the best buildings of recent construction, and we are sure that when the structure is completed it will be found that Goshen has one of the best arranged buildings possible under the conditions. The building is to be fire-proof with exterior of pressed brick trimmed with limestone and marble. Prize Speaking Contests. THE annual local prize speaking contest was held at Music Hall on Thursday evening. May 26. 1910. All of the speakers showed the result of a great deal of careful training and delivered their selections so well that the judges were given a very difficult task in deciding upon the winners. Following is the program: Orchestra . • Not Guilty, ..................... The Old Settler’s Story, “ The New South, .... “ The Fiddle Told, Vocal Solo,........................ Storming of Mission Ridge, ■ How the La Rue Stakes Were Lost, The Black Regiment, “ Cherokee Roses,” .... Violin Solo—Selected, . ( Orchestra Medley- Hits of 1910 . . Willis Marsh . . Elma Abrams . John M. Welsh Charlotte Schriver . . Mary Y. Lewis . . . Earl Roosa Mary McCormack E. Reynolds Farley . Emma Kattmann . Miss Julia Reid Rose Blushes. Wooden Shoe Dance.