Westfield High School - Prospectus Yearbook (Westfield, NY)

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THE Class of 1944 Westfield Academy and High School WESTFIELD, N. Y. presents The Historical Issue of the P O R T A - V I A

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FOREWORD TO FOREWORD The pages of the 1944 Porta-Via have been faithfully devoted to Westfield history. It has been our aim to achieve an historic comparison between the earliest and most recent classes to attend Westfield High School. Just as each of us today is making history, in his own individual manner, as well as conjoined in groups of his contemporary comrades, so did our fathers and their fathers before them record a life, perpetually changing, perpetually progressing, which we of the present and our posterity will use as guide-posts and markers upon the crooked road of human progress. Without generations of experience behind us to light the path ahead, to point out the wrong from the right, we should not have been so far advanced as we are today. It is to the unselfish, stalwart men of a century past, who had the desire and perseverance to bring education to children of the frontier, despite the many hardships of pioneer life, that we owe our right to enjoy the wealth of opportunity which education affords today and to publish this annual in their commemoration. Early History of Chautauqua County Before the land¬ ing of the Pilgrims, the French, m 1615, led by Champlain, had penetrated hun¬ dreds of miles into the wilderness and reached the distant shores of Lake Hur¬ on. The French ex¬ plorer learned there that the country southeast of Lake Erie, where lies Chautauqua Coun¬ ty, was the home of the Eries. Champlain’s interpreter, Ettiene Brule, had traversed the wilderness of Western New York and visited the country of the Eries and Carantouan, their principal village. In 1656, in a fierce war with the Iroquois, the Eries were destroyed and ceased to exist as a nation. Their towns, of which we find numerous remains in our county, were devas¬ tated or went to decay. LaSalle, the most remarkable explorer that ever visited this continent, on his voyage west¬ ward in the “Griffin,” the first vessel to spread its sails to the breezes of Lake Erie, passed in sight of the forest-covered hills of Chautauqua in 1769. Journeying westward from Onondaga County in New York to the headwaters of the Ohio River, LaSalle came within view of Chau¬ tauqua Lake. At that time there must have remained many evidences of the great calamity that had befallen the Eries—abandoned corn¬ fields grown up to briars and saplings, fallen palisades—sites of their longhouses and now and then bones of a murdered Erie. Prior to and at the time of the destruction of the Eries there dwelt around Lake Erie several nations of Indians. The valley of the Mohawk and the country westward in the state of New York was the territory of the Iroquois or Six Nations. Along the northern shore of Lake Erie and extending east of the Niagara River toward the Iroquois was the country of the Neutral nation. North of the Eries and be¬ tween Lake Erie and the dominions of the Iroquois dwelt the Wenrohronons. Among the many evidences that the earth¬ works in Chautauqua County are remains of the conquered Eries is that furnished by an ancient French map of Frankuelin, dated 1684. Upon several old French maps Chautauqua Lake is called Oniassont and the people who inhabited the region, Ontarononas. From the destruction of the Eries until its settlement by pioneers of the Holland Purchase Company, Chautauqua county was the do¬ main of the Senecas, most western of Iroquois nations. Sixty years after the death of LaSalle, France and England were bound in earnest contention respect¬ ing boundary lines between their pos¬ sesions in America. Chautauqua was in¬ cluded in the region claimed by both France and Eng¬ land. As a conse¬ quence of this ir was soon to be near to prominent mili¬ tary operations and in close proximity to important lines 4