Recently I took a delightful day trip with my fellow church parishioners to the towns of Auriesville and Fonda, New York, which are about forty miles west of Albany. Although the bus trip was basically religious in nature, I was fascinated by the lifestyle of my ancestors, the Mohawks, in the mid-Seventeenth Century. Our first stop was at the village of Ossernenon, now a religious shrine where three Jesuit missionaries were killed by the Mohawks, and also the birthplace of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who was canonized in 2012 by the Catholic Church. The actual village is not very large. Stakes in the ground on each of four corners indicate the placement of protective palisades to keep out enemies. This is why such a village is called a “castle”--because it served the same purpose as medieval castles, not because of its size. Inside the palisades would have been a small number of longhouses where the families of the tribe lived.
Ossernenon was built on a hill overlooking the Mohawk River. When Isaac Jogues and Rene Goupil, Jesuit missionaries, were captured by the Mohawks in 1640, they were made to run the gauntlet up the steep hill that led to the village, while two lines of Mohawks beat them with clubs and sticks. Then they were led to the village, in the center of which was the Torture Platform, where they were further abused. Then they were kept as slaves and eventually killed. But that is a story in itself. Apparently this sort of thing happened a lot, because the torture platform was erected in the very center of the village, and was pretty much a permanent fixture. St. Kateri Tekakwitha was born at Ossernenon in 1656. About five years later a smallpox epidemic wiped out her family and a good part of the village, and left her with very poor eyesight (Tekakwitha means “the girl who bumps into things” in Mohawk). So the tribe decided to move out of the area before the smallpox returned to kill them all. Native Americans had no immune system because they had no diseases until the white man came. The whites did not need to shoot the Indians--all they had to do was breathe on them! So they abandoned Ossernenon and settled about five miles away in what is now the town of Fonda, NY. Here they built a new village and named it Caughnawaga, which means “The place by the rapids.” Now here is the interesting part of this re-settlement. As always, the Mohawks built a series of longhouses and surrounded it with a palisade. Again, this village was fairly small and housed about three hundred Mohawks. Unfortunately the Mohawks did not get along very well with the French who were moving in from the area of Lake Champlain, and in 1666 French soldiers burned down the village of Caughnawaga, forcing the Mohawks to flee into Canada, where they settled into yet another new village, also named Caughnawaga (I guess they liked to live near rapids!). There Kateri died from a severe cold in 1680. Again, no immune system, so she was killed by a common cold. In 1930 a Jesuit priest named Father Thomas Grassmann, who also dabbled in archaeology, discovered some charcoal stumps buried in the ground. Further digging revealed more stumps, and soon the priest was able to map out the perimeters of the Caughnawaga palisade. Over the years the remains of the longhouse foundations were discovered. The village is now declared a national historic site.
Iron stakes of different colors were driven into the ground to indicate the position of the longhouses and the surrounding palisade. When I saw itI noticed that the weeds were allowed to grow within the confines of each longhouse, thus giving body and shape to what had been there. Outside the walls of the palisade is an artesian spring where the Mohawks obtained their water for cooking and drinking. It is said that St. Kateri was baptized there, so the water is considered sacred. I felt the water and it was this side of freezing, so I doubt if the Mohawks took any baths in it! Also outside the palisade is a burial ground for the deceased villagers. There is a memorial stone dedicated to them, as well as the grave of father Thomas, who had discovered the ruins of Caughnawaga. So now, thanks to the French who burned the place down, archaeologists are able to map out the exact size and shape of an authentic Mohawk village of the Seventeenth Century.
