FAMILY OF CHIEF ABRAM ANTONE FROM THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY 1910

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INDIAN INCIDENTS

After Penn's treaty with the Six Nations, in 1768, the Six Nations sent Abram Antone, a full-blooded Indian, to Tioga Point, at the confluence of the East Branch of the Susquehanna and the Chemung Branch of the Susquehanna, where he remained until the peace with Great Britain, in the year 1783, when he and his family and a small retinue ascended the East Branch to where the city of Binghamton is now located, thence northward up the Chenango River to Sherbune, on the county line between Chenango and Madison Counties. He took up his abode on lands owned by Elijah Sexton, a Son of Liberty, formerly from Connecticut, who had served in the Continental Army as an officer from the battle of Bunker Hill to the surrender of Cornwallis. Chief Abram Antone and Elijah Sexton and their families became fast and firm friends. About the year 1790, the chief and one of his Indian aids got into trouble, just over the line in Madison County, and the chief killed his Indian aid. Twenty years afterwards, or about the year 1810, the civil authorities of Madison County took the matter up and had Chief Antone arrested, tried and convicted of murder. Elijah Sexton, Harvey Talcott, Joshua Talcott and Dr. Samuel Guthrie did all in their power to save the life of the chief. At that time Elijah Sexton was a magistrate appointed by the Governor of New York, and he engaged an attorney to defend Antone from the charge, claiming it was a tribal affair, that the dead Indian was guilty of insubordination, and according to the Indian code should have been killed, and that it was an affair beyond the civil jurisdiction of the courts of the State of New York. Antone, however, was convicted and hung. Antone was a quiet, peaceful and dignified man, and had the sympathy of many of the most reliable citizens of that locality. Before Antone was executed he called his family, consisting of sons and daughters, around him and gave them instructions what to do, among other things, always to be good to the families of the Sextons, Talcotts and Guthries.

HOW WELL THEY OBEYED HIM

In the spring of 1843, we were visiting our Uncle Elijah Sexton, Junior (son of the Elijah Sexton, Revolutionary soldier), at Pine Valley, Chemung County, New York, and at evening, while our uncle and aunt and two other members of the household were engaged in a game of whist, a knock was heard at the front door. We were directed to go to the door. We went and opened it. It swung inward into a vestibule. There stood a figure it seemed to our young eyes as if it was about twelve feet high clad in deerskins and feathers, who enquired if "little young Elijah Sexton lived here." We told him that Elijah Sexton lived here, but he was not a young man; that he was fully sixty years old. "Just my age, I am fifty-nine; I want to see him." Elijah Sexton overheard the conversation and came to the door, and surveyed his strange visitor, and pronounced, "Tom;" and the stranger pronounced, "Young Elijah!" and the identification was complete. Uncle invited Tom into the sitting- room and gave him a chair and entered into conversation with him. Finally, uncle asked him where his squaw and children were. Tom pointed and said, "out in the yard." A light was brought, and sure enough, a whole tribe had squatted down in the yard, consisting of his squaw and seven children, the oldest about seventeen, a son, another Tom, and the youngest about one year, bound to a board. In less than three minutes the whole tribe were in the sitting-room, and preparations made to feed them. Tom Antone, during the evening was surprised to find that his old boyhood friend, "little Elijah," was so well, and explained that word had been sent to him from the Indian reservations, near Utica, New York, on the Mohawk to Canada, opposite Sackett's Harbor, New York, to the Green Bay region on Lake Michigan, by one of his family, that "little Elijah" Sexton was sick and liable to die. This news had been conveyed by a special messenger or runner more than a thousand miles, and that he and his squaw and children had travelled through the heat and dust, on foot by the most direct route, over nine hundred miles, to reach the bedside of his sick companion. We shall never forget the scene of the renewal of friendship between our uncle and Tom Antone, son of Chief Abram Antone, of the Onondago tribe of the Six Nations. Sexton immediately provided Tom and his tribe with a neat, new home made of new lumber, and painted with every known color with the juices of raspberries, blackberries, elderberries and cherries by his squaw and daughter.

Tom remained at our uncle's three or four years, when he received word that Joshua Talcott, of Smyrna, Chenango County, New York one of those gentlemen whom his father, Chief Abram Antone, had given his dying charge to be good to was taken ill. Tom removed his tribe to Chenango County and Mr. Talcott provided him a house, similar to the one that Elijah Sexton, Junior had provided him with at Pine Valley, Chemung, County, New York.

In May, 1846, we visited Smyrna and Sherbune, in Chenango County, and met Tom Antone and his tribe. He accompanied us to Sherbune Hill cemetery and visited the grave of our grandfather, Elijah Sexton and the friend of his father, Chief Abram Antone. We visited that locality again in 1852, and again in 1854. Soon after 1846, Tom and his tribe removed to the reservation near Utica, New York. We were in Utica in 1855 or 6, and stopped at Bagg's Hotel. While there, ex-Governor Horatio Seymour called with a carriage for Mr. Bagg, the proprietor of the hotel, and invited him to accompany him to the Indian reservation. The Governor said that the Indians were very much perplexed to think that they did not own a horse that could trot a mile in less than three minutes, and wanted Mr. Bagg to go up to the reservation that day with him and act as time-keeper. Bagg accepted the invitation. We had made an acquaintance with Mr. Seymour when he was speaker of the Assembly in 1845, when Silas Wright was Governor of the State. The Governor gave us an invitation to accompany them, which we cheerfully accepted. Arriving there, probably three hundred were present; a few white people and about two hundred and fifty male and female Indians. Three trotters were brought out. Mr. Bagg, with a gold watch in hand, had taken his position; the starter had given the word "go" and away these three dashed. About half the race had been made when one of the horses met with a mishap, and was taken from its course, the other two continuing to the finish, and as they passed under the wire, neck and neck, Mr. Bagg shouted out in a megaphone voice, "two minutes and seventy seconds!" All was quiet for a moment, then such a whirlwind of shouts as went up we never heard before or since. The females were the most demonstrative and prolific and varied, and personated the voice of every known animal or fowl on the face of the earth, or upon the face of the waters. Tom Antone the elder and Tom Antone the junior, and the most of Old Tom's family were there and greeted us kindly. Old Tom introduced us to the chief of the tribe, gave them our pedigree, particularly emphasizing the fact that we were a grandson of Elijah Sexton, Esquire, and a nephew of "little Elijah" Sexton, thus demonstrating the fidelity and dying injunction of Abram Antone, the chief and watchman at the Tioga gate, between the white men and the Six Nations of Indians.