Chapter 2 - The foundation is laid

As the glaciers retreated, the landscape around Meridian was similar to the Alaskan tundra landscape of today. The only trees were small willows and birches, and the predominant plant life consisted of grasses. As the climate warmed, conifer forestation began and these trees were dominant for about 2,000 years.

Slowly, deciduous trees began to proliferate, and by about 9,000 years ago the area resembled the woodlands we see today, with forests of such trees as maples, pines and oaks covering the hillsides.

As this change in plant life was taking place, the animal life of the region was changing as well. Previously, extremely large mammals had lived in Central New York. By 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, they were all extinct, both in New York State and in the rest of North America. This group of large mammals included a ground sloth that weighed nearly a ton, two varieties of mammoths, a species of mastodon, some zebra-like horses, and giant beavers that could weigh anywhere from 200 to 500 pounds. The descendants of those beavers are all that remain, and they would later play a significant role in the later history of what is now New York State.

So, as the ice age ended, the flora and fauna of Central New York were beginning to be more like what we see today. The stage was set for the first arrival of human beings to our area.

The time of arrival of the first people in North America has been calculated at anywhere between 15,000 and 50,000 years ago, depending on who you ask. There may have been multiple migrations. Some may have come over a land bridge over what is now the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, or other immigrants were seafarers from the Pacific who migrated to South America. Regardless of which theory represents the truth, there were people living in North America for thousands of years before anyone came to what is now Central New York.

It appears that people wandered in and out of New York State as early as 9,000 years ago, but it was another 3,000 to 4,000 years before there were groups of people who stayed in the area.

These earliest human inhabitants of upstate New York, nomadic hunter-gatherers, have been called the Lamoka people. They appear in the archaeological record about 4,500 to 5,000 years ago. They built few dwellings, since they were constantly on the move, and did no farming. They left behind primitive tools, including fish hooks, mortars and pestles, projectile points (although they didn’t have bows and arrows), and sinkers for fishing nets. They buried their dead. These Lamoka people may have been the forbears of the people who lived in Central New York by the 15th century. However, some historians believe that the local native Americans were later immigrants from the Mississippi Valley, and still others believe that they came from the St. Lawrence valley.

Wherever they came from, the people later called the Iroquois were the people who lived in Central New York when Europeans first arrived.

These people were divided into five groups. Today they are known as the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk tribes, or nations. The name “Iroquois” was given them by the Mohicans and the French. The “ois” ending is French and has a mellifluous sound. The first part, “Iroqu” was less kind. The Mohicans regarded the Iroquois as “rattlesnakes.”

The Iroquois call themselves the Haudenosaunee, “people of the longhouse.” The names of the individual tribes were, from west to east, Seneca – Onondowahgah, “people of the great hill” or “people of the western door;” Cayuga – Guyohkohnyoh, “people of the great swamp;” Onondaga -- Onöñda'gega', “people of the hills;” Oneida – Onayotekaono, “people of the standing stone;” and Mohawk -- Kanien'kehá:ka, “people of the great flint.”

Agriculture had began in the area 1,000 years ago. The Iroquois planted corn around their villages, and as the corn sprouted, they planted pumpkins, beans and squash in between the corn plants. They also hunted for game and gathered wild plants, including berries, nuts and fruit, to supplement their diet. Three times a year, they celebrated thanksgiving festivals: a maple festival in the spring, a strawberry festival in the summer, and a green corn festival later in the year.

The previous inhabitants of the Meridian area lived in small villages with a central longhouse (used for councils and ceremonial gatherings) surrounded by individual huts for each family. Corn was planted at the edge of the villages, which were surrounded by forests. Often villages were surrounded by log palisades. The buildings and land in each village were owned communally.

As members of a matrilineal society, Iroquois children took their mother’s name at birth and could inherit property only from their mother. Women nominated the tribal rulers (except for warrior chiefs, who were elected by the warriors who served under them), and women and their wisdom were respected and followed. Women planted and harvested the crops, made most of the decisions, and raised the children. Men hunted and went to war. The value of the life of a woman was twice that of a man in this society.

It’s interesting that it took the Europeans who settled in the same region much longer to establish the rights of women. It seems somehow fitting that the women’s rights movement had its beginning in Central New York in nearby Seneca Falls, on the very land where women had once had such an important role in their society.

Clans were made up of multiple families, and a number of clans made up each of the tribes, or nations. Marriage was always outside of the clan, and women remained with their own clan after marriage, where they were joined by their husbands.

Sometime between 1450 and 1570, it is told that an Onondaga from near Pompey called Ayonhwatha (also known as “Hiawatha”) worked to organize the five tribes of the Haudenosaunee into what is often known as the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Five Nations. There are echoes today of the structure of this confederacy in the United States government. Each tribe managed its own affairs, but each tribe worked together for the good of all the tribes, with each having a proportional number of votes. Each promised not to war against the others, and they joined together in defense of one another when wars arose. Later on, in the early 1700s, the Tuscaroras, from the Carolinas, joined the confederacy as a non-voting member tribe.

The area of Meridian is on the eastern edge of the lands settled by the Cayugas, but not all that far from the Onondagas. The New York State Historical society placed a marker on the edge of the Short Cut Road overlooking Otter Lake that reads:

CEREMONIAL FIRE

SITE OF PERMANENT VILLAGE

AND PERPETUAL COUNCIL FIRE

OF CAYUGA BRANCH OF THE

IROQUOIS. LAMOKAS, SENECAS

TRAIL TO ONONDAGA FOR SALT

Since it appears that many of the early roads in New York State follow the paths long ago established by its original inhabitants, it is probably a reasonable assumption that Route 370 through Meridian, with its easternmost point at Onondaga Lake, was a well-traveled path for the Cayugas and Senecas to the salt deposits there.