CHAPTER X.
Canandaigua at an early day--Facts in the early settlement of Bloomfield--
Indian Council--Its object--Indian parade--Indian dress--Opening of
Council--Speeches--Liberal offers of the government--Mr. Savary's Journal
--Treaty concluded--Account of Red Jacket by Thomas Morris.
Canandaigua at an early day was the objective point for all who were
seeking what was called the Genesee country. It was at the head of
navigation. Parties coming from the east could transport their goods by
water from Long Island Sound to Canandaigua, with the exception of one or
two carrying places, where they were taken by land.
We can hardly realize that at that time there was here a widely extended
forest, in all its loneliness and grandeur. Its first trees were cut down
in the fall of 1788, soon after Mr. Phelps had concluded his treaty of
purchase with the Indians. By means of them a log store-house was
constructed, near the outlet of the lake. The family of a Mr. Joseph Smith
took possession of it in the spring of 1789. Judge J. H. Jones, who in the
fall of 1788, was one of a party to open a road between Geneva and
Canandaigua, witnessed, on revisiting the latter place in 1789, a great
change.
"When we left," he says, "in the fall of '88, there was not a solitary
person there;--when I returned fourteen months afterwards, the place was
full of people; residents, surveyors, explorers, adventurers; houses were
going up; it was a thriving, busy place.
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