RUSH COMMUNITY CHARACTER & HERITAGE

Thousands of years ago, the Seneca’s were the first residents of what we now call the Town of Rush.  Our histories have been inextricably linked ever since.

The Haudenosaunee People, People of the Long House, are the original five tribes of the Confederacy or League: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga and the Seneca.  The Seneca’s are sometimes called the “Keepers of the Western Door” because they are the western-most tribe of the Confederation.  

The oral history suggests that the Five Nation Confederacy was formed sometime between 1450 and 1660 as a way to unite these western NY tribes with the common goal of living in peace and harmony yet recognizing the separate tribes with distinct customs and language.  The Tuscarora’s joined the League when they were driven from the Carolinas by the British, 1714-1722, making up what is now referred to as the Six Nations.

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation (NYSOPRHP) classifies land in  Rush as “the most archeologically significant area in western NY” according to Josalyn Ferguson, a staff member for Monroe County when contacted in March, 2020.

Gravesite materials and artifacts now preserved at the RMSC collected from the Golah area attest to the Seneca presence.  In fact, arrowheads of a certain description are termed Meadowood arrowheads.  The homes of Meadowood are on the western-most length of Stull Road.

A 1932 State Education Department historical marker on the west side of East River Road just as you enter the Town of Rush denotes a Tuscarora Settlement.  Scant hundreds of feet away is Elm Place, featured in Rush’s Bicentennial House Tour in 2018.  Colonel William Markham III came to the Genesee Valley in 1789, built the first brick house in the Valley and became Rush’s first Supervisor in 1818.  Rush’s Town Council met in the front parlor of Elm Place, on the Tuscarora Settlement land.

Another State Ed historical marker is near the West Rush Fire Department by Rush West Rush Road and Creekside Drive.  It states that “Three Indian Tribes Fished and Tilled the Soil here for Thousands of  Years”

The Nature Conservancy recognizes Rush’s Oak Openings as the eastern-most remaining Oak Opening in the US.  Located on Honeoye Falls Five Points Road, a sign denotes Oak Openings as state property.  Recent scholarly work by SUNY geographers at Geneseo and U. Buffalo have linked these oak openings or savannahs to Seneca land management in the late 1700s.  It is believed that the Seneca’s burned closed canopy forests to create areas more amenable to hunting or easier travel.  More information and a video from SUNY Geneseo are available at: 

https://www.geneseo.edu/news/native-american-burning-key-rare-oak-savannas 

And now, once more, the Seneca’s and Rush are linked by HSS’s inclusion of Rush acreage and the selection of the Point of Interconnection (POI) at Golah.  The Point of Interconnection refers to the place where energy produced by solar arrays enter the grid system.

The NYSDPS-DMM 18-02413 website lists the first filing for HSS, completely on the Caledonia side of the Genesee River, on 10/5/18.  The 2600 acre, 180MW proposal would use a POI on reclaimed quarry land leased from Hanson Valley Sand and Gravel.

The second filing for HSS that includes the Town of Rush is for a 180MW, 3800 acre proposed installation listed on the website on 2/28/19.  The POI at Golah is high value, culturally significant formerly Indigenous land- sacred land in the Seneca tradition.

The Steering Committee of Residents United to Save our Hometown has always had the removal of HSS from Rush land as our primary goal. A secondary goal is providing information on the issues associated with large-scale solar. 

We’ve tried to detail some of the Town’s history with respect to our Indigenous first residents.

The sacred ground at Golah is not threatened if HSS moves west, back across the River.

Let us begin with wisdom from what the Onondaga call the WORDS THAT COME BEFORE ALL ELSE (perhaps more popularly known as The Thanksgiving Address).

After admonishing all who listen to recognize the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things, the WORDS recognize Mother Earth, the waters, the Fish life, the Plant life, the Food Plants, the Medicine Herbs. etc.  Then the WORDS speak of trees.

“Standing around us we see all the Trees.  The Earth has many families of Trees who each have their own instructions and uses.  Some provide shelter and shade, others fruit and beauty and many useful gifts.  The Maple is the leader of the trees, to recognize its gift of sugar when the People need it most.  Many peoples of the world recognize a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength.  With one mind we greet and thank the Tree life.  Now our minds are one.”    (Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Environmental Biology and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, p.110)

The Town of Rush is fortunate to have state land on Honeoye Falls Five Points Road known as Oak Openings.  Newly published research from SUNY Geneseo posit an explanation for such openings dating back thousands of years to our first Rush residents, the Seneca’s.  

In a recent article in Annals of the American Association of Geographers, geographers from the State University of New York (SUNY) found that Native American land use—in particular, the use of fire—was critical in shaping the distribution of oak savannas in Western New York at the end of the 1700s.

 “Oak Savannas in Western New York State, Circa 1795: Synthesizing Predictive Spatial Models and Historical Accounts to Understand Environmental and Native American Influences,”

Assistant Professor Stephen Tulowiecki and Professor David Robertson, both at SUNY Geneseo, along with Associate Professor Chris Larsen from the University at Buffalo, compared information gleaned from historical sources in order to map oak savannas and to better understand how both environmental conditions and Native Americans influenced their distribution around 1795.

Oak savannas are a globally endangered ecosystem. “We have maybe five good remnant locations of oak savannas, also known as oak openings, in New York State,” Tulowiecki said. “And within those ecosystems, there are rare plants. These landscapes are also beneficial for wildlife.”

The following is a link that will explain the NSF sponsored research with a video:

https://www.geneseo.edu/news/native-american-burning-key-rare-oak-savannas 

Article 10’s regulations decree that proposed solar installations must document and respect the cultural and archeological assets of any land potentially included in an installation’s footprint.  The Town of Rush and the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation have long recognized that our first citizens were Indigenous People. The documentation is clear.  But it was a recent Guest Essay in the Livingston County News that brought this cultural and archeological history to present dayconsiderations of Horseshoe Solar’s Point of Interconnection (POI).  The POI is where the energy generated from solar panels enters the grid apparatus.

“It’s happening all over again.  An outsider (Chicago-based Invenergy) is taking your land (residentially zoned Rush land) with the aid of the government (Cuomo’s Article 10 and 54-C) for the private profit of investors!  You thought you were protected (local zoning law) but you’re not! You cannot trust the government where big money is concerned.  The government does not respect the treaties they agreed to! They didn’t with us, they won’t with you!”

So began a poignant conversation with a gentleman who belongs to the Tonawanda Seneca Nation on Friday, June 26th.  He had seen the Guest Essay by Michael Leroy Oberg, (Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History at SUNY Geneseo) available  onthe Res United’s website.  

The Oberg Essay, Horseshoe Solar array would ‘destroy’ site of Seneca village, notes that the study commissioned by HSS “diminishes Seneca attachment to the region and the historical reality that the site has a history going back further than that of London in England. . . The report’s authors spoke to no Seneca people, nor did they do any research in the archives”.

Continued conversations led to a meeting with other Native Americans, an invitation to the Reservation near Buffalo to meeting with the Tonawandan Historical Society and finally to a Tobacco Burning Ceremony at Golah.

On August 11, 2020, 205 years and one day after the death of Handsome Lake, almost 30 Indigenous people of the Tonawanda and Tuscarora tribes gathered at 260 Golah Road for the Tobacco Burning Ceremony to Honor the Ancestors who lived on this land.

Golah is at the junction of Honeoye Creek and the Genesee River- rich, alluvial soil and transport via canoe made possible by these waters.   This site is sacred land to Indigenous Americans.   Although many gravesites have been excavated and artifacts removed, the indigenous spirits reside in the land, not in boxes in museums and private collections. 

Mr. Jacobs is a Tonawandan Faithkeeper, a man who keeps the rituals and ceremonies of the tribe. He conducted the sacred ceremony in the native Seneca language; he explained it afterwards to those assembled including Assemblywoman Byrnes, Supervisor Kusse, Mr. Stokie (who gave permission for the Ceremony on his land) and a few others of European descent.

Around 10:30, a small fire was lit on the plowed field to create the smoke to, in the words of Faithkeeper Jacobs, “pierce the sky, be driven by the wind, to travel to wherever our ancestors may be”.  

The ceremony began when Levi Winnie, Tonawanda Seneca, gave three sharp calls, much like those of crows, to draw attention and gather all spirits to pay attention to the entreaty and lesson that was to come.

The smoke from the burning tobacco goes first to the Great Maker who gives all resources and is ever present.  The smoke gathers all souls, each will add power and speak through one voice, Mr. Jacobs’, in the ceremony.  By all speakers, The Haudenosaunee include all things who came first- the wind, the water, the moon, the sun, the plants, the animals, etc.  We people are the “younger brothers of Creation”.  We came second.  We, therefore, have the most to learn.

Nicotiana rustica, the tobacco used in the ceremony is not the current commercial tobacco used for cigarettes or cigars.  Rather it was originally cultivated by Indigenous people in the eastern U.S. and later modified and altered to become the tobaccos we associate with pipes, cigars and cigarettes.  Throughout the ceremony, the tobacco was thrown on the fire so that the smoke continued to gather all souls, their power and their voices together.

Handsome Lake, a Seneca spiritual leader and prophet, instructed the people of Canawaugus and those living at Golahto be wary of non-native brothers and sisters, the Europeans.   The warning prophecy was because these people, the Europeans, thought they could control the Earth, and all the things that came first.  But Handsome Lake foretold that one day, the non-natives would learn they did not have dominion.  Something would arise to teach them.  Handsome Lake warned the native people to not get caught up in the foolishness of the Europeans colonizing the land as if to own and control it.  One day, the lesson would be learned.  Was he warning of climate change?  Of Covid-19?

On this day, in the midst of the tobacco smoke, Mr. Jacobs entreated the spirits to gather and to use their force to move, to push, this off their sacred land.  For like the time so long ago, the non-native brothers believe they can control the forces of the earth.  Once again, Mr. Jacobs said, it is as if they (the Europeans) have their hands around our throats, holding our heads down and we cannot breathe.   We must elevate the discussion of the continuous denigration of Indigenous Peoples to something beyond pulling down statues of Christopher Columbus and celebrating Columbus Day as a national holiday.

To the spirit forces, Mr. Jacobs said, “You are resting here.  You are speaking through me.  We ask you for the power to push this somewhere else- push it off to the side, to a different land!”

Mr. Jacobs was speaking of Horseshoe Solar.  Push Horseshoe Solar off to the west side of the Genesee River using reclaimed quarry land as originally planned for the additional substation, the 5200 square foot Operations and Maintenance Building, the 5 acre lay down yard.  Remove it from Golah!

Let the Ancestors and their spirits rest undisturbed where they lived so many years ago.

No pictures or recordings were permitted during the Tobacco Burning Ceremony. This description was written after the fact.  To be assured of its accuracy, Mr. Jacobs received a copy for evaluation.  In the Haudenosaunee oral tradition, FaithkeeperJacobs passed along word that the chronicling and interpretation are accurate and correct. Perhaps of additional interest, Mr. Winnie camped with the Standing Rock Sioux on three separate trips to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline.