The Local History Department at the Steele Memorial Library received a letter some months ago wondering if we had ever heard of a silver mine used by Native Americans around Elmira….
It referenced a book entitled, “The Wilderness War,” by Allan W. Eckert. On page 12 it reads,
“Tiyanoga had told Joseph when the boy was only ten years old that in the Iroquois country there was a great and inexhaustible silver mine on a tributary of a tributary of the Susquehanna River. The Indians who controlled it were called Tyadaghtons. They were not League members, but they were a protectorate of the League and provided, as a tribute, all the silver the Iroquois needed. The amount was prodigious. Then a great tragedy came one day and the earth opened up and swallowed the little isolated tribe completely, and they disappeared to the last individual without a trace. At the same time the shifting of the earth sealed the mouth of the mine that produced the silver, and the tools of the Iroquois were never sufficient to open it.” *
*Since there is no recorded instance of an earthquake having occurred in the area, the story of the Tyadaghtons and their silver mine is probably apocryphal, yet the Iroquois evidently did have a good source of silver, which has never been located. Dr. Lyman C. Draper, who investigated this just after the Civil War, kept notes that indicated that the mine was located “near Elmira, NY, on Pine Creek where it is joined by Elk Run.”
But another book reports that there was a large earthquake in the 1600s originating in Canada that may have been felt as far south as the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. Read this from “History of the pioneer settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase, and Morris’ Reserve,” by O. Turner (1851):
“…There are strong evidences, throughout all this region, of some great convulsion of the earth, as recently as within the last two centuries. There are the fissures in our rocks, extensive forests with timber growths off less than two centuries; mounds and indentations of earth, as if whole forests had suddenly been uprooted; immense sections of rock and earth detached from their primitive locations upon hill sides, and the banks of our streams; shall we not say that all this dates from 1663? Some portions of the account would seem exaggerated; but in all matters of fact, the Jesuit Relations are accredited by historians…the extent of this earthquake…was universal throughout the whole of New France…this earthquake extended more than 600 miles in length…”
I looked further into theories on the origin of Iroquois silver work. In 1902, Harriet Maxwell Converse wrote of a legend that an Iroquois was led to a silver mine in northern New York through his dreams (see page below), But she says that no silver was found in Native American burials, and dates their silver work to colonialism. She writes that coins, medals, and utensils were used to make Iroquois silver ornaments.
Anthropologist M.R. Harrington wrote in 1908 that the Iroquois had long made copper ornaments and also mentions the hypothesis that brooches were made out of the coins of the European settlers. In 1910, Arthur Parker wrote that Iroquois silver brooches were modeled after Scotch jewelry, though Native American fables told of a silver mine in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania.
In the end, we couldn’t answer the question of if there was a silver mine near us, but it led us on a fascinating journey through history nonetheless. I hope you enjoyed it, too.
Resources Consulted
Harrington, M. R. 1908. Iroquois silverwork. New York: American Museum of Natural History. https://tinyurl.com/c8e7tnxv
Parker, A. C. (2009, October 28). THE origin of Iroquois SILVERSMITHING. AnthroSource. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1910.12.3.02a00010.
Converse, Harriet Maxwell. 1902. The Iroquois silver brooches. Albany, N.Y.: University of the State of New York. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/13660745.html.