Roots in land go deep
Mar. 28, 1999

By MEG SCHNEIDER
Observer-Dispatch

The big hole in the side of the hill where Madison and Onondaga counties meet used to be filled with an eddying pool of water, fed by an underground spring.

According to legend, members of the Oneida and Onondaga tribes sometimes would toss wood chips into the swirling water, watch them disappear, and then sprint the couple miles to Mycenae to see those wood chips reappear in an above-ground spring there.

“It was like magic to them,” said Dan Gates, owner of Deep Spring farm near Chittenango.

Today, there isn’t any water visible in Deep Spring — only a hole large enough to park about eight cars side by side. But there are some Indian burial grounds on both sides of the Deep Spring, making the site a culturally and historically important one to the Oneidas.

The land also is important to Dan Gates, whose ancestors purchased it many generations ago. That both the Indians and long-time white residents feel such a strong sense of heritage about land in Madison and Oneida counties lends a touch of poignancy to the often-angry debate.

“Knowing this land has embraced the dust of our ancestors from time immemorial and we’re powerless to protect it, that’s hard for us as a people,” said Brian Patterson, a member of the Oneidas’ Men’s Council and a passionate advocate for the Oneidas’ ancestral lands.

“The land is the future,” Patterson said. “The homeland is the most important thing, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s one square inch or 300,000 acres.”

Gates speaks in similar terms.

“The original 250 acres was bought by my great-great-great-great grandfather — I’m not stuttering, it was four ’greats’ — and I’m the seventh generation of my family on this land,” he said. “We raised our children here, that’s eight generations, and my grandchildren visit me here — that’s nine generations.”

Gates is president of Madison-Oneida Landowners Inc., one of several groups that have sprouted up in the land-claim area since the Oneidas filed court papers seeking to add 20,000 individual property owners as defendants in their long-stalled land claim lawsuit.

“At 75 years old, I’m a pretty quiescent person,” Gates said. “But I ain’t quiescent any more.”

For Gates and others like him, the Oneidas’ court action is an attack not only on their homes but also on their heritage — every bit as dear to the descendants of the colonials as the Oneidas’ heritage is to them.

“This is what bothers you the most, the history that could be lost,” said Georgia Gorton, a Verona native whose ancestors are buried in three small adjoining graveyards near Verona Mills. “If we lose this, I think I would walk away and never come back.”

Gorton’s parents used to bring their six children down to the cemetery every Memorial Day and pass on the history of the family, starting with Capt. Daniel Williams, who moved to New York from Rhode Island and served in the New York militia during the Revolutionary War. He and a handful of other colonial families founded the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Verona — a small building that still stands to the west of the cemetery.

Williams is buried in the nearly 200-year-old cemetery on Happy Valley Road, along with his wife and five generations of descendants. Gorton hopes to be buried there, too.

“My spot’s already picked out,” she said. “This is where my family is. This is where I want to be.”

Some, like UCE Homepage Attorney John Campanie, have suggested that the Oneidas could have state-owned land outside the claim area. That could eliminate the risk to individual property owners here.

But Oneida Nation representative Ray Halbritter said the claim area is where the Oneidas want land.

“The Creator isn’t making any more real estate. This is it,” Halbritter said. “It’s unique to us. It’s our homeland.”

It is unique, too, to the descendants of Daniel Williams.

Mary Kitchen, one of Gorton’s sisters, said her own children have picked up the family heritage from visits to the cemetery.

“They could probably show us where all the graves are,” Kitchen said. “This is something you can’t replace. This ground is our burial ground. It’s sacred to us.”