| Nothing indicated any connection between Shononsise's two daughters and the Van Slycks except that both families lived on the island at different times, according to this theory. Yet even this is suspect, since the index to the published Jesuit Relations (73 volumes of accounts by the French missionaries concerning their work among the Indians of the colonial period) lists neither Chief Shononsise or the Oron [Huron] tribe in any spelling variation.[6] These two accounts bear so little resemblance to one another that one wonders how Giles Yates could be the source of Harriet Paige's version. Some insight into this dilemna is offered by a footnote in Pearson's A History of the Schenectady Patent, brought to my attention by Kenneth Bradt. Written by the editor, J. W. MacMurray, in reference to the fact that Jacques Cornelise Van Slyck was sometimes called Jacques Cornelise Gautsh, it said: |
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Gautsh, pronounced Hotch (nearly); can it be an abbreviation of Ots-Toch, his mother's name? "A squaw was queen of the island which lies back of Washington Street. She is buried on the island, under an old willow tree at the point towards the bridge. She had two children by a Frenchman--Mr. Harttell. Ots-Toch was like her mother, savage and wild. She married Cornelius Van Slyck. Kenutje, the second child, was small and handsome, like her father Mr. Harttell; she was very white. She married a Bratt." |
| Statement of tradition in his family, by Lawrence R. Vrooman, of Cortland County [7] |
| This Lawrence Vrooman was probably the grandson of Lourens Vrooman who married Maria Bradt, according to published Bradt and Vrooman genealogies. [8] Comparing this footnote to the Paige Diaries, one finds the identical descriptive phrases, such as "small and handsome like her father." This same phraseology is found in Nelson Greene with the significant addition of the words "she was very white" in both the Vrooman and Greene versions. |
| Questions come to mind: | |
| 1) | Why did Mrs. Paige attribute the tradition she wrote down to Giles Yates when his version was totally different from hers, and the words she used were later almost word for word the same as Laurence Vrooman's? |
| 2) | At what date did Vrooman send his family tradition to MacMurray? The latter does not say, although another quote from Vrooman on funerals was dated 1856. [9] |
| There are several possible connections among Yates, Paige and Vrooman. The most reasonable to me is that Lawrence Vrooman read Yates's article and corrected him with his own family's version, which Yates passed on to Mrs. Paige, possibly in person, for they were contemporaries and undoubtedly knew one another. Oral tradition passed down for generations is bound to to change, yet three versions use the same descriptive words. This suggests a written version of the "tradition" shared among contemporaries and later used by Nelson Greene. Whether Vrooman or Yates was the true source of Mrs. Paige's diary entry is unknown. It should be noted that dates make Yates's 1857 version of the tradition impossible. Hertel was born about 1603 and would not have had a daughter before about 1620, yet this daughter supposedly married an Indian chief, of a tribe unknown, and their daughters were Ots-Toch and Kenutje. These daughters would not have been born by the time Cornelis Van Slyck married, nor could one be the mother of Arent Bradt, born about 1615. The account of Jacques Hertel, the Indian guide and interpreter who settled at Trois Rivieres in Quebec, as having "taken up his abode in Schenectada" in 1623, is very much in doubt as well. With the help of Joan Wood, a Canadian Bradt descendant who had done much research in Canada, I located a researcher, Mr. Jean Prince, Director of the Institut de Recherches les Sources du Passe Enr. in Trois Rivieres. He searched many sources for me, such as biographical dictionaries of Canada and genealogies of Quebec families. [10] Nothing suggested that Hertel fathered any Indian children before his marriage to a young French lady in 1641. |
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Prince quoted from Father LeJeune's account of Hertel as follows: [11] He came to Canada circa 1615, learned the idioms of the Indians and became an eminent interpreter. In 1627, he took refuge with the Indians and lived their way of life until Champlain came back (in 1633). The latter then granted a lot to him in Trois-Rivieres.... |
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*This article originally appeared in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 128, Number 2, pages 91-97. |
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