Lincoln The Story of an Ontario Town By William F.

Rannie (1974) Cave Springs Farm William F Rannie, Rannie Publications Limited, Beamsville 1952 p.18 One small area of Lincoln that has over the years come under an almost microscopic examination for its natural attributes and flora is Cave Springs Farm. Located on the first rise south of Regional Road 81, about a mile and a half east of Beamsville, the farm possesses most unusual natural attractions. It was the site of a Neutral Indian encampment with long house, and high above on the face of the Escarpment wall were until recent years a number of Indian faces carved in stone, the flat noses and thick lips the features of aboriginal Indians. Before the last of these most unusual carvings fell prey to vandals who have erased all traces of them, Kenneth Kidd, deputy keeper at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology, took plaster casts of the heads and preserved them for all time. In describing the originals, Dr. Kidd reported: There were several faces carved in the rock but it is, of course, extremely difficult to know by whom they were done. Since this was once the territory of the Neutral Indians and perhaps also at times held by the Senecas, it would appear that the carvings are due to either one of these people; but I know of no similar examples elsewhere. The Iroquois (including the Neutrals and the Senecas), sometimes did large carvings in stone, but they were better known for the carved wooden faces. The Delaware Indians, who were subject to the Iroquois for many years, had the custom of carving a face near the top of a wooden post, which custom seems closer to the stone carvings at Cave Springs Farm than the masks. There is not much doubt in my mind that one of the Iroquois tribes, probably the Neutrals, did these carvings, but what their purpose was is probably beyond recall. At any rate they are well worthy of preservation.12 Flora of Cave Springs Farm has been extensively examined, p.19 in 1952 by a plant survey directed by Professor F. H. Montgomery, assistant professor of botany at Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph. Results of his research are published as an appendix to the booklet Cave Springs Farm (W. F. Rannie, Rannie Publications Limited, Beamsville, 1952). The same publication subtitled Fact and Fancy about One of the Historic Places of the Niagara Peninsula, sketches some of the legends connected with the farm, as well as several of its natural

features. Over the years, since W. H. Smith published his first Canadian Gazetteer (1846) and devoted most of his description of Beamsville to the ice cave, this natural phenomenon at the base of the rocky Escarpment wall has excited all who have seen it, the ice even in midsummer being used as a natural refrigerator by successive owners of the farm. One such, unfortunately, in the 1930s attempted to improve upon nature by enlarging the cave with a blast of dynamite. He brought down some of the roof and succeeded merely in substantially blocking the finest features of the cave. Connected with stories of the ice cave are tales of an underground lake, entry to which could until about the 1920s easily be gained from a field on Quarry Road. Another phenomenon is the magnesium spring, well-regarded by the Indians for its medicinal properties and for some years trucked to Hamilton and sold as efficacious for several stomach complaints. Chemical analysis in 1950 showed relatively large amounts of magnesium sulphate (Epsom Salt), proving in this case that what everybody knew was substantially correct. In 1846 the Gazetteer described Louth and Clinton as possessing well cleared farms anti good orchards, and the description suits today, heightened by the agricultural advances that have made the soil of the Town of Lincoln among the countrys most productive. Despite the encroachments of broad highways, housing, industry and commerce, the land of Lincoln remains its prime asset and its principal source of wealth. p.55-56 CAPTER FOUR Agriculture WHEN THE FRENCH explorers penetrated the Niagara Peninsula in the 1700s they found the Neutral Indians engaged in agriculture, an occupation that from that day to this has accounted for the principal source of wealth in the Town of Lincoln. From the explorers crude maps, and the turning up from time to time of Indian artifacts there are evidences that the sedentary Neutral people such as those who lived in a longestablished encampment at Cave Springs Farm east of Beamville grew Indian corn, beans and pumpkin. The hoe was their implement, and lacking a better tool they naturally favoured the light, sandy-loam soils. Villages were not founded in areas above the Escarpment on the heavier clays where grew dense vegetation of oak and soft maple.1 The Indians fished the waters of the lake and the mouths of the creeks. In the forests they

hunted for fresh meat and used the skins of the animals they killed to fashion the clothes they wore. * When the first white settlers entered Lincoln however, they found virtually a wilderness, empty of people. The Neutrals were no more, victims long before of the Iroquois war parties, and the densely forested land with its variety of soils was available to those who would claim it. In the late years of the 1700s there were people looking for just such an opportunity. * Mrs. Simcoe, in her Diary, spoke appreciatively of whitefish, caught from October until April. Most exquisitely good, she wrote. She also mentioned sturgeon and red salmon. The 5th Regiment have caught 100 sturgeon and 600 fish in a day in nets, and thousands of ducks fly up the river daily. p.227 Population statistics for Lincoln in the period here surveyed began almost at zero. At the time of the American Revolution the town was a heavily-forested area without people. The Neutral Indians had almost disappeared as permanent dwellers, their few former settlements overgrown and almost obliterated. Their trails were still travelled by parties from other tribes but the Neutrals, never numerous in Lincoln, had been slaughtered by Iroquois war parties on their journey south after the final defeat of their Huron enemies on Georgian Bay. Called by the Hurons Attikadarons people of another dialect the Neutrals have left no trace of their language and few signs exist in Lincoln of their presence. Discernible at least until a few years ago was the site of the long house of an encampment at the foot of the second rise of the Escarpment at Cave Springs, once a prolific yielder of arrowheads and other relics. Above were well-executed faces carved in stone on the top face of the wall, evidence of the considerable artistic skill of these people. The carvings are but a memory, all having fallen victim to destruction by 20th Century vandals. At other places in Lincoln such as the former Snure farm in the valley of the Twenty at Jordan, and the sites of digs along the same creek at Tintern, relics of onetime Neutral encampments. Nonetheless, evidences of the Indians presence in Lincoln has not been developed to any great extent by those who have followed. Father Jean de Brebeuf pictured Neutrals as tall, strong and well-built, the nation numbering possibly 12,000. Their 4,000 warriors were described as cruel and warlike, exceeding the Hurons in tortures of their captives, and burning even women

prisoners of war. In clearings by their encampments grew Indian p.228 cont corn, beans and pumpkins. They fished in the creeks, arid in the forests hunted deer, wildcats, bear, beaver and other animals whose skins provided clothing. As well as flesh from the animals they killed, there were wild chestnuts and apples in quantity to eat, and flocks of wild turkey in the woods and clearings. Capital of the Neutrals was Onghiara Niagara. After white settlement began, Indians frequently were encountered along the trails that had been their exclusive pathways through the bush, usually Iroquoians from west of Lincoln on game hunting expeditions. Throughout the subsequent history of the town there have been a few Indian residents, as there are today, though not many have become permanent Lincolnians with lands and homes. Most of todays Indian population is in the Jordan area; they came to Lincoln from the Six Nations Reservation and are largely a transient population, engaged in agricultural work. In recent years there have been some Crees from the Moosonee district, in Lincoln as fruit pickers, and a few families have remained as year-round residents. The lands of the Neutrals in Niagara were purchased for a pittance by General Haldimand and parcelled out in Crown grants. Earliest recipients of these lands were the officers and men of Butlers Rangers, some of whom were of GermanEuropean background and others of Anglo-Saxon origin. Nonmilitary Loyalists fulfilling requirements for land grants were of mixed origins, though almost all had lived for extended periods in the American colonies. Pennsylvania-German Mennonites bought extensive lands in the Twenty vicinity from the nonfarmers who had received them for military services rendered, and while a number with German backgrounds received Crown grants in Clinton as United Empire Loyalists who had suffered at the hands of the Americans, the majority of settlers in the western section of the township were of Anglo-Saxon descent.