WAJ (What about Joey Primitive Rendezvous
2023 Dates
June 7th - June 11th
June 7th - June 11th
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Little Beard's History
There’s a little stream that winds through the lowlands down Cuylerville-Leicester.
A roadside sign tells the traveler that here is Little Beard’sCreek
Thus is the name of a Seneca Chief, powerful in his time, perpetuated in his old realm in the Genesee Country. Little Beard lived near what is now Cuylerville and there before the Revolution stood the most important stronghold of the Senecas, known as Genesee Castile or Little Beard’s Town. It was to this town that the Indians and their Tory leaders dragged the captured soldiers of Sullivan’s army, Boyd and Parker, to be tortured to death. It was this big town that Sullivan wiped out as the finale of his campaign. After the Revolution, a tract there was set aside as the Little Beard Reservation.
Little Beard had a reputation for cruelty and ferocity in battle but in peace he was described as amiable and he made friends with the white settlers after the war. He was a fluent speaker although not a great orator and was influential at the council fire. He was a straight and slender man of medium height.
He came to an ignoble end. During a drunken brawl in a Leicester tavern in 1808, the chief was thrown out the door and sustained mortal injuries. A few days after his death, there was an eclipse of the sun, something that generation of Indians had never seen. They were terrified and assembled, beating their drums and singing. Believing that the spirit of Little Beard, on its way up the heavenly path, had obscured the sun, they shot their bullets and arrows skyward until the brightness was restored.
There’s a little stream that winds through the lowlands down Cuylerville-Leicester.
A roadside sign tells the traveler that here is Little Beard’sCreek
Thus is the name of a Seneca Chief, powerful in his time, perpetuated in his old realm in the Genesee Country. Little Beard lived near what is now Cuylerville and there before the Revolution stood the most important stronghold of the Senecas, known as Genesee Castile or Little Beard’s Town. It was to this town that the Indians and their Tory leaders dragged the captured soldiers of Sullivan’s army, Boyd and Parker, to be tortured to death. It was this big town that Sullivan wiped out as the finale of his campaign. After the Revolution, a tract there was set aside as the Little Beard Reservation.
Little Beard had a reputation for cruelty and ferocity in battle but in peace he was described as amiable and he made friends with the white settlers after the war. He was a fluent speaker although not a great orator and was influential at the council fire. He was a straight and slender man of medium height.
He came to an ignoble end. During a drunken brawl in a Leicester tavern in 1808, the chief was thrown out the door and sustained mortal injuries. A few days after his death, there was an eclipse of the sun, something that generation of Indians had never seen. They were terrified and assembled, beating their drums and singing. Believing that the spirit of Little Beard, on its way up the heavenly path, had obscured the sun, they shot their bullets and arrows skyward until the brightness was restored.