Ghosts

I am married to someone who wants to believe in ghosts. I think I already believe in them. And writing a story set in someplace as historical as Fort Niagara, which has witnessed bloodshed over the centuries, it's a challenge to the senses to think the fort is not haunted. There are places one expects to have ghosts, and Fort Niagara is on my list.

So I decided that Where the Gold is Buried would be incomplete without ghosts. The question was, in a story that spans centuries, with people dying left and right, whose ghost should haunt the story?

The only Seneca chief to stick with Captain Pouchot was Kaendae, and though the legend says two French soldiers buried the chest, I decided it would be more interesting with Kaendae.

The Loyalists

In the full sweep of history there are groups of people who have suffered grievously. I'm thinking of the Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, of the tribal slaughters depicted in (among other films) Hotel Rwanda. So posting about the lot of the American Loyalists will not, and should not, rank highly on the list of tragedies.
Still, they were victims. Proud victims. As many students of history know, Loyalists took their measure of the Patriots, of their Committees of Correspondence, assessed the men who made the bold speeches and said, Better one tyrant a thousand miles away than a thousand one mile away. Many of the Loyalists were well off. They were people of property, and many felt King George was abusing the colony, but argued for diplomatic solutions. Some wanted a colonial elected body, a political solution that Canada successfully navigated.
But that didn't happen in the colonies. The Patriots successfully argued for war, and midway through the war they clued into the wealth left by the ostracized Loyalists, some of whom left the colonies at the beginning of hostilities and may have planned to return after the king's expected victory (!), leaving behind mansions or at least comfortable homes with valuable furnishings. The Patriots made a business of stripping Loyalists of their material goods to help pay for the war.

The Loyal Quakers in Where the Gold is Buried were among the last to leave, after the cessation of hostilities in the latter 1780's. Many were persecuted by the Patriots during the war, fined for not taking part in the war, taxed heavily as many were as well off as the mainstream Loyalists, even forced to pay for substitutes. Being Quakers they were supposed to be pacifists and to take no part in political issues. Obviously, some did, and in the case of Jeremiah Moore, they also offered comfort to Hessian soldiers being released from POW camps at the end of the war. (An interesting historical note: when POWs were released in earlier times, they were kicked out the gate and left to walk home). Who, exactly, Jeremiah Moore aided is not clear. In family legends a reference is made to a local Loyal family. In the Legend of the French Military Chest, Moore aided a Hessian prisoner. If it was the Hessian, he died in the Moore home, but he died more comfortably than he would have in the camp, and he drew the map for young Jeremiah in gratitude for the kindness.

The Quaker Loyalists settled in present day Niagara-on-the-Lake, settling wild country and starting their lives over. They obviously suffered hardships, including repeated famines. In memory of their hardships, of the great pains they suffered to remain in the British Empire, they were granted the honorific of UEL, United Empire Loyalists.

Another lost chapter, Father Brebeuf

I initially began Where the Gold is Buried with a retelling of the martyrdom of Father Brebeuf, patron saint of Canada and a Jesuit missionary to the Hurons. My plan was to fill the French military chest with something other than money or gold, to put in something of spiritual value. So I described how he was tortured and lost his rosary, and a diary of hymns he was busy translating into Huron. These items later surface in the chest.

Change of heart: after rereading the entire book, I'm back starting the book with Father Brebeuf. Just couldn't kill it.

The Haudenosaunee, aka Iroquois Confederacy

In the course of reading about the native Americans of upstate New York, widely labeled as the Iroquois, I learned a few things. Some of these I knew from my upbringing in Niagara, where the Tuscarora Nation has its reservation. The Seneca are the largest tribe and controlled the land of western New York, with the Tuscarora moving north from North Carolina after suffering abuse from settlers. The Europeans were kidnapping Tuscarorans and selling them into slavery, aside from the ordinary abuses.
One fact I learned was that the name Iroquois does not come from the language of the tribes. The Haudenosaunee, as they call themselves, went to war with the Huron, found largely in the province of Ontario, and the Hurons called their opponents 'snakes', and the Huron word for it (I can't do it justice) phonetically sounds like Iroquois. So when you call them Iroquois, it's repeating a slander delivered by a defeated foe.
In Where the Gold is Buried, I wanted to show the process the Haudenosaunee underwent in the course of European colonization, from a feared force to blending with the conquering race. First they were valued as allies, and the French and English offered gifts and treaties to lure the warriors to their respective sides. The Haudenosaunee were allied to the French when the siege of Fort Niagara began. The English won them over, in part by showing themselves to be the stronger force. When the English were preparing to meet the French coming back to break the siege, the Haudenosaunee abandoned their neutrality to join the English, so they would have prizes of war to take back.
Later, as the Loyal Quakers are travelling north to Niagara, they encounter Indians mostly as refugees, reduced to begging. Viewed through the harsh light of victor and vanquished, during the American Revolution most of the Haudenosaunee backed the English, and paid the price of allying with the losing side. They lost their lands.
In the present day many Tuscarora still live on the reservation, but with the intermarrying that naturally occurs, many live in the community. My archeologist in Where the Gold is Buried is a half-blood Tuscarora, Diane Printup. Fortunately it was her father that was the Tuscaroran, so at least she sounds like a native.