The Cradles

Seneca porters originally carried goods and boats up the Escarpment for the French and the British. In 1750, Swedish traveler Peter Kalm reported that 200 Seneca were employed carrying packs of bear and deer skin on their backs, and that he saw four men carry a birch bark canoe five fathoms long up the Escarpment. He wrote that the Seneca called the way the porters climbed on their hands and knees Duh'jih'heh'oh, meaning "to walk on all fours." The porters were paid 20 pence for each pack they carried or were given blankets, coats, stockings, and other items for their labor. After the British occupied the Niagara region, they tried to improve the movement of goods up the Escarpment by first grading the Gully and then creating a mechanical device to move materials up from the Lower Landing. Several individuals, including John Montressor, a British lieutenant of the engineers, are credited with building this carrying device for moving goods up and down the Gully between 1762 and 1764. Called the Cradles, these were carts or sleds drawn by ropes along wooden rails. To manage the slope, the rails were arranged in three stages: the first raised the carts from the river up the Gully to the top of the bank, about 50 feet; the second turned ninety degrees to the south and began the ascent up the Escarpment; and the third began halfway up the Escarpment on a natural shelf and ended at the crest of the ridge. Because many men were needed to operate the winches that pulled the cradles, the second and third stages were abandoned during the Revolutionary War.

Lewiston, New York · United States