ved "that the flag of the U.S. be thirteen stripes,
alternates red and white, that the Union be thirteen stars, white
in a blue field, representing a new constellation." This was the
original of the national flag. The flag at Ft. Stanwix was a
hasty makeshift put together under direction of Col. Marinus
Willet, who found it difficult to obtain materials because the
fort was hemmed in by the British. In his diary Col. Willet
relates that "white stripes were cut out of an ammunition shirt;
the blue out of a camlet cloak taken from the enemy at Peekskill,
while the red stripes were made of different pieces of stuff
procured from one and another of the garrison."

After the War of Independence, three commissioners for the U.S. made a
new treaty with the chiefs of the Six Nations at Ft. Schuyler (1784). In
1796 a canal was built across the old portage between Wood Creek and the
Mohawk. In the same year the township of Rome was formed, receiving its
name, says Schoolcraft, "from the heroic defence of the republic made
here." The country surrounding Rome is devoted largely to farming,
especially vegetables, gardening and to dairying. Among the manufactures
are brass and copper products, wire for electrical uses, foundry and
machine-shop products, locomotives, knit goods, tin cans and canned
goods (especially vegetables).

264 M. ONEIDA, Pop. 10,541. (Train 51 passes 1:53p; No. 3, 3:05p; No.
41, 7:25p; No. 25, 8:12p; No. 19, 11:42p. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 3:15a;
No. 26, 4:02a; No. 16, 9:11a; No. 22, 11:10a.)

The city of Oneida is comparatively modern, but the village of Oneida
Castle across the river to the south dates back to the time when this
was the chief settlement of the Oneida Indians, who moved here about
1600 from the site of what is now Stockbridge in the same county.

The name Oneida is a corruption of the name Oneyotka-ono or
"people of Stone," in allusion to the Oneida stone, a granite
boulder near Oneida Castle which was held sacred by this tribe of
the Iroquois. An early traveler who visited the castle in 1677
wrote that the "Onyades have but one town, doubly stockaded, of
about one hundred houses." The rest of the tribe lived around
Oneida Lake, in the region southward to the Susquehanna. They
were not loyal to the Iroquois League's policy of friendliness to
the English, but inclined towards the French, and were
practically t