USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the Genesee country (western New York) comprising the counties of Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Erie, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates, Volume I > Part 6
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As the settlers began to hew down the forests and penetrate the country they found more of these "Indian forts," as they called them. When these were plowed over the plowshare turned up quantities of animal bones, potsherds and implements of stone and pottery. Little was thought of these things then, though an occasional fine specimen may have been picked up. As a rule the
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settlers had no love for things Indian, for these objects reminded them of their struggle against the native red man; they bespoke the red man's bloody warfare-an unpleasant recollection. It was not until the writings of Squier and Davis and Schoolcraft had become generally circulated that much interest was manifested in collecting "Indian relics". This is so far true that it is a dif- ficult thing to find in any large archeological collection a single specimen collected before 1850, though the most favorable oppor- tunity to acquire these things existed before this date when the virgin soil was rich with Indian artifacts that had become em- bedded in the top-soil and leaf mold. Tales are many of plowing through heaps of relics, pottery, jars and piles of arrowheads, not to mention ossuaries, where scores of skulls and other bones were ripped from the earth and strewn through the tilled ground to become food for the growing fields.
Though few only of these objects were then preserved, they excited curiosity and discussion, and many theories were de- veloped. No people have greater interest in Indian relics and remains today than those of the Genesee Country, for traditions regarding these things have come down to them from their grand- fathers. Now every specimen discovered is saved with great care and systematic search is made for them.
One of the earliest theories advanced to account for the numerous mounds and earthworks in this region was that the mysterious Mound Builders had once lived here and that the Iroquois had driven them out and exterminated them. Every earthwork was thought to have been the stronghold of this "van- ished race". It was believed that the dispirited Senecas, who showed scant inclination to work at such things, were lacking in the initial energy to produce them. Indeed, all Indians were thought to be somewhat lazy and incapable of the sustained effort that the building of walls and ditches of earth demanded. The hypothetical Mound Builders offered an explanation, but then came the question "Who were the Mound Builders?" This seemed a reasonable question, but one that could scarcely be answered, because it was supposed the Mound Builders were utterly ex- terminated, and thus beyond the possibility of discovery.
Thus the first investigators groped in darkness. To them all Indian implements were simply relics of one similar culture.
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The day of systematic investigation and careful discrimination had not yet dawned.
In the year 1848 the Smithsonian Institution published as its first volume, "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," by E. G. Squier and Dr. E. H. Davis. This was the first great work on American archeology and it created a sensation not only in America but in Europe. It was followed by another notable work, "Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York," by E. G. Squier, which included diagrams and maps of many note- worthy earthworks.
Other writers, like Schoolcraft in his "Notes on the Iroquois" (1847), had mentioned mounds and tumuli, but it remained for Squier to make accurate observations. The scientific circles of the state were now thoroughly aroused to the possibilities of archeological research. While interest in the Indians themselves was stimulated by the publication of biographies of Brant, Mary Jemison, and Red Jacket, between 1838 and 1842, it was not until the appearance of "The League of the Iroquois" (1851), by Lewis H. Morgan, of Rochester, that it became fixed. Intelligent research now commenced, though it was naturally confined to a few experts. The first serious attempt to make use of this new knowledge was by Morgan, who began in 1850 to collect the implements and utensils of the Seneca Indians for deposit in the New York State Museum. Visiting the reservations at Allegany, Cattaraugus and Tonawanda, he brought together a collection whose worth has not since been surpassed. The systematic col- lection of archeological implements did not start until a much later date, though many collections were brought together, it is true. As a rule, however, these were without much significance, as will later be seen.
As accounts of the settlement of western New York began to appear and county histories were published, the first chapters were devoted, in most instances, to the Indian occupation and to the earth monuments which were scattered throughout the region. There was much speculation about these remains and but little definite information other than mere description.
It was not until the list of William M. Beauchamp appeared in the State Museum Bulletin on "Aboriginal Occupation" that any serious attempt was made to enumerate all the sites. Dr. Beauchamp described two hundred and sixty-eight in the Genesee
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Country, and as a result of this pioneer work, other investigators began to make similar records. The State Museum made another survey in 1912-13 and gave seven hundred and forty-eight sites within this area, six hundred and twenty-three of which were described in the second part of "The Archeological History of New York". If every camp site and field where arrowheads might be found were included, the list would embrace more than one thousand locations where the aborigines had lived or where their influence was manifest. Within the counties of Monroe, Genesee, Ontario and Livingston, the heart of the Seneca terri- tory, nearly five hundred sites have been charted by one collector alone, Mr. Harrison C. Follett, of Rochester.
Investigation has revealed that in the Genesee Country there are nearly one hundred fortified hilltop strongholds, a like num- ber of burial sites, and nearly fifty true mounds. It thus appears that long before the coming of the white man, this region was settled by active and vigorous peoples. Their villages were along the rivers, creeks and lakes, their camps upon the hills, their fortifications in strategic places difficult of assault. There is not an area of like size in the United States, east of Ohio and north of the Mason and Dixon line, where the evidences of aboriginal occupation are so abundant.
Beginning with Chautauqua County, let us read these evi- dences as they spread eastward to Seneca Lake.
All along the shore of Lake Erie from the state line to Cat- taraugus Creek are scattered remains of camps and villages. Two trails ran along the shore, one near the water's edge and a main trail along the ridge made by the lake when it had a much higher level. Not far from the Pennsylvania line, in the town of Ripley, is a village and burial site of major importance. It was excavated by M. R. Harrington for Harvard University in 1904, and by the present writer in 1906 for the State Museum. The first published account of a systematic and scientific exploration of an Indian site in this state, describing the Ripley excavations, was issued soon after by the State Museum in a special bulletin.1
Both Mr. Harrington and the writer concluded that the site was that of an important Erie settlement. It may have been the Geutaieuton mentioned in the Jesuit Relations.
At Westfield, a little way up Chautauqua Creek, is another
1 Bulletin 117, Excavations in an Erie Village and Burial Site, by A. C. Parker.
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location. It is a village site within which was an extended earth walled enclosure of undoubted antiquity. Farther east is an important site near Portland. Other sites are near Silver Creek, along Walnut Creek. Farther south, in Sheridan and in Fre- donia, are important works, ossuaries and mounds.
The Cassadaga Valley from Lilydale to Gerry is filled with signs. At both Sinclairville and Gerry are several earthworks, burial sites and mounds, while across the hills to the east, in the town of Ellington, are some of the most noteworthy fortifications in the entire state.
Chautauqua County is a mine of archeological localities, and archeologists will find here a range of occupations worthy of a detailed and prolonged study. Here once lived outer tribes of mound-building Indians and, before them, roamed bands of the archaic Algonkian peoples. Later came other Algonkian tribes with a higher culture, and then came the Iroquois. Chautauqua County antiquities were studied by T. Apoleon Cheney and by Obed Edson, the veteran historian of the county, and A. W. Young in 1875 published an excellent account. In this county are found true mounds, though most of them have been destroyed. One large and conspicuous mound still remains on the old Cheney farm, in the town of Poland.
Cattaraugus County presents evidence of having been occu- pied from remote times, and here; as in Chautauqua County, there are numerous sites of camps, villages, burial places and mounds. Some of the village sites are so extensive that they cover many acres and merge one with the other. This is espe- cially true along the Allegany, where there are mounds and earthworks. One of the most interesting group of sites is in the town of Randolph. This was the home of Dr. Frederick Larkin, who was so impressed by the antiquities about him that he ex- plored the surrounding region and wrote an interesting book called "Ancient Man in America". It was in this region also that Cheney in 1859 made his investigations, published in the 13th Report of the State Museum.
Along the Cattaraugus, from the county line in Perrysburg to Otto, are important and interesting earthworks and mounds. Here along Big Indian Creek is the Burning Spring fort which the writer explored in 1905, and the double walled fort on Castile Creek, explored by Mr. Harrington in 1904. Above Gowanda,
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in the town of Persia, is the famous Point Peter site. In the southern portion of the county, in Carrollton, are mounds at Van- dalia and an important earthen enclosure at Limestone. Cat- taraugus County, with its several occupations and ancient cultures, will stand considerable study and yield a vast amount of archeological data.
As the nose of Lake Erie is rounded we find another archeo- logical area of major importance in Erie County. Here is a natural field bounded on the north by Tonawanda Creek and on the south by the Cattaraugus, while to the west is Lake Erie and the Niagara River. Beginning at the southwest corner of this region, we find a vast array of Indian localities along Cat- taraugus Creek from its very mouth to Gowanda. This par- ticular stretch of land is even now Indian territory, being a part of the Cattaraugus reservation and belonging to the Seneca Nation. At the mouth of the creek is a large tract of several hundred acres strewn in every direction with flint chippings, arrowheads, net sinkers and hammer stones. There is abundance of evidence that numerous tribes from most remote times have lived here, for one finds not only places where the crudest of specimens are to be discovered, but also the finest specimens of the mound builder's art. Following the creek to the southeast, we find sites continuously all the way to the mouth of Clear Creek and then, scattered more thinly, to Versailles, and several along the creek to the village of Gowanda.
Every creek valley along the lake to Buffalo has its sites, but not so abundantly as in the vale of the Cattaraugus. This creek with its fertile flats on the Erie County side must have been a veritable Garden of Eden to many shifting tribes of red men, and it is today. One of the earliest expeditions sent out by an institution for systematic work in western New York was that of Harrington and Parker, who in 1903 explored and excavated the Silverheels site on the Cattaraugus reservation, for the Pea- body Museum of Harvard. More than thirty entire pottery ves- sels were taken from graves here, which with seventy from the Ripley site made more than a hundred from western New York in a period of three years. This record has never been equalled.
Almost equal to the Cattaraugus is the valley of Buffalo Creek, where there are numerous sites from the mouth fifteen miles inland to East Elma, and along Cazenovia Creek from its
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confluence with Buffalo to East Aurora. Cayuga Creek and its branches also have their groups of sites. Other important clus- ters of earthworks are found near Clarence, Williamsville and Akron. Upon Grand Island are also sites, one of which was explored by Frederick Houghton, of Buffalo, with excellent re- sults; these are reported in the publications of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.
Erie County was once inhabited by bands of people with a culture similar to the Eskimo. The archaic and intermediate Algonkian peoples lived here also. Later came various branches of Iroquoian people, and when history opens her sure pages we find the names of the Eries, the Neutrals and Wenroes associated with this region. Here, too, came bands of mound-building Indians and many strange wanderers from the west. The coun- try was inviting and fertile, but its very attractiveness made it a battlefield.
Niagara County has its share of earthworks and mounds. Perhaps the most interesting group is in the town of Lewiston against the limestone escarpment on the Tuscarora reservation line. This is the site of the Attawandaronk or Neutral Nation village of Ga-yen-no-ga, the capital of that famous people. Here tradition tells us dwelt Jikinsaseh, the Mother of Nations, the powerful arbiter of peace. Her nation kept peace with all the Iroquoian people and preserved neutrality in all wars. The loca- tion is a commanding one where even now the sites of ossuaries and burials may be discovered.
Another interesting group lies at the headwaters of Twelve Mile Creek, in the township of Cambria. Here is an earthwork, a village site, a burial place and a mound. This site has received much attention, and Schoolcraft, Turner, Reynolds and General Lincoln have all described it in greater or less detail.
The aboriginal remains of Genesee County are extensive. The best known is the great earth-walled circle near Oakfield. Since the days of Kirkland, who examined it in 1788, it has attracted attention and speculation. Squier made a detailed survey of it and gave its dimensions as an oval, six hundred by eight hundred feet, with five gateways, deep outer ditches and plain evidences of a palisade. Another site of considerable importance is at the confluence of Fordhams Brook and Allens Creek, in the town of LeRoy, being three miles north of LeRoy village. Unlike the
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Oakfield site, which is on the lowlands and completely enclosed, the LeRoy site is upon a hill which projects, like a thumb, into the valley. Three sides are bordered by deep ravines, making it necessary to erect a wall and ditch only on one side, to cut it off from the rest of the hill, though the wall is fifteen hundred feet long and nearly straight, but curving down the hill at the ends. This site was surveyed by Squier, who represents it in an en- graved map in his "Aboriginal Monuments of New York". It was described by Lewis H. Morgan and by Rev. C. Dewey, of Rochester. Alvin H. Dewey, of Rochester, has a number of interesting specimens from this site and he placed others in the New York State Museum, one of which was a double-faced pipe with the facial effigies of a man and woman side by side in front of the bowl, which appears like a basket upon their backs.
Sites of former Indian occupation are numerous near LeRoy and occur along Oatka Creek as far south as Pavilion and run over the county line into Wyoming. There is another group on Black Creek near Stafford, where some unusually fine specimens have been found by John Gilliard. Sites are numerous along the Tonawanda Creek, in the township of Alabama. These sites ex- tend from Indian Falls all the way through the present Tona- wanda Seneca reservation to Akron, in Erie County. Several cultures are represented, and mingled with the soil are relics of the Neutrals, the mound-building Indians and Algonkian tribes of the second period. Batavia has its quota of sites and they run up the creeks that flow from the south. The Archeological His- tory of New York mentions several in this vicinity.
Orleans County has few well defined Indian sites, but there are traces all along Oak Orchard Creek, a considerable village site at Lyndonville and mounds at Carlton, according to old rec- ords. The most notable earthwork of this county, however, and the one that makes it unique, is the circular fortification near Shelby Center. This lies just north of the Alabama group in the county of Genesee. Squier first described this work in 1851 and it was afterwards excavated by Frank Hamilton Cushing, who recorded his discoveries in the annual report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1874. This work is nearly circular and its center is at the intersection of two fence lines that cross at right angles. A portion of the circle has been obliterated by cultivation, but the sectors still in the woods show well defined walls and deep
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ditches. At one portion of the wall are two large boulders. The unique features of this earthwork are: First, its almost circular form; second, the two parallel embankments, one within the other, and third, the fact that the openings or gates are not oppo- site each other. Excavations within this fortification show that it is of Iroquoian origin and that it probably was built by a band of early Neutral Indians.
Wyoming County, south of Genesee, seems to have been a land of passage rather than settlement. It is high and hilly and in its well watered highlands the Tonawanda, the Cattaraugus, Cayuga and Oatka creeks have their sources, while to the east is Silver Lake, and to the southeast flows the Genesee. In the ex- treme northwest corner, at Cowlesville, in the township of Ben- nington, on the headwaters of Cayuga Creek, is an interesting fort site, but its relation is rather with the Erie County groups to the west. In Java, along the headwaters of the Cattaraugus and the Tonawanda, are many evidences of occupation, and there is a village site near Java village. There are two village sites on the headwaters of the Oatka, one near Oatka and one near Warsaw. Just south of Portageville, along the Genesee, is a prominent hilltop stronghold. It has been described several times and outline maps are shown in the Bureau of Ethnology report for 1880, in the State Museum Bulletin 32, 1900, and in the American Anthropologist, No. 4, 1916, in an article by Frederick Houghton. Near this fort, the wall of which is some four feet high, is a mound on the flats. There are also several sites in Perry and a village site in Arcade.
Let us now journey up the Genesee, commencing at the mouth of the river at Charlotte. In this manner we can make a rapid survey of Monroe County, though, if we wished to linger, it would take us many weeks to fully inspect the more than one hundred sites that cover the county. From Charlotte to Rochester are sites on both sides of the river, but most of them Algonkian in character. We must go far up the river and into the town of Rush before we strike any prominent Iroquoian site. In Rush Township are more than a score of places where Indian relics and remains may be found. This is particularly true along the banks of Honeoye Creek, where Joseph E. Mattern, of West Rush, has conducted many excavations. The relics here are abundant and cover every cultural type found in the state. Here we discover
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the relics of the later Seneca, of their remote ancestors, of the second period Algonkians, of the mound-building Indians and even of the Eskimoan wanderers.
East of Rush, in the town of Mendon, are two highly im- portant sites, one at the bend of the river at Rochester Junction and one farther south on the John Dann farm. Both of these sites are of the historic Seneca and the first named is definitely known in historical annals as the Seneca town of Totiacton. The Jesuits who established a mission there called it La Conception. The site itself is situated at the sharp bend of the Honeoye and upon elevated ground. It covers some thirty acres. The land has been plowed for many years, but it is still strewn with beads, scraps of brass, bits of iron, broken trade pipes, native terra- cotta pipe stems, and now and then native implements of stone. Numerous collectors have sought specimens here and all have met with some measure of success. Among them are J. E. Mattern, Samuel P. Moulthrop, Harrison C. Follett, George and Henry Selden, and Alvin H. Dewey. Greenhalgh visited this site when the village flourished and says that it contained one hundred and twenty houses, mostly large. Archeological appearances bear out this statement, for not only have evidences of the houses been found, but also three cemeteries, from which many fine pottery pipes, antler combs, beads and shell articles have been taken. The site was destroyed in the French raid under Denonville in 1687.
The Dann site is south of Totiacton and lies along Spring Brook but near the Honeoye. It is an extensive site and the burial ground has yielded more than three hundred graves. Ray- mond Dann, who excavated most of them, found great quantities of wampum, thousands of glass and shell beads, a score of antler combs, several pottery vessels, about thirty stone and terra-cotta pipes and many other rare specimens. It may be that this village was established after Totiacton had been destroyed and that it is also one of the Totiactons of the Senecas, for it is a well known fact that the Iroquois removed their villages at stated periods and reestablished them, frequently under the same name. About Irondequoit Bay is another group of localities presenting certain complexities and representing several cultures. This was a favorite landing place for parties that came by canoe with an inland destination. It was this route that Denonville took in 1687 when he moved against the Senecas. On the bluffs above
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the bay in the town of Penfield were mounds, one of which had a depression near by from which the earth to form it had been taken. On the west side of the bay and above it are sand plains upon which are several sites. Here large quantities of human bones have been found and caches of flint blades stained with iron oxide. In the town of Chili is an interesting group of localities where some unusual specimens have been discovered. Indeed every township has its full quota of camp, village and burial sites, save Hamlin and Parma, from which little has been reported.
Going south from Monroe County, we enter Livingston, the very heart of the Seneca Nation of historical times. It was here that the pioneers found the Senecas in their full glory when the Genesee Country was opened for settlement. But here, as in other counties of this area, other tribes and stocks had preceded them, and not every site is to be credited to the Senecas by any means. In Livingston County, after the destructive raids of the French culminating in 1687, the Seneca Indians found a refuge and pushed their villages against the Genesee, moving westward from Ontario County, where they had earlier dwelt. Forty years before this date the region had not been so safe, for the Eries and Neutrals had their hunting grounds against the western banks. By 1655, however, the trans-Genesee tribes had been destroyed and the region became an inviting refuge. Here, as history opens, were the Indian villages of Geneseo, Canawagus, Little Beard's Town, Big Tree, Duydosot, Ganyuhsas, Keinthe, Ganada- chioragou, Squawkie Hill, Ohagi and Ganasegago, and several other sites, plainly of historical occupation, but not identified with any name.
Before the Senecas came the mound-building Indians had established themselves in many localities throughout the county. The site on Squawkie Hill is one of their strongholds, and there are three mounds on the hill. Here, as in other localities, how- ever, there is a mixture of artifacts plainly showing traces of both Algonkian and Iroquoian occupations. From the Squawkie Hill mounds, on the farm lately occupied by John F. White, have come beautifully polished and shaped monitor pipes, copper im- plements and pearl beads. In the area about the mounds have been found bell pestles and grooved axes.
The sites in Livingston County cluster about certain spots, as if these places had some particular attraction for the red men.
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