646 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



rude camp and defenses, there was no settlement nearer than Logstown, 

 Ohio. The Senecas formed what was called the western door of the 

 Iroquois Long-house, and claimed our county as a part of their hunting- 

 ground. I can find no satisfactory proof of the occupancy of this ter- 

 ritory by any tribe of Indians, unless it may have been the residence of 

 the Kah Kwahs, a tribe said to have been driven out by the Iroquois, 

 and which has wholly disappeared. It is claimed by some that there 

 was once a tribe called AUeghans occupying lands in or near this county. 



It appears to me that the Iroquois, admitted to be the most intelligent 

 and powerful of all the tribes or confederacies, were never far enough 

 advanced to construct the fortifications or to make the polished stone 

 implements found in our county ; and if they were not, was there any 

 other people who were ever settled in this territory 1 



Champlain, in 1609, gives us some idea of the barbarism of the Sene- 

 cas, against whom he made war. Wasseuaer, the Dutch historian, in 

 1621-'2 represents the Indians as savages who could not have been of 

 the "polished stone age." Cartier found them " insuiferable" ; so Cadil- 

 lac describes them. All we can gather from historical documents leads 

 to the belief that the stone implements, the pottery, the fortifications, the 

 skeletons found, and the large mound (if it be one) were the work of a 

 people existing anterior to the historic period and more advanced than 

 the Knoshioni, or Powhatanic stocks. One argument grows out of the 

 fact that all the relics have been dug or plowed up. Stone axes, flint 

 or chert arrow and spear heads have often been found on the surface or 

 just below the surface of the land, while the pottery, gouge, amulet, &c., 

 have been found at various depths. The two skeletons found at Frews- 

 bury under the pine stump lived and died long before the " League of 

 the Long-house" was formed. Two feet, at least, of a secular increase 

 has grown up since these two human beings were laid away, ('an we, in 

 the absence of " monuments of known age," ever ascertain the rate of 

 that increase ? The lofty old pine tree began its life more than six hun- 

 dred years ago. How long before that tree sprouted had these bodies 

 been deposited there? And then, again, were these two dead ones 

 members of the tribe or nation that raised the breastworks and made 

 the implements we find at various depths below the surface of to-day? 



In my search after data upon or from which to estimate a secular in- 

 crease of land I have consulted many Indians and whites, but none 

 are able to give any facts. Sa-gun-da-wie, or Big Nose, a member of 

 the Seneca tribe, gave me an iron ax or hatchet, evidently one of the 

 kind used by the Dutch or French to trade for fur^. He told me it was 

 plowed up on the Cattaraugus reservation from a depth of about 8 inches, 

 but he could not say whether the plow had ever before passed over the 

 spot. The ax must have been lost or thrown away at least two hundred 

 years ago ; it may have been two hundred and fifty years. If we were 

 sure that the implement was left on the surface two hundred years ngo, 

 the secular increase would have been at the rate of about 4 inches per 



