94 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



pottery, though no complete vessels have been found. The culture 

 is plainly derived from the Ohio reg'on and southward. Numerous 

 sites along the central Finger Lakes and along the Seneca river have 

 yielded an abundance of polished slates similar to Ohio, Indiana, 

 Michigan and other areas in the mound area. The region about 

 Oneida lake is especially rich. One site near Brewerton has yielded 

 more than twenty copper objects, many gorgets and several banner 

 stones. The Bigelow collection in the State Museum, embracing 

 more than ten thousand articles, has numerous polished slates from 

 this vicinity. 



If we were to trace the route taken by the people of the mound 

 culture we should follow both the lake shore of Erie and the valley 

 of the Allegheny. Perhaps the north shore of Lake Erie was also 

 a route for we find abundance of polished slates in the sites upon 

 which the Huron and the Neutral and the Iroquois later intruded. 

 The southernmost division in New York, we would say, dwelt about 

 Chautauqua lake and the valley of the Allegheny, with its tributaries. 

 We thus find true mounds in Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Erie 

 counties. The southern bands along the Allegheny and the Catta- 

 raugus perhaps found a portage or a short overland trail to the 

 upper waters of the Genesee, and the more northerly along the 

 Tonawanda creek to the lower Genesee. The Genesee valley 

 throughout most of its length is rich in artifacts of this culture, and 

 the routes we have pointed out pass over and through sites where 

 such objects have been found. 



Apparently the presence of mounds and the artifacts of the 

 mound culture represent the expansion of the parent culture beyond 

 the limits of its home. Whether this was due to simple migratory 

 movements, to exploring bands, to expatriated tribesmen or the 

 pressure of warring enemies it is difficult to state. Perhaps alt 

 these factors contributed to the expansion of the mound culture. 



European articles have not been found in undisturbed mounds or 

 sites of this culture in New York. There are, it is true, occasional 

 intrusive burials in these sites, but all of them appear to be precol- 

 onial and pre-Iroquoian. Whether some of them were contem- 

 poraneous with an Algonkian culture is another problem. The 

 weight of evidence seems to be that this is the case. Certainly the 

 material culture of the eastern Algonkins seems to have been con- 

 siderably modified by this culture, just as the later New England 

 tribes were modified by the Iroquois. It is quite possible, there- 

 fore, that the mound culture people intruded into the hunting 

 grounds of certain Algonkian bands and established themselves. 



