NEW YORK STATK Ml'SHl'M 



The Erie are commonly said to have been exterminated but this 

 is not entirely true. They became exterminated only in the sense 

 that they ceased to exist as an independent people. The surviving 

 Erie who did not flee to other tribes became the captives of the 

 Iroquois, who in accord with their usual policy adopted the indi- 

 viduals into their families and gradually absorbed them. 



Date of occupation. From the testimony of the records it would 

 thus appear that the inhabitants of the Ripley site must have been 

 Erie. The testimony of the relics leads to the conclusion that this 

 occupation was of the early historic period. Without doubt the site 

 bridges the prehistoric to the historic. That it must have been earlier 

 than 1654 is known from the fact that the Erie were expelled from 

 their territories by the confederated Iroquois in 1654. That it is not 

 so late as 1654 appears from the fact that by this date the Erie had 

 opportunity to trade extensively with European and yet few Euro- 

 pean articles were discovered. From the time the Dutch entered 

 New York and the colony of Jamestown was settled, the Erie had 

 opportunity to acquire articles by trade with other Indians, espe- 

 cially the Iroquois. Considering all things, one would be strongly 

 led to place the date of the cession of occupation before 1620. It 

 is highly probable, moreover, that the first occupation of the site 

 was early in the seventeenth century if not during the last few 

 years of the sixteenth. 



Description of Implements 



Stone 

 Objects oj Rough Stone 



The rough and massive stone objects requiring but slight modifi- 

 cation from natural forms to adapt them to the purposes intended 

 include hoes, anvils, shaft rubbing stones, pitted hammerstones, lap- 

 stones, net sinkers, rounded pebbles, mortars and some celtlike 

 implements. 



Figure i in plate 87 illustrates a flat piece of shale which has been 

 roughly shaped and from its marks of use evidently has been used 

 for a digging implement, perhaps a hce. Objects of this class were 

 not common, this specimen being the only complete one found on 

 the site. Large numbers of rounded water-washed pebbles were 

 found distributed over the site. All had been brought from the lake 

 shore and they were not found in the undisturbed soil. These peb- 

 bles varied in size from 2 inches to 5 inches in diameter and most 



