3*8 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



village site scatteringly covers 2 or 3 acres along the first terrace, 

 while the burial ground was on the second terrace. Here a number 

 of skeletons were found in removing gravel for road-making, buried 

 in the usual folded position at the depth of 3 or 4 feet in the rather 

 tough gravelly soil. Each grave, it is said, was marked by the 

 presence of stained earth and fragments of charcoal. As nothing 

 whatever had been found with the skeletons, and as the village site 

 portion was sown to oats and could not be disturbed, this site was 

 not explored. A little scratching in the partly dug-over refuse heaps 

 revealed a few fragments of clearly Iroquoian pottery, so the site 

 can probably be referred to that people. 



We began our examination of the Rutland Hills series of sites east 

 of Watertown by investigating that on John Colligan's farm, at the 

 east end of Rutland Hollow about 2 miles south of Felts Mills. It 

 occupies 2 or 3 acres on a hilltop on the north side of the hollow in 

 a grove of pines and, maples. 



There is here a spring near the top of the hill, which must 

 have been a great convenience to the Indians. No ash pits 

 were found, even after careful search, but several large refuse 

 heaps on the top of the hill and some smaller ones on the hillsides 

 were noticed, nearly all worked out. All these, as could be seen from 

 the few specimens found, were of Iroquois origin, but near the 

 spring a small refuse deposit was examined, which yielded nothing 

 but a few grains of charred corn and several pieces of purely 

 Algonkian pottery. This small refuse heap probably indicates the 

 occupation of the place for a short time by Algonkian people, pre- 

 sumably before but possibly after, the Iroquois settlement. Such 

 inland Algonkian colonies are rare in Jefferson county, although I 

 have heard from Mr Woodworth, the veteran relic collector of the 

 Rutland hills, of another site yielding the same kind of pottery in 

 the valley just west of the hills. The Colligan site, I decided, was 

 too nearly worked out to repay exploration. 



We next crossed the hollow and climbed the opposite height to a 

 site farther westward on the farm of Ex-supervisor Allen, listed by 

 Squier, as nearly as I could study it out, as the " sites near Abner 

 Tamblin's farm." 1 There is no trace now of the earthwork men- 

 tioned by Squier but the field, sown to oats, showed scattered bits of 

 Iroquoian pottery and other artifacts. The traces of occupation lie 

 on a slight elevation partly surrounded by swampy ground, on the 

 flat hilltop not as one would expect from Squier' s description, on 



1 Squier, Antiquities of the State of New York, p. 24, pi. 3, no. 2. 



