676 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



a colossal boulder parallel to the ledge and forming with it a pas- 

 sageway about 20 feet long and 5 feet wide. To the left of it a 

 rocky mass as high as the cliff stands outside. This remarkable 

 place has been but partly explored. . . . Examination of the pas- 

 sageway reveals some slight traces of an ancient fireplace near the 

 center as indicated by blackened soil, heat, stones, etc." 



Staten Island 1 (Richmond county) 



List of Sites 



1 A village and burial site and burial ground at Upper or Pelton's 

 Cove occur between Livingston and West New Brighton. When 

 the Shore road was cut through this place many years ago, numbers 

 of skeletons were found. This site is now obliterated. During the 

 last ten or twenty years there has been absolutely nothing to show 

 aboriginal occupation. Old people now living remember when a 

 large sand dune was to be seen at this spot, and the finding of human 

 bones and other objects washed out by rains. In Hagadorn's 

 " Staten Islander," June 4, 1856, the following account concerning 

 this site occurs: " Mr Dissosway's lecture on the Indians of Staten 

 island, last Friday evening, was attended by many of our most 

 prominent citizens. The church was filled as usual. Mr Dissosway 

 delighted his audience with a mass of historical facts and incidents 

 highly instructive and interesting. At the close of his remarks, he 

 exhibited to the audience some skulls of the Red men, found on Mr 

 Samuel Pelton's farm, together with their arrows and other articles 

 used by them in peace and war. Mr Pelton had very kindly sent 

 them to the society that the public might have an opportunity to see 

 them." 



2 A village site, now obliterated, has been reported at West New 

 Brighton. This is said to have been situated in part between Cedar 

 and Dongan streets. When the foundation for the new parish house 

 of the Church of the Ascension was being dug in the spring of 1903, 

 shells, skeletons and implements are said to have been found. A 

 three-pitted hammerstone and a small fragment of pottery were 

 found by the writer. The skeletons, or rather the human bones seen 

 by the writer, were recent white men's bones ; but we were told that, 





1 The information concerning the sites on Staten island has been taken 

 from information supplied by Alanson B. Skinner and contained principally 

 in his article on the " Lenape Indians of Staten Island," in volume 3, of 

 the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History. 



