24 NK\V YORK STATE MUSEUM 



readily found, in a cabin than in a village. The wooden arrow 

 might have sufficed for most of the needs of the place. Some have 

 suggested that the huts were those of a recent day, and that no 

 purely Indian relics may be expected. I do not assent to this view, 

 nor am I prepared to say with Mr Marvin, that these forest men 

 have left us traces of the oldest habitations in the State. The fact 

 seems to be, however, that we must make these very modern, with 

 but little to sustain this view, or place them before the Iroquois 

 occupancy of New York and the St Lawrence. Till the Iroquois 

 sold their lands there has been no time within the last 300 years 

 when it would have been safe for Algonquins to have habitations 

 on Perch lake. For a century before that, at least, Jefferson county 

 was occupied by the Iroquoian family, and they had no wish for 

 intruders. How much these mounds antedate the last four centuries 

 is a harder problem. I think they may safely be placed within the 

 past 500 years. Traditionally the Algonquin and Iroquois family 

 arrived here nearly together, and at no remote period. An exam- 

 ination of the sites of their camps and towns seems to substantiate 

 this, and these mounds suggest a period antedating that of their 

 inveterate hostility. They were undefended, long used, and yet 

 were in a territory claimed and held by the Iroquois for hundreds of 

 years. 



Two maps of the vicinity are given ; one from a large county map, 

 and the other from the public topographic purvey, conspicuously 

 differing in some respects. In the latter, plate 3, the lake is much 

 shorter than in the former, and streams which enter the river 

 in one flow into the lake in the other. The difference may be 

 accounted for by the fact that part of the swampy shores w r ere once 

 included in the lake, when the water supply was greater. On the 

 former map the general range of the mounds is indicated by the 

 usual sign. 



OTHER NEW YORK MOUNDS 



A few supplementary remarks may be made on other mounds in 

 New York, the larger part of the State having none, and most of 

 those found being of small size and simple character. In some 

 cases natural formations have been mistaken for these, having been 



