AN ERIE INDIAN VILLAGE AND BURIAL SITE 473 



Part 2 

 RECORD OF EXCAVATIOxNS AT RIPLEY 



A foreword 



It is not designed in this account to present an exhaustive treatise 

 on the Eries or of the various classes of objects discovered. Our 

 purpose is merely to set forth an account of the work as it was done 

 and briefly describe the specimens found in the course of explora- 

 tion, adding such supplementary matter as may be of immediate 

 importance for a proper understanding of the operations and the 

 results. The record of this expedition with those which have pre- 

 ceded it and those which follow in the Erie region will form the 

 base of a special work on the Eries and in that work the various 

 Erie sites in New York and Erie artifacts will be fully discussed. 

 This account, therefore, is to be regarded as a report of progress 

 rather than as a complete and final treatise. 



General region 



Along the southern shore of Lake Erie between Westfield and 

 State Line, and extending east and west from these points, is a 

 high bluff of Chemung shale rising almost sheer from the water. 

 In various places it is from 15 to 65 feet above the lake level. It 

 forms a most effectual barrier to those who might wish to reach the 

 land from the water or the water from the land. The soil above the 

 shale in general is a loose water-washed sand and gravel beneath 

 which is a substratum of Erie clay which outcrops at denuded 

 places. In this lake border region are numerous springs and brooks. 

 Two miles back from the lake rise the steep Chautauqua hills which 

 form the watershed that sends the streams on the south into the Alle- 

 gheny and its tributaries and finally into the Gulf of Alexico and 

 those on the north into Lake Erie and finally into the Gulf of St 

 Lawrence. This region by reason of its physical features afforded 

 an ideal retreat for the tribes of men who found their way there 

 after the subsidence of the great glacial lakes, which receding left 

 their shore lines far inland as terraces and hills and their beds as 

 fertile undulating plains. 



Traces of early occupancy are found here. On the sites of 

 ancient marshes are found the bones q1 the mastodon and with 



