ABORIGINAL OCCUPATION OF NEW YORK 29 
It is said that the Mahikans had a fort on an island at Albany 
when the Dutch came there. Messrs Dankers and Sluyter visited 
the remains of a fort at the end of an island, thought to have been 
built by the Spaniards. This they did not believe but said “ That a 
fort has been there, is evident enough from the earth thrown up.” 
It has been recently claimed that this was a French fort, built in 
1540.—Weise, p.12. This is supported by a note found on the map 
of 1614, thus translated: “ But as far as one can understand from 
what the Maquas say and show, the French come with sloops as 
high up as to their country to trade with them.” There is no men- 
tion here of a fort, and the reference seems to be to the visit of 
Jacques Cartier to the Mohawks, in 1535, when they dwelt at Hoche- 
laga in Canada. They came.into New York late in that century. 
Allegany county. 1 Caneadea, the last Seneca village on the 
Genesee, was at the mouth of Caneadea creek.—Morgan, p. 436. In 
the Smithsonian report for 1879, E. A. Byrnes reported a ceme- 
tery near Caneadea and at the mouth of Black creek. FE. M. 
Wilson of Belfast wrote in 1896, “Between 15 and 20 years ago Mr 
Byrnes and I visited an old Indian cemetery which had been opened 
at that time near the village of Houghton in Caneadea. With the 
exception of one stone pipe nearly everything found in the shape 
of implements was made by white men.” 
2 The Seneca village of Karathyadirha in 1766 was at Belvidere, 
on the Genesee and at the mouth of Van Campen’s creek.—Doc. hist. 
N. Y. 7:723. _E. M. Wilson furnished the plan of fig. 14, on a 
scale of 200 feet to the inch. It is an earthwork in Angelica, one 
and one half miles north of the N. Y. L. E. & W. railroad station of 
Belvidere, 80 rods west of the Genesee river, and on a partly inclosed 
piateau. A stream is on the west, and the river flats on the east. It 
is a half circular bank, with a gate in the center and an outside ditch. 
The plateau is about 60.feet high, and the wall 450 feet long. It is 
an early site, with stone implements and pottery. 
3 Near Phillipsville, now Belmont, and in Amity, not far from 
Belvidere were three forts. On the largest of these were eight old 
trees, on one of which was painted a turtle over a canoe.—Barber, 
p. 86. Mr Wilson knew of only one work near Belmont. Dr E. E. 
