184 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



be entered by following the road due east, making allowances for 

 the bends near the Ontario couaty line, to the first southeast road 

 down the hill, 5^ miles from Livonia. A road running down the 

 hill one-fourth of a mile farther on will also lead to Richmond 

 Mills. The south road should now be followed for three-fourths of 

 a mile to the farm of George Reed, through whose barnyard runs 

 a lane directly to the site. The unselfish and kindly interest of Mr 

 Reed has unfailingly opened the gate to the explorer who had a 

 genuine scientific interest. 



Located from the standpoints of aboriginal geography, the Reed 

 Fort site is situated just off the main trail from Aliens hill to Hem- 

 lock, which in general followed the valley of the outlet from its 

 juncture with Gates creek. The trail from the outlet of Conesus 

 lake to Honeoye lake crossed the Hemlock outlet about a mile south- 

 west of the site, but a supplementary trail still in use when the 

 township was settled passed directly over the site and southward, 

 again striking the Honeoye trail at the headwaters of the larger 

 stream forming the northeast side of the site. Just beyond are two 

 non-Iroquoian sites on the P. P. Barnard farm. The important 

 aboriginal sites to the southward are those at the foot of Hemlock 

 lake and at the outlet of Honeoye. It is along the Honeoye outlet 

 from the lake to the Genesee that many important sites are found. 

 Nearly all, if not all the sites near the Reed Fort site are prehistoric 

 and pre-Iroquoian. We except only the later historic sites at Hem- 

 lock and at Honeoye destroyed by Sullivan in 1779. 



The Reed Fort site stands alone and in a setting that is non- 

 Iroquoian. This suggests that it was settled or occupied soon after 

 the driving out of the non-Iroquoian tribes from the region. We 

 can not even be sure that when the site was seized for occupation 

 the original claimants of the region were all driven out, for there 

 have been discovered fragments of charred human bone that look 

 suspiciously like the evidences of the torture stake of a neighbor- 

 Tiood victim. Mr Dewey has in his cabinet the fragment of a lower 

 jaw, one end of which is carbonized. It has a projecting chin that 

 seems to betoken the stubborn resistance of the victim to the 

 intrusion of the Iroquois and his defiance of them even in the 

 flames. 



During the past seventy-five years this site has been gone over 

 by collectors who have carried off a very large amount of material. 

 During the past twenty years excavators have been particularly 

 active and thus far no object of European origin has been discovered 

 an any |)ii or refuse heap. 



