THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 495 



gap. At the northwest end the wall bends to the west. The ridge is 

 very narrow here. This site has been recorded by various writers, 

 but does not seem to have been long occupied. The ridge appears to 

 be natural and the few flints found near it seem to have come from 

 a pre-Iroquoian village site nearer Big Indian's mouth. 



2 Burning Spring Indian fort. This earthwork is situated on the 

 point of a ridge jutting out from the superior terrace on the south- 

 east side of Cattaraugus creek near the mouth of Big Indian creek. 

 The earth wall that forms the breastworks of the fort was locally 

 supposed to be beyond the power of the Indians to erect and hence 

 was credited, for no other apparent reason, to the French and the 

 place has long been called the Old French fort. Burning spring is 

 found at the foot of the hill upon which the fort is erected, and 

 takes its name from the gas that bubbles from the rocks beneath the 

 water at the base of Burning Spring falls, a stone's throw from the 

 mouth of Big Indian creek. The fort proper embraces an area of 

 about I acre. The site is admirably adapted by its surroundings for 

 a fortified refuge, the swift Cattaraugus on the north preventing 

 access from that direction and the high, almost perpendicular slate 

 cliffs of Big Indian creek on the west forming an effective barrier 

 there. The eastern hillside is less steep but is protected by a series 

 of trenches sheltered by walls of earth dug into the hill at intervals 

 from top to bottom. These outposts are found at all easily accessi- 

 ble parts of the bank. They were probably intended as vantage 

 places from which the enemy could be fought and driven down the 

 slope. That these walls and trenches are artificial is shown by the 

 fact that potsherds, fire-broken stones, chipped flint and stone imple- 

 ments were found below the modern bottoms of the trenches. 

 The earth of which the walls are composed prove to have been 

 thrown up by man because of the disturbance of the regular strata 

 of the soil. The fort is separated from the point of which it is a 

 part by a wall 205 feet in length that curves irregularly from bank 

 to bank. All this wall is palpably of artificial origin as again shown 

 by the disturbance of the soil layers. The base of the wall is 14 feet 

 in thickness while the depth from the crest of the wall to the outer 

 edge of the excavation is 16 feet. The average height of the wall 

 from the bottom of the trench is 5 feet. Near the eastern side of 

 the fort, where the hill is not steep, the wall l^ecomes higher and the 

 trench deeper. A depression in the top of the wall at this point 

 seems to indicate an ancient gateway. The site is of early Iroquoian 

 occupation and metallic implements or evidences of European con- 

 tact were discovered. 



3 Burial site near the mouth of Castile creek. 



