74 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



brooks, which again approach within 40 to 50 feet of it. The 

 brook on the northwest side is shallower at the upper end but 

 quickly eats its way into the shale and plunges over a series of 

 falls until at the lower end of the fortification the banks are 30 

 to 40 feet in height. The brooik on the opposite side is deeper and 

 throughout the length of the hill its depth is 40 to 50 feet with 

 high shaly embankments impossible to climb in places. Along 

 these embankments, particularly at the upper end, the refuse heaps 

 are found scattered over the end of the bank and down the talus 

 slope almost to the bed of the brook; in fact the entire outline 

 of the fortification is nearly bounded by refuse heaps. 



The site covers an area of about 5 acres, which was ample space 

 for a considerable Indian village. When the site was cleared about 

 1850, it was covered with a dense growth of large oak trees, with 

 pines at the lower slope. 



The Seneca Indians who frequently passed over this site at the 

 time it was cleared and who frequently hunted, fished and worked 

 in the neighborhood, told the original settlers they had no idea who 

 had lived on the site and the pipes, flints and fragments of pottery 

 were of as much interest to them as to the settlers who opened up 

 the tract. 



From this time on antiquarian and amateur archeologists com- 

 menced their search for relics and the first spring plo wings were 

 always a signal for relic hunters to pick over the surface for finely 

 shaped flints, pipes and shell and bone trinkets. During recent 

 years the most successful collectors so far as we know have been 

 Mr Alva Reed, Mr Joseph Mattern of West Rush; Mr Alvin H. 

 Dewey, Mr H. C. Follett and Mr George Mills of Rochester; and 

 Mr Frederick Houghton of Buffalo. A large share of the material 

 found by individual collectors is in the New York State Museum 

 collection. No burials were found until 1912, when Mr Frederick 

 Houghton, excavating for the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, 

 found a burial site on the projecting nose across the ravine east 

 of the spring and nearly opposite the falls. Our examination of 

 this site made in 1905, 1910, 191 1 and 1916, resulted in the series 

 of notes here given. 



It was found that the soil in nearly every portion of the site was 

 deeply stained and that there were natural depressions irregular 

 in shape that seem to have been used as refuse dumps. Even 

 after much cultivation for farming purposes, the soil still shows 

 blackened areas that outline the village dumps. Some of these 



