366 THE SENECA NATION 



about them from English sources during- the period is second 

 hand, mostly given in official documents based upon oral reports 

 by Indians or whites. 



Knowledge derived from archseologic sources is equally scant. 

 Their villages of that period were destroyed in 1687 and the sites 

 of the villages seem to have been abandoned by the Senecas at 

 that time. By the time their country was opened up to white 

 occupancy after Sullivan's expedition in 1779, all knowledge of 

 these villages was lost and when the first settlers chanced upon 

 their' sites, marked as they were by kettles, axes and beads in 

 immense numbers, they were puzzled to account for them. It 

 was not until Mr. O. H. Marshall made a study of certain French 

 manuscripts that the sites of the great villages were positively 

 identified and located. One of the sites was described as an 

 earthwork by E. G. Squier who followed Marshall in identifying 

 it as Gandagora. 



Because the village sites have been under cultivation for 

 nearly a century, and have been described and studied for a half 

 century, they have naturally attracted the attention of the collec- 

 tors and archaeologists of three generations. Every Seneca site 

 of this period has been walked over and dug into for the best part 

 of a century. Laterally tons of archaeologic material have been 

 taken from them, yet there exists today to my knowledge not one 

 single description of the customs and manner of living of the 

 Senecas of that period as shown by archaeology. The thousands 

 of articles found have been accumulated by private collectors. 

 Some have been sold or donated to the State Museum, with few 

 or no data for guidance. Some are in the possession of the origi- 

 nal collectors mainly without data. The field work on the sites, 

 done by the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, has been the 

 only archaeologic work carried on with the deliberate intention of 

 learning something of the people who once lived there, and its 

 field work has been successful in that it has resulted in the dis- 

 covery of material which goes far to reconstruct for us the life of 

 the Seneca Nation of that time. 



This third period of Seneca occupancy began when Father 

 Joseph Chaumonot appeared in the Seneca towns in 1657, and 

 was ended by the devastation of the country in 1687 by a French 

 punitive expedition under the Marquis de Denonville, the Gov- 

 ernor of New France. It was characterized by the attempted 

 domination of the Senecas by the French through diplomacy, 



