380 , THE SENECA NATION 



ship of Mendon, Livingston County. The site on the Dann farm, 

 Honeoye Falls, claimed to be the Totiakto of 1687, was either a 

 later site, occupied by the homeless community of Totiakto, after 

 1687, or Gannounata. 



Besides the sites thus identified as being those of the historic 

 Seneca towns of this period, there are in the Genesee valley 

 several other sites which cannot be identified. One on the Shat- 

 tuck farm at Factory Hollow, on Honeoye Creek, near West 

 Bloomfield, and another on the same creek near West Bloomfield 

 station are the sites of large communities. At Factory Hollow I 

 found deep refuse heaps, containing Stone Age articles, and judg- 

 ing only from the plates in Mr. Beauchamp's publications of 

 articles found there, I believe that it was inhabited earlier than 

 either the Rochester Junction or the Victor site. Probably the 

 same community occupied it which later lived on the site at West 

 Bloomfield station. These two locations are probably those of 

 villages inhabited successively by the people who finally built on 

 what is now the Kirkpatrick farm, the large bark village described 

 by Greenhalgh as Tiotohatton, and burned by Denonville. Yet 

 either one may have been Gannounata, Gandachioragou, or Father 

 Fremin's village. 



The country of the Senecas was described in 1657 by the Jesuit 

 missionaries as being the most fertile and populous of all the 

 Iroquois provinces, and as containing two large villages and a 

 number of small ones, besides the Huron town of St. Michel. 

 Father Chaumont (*l) visited the country and preached there in 

 1657, but after a very brief stay he returned to the lower Iroquois. 

 At that time the Senecas were in touch with Dutch traders from 

 Fort Orange or New Amsterdam, and had been for at least twenty 

 years, probably longer. Thej^ were acquainted with the French, 

 too, for the Directors of the Dutch West India Company wrote in 

 December, 1656, to Director General Peter Stuyvesant at New 

 Amsterdam that a Jesuit and some Frenchmen were in the "Sen- 

 nequens' " countn-. ("2) 



In September, 1664, New Netherlands was surrendered to 

 England and its administration was given into the hands of Sir 

 Richard Nicolls, an adherent of the Duke of York. Immediately 

 after his assumption of office he sent Colonel George Cartwright 



*i Jesuit Rel. XUV, 21. 



*2 Doc. Rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., Vol. Ill, 6S. 



