778 Relic Hunting on the Mohawk. [ December, 
built their fortified towns on commanding hills, and paddled their 
elm-bark canoes on the river that bears their name. The insane 
love of war and conquest that possessed them, their cruelty and 
ferocity, for long ages made a very pandemonium of the valley 
that is now so peaceful and prosperous. At the head of the Five 
Nations, their name indeed “lead all the rest.” They kept back 
the advancing Dutch and English ; they were an almost impas- 
sable barrier to all French colonizing and proselyting among the 
cognate tribes in Canada, and red and white together, from 
Illinois to Acadia, trembled and fled at the cry of “a Mohawk! 
a Mohawk!” 
The Five Nations, or Iroquois, called themselves the Konosh- 
ioni, or People of the Long House. The Mohawk valley was, 
the eastern door, and the Mohawk tribe held it. While much 
has been written, from the time of DeWitt Clinton to the present, 
about the antiquities of the other tribes of the Confederacy, very 
little has been said or is known about the relics of the Mohawks. 
All that are described and illustrated in this article have been 
found on what are presumably sites of old Mohawk villages. 
These sites naturally divide themselves into two classes; the first, 
those unmistakably occupied during the Stone Age proper, 
where are found only relics of stone, and clay, and bone; and 
second, sites where relics of a mixed character appear, consisting 
of similar relics to those of the first period in connection with 
articles introduced by the whites after the discovery. 
Village sites that can be certainly identified as belonging to 
the time previous to the introduction of metals are few; a dili- 
gent and careful search may discover more than are now known, 
but at present I know of but two. The first of these was evi- 
dently a place where the rough material was quarried and stone 
implements manufactured, as there are innumerable flakes and 
flint chips, broken and unfinished weapons and tools, and many 
arrow heads, etc., scattered over a surface of several hundred 
acres in extent. The other site is one of peculiar interest; as It 
has never been cultivated, and is covered with a pine forest, every- 
_ thing is undisturbed and is just as it was when it was deserted by 
the savages. It is a very Kj6kken-Modding, where heaps of the 
_ refuse lie untouched. Here in piles of ashes and clam shells are 
_ found innumerable fragments of pottery, broken bones of animals, 
stone and bone implements, deers’ horns, bears’ and beavers 
