ii6 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



As the site of this fort is well known, and as the writer has else- 

 where recovered points of pickets from 260 to 300 years old, much 

 less deeply set, there is reason to suppose that the bases of these 

 posts still remain where they were placed. The forts of that year 

 were the last built for Indian use in New York. 



A supposed feature of some forts may be mentioned. Dawson 

 places round towers along the ramparts in his picture of Hochelaga, 

 but they are not mentioned in the text unless inferentially. Simi- 

 larly Parkman speaks of the wooden watch towers surmounting the 

 walls of a Huron town in 1646. The original may perhaps imply 

 this. It reads: 



The young men were the night guard, mounting to the top of the 

 sentry boxes, and singing war songs with a voice so terrible that 

 the fields and neighboring woods bore these afar off. There could 

 be no doubt that they were prepared to fight. Yet some Iroquois 

 adventurers, notwithstanding these cries, secretly made their ap- 

 proach, making a resolute stroke. Seeing that sleep had silenced 

 the sentinels, one of them climbed the tower like a squirrel, where 

 he found two men asleep. He split the head of one, throwing the 

 second below, where his companions scalped him, making off so fast 

 that the Hurons could do nothing. Relation, 1646 



Burial 



Life and death are very close neighbors, and the care of the dead 

 was an important affair with our aboriginal predecessors. Burial 

 was not always the same, and but one or two features of this will 

 now be described. For this statement we have both the results of 

 excavations and the testimony of the Indians themselves. After 

 relating his story of the vampyre, quaint David Cusick said : 



This important event was soon made known among the five 

 nations, and afterwards changed their mode of burying, by sitting 

 posture face to the east; but again they were troubled with the 

 dead bodies, and were compelled to make some alterations in 

 burying. Beauchamp, p.30 



A passage from J. V. H. Clark may be quoted, though the writer 

 knows of not a single fact in its favor in New York. In Canada 

 it was a common practice with the Hurons and other relatives of 

 the Iroquois. Mr Clark said: 



The most ancient mode of burial by the Iroquois, says La Fort, 

 was first to place the corpse upon a scaffold some 8 feet high, 



