Notes on the Iroquois / or, Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Buffalo.

Whence this name? The Indian term is Te-ho-so-ro-ro in Mohawk, and De-o-se-o-wa in Seneca. Ellicott writes it Tu-she-way. Others, in other forms. In all, it is admitted to mean the place of the linden, or bass-wood tree.

There is an old story of buffaloes being killed here. Some say a horse was killed by hungry Frenchmen, and palmed off for buffalo meat at the camp. How came a horse here?

A curious bone needle was dug up this year, in some excavations made in Fort Niagara, which is, clearly, of the age prior to the discovery.

Bones and relics must stand for the chronology of American antiquity.

America is the tomb of the red man. All the interest of its anti-Columbian history, arises from this fact.