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

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

As you pass towards Fort-Hill in the road from Le Roy village, which is about three miles to the south, you descend a little most of the distance to this place. The road passes a little west of the middle of the space nearly north and south.

The shape is quadrangular, and is shown in the diagram or ground plot.

On the right and east side is the deep water course of Allen’s Creek, cut down through the rocks for a mile or more, perhaps one hundred and thirty feet deep; on the north is that of Fordham’s Brook, of nearly the same depth, which drains a wide swale from the north and northwest; and on the west is a short and deep ravine, which is a water course in some seasons of the year, where the waters fall over a precipice a little south of the quadrangular space, or fortification. This ravine is not so deep as the water courses on the east and north. The descent is quite steep on these three sides. At the northeast Allen’s Creek turns to the east and receives the waters from Fordham’s Brook.

The quadrangular space, D, A, B, C, was enclosed by a trench, D A, nearly a north line on the east, by A B on the north, and B C on the west.

A B is the north trench about sixty rods long, and nearly east and west. A D is about thirty rods, and B C is fifteen rods, and terminates at the ravine at C. The trench D A, and A B lies on the brow of the descent to the streams below. At D the bend of the ravine stops the trench. At the northwest corner B, a trench is continued about 15° to the right and down the declivity 15 rods to a spring; 50 feet perhaps below A B, and B G is the brow of the descent west of the trench at B, and G C is the edge of the ravine on the west. Q W is Allen’s Creek on the east; H I K is Fordham’s Brook on the north, and L P M is the water course on the west to the precipice at M, over which the water falls at some seasons, and the surface at M is only a few feet lower than the general level of the quadrangle. The space F was a burying ground, as bones, skulls, pipes, beads, have been ploughed up there. The road R N passes through the middle nearly of the space enclosed by the trench, and at N turns to the right to descend to the flat below; but formerly the road turned to the right at U and passed down at the right of the trench at D to T.

The place was pointed out to me by H. M. Ward, Esq., who was familiar with it when it was covered with the forest. He states that the trench must have been eight to ten feet deep and as many wide; that the earth was thrown either way, but much of it inwards; that the forest trees were standing in the trench and on the sides of it and of the same apparent age and magnitude as on the ground generally; that the heart-wood of black cherry trees of large size was scattered over the ground, evidently the remains of a forest anterior to the then growth of maple and beech, and that this black cherry was used by the settlers for timber; that the road, when first made, crossed the trench at N by a bridge; that the trench at D and A was cut down the bank a few feet, or else in time water had worn a passage from the trench downwards; that there was no tradition heard of among the Indians of the country, in respect to the use or design of the work.

The underlying rock is the hydraulic limestone of this section, which is fully exposed at the falls of Allen’s Creek, half a mile south of Fort-Hill. This rock was struck in digging the trench on the north line in some places, and portions of it were thrown out with the earth.

Of the pipes found at F one was formed from granular limestone; one was of baked clay, in the form of the rude outlines of a man’s head and face, nose, eyes, &c., and it reminds one of the figures in some of Stephens’ Plates of the ruins of Palenque. It has the hollows for the ears to be fastened on, and shows no little effort. The top of the head is surrounded by a fillet or wreath, and behind are two more fillets. At the bottom of the neck is a similar ornament, and on the front is another below it. This is the most curious.

Another pipe is of reddish baked clay, with some pits or dots for ornament upon it, two rows of dots around it and another below like a chain suspended at several points and curved by its own weight.