Curiosities of the Finger Lakes

Hidden Ancient Ruins, Flying Machines, the Boy Who Caught a Trout with His Nose and More

Melanie Zimmer

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781626190924
• eBook ISBN: 9781625845450
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The Finger Lakes region is known for its beauty, but look carefully and you will discover some of New York's other abundant--and unusual--treasures. The cliffs of Excelsior Glen are scattered with ancient Indian pictographs, and Bluff Point conceals the ruins of an unknown civilization. The wine industry has its own strange stories; discover why one wine producer was banned from using his own name. Among the oddities of the Finger Lakes region are the world's largest pancake, a slice of Susan B. Anthony's seventy-eighth birthday cake and the anecdote of the boy who accidentally caught an eight-pound trout with his nose. Join author Melanie Zimmer and uncover these and other curiosities and strange tales of the Finger Lakes.

CHAPTER 1

STORIES OF THE HAUDENOSAUNEE

CREATION

Before the Finger Lakes existed, and before the earth itself had come into being, there was Skyworld. One day, Skywoman discovered she was pregnant with twins. When Skywoman’s husband learned this, he became outraged and tore the Great Tree right out of the ground. Skywoman was peering down the newly made hole to the waters far below when her husband pushed her. Down, down she fell, and as she fell, the animals below saw her and hoped to save her. They decided the woman would need a place to stand, so each tried in turn to dive down to the bottom of the waters to bring up some soil. Everyone tried and failed until Little Toad dove down and finally surfaced with a mouthful of dirt. This was placed on Turtle’s back, and the dirt continued to grow and spread there. The land that was created on the Turtle’s back is now called North America. Skywoman landed there. Later, it is said, the Great Spirit placed his hand on the soil, and the spot on which his fingers pressed became the Finger Lakes.

HOW THE SENECA INDIANS CAME TO THE FINGER LAKES

The Seneca tell of their people emerging out of Bare Hill, which is located in the present-day Rushville area on the eastern side of Canandaigua Lake. (Some say the Seneca emerged out of a hillside near Oswego Falls.) They followed the Holder of Heavens to the Mohawk River, the Hudson River and at last to the sea. From there, the people became scattered in different directions, but the Holder of Heavens brought the six families back together. They traveled up the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers. The Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee* were born when he left a family in each site where they stopped. He named them the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga and the Seneca. As he left each family, he gave them a slightly different language to speak. After establishing the last group, the Seneca, the Holder of Heavens traveled on to the Mississippi River. Part of the group crossed the river using a grape vine, but the vine broke, and half were unable to ford the river. The people stranded on the east side of the river became the Tuscarora, and they traveled east to the ocean and up the Neuse River in what is today North Carolina. They would one day be called the Sixth Nation.

The Seneca myth of origin tells that the they emerged from a place called Bare Hill. Seneca mythology suggests that near that location was the first Seneca village, known as Genundowa, which existed before the time of Columbus. Bare Hill is so named due to its historical treeless landscape, which Seneca myth explains in the following tale.

One day, a Seneca boy was in his canoe on the lake when he came across a beautiful and colorful snake. It fascinated him, and he decided to take the snake back to his village and raise it as a pet. The boy would hunt small game such as frogs and mice to feed the snake, and the snake grew large. Eventually, it was so large that it required sizeable game such as deer. The snake continued to grow until the boy, now a man, had to enlist the help of other hunters to supply the ever-growing reptile with its meals.

Bare Hill, where the Seneca are said to have emerged. Author’s collection.

Eventually, the snake grew so large that it became an enormous serpent, and the villagers felt threatened by its very presence—not to mention that the animal was eating much of the village’s meat supply. They were so afraid that they decided to flee to another site and abandon their village at Genundowa all together. The plan was that they would move to a village north of there and construct fortifications. The people left, fleeing for safety, but the serpent discovered them, wrapped its enormous body around the village and then swallowed all of them. The only two Seneca who survived were a boy and his sister who had not fled with their people.

The boy had a dream in which he saw how he must kill the serpent—shooting an arrow into a scale behind the great snake’s eye. The boy knew the dream was the truth, and so he took his bow and arrow and aimed it at the vulnerable area. He released the arrow. The shot was successful, but the snake’s death was slow and agonizing. The giant beast fell to the ground and began to writhe with pain. Its body thrashed this way and that way, and with each movement, trees were uprooted and thrown afar, bushes were smashed and the hillside was wiped clean. At last, the immense serpent fell down the hill in death, its body decapitating the dead villagers before falling into the lake. Thus, Bare Hill became denuded of vegetation. The round stones found in the area are known locally as “Indian Heads.” All Seneca thereafter were descended from that boy and his sister.

Council Rock, located at the top of Bare Hill, was where the Seneca kept their council fire. Genundowa was also the site of the Genundowa Festival of Lights, held during harvest time in autumn. The Seneca would light an immense fire at the top of Bare Hill and set a series of smaller fires near the lake in early September as part of the Seneca Autumn Ceremony.

Historically, it is believed that rather than originating in this region and arising from the land, the Haudenosaunee migrated here and subsequently drove out the preexisting peoples. By several accounts, there were ruins here when the Haudenosaunee arrived. One of those stone ruins was on Bare Hill and was called “Old Fort” by later settlers and New Yorkers. David Cusick mentions the fort in his 1825 Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations in regard to the Seneca myth. Schoolcraft also makes references to it in 1847 in Notes on the Iroquois.

And although the Seneca controlled the fort as late as the 1780s, when settlers arrived in the area, they deny building it, despite the mythological reference. According to the Seneca who spoke to settlers regarding the fort, it was there when the Seneca arrived, and the builders were unknown to them.

By 1873, the “Old Fort” was much deteriorated but still visible, as evidenced by this description from S.C. Cleveland in History of Yates County, New York: “The traces of an ancient fort, covering about an acre, and surrounded by a ditch, formerly by a formidable wall, are still to be seen on top of Bare Hill…The wall is now about tumbled down, the stones seem somewhat scattered, and the ground is overgrown with brush.”

However, in the early part of the 1920s, the town of Middlesex sent a highway crew to Bare Hill to dig up the ruins and use them as road fill. Apparently, no one mapped the site or otherwise documented it before its removal. Supervisor Glenn Martin took a crew of men and a steam shovel up to the summit of Bare Hill and excavated the stone. The rocks were later loaded on a stone boat, transferred to a truck and hauled along North Vine Valley Road.

During excavation of the site, Steltz Lafler was shoveling when he discovered a body in Glenn McCombs’s gravel pit located at the base of Bare Hill. The remains were apparently that of an Indian in a seated position holding a pipe in his hand. Lafler was terrified and screamed for his father, who came and had a look at the burial. Steltz Lafler’s father then contacted Arthur Parker of the Rochester Museum, who removed the remains. In one respect, the burial should have been no surprise, as Theodore McCombs had discovered burials there years before.

The sign for an old Indian burial ground. Author’s collection.

Spook Hill. Author’s collection.

According to William A. Ritchie in 1944, the people buried near Bare Hill were of the late Adena culture. The Adena were mound builders but distinct from the Hopewell mound builders. The Adena were more robust physically than the Hopewell and had wider skulls. Like the Hopewell, they were known to have lived in Ohio and elsewhere. Authorities suggest that they may have lived from perhaps 1000 BC to AD 300.

Exhumations at the Vine Valley burial site show that the backs of the skulls were flattened, as was customary among the Adena. Traditionally, crib boards were attached to the heads of young Adena children to change the skull into a more appealing, flattened shape.

The ancient burial site is located near the lake on North Vine Valley Road on the hairpin turn. Not far from this is Newell Road, where for decades locals would bring their cars, place them in neutral and watch as the cars appeared to travel uphill. Local lore tells that Native American ghosts from the Vine Valley burial ground push the cars uphill. The site is known locally as “Spook Hill.”

After the Haudenosaunee emerged from the hillside, myth tells that their numbers increased greatly over the next century. They had since established some villages, but the Holder of Heavens was nowhere to be seen. Instead, they were plagued with nightly attacks from flying heads that mercilessly ate their people. They were soon after attacked by the giant Lake Serpent and forced to fortify their villages.

HOW FIRE CAME TO THE HAUDENOSAUNEE

In every culture, one of the most vital myths next to that of creation is the story of how fire was first obtained. The following story of a Mohawk boy who learns to create fire is how the Haudenosaunee explain the origin of fire among their people.

Three Arrows’s name had been given to him when he downed three geese with three arrows. He was young, not quite fourteen, and yet he was brave, as well as skillful with a bow and arrow. He was a clever hunter and knew how to travel silently through the woods stalking prey. Even so, he never killed unnecessarily—only for food. Three Arrows was the son of a chief who was known to all as a good man.

Three Arrows was in good spirits and full of hope. It was nearing the time when he would begin his dream fast, during which he would go to a secluded place in the wild to wait for a dream vision to appear. That vision would reveal the identity of his guardian bird or animal. He would then be considered a man.

At last the day arrived, and Three Arrows followed his father to a sacred place in the mountains. His father showed him a small cave where Three Arrows would stay for several days during his fast. The chief promised to visit him each dawn and then left his son alone. The boy had no weapons or food. He wore a simple loincloth and moccasins on his feet—that was all he would need to wait for his guardian to be revealed. Then he could return to his longhouse as a man.

Each day, Three Arrows prayed to the Great Spirit. He ate no food and waited, but there was no sign. He was not visited by a vision. At night, he would climb down from the plateau and drink a bit of water from a stream, which was his only allowed refreshment. Three Arrows became tired and hungry, but still no vision appeared.

On the fifth morning, his father told him that if he had no vision that day, he must return to his clan. There would be no second dream fast. Three Arrows would be disgraced.

That night, Three Arrows cried out into the darkness to the Great Spirit to have mercy on him before dawn and to send a vision of a guardian. As he prayed, the wind changed directions and began to blow from the north. Three Arrows was filled with hope. The wind of the north was that of the great bear, his clan totem. He entered the small cave and smelled the scent of bear. His heart leaped in anticipation. He excitedly peered out of the mouth of the cave as he watched lightning and heard the boom of thunder. He heard the howl of the wind as it blew stronger from the north.

Then Three Arrows found himself facing an enormous bear. “Listen,” spoke the bear. “Your prayer has been heard, and this night you will discover a great secret that will help your people.” Thunder crashed, and the bear was gone.

Three Arrows looked out into the night as lightning streaked across the sky in the form of a blazing arrow. Just then, a horrible sound came from above the cave. Three Arrows slipped from the mouth of the cave and began climbing toward the ledge above. It was dark, but at last, he was able to see the source of the noise. Two balsam saplings were rubbing against each other in the wind, causing the strange shrieking noise. For the first time, Three Arrows felt real fear as he saw smoke and then fire emerge from the two trees.

Iroquois fire pit. Author’s collection.

Three Arrows had never seen fire except from a distance, but he knew it was something very dangerous and turned his head away in fear. Again he smelled the scent of bear and remembered the message of his vision. He realized that fire was the secret he would share with his people. His new totem would be Blazing Arrow, the sign he had seen in the sky.

When dawn broke, Blazing Arrow climbed out from the cave and returned to the ledge where he had seen the two balsam trees catch fire. He broke off bits of the remains and began rubbing them together, but he was exhausted and starved. Then, however, he thought of his people and found himself filled with new strength. He rubbed faster and harder. At last, there was smoke, then a bit of spark. He thought of the blazing arrow he had seen in the night sky and took the smoking balsam stick and waved it as he had seen the arrow fly. The stick glowed, and a flame emerged. The gift of fire had come to the Haudenosaunee.

HOW THE PLEIADES STAR CLUSTER CAME TO BE

The Haudenosaunee told many stories describing the creation of the world, as well as the creation of features in that world and in the heavens. The following myth, told by the Onondagas, relates how a star cluster came to be. Many stories were shared by the Haudenosaunee as a whole, although different versions were sometimes told by different nations.

The Onondagas built a lodge near the lake so that they could hunt and fish to supply themselves for the long, cold winter. However, as the air became cooler, there was less work to do. Fall had arrived, and so a group of children decided to dance by the lake and enjoy themselves. And enjoy themselves they did—so much so that they decided to dance every day. Each day, those same children gathered by the lake and danced with abandon. One day, however, an old man with white hair and wearing white feathers approached the group. He warned them that it was not good to dance every day, but the children refused to listen. They laughed at the man and continued to dance. In fact, they decided that the following day, they would not only dance but hold a picnic as well.

The next day, the children asked their parents for food for a picnic, but none of the parents would give them any. They didn’t think dancing and picnicking was appropriate behavior. Still, the children decided to dance even without food, and so once more, they gathered by the lake and began to dance. They danced and cavorted, but this time was different because they began to feel strange and light-headed. As they danced, they felt so light that their feet no longer touched the ground, and they began to rise higher and higher into the sky. One of the children said to the others that they must not look down.

A woman below spotted the children dancing in the air and hollered to them to return, but they only flew higher and higher. Quickly, she ran to get the others, and they brought food and holle...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Stories of the Haudenosaunee
• 2. Pre-Columbian Civilizations
• 3. A Bit of History
• 4. Fruit of the Vine
• 5. Inventions and Ideas
• 6. The Spirit World
• 7. Other Strange Tales
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• About the Author