The Lovers’ Leap
(Seneca Country, Canandaigua Lake)
For many years the Algonquin speakers and the Iroquois had waged war throughout the Northeast. A valiant Algonquin, Hondosa, had killed in a fair fight the son of the Seneca chief into whose hands he had fallen. The handsome guest was awarded the honor of proving his national courage at the torture stake. Till then he was treated with the utmost courtesy. Among his privileges was the attentionof the fairest maids, including the chief’s daughter, sister of the man he had killed. Many days she waited on him and talked to him. She came to love him.
The guards slept, the escape was made, and the pair paddled across Canandaigua Lake into the reflection of the fabled mountain Ganundowa, most likely today’s Bare Hill. Pursuers came, swift young warriors not weakened from weeks of captivity. The pair reached the eastern shore first.
“Run,” the girl told her chief. “Run to your people. I will face them.”
“We run or stay together,” said the man. They climbed the hill over the lake and looked down from a steep crag. As their pursuers closed, the pair leaped to the rocks below. Ever since, their spirits can be seen in the waters of the lake as reflections, and sometimes, in the right light, as images, hand in hand, on the edge of that same cliff.
ROGERS ISLAND
There are two Rogers Islands in the Hudson River. The one in Washington County just off Fort Edward is where Major Robert Rogers trained Anglo-American forest fighters for the French and Indian Wars. About fifteen miles north of Saratoga Springs, this is “the spiritual home” of American special forces. Don’t be shocked that something spiritual could be associated with war. Companies of men who risk their lives together develop intense bonds that span generations, including psychic traditions.
Eighty miles south, also in the Hudson, is Rogers Island, Columbia County. Archaeologists have found six-thousand-year-old signs of hunting and fishing here. The battle was far more recent.
The Last of the Mohicans
The Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Mohawks, were expanding their territory. They met in battle in 1628 with an alliance of Algonquin-speaking nations, including the Mohicans, whose domain was this part of the Hudson Valley. The Claverack woods resounded with yells and groans, the clack of weapons, the arrows’ hiss.
The Mohawk got more more fight than they bargained for. At sunset, they withdrew in apparent despair to Vastrick’s—now Rogers—Island. Their foes ringed them and waited.
The Mohawk made campfires, wrapped sticks and logs into bundles, arranged them like sleeping warriors, and lay waiting in the dark. The Mohicans crept to the scene, jumped the bundles, and sprung the trap. This was the last of the Mohicans, at least as national players.
A century ago the visitor to Rogers Island could still see the spot of the struggle: an open green ringed with pines old enough to have witnessed the clash. For years, arrowheads and trophies turned up, and Rogers Island was one of the Hudson’s most haunted spots. It was said that, on the right night, the old battle resounded on both sides of the river. No one dared get close enough to see if the source was visible.
It would be no wonder if you were to visit Rogers Island and find the marvel over. Against logic, there seems to be an expiration date for ghosts. As we’ve observed, two hundred years is it for most of them. We’ve already crossed that mark for most of our New York Native American sites.
THE DARKNESS ON THE HILL
(Seneca/Cay uga Country)
Where the name Spanish Hill came from is a question. This bread-loaf-shaped hill is a stone’s throw south of I-86, about ten miles east of Elmira by the cross of the Chemung and the north branch of the Susquehanna. Fortifications found here were said to be quite like those at the mystery site Bluff Point, fifty miles to the north. European-style artifacts suggested the visit of gold-hunting conquistadors, even the last holdout of besieged buccaneers. French explorer Champlain wrote about Carantouan, a Native American fort some suspect was Spanish Hill. It would be hard to find a place in Iroquois country with a reputation like it.
Writer Carl Carmer found Spanish Hill a mystical place that fully engaged the circuits of wonder. To white settlers in the late 1700s, it was a hill of dread, and no Native American would set foot on it. Historian Deb Twigg calls its energy “the Darkness on the Hill.”
Once this formation was presumed a titanic, man-made earthwork. It’s clear now that it was formed by retreating glaciers. It may have been the site of a battle, and a legendary curse.
The Iroquois Confederacy cleared New York of the Huron, Eries, and Neutrals. The Andaste community at the southern edge of Seneca/ Cayuga territory may have given them more trouble than all the rest. An Iroquois attack in the spring of 1662 found the Andastes behind a double-walled fort and a handful of European cannon. They hoisted the Iroquois ambassadors over the walls and killed them slowly in sight and sound of their fellows. The Iroquois considered Spanish Hill haunted, and then cursed, ever after. The Andastes, stricken by plague, were later overwhelmed by the Iroquois. Their refugees were shamefully massacred by white vigilantes called the Paxton Boys.
Spanish Hill today is a tough place to collect folklore. It has a fine house at the top and posted signs about it. Still, there are newspaper reports of haunted houses (1930) and suspicious construction accidents (1971). There are still rumors of mysterious fires afflicting whatever has been done up there. Earlier forms of legends included strange caves, buried treasure, and giant skeleton reports—a New York state fixture.
The Mohawk sided with the British during the American Revolution, and things didn’t go their
