FORT HILL AND BLUFF POINT
(Seneca Country)
Shortly after the American Revolution, the whites moved en masse into central New York. The landscape itself attested that the Iroquois were not the only people who had lived here. Some of the most problematic earth-and-stone constructions ever discovered in the Empire State were in Yates County around Keuka Lake.
Keuka Lake is shaped like a big natural Y with the forks to the north. In the middle of the forks is a V-shaped high ground called Bluff Point. Some of the most spectacular vistas in New York state are to be had from atop this promontory. Man-made spectacles even more unique could have stood until the middle 1900s.
On behalf of the Smithsonian Institute, a couple of detailed (for the day) studies were made of the monumental Bluff Point stonework. In 1880, the father-son team of Dr. Samuel Hart Wright (1825–1905) and Professor Berlin Hart Wright (1851–1940) surveyed and mapped the fourteen-acre site at the summit of the promontory. The son revisited them in 1938.
The Bluff Point ruins were a set of low stone ramps and marking stones that might have suggested archaeoastronomy to the two men, had the discipline then been understood. The stones and their placement were so bizarre as to be indescribable. We can only suspect that a lot was stripped away before the first studies were made. The rest was taken for road fill and even building foundations in the later twentieth century.
Ten miles to the north and clearly visible to the Wrights from one of Bluff Point’s pillars was an elliptical earthen structure often called Fort Hill. The Old Fort in Sherman’s Hollow was 545 feet long north to south and 485 feet across, enclosing ten acres. Its dirt embankments were 4 feet high and 10 across a century ago, and they had probably settled quite a bit.
Fort Hill may have been aptly named. There were twelve breaks in the walls where gates, presumably wooden ones, could once have been, and it had a spring, which would have been vital for withstanding a siege. Near it is a tall hill with steep sides, nicknamed the pinnacle. Smoke signals or fires from this spot would have been visible at Bluff Point, implying line-of-sight communication with a sister settlement, part of the reason we profile them together.
There are many Fort Hill place-names in the eastern states. A military use was surely made of some of these virtual henges or ring-ditch earth circles, but they may not be only what they seem. Many may have been places of ritual and commemoration. A deep, wide trench ran around the inside of Bluff Point’s bookend earthwork. In essence, Fort Hill’s moat is within, which implies a ceremonial use, possibly a water barrier to pen in the spirits summoned until their eventual release.
Historic Native American groups in this part of New York were not thought to build elaborate stone-and-earth structures. The influence of the mound-building Adena or Hopewell cultures of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys may be seen in the Yates County sites. It was known that their influence extended into western New York.
Other curiosities were found at both sites. A hundred yards southeast of the Fort Hill enclosure was an ancient graveyard in which skeletons had been buried seated, facing south back toward Bluff Point. There is talk among Yates County historians about a bronze sword taken from a nearby mound. Only two Native American cultures were known to be working in bronze before the Europeans came, and neither was in North America. The ground around Bluff Point was reputed to have disgorged other out-of-the-way artifacts, some implying a Mesoamerican influence and others—bits of iron—ancient Europeans.
Many are tantalized by the prospect that a mystery community may have settled this region, a possibility that Seneca historians do not discount. “We’ve kept the tradition that we had visitors from other parts of the world,” DuWayne Bowen told me in 2003. “The idea is nothing remarkable to us.”
One thing that may be remarkable is the way white supernaturalism gathers around these ancient sites. Fort Hill in Sherman’s Hollow is a short walk from the home of the mystical community of Jemima Wilkinson (1752–1819), the Publick Universal Friend, in a town even called Friend. And all the evidence we have implies that as long as both these sites were intact, they were folklore batteries. Howling ghosts, mystery lights, and buried treasure were rumored of both sites.
“These were old, abandoned places that have always been mysteries. Everybody’s trying to figure out who did them and why,” said Michael Bastine. “I think if I sat down with some tobacco and asked for some more information, I’m pretty sure it would come with time.”
THE VALLEY OF MADNESS
(Seneca Country)
They say the word kanakadea means “where heaven and hell meet earth.” Whatever that might point to, the Kanakadea Creek valley holds two New York colleges, SUNY Alfred and Alfred Tech. The region has another nickname, more direct and more sinister: the Valley of Madness. It points to the sense of an age-old suspicion to this valley that may predate the Iroquois. The lore doesn’t let up there.
An ancient Seneca burial ground is reportedly covered by the Alfred campus. They talk about it being a more recent battlefield, possibly from General Sullivan’s Revolutionary campaign. People hike and hunt in the woods and report strange “things” in the trees at dawn and dusk, strange sounds at dawn and twilight, strange images at the eye corners. After dark, some say you can see spectral figures carrying their dead to the sound of deep drumming. Something must be behind it all.
Allegany County
