found dead in this swamp. He may be buried under a mound that could still be here—somewhere.

Eldridge Park today is an urban oasis just north of the core of Elmira. Its small lake is so deceptively deep that the Native Americans believed it was bottomless and that it might be connected by underground channels to Seneca Lake, and thence to Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Atlantic. Maybe that explains its most dramatic legend, the one about its monstrous serpent at perpetual war with the local villages that the Thunder Being resolved to save. A chief ’s son and his bride-to-be bravely tempted the critter into the open, walking dangerously close to Eldridge Lake. When it reared to strike them in full sight of the lightning hurler, the trap was sprung. A single bolt ended the monster’s reign.

HIGH ROCK SPRING

(Mohawk Country)

For thousands of years, on all the continents, springs have represented healing and inspiration. They are also associated with visions. Many Christian miracle sites, including those of Marian apparitions, are natural fountains. It was no different in Iroquois country.

The British Empire’s Indian agent in North America was Irish-born Sir William Johnson (1715–1774). Revered by the Mohawks, he had a thing for Mohawk women and left a long line of multiracial descendants. He led the Mohawk men against a French and Algonquin force at the 1755 Battle of Lake George. He took both the honors of victory and a musket ball in the thigh that acted up ever after. It was so bad by the summer of 1767 that the Mohawk took Sir William in a litter to their most private and holy site: High Rock Spring in today’s Saratoga. He got there one morning in August.

In the Mohawk style, he offered ground tobacco to the earth and winds, to the ancestors, and to the four quarters. He used more to fill and light the calumet, the peace pipe that may have been a gift from Ottawa chief Pontiac. Then he walked shakily to the sacred fountain. For four days he drank from it and lay in its waters.

Letters arrived calling him home, and he stood with a pleasant shock. Not only was he no longer at death’s door, he could walk well enough to make much of his journey on foot. High Rock Spring’s notoriety may date to this visit. Other new springs were found in today’s Saratoga village, and all over this part of Saratoga County. The towns of Saratoga Springs and nearby Ballston Spa thrived as resorts based on the healing industry.

Today, High Rock Spring nestles in its pavilion below the prominent fault that runs right down Saratoga Springs’ most important street. Its chief supernatural distinction today may be the wake of hauntings that spreads all around it. Noteworthy but not unexpected is its nearness to the famous haunt the Old Bryan Inn and the reputed territory of the late Angeline Tubbs (1760?–1865), the Witch of Saratoga. (She resurfaces, too, as a worthy ghost.) “You always have sightings at springs,” says Abenaki author Joe Bruchac. “We’ve got so many stories.”

THE GREAT HILL

(Seneca Country)

The south end of Canandaigua Lake is a region of paranormal mystery. Here a Seneca-Onondaga army was rumored to have defeated the Massawomeck, a fierce nation whose name means “great snake.” A big mica-flecked rock cut with unexplained symbols may commemorate the event. Algonquin settlement was here, as well as strange and ancient stonework, something that always fills people with awe. Giant lake-serpent sightings have been so prevalent since the whites moved in that lakeside innkeepers took their validity as a matter of course into the late nineteenth century. This lake is also a zone of sanctity. Somewhere here, a nation was formed.

THE SENECA NATIONAL CREATION TALE

The Seneca national creation tale begins with a pre-Iroquoian boy who made a pet of a queer worm found in a creek feeding Canandaigua Lake. At the start it was cute, and it had two heads in some of the tale’s sixty-something versions. It ate ravenously and grew so big that soon it was a monster that people were afraid not to feed. When the forests had run out of animals, the devil snake turned on its patrons. By the last night, it had encircled the community in their fort like a living henge and eaten every human but the boy who raised it—and a girl. The human pair huddled behind the palisades after sunset. Their reward was to be the serpent’s last Canandaigua brunch. The Holder of the Heavens had other ideas.

In a dream, he told the boy to fletch an arrow with the girl’s hair, then face the beast, draw bow, and take aim. A single stroke of this fatal charm took the monster down. Its death rolls cleared the hillside below of its trees. As it subsided into Canandaigua Lake, it disgorged the skulls of its victims. The two young survivors started the Seneca Nation.

The Seneca name for themselves, Nundawaono, means “People of the Great Hill.” There’s debate, though, about the exact site of the sacred mountain, and no wonder; the Seneca have repented many of their disclosures to the Europeans, not least of which might be their sacred stories.

It might be what’s commonly called Bare Hill, on the east side of Canandaigua Lake and five miles from the head. That’s what the Seneca told the early whites. It could also be South Hill, this one, too, thin of tree. It could even be Parrish Hill, where Arthur C. Parker made his home at the end of his life. Whichever mountain it is, if you head to Canandaigua Lake and look south, you will be sure to see it.

Much that we know about Parker’s ancestors comes from his work. In the 1930s, Parker and his wife spent summers in a farmhouse on Parrish Hill near Naples, high over the valley legendary as the birthplace of the Senecas. This home became their residence when they retired. Parker was sure this was the hill

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