Curiosities of the Finger Lakes: Hidden Ancient Ruins, Flying Machines, the Boy Who Caught a Trout with His Nose and More

By Melanie Zimmer

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625845450

Melanie Zimmer

Melanie Zimmer is very active in the folklore and storytelling community. She is currently a member of the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling, the Puppeteers of America, the Puppetry Guild of Upstate New York and the New York Folklore Society. She has published numerous books and articles and frequently presents and performs at libraries, schools, museums and historical societies.

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INTRODUCTION

Glaciers creeping at an almost imperceptible pace over the landscape dramatically sculpted the Finger Lakes, creating this area’s unique and breathtaking geology. Long before settlers arrived, the Finger Lakes were inhabited by ancient peoples of whom we know precious little. We do know, though, that they lived and built here as they left material evidence of their existence. However, the identity of those people and what their beliefs might have been remains a mystery. Later, other Native Americans inhabited the region but were eventually driven away by the fierce Haudenosaunee, who had firmly established their hold on the region before the arrival of settlers. The Seneca believed that they arose from a hill in the Finger Lakes and tell of how the different nations became established across what is now New York State.

Eventually, white settlers arrived, and in time, missionaries came to establish morality and spirituality on the frontier. Reverend Bostwick was one such missionary. In addition to establishing outpost churches in the Finger Lakes, he also introduced the first wine grape vines into the region, profoundly altering the landscape.

Inventors thrived here. Curtiss designed and tested flying machines, and Theodore Case worked on the problem of creating sound-on-film. People strived to create new systems. The Auburn System was developed with the highest intentions to reform criminals. The electric chair was designed to eliminate the barbarism of hanging as a form of execution. Willard Insane Asylum was designed with the belief that the insane, poor and unhealthy would benefit from the beautiful environment near the banks of the lake.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Finger Lakes region has many tales and hidden treasures to reveal. It is more than just a place of stunning beauty; its lands offer a wealth of unique tales and a fascinating history.

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