All that Thurensera foretold came to pass. His burial, too, went as planned. Today, Skaneateles Lake, including any of a dozen potential gravesites, is a region of paranormal allure. What one of the mystery lights on any hill about that lake is a blink of the orenda of the old chief? That spectral form they report, rising from the shallows on moonlit nights—is it the Dawn of the Light?
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 attention of 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 way. Most of them headed to Canada, but one diehard stayed near Schenectady.
The Phantom Paddler of the Mohawk
(Mohawk Country)
The old Mohawk lived on the Hill of Strawberries and came now and then to the Dorp—the Schenectady Stockade Historic District—with fish and game for trade. On those occasions, he revealed his other gifts: He could shoot and drink as well as any white.
One day in 1789 he came to town and did a couple of strange things. For one, he shunned the tavern. For another, he gave his load of fish to a friend and refused payment. All he said in explanation was, “Great Spirit call. Indian no need.” Then he got into his canoe and headed up the Mohawk River.
Boys swimming off a sand bar saw something odd the same day: the old Mohawk in his canoe, moving against the current without paddling. Like Pharaoh in the stern he sat, head up, arms folded across his chest. Next day the canoe was found far down the river.
A week later a white who had known the gent was out fishing when he looked up and saw his old pal sitting on a high bank of one of the river islands, arms folded and gazing “toward his departed people,” according to Louis C. Jones. This may have been a look toward Canada, but possibly it was toward vanished riverside villages that might have been considered the Mohawk homeland. The white guy paddled over and offered him a lift to shore. The Mohawk—clearly a ghost—faded from view as his head turned.
In the accounts of longtime Schenectady historian Percy Van Epps (1859–1951), this old Mohawk was one of the longest-lasting ghosts of the region. Many reported seeing him in this pose, knees hugged to his chin—a common burial position—and looking to the upper reaches of the valley. We only wish his name had been preserved.
It seems logical to link him with the phantom Indian paddler who with his canoe has been reported recently on the Mohawk River between Utica and Schenectady. On the right night, you could probably see him from many spots on the I-90 and Route 5.
The Ghost-Riders of Coxsackie
(Mohawk Country
)
In the settler days, a white hunter and trader named Nick Wolsey lived along the Hudson in Green County near Coxsackie. Honest and fair, Wolsey got along well with his Native American neighbors.
To one village in particular he kept returning, and few needed the medicine people to know that it was more than trade that brought him in. In fact, it was a lovely lass whose name Louis C. Jones remembers as Minamee. She was sought after by the young men of her nation, but became the wife of the white trader.
Wolsey was so well thought of in the village that no one disapproved—no one, that is, but one jealous suitor. There was one bitter outburst between the two contenders for Minamee, possibly on the wedding day, but otherwise the matter seemed forgotten.
It was a happy year for Nick Wolsey and his new bride. Every day when he returned from his hunting, trading, or trapping, the welcoming smoke of the hearth drifted over the clearing. Light shone in the cabin, and his wife and her babe waited in the open doorway.
One day he came home to find trouble. The door was open, but no one stood in it, and no blue haze or sweet smoke lingered. On the cabin floor, he saw the baby’s decapitated head, and in the shadow, eyes glazed, beaten and bruised, his young wife clutching the tiny trunk. She died sometime that night, but not before telling Nick Wolsey about the drunken rampage of her former suitor and the horror he had visited upon them.
Wolsey rode to the nearby village and told the tale. The murderer was brought forth, and Wolsey allowed to name the punishment. “You wanted Minamee,” he said, “so badly that you would kill. Then have her now!” The murderer was lashed face to face with the body, then mounted on a crazed horse. The grisly burdens on its back, it tore off into the woods along the ancient trails. It was never seen again.
They say that for many years after, the ghost horse and its desperate riders were dreaded apparitions in this part of the Catskills. Even today if you are in the region some night and hear hollow hoof beats and a godless howling, you may know that Wolsey’s revenge lasted longer than life.
THE WAILING SPIRITS
The old Iroquois had clearly developed a concept of the soul that was detachable from the human body.
They also believed that, on occasion, the souls of the dead can be invited back from the afterlife to enjoy the love, tribute, and even goods of this world. This is the night of the dead familiar to many world societies. The Iroquois version seems to have had no fixed solar date. The dead may also come back uninvited.
Seventeenth-century missionaries and travelers reported incidents reflecting the Iroquois dread of offended human spirits. A servant girl of the Erie Nation was impulsively killed by her Onondaga mistress in December of 1656. A couple of captives were executed in a Seneca village in 1677. In both cases, the communities sent word all round that so-and-so had been killed that day. That night, the village set up a ritual racket—howling, screaming, pounding, and banging, hoping to distract, reorient, or even scare off the presences of the indignant dead.
The Caged Spirit
Early one evening in February of 1807 a Leicester man started heading for the western shore of the Genesee River. This meant crossing the river at its shallows where it freezes easily. About halfway over the Genesee Flats, he was shocked and terrified by the sounds of human screaming, seemingly coming from the sky above him. He hustled home and told his neighbors.
A handful of suspicious Genesee farm folk came back to the spot the next night. The gusty shrieking returned, this time for multiple witnesses! Word spread, and people came from far parts just to hear it. Every night for two weeks no member of the ever-increasing crowds was disappointed by failing to be scared silly. Oh dependable prodigy! At least once there may have been two thousand onlookers. Among the multitude of rustic spectators were several prominent, educated gentlemen (“very aged and very reliable,” according to the article in the Genesee Valley Herald). They, too, vouched for the phenomenon.
This wonder needed an answer, and someone thought of consulting the Native Americans—a remedy we’d recommend today for many American problems. The Seneca dwelling at nearby Squakie Hill held a council and came to the conclusion that this was the spirit of one of their elders who had recently died. Apparently it had lost its way on the journey to the Iroquois heaven and was caught in this sort of nether land. To help the disoriented soul, a hundred warriors were chosen, armed with rifles, and placed as directly under the noise as possible. At a signal, all of them fired their guns at once into the air. The echoes faded, and the wonder was no more. It was not reported again after the Senecas’ ceremony, so maybe their explanation of it was the best. It would be far from the first time.
THE ONTARIO COUNTY COURTHOUSE
(Seneca Country)
At the north end of Canandaigua Lake was a village of Great Hill folk and other Native American communities before them. Its name in Seneca means “the chosen spot,” and Canandaigua is still one of the most gorgeous towns in New York state. It’s long been a place of power.
Somewhere in today’s village the first whites found a big old fort—a term for both a palisaded town and an oval or circular earthwork shape. Canandaigua was one of the frontier’s early capitals, nucleus of a huge tract that stretched westward and became many of today’s counties. Canandaigua was the seat of Ontario County’s government and a frontier center of population and trade. Its star was high until the Erie Canal turned cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse into metropolises.
Canandaigua’s original 1794 courthouse administered frontier justice from the square at 27 North Main. New York’s first jury trial west of Albany was here. (It was over the theft of a cowbell.) By a big rock still here was signed the Pickering Treaty (1794), the oldest still-honored pact between the United States and the Iroquois.
The splendid Greek Revival courthouse we see today was wrought in 1857 by architect Henry S. Searle (1809–1892), most likely on the spot of the earlier one. Searle’s original was squarer than what we see today. The wings that make the courthouse rectangular were put on in 1908 by another Rochester star, J. Foster Warner (1859–1937). Both tended to design buildings that would someday be haunted, and this one does not disappoint.
Some memorable guests have made in-life appearances here, which always gives a prod to psychic folklore. In the original courthouse on this square, Red Jacket defended a Seneca accused of murder in 1794. (Stiff-Armed George was convicted but later pardoned by state governor George Clinton.) Cult leader/community founder Jemima Wilkinson was tried here in 1800 for blasphemy. Batavia’s famous William Morgan (1774–1826), allegedly kidnapped and murdered by the Masons, was jailed here in 1826. In the updated courthouse, suffragette Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was tried and fined in 1873 for voting in the presidential election. Two executions that took place here—those of Charles Eighmey (1876) and John Kelly (1889)—involved illicit love affairs and unseemly gallows scenes. We have many candidates for ghosts. This is one of the liveliest sites in the upstate.
The Ontario County Courthouse, Canandaigua, with a stone marker commemorating the 1794 Pickering Treaty
Every courthouse has its cast of mortal grievants. We have here a diverse and nether legion. One comes in the image of a Native American male, rumored to have been hung for some crime or other. A ghostly black man appears, too, suspected to be a runaway slave returned South, if not local abolitionist Richard Valentine (1798–1874), still blaming the system over the court case that had ruined him. Even an image identified as Red Jacket is reported here now and then, maybe lamenting one of the few cases that got away from him.
One curious thing is the way the building itself has been supernaturalized. When the verdict against Anthony was announced, they say, the scales of the statue of justice atop the building clattered to the ground. Faces are said to peer and arms reach out of the courtroom walls. Men working near the dome have been stunned by the building’s reactions, shuddering and moaning like a giant organic being under attack by hammer and chisel. It’s as i
f the Iroquois sense of the power of place spires up through its foundations.
This is not by a long shot the only upstate site to represent a human train wreck of history, a place or zone at which memorable events tend to pile up; nor is it an exclusively Native American site. But what in New York is exclusively anyone’s? We’re all just passing through, or over. This psychically energetic site illustrates again that the Native American element cannot be separated from any aspect of New York life. The clearest ghosts at this site may be figurative ones, the ghosts of a ceremony.
Go back to that fortnight in 1794 as the Pickering/Canandaigua Treaty was made. Between October 18 and November 12, sixteen hundred Native Americans camped about the well-wooded region. Hunting parties brought in one hundred deer a day. Native witnesses included a Longhouse all-star team: Farmer’s Brother, Cornplanter, Red Jacket, Little Beard, and Handsome Lake. Sometimes called the Calico Treaty, it declared peace, set aside reservations of land, and provided the annual delivery of a batch of cloth—calico—from the U.S. government to the Seneca. The hand-off still takes place. Drop by that stone outside the courthouse any November 11 and see for yourself.
Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People Page 37
