Appendix H - Historical Archaeological and ... - CBP.gov

ectangular-shaped houses (Engelbrecht, 2003:89). Settlements gradually shifted from river
floodplains and areas near wetlands to more elevated settings away from canoe-navigable
waterways – a movement indicating “an increasing focus on features favorable to maize
horticulture” (Hasenstab, 2007:169) and possibly a preference for easily-defensible locations.
By 450 B.P. to 350 B.P., Iroquoian speaking people throughout central and western New York
were living in villages up to eight to ten acres in extent that had longhouses and palisades
(Engelbrecht, 2003:89). These village sites cluster in the historical homelands of the Five
Nations Iroquois (the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk (Niemczycki, 1984;
Pratt, 1976; Tuck, 1971), as well as nearby groups, such as the Erie who occupied the east end of
Lake Erie (Engelbrecht, 2003:143; White, 1961; 1978). Outside these permanent villages,
people occasionally visited other areas, such as zones along large rivers and water bodies, for
resource procurement activities (such as fishing and hunting), during which they occupied
smaller camps, such as that represented by the Street site (Rieth, 2002). There were gradual
changes in ceramic vessel morphology throughout the Late Woodland in New York (Hart and
Brumbach, 2009; MacNeish, 1952; Ritchie and MacNeish, 1949). Early pots have conoidal
bodies with cord-roughened exteriors, lack collars, and were typically decorated with cordwrapped
stick impressions, while later (post ca. 650 B.P.) vessels had globular bodies with
smooth exteriors, collars, and incised decorations, sometimes with castellations and
anthropomorphic designs.
Protohistoric and Historic Periods
Items of European manufacture appear on Native American archaeological sites throughout the
study area in New York beginning in the first half of the sixteenth century A.D. (ca. 450 B.P.-
400 B.P.). Such artifacts were quickly integrated into the material culture inventories of native
groups and included: sheet brass, copper and iron kettles; items derived from sheet metal kettles,
including tinkling cones, projectile points, and other tools and ornamental items; colorful glass
trade beads; and iron axe blades (Bradley, 2005:69-80). 'True' Wampum - small white and
purple beads made from marine shells drilled with metal tools - also dates to the Protohistoric
(Ceci, 1989:72-73; Tooker, 1978:422). Site locations were generally similar to those during the
Late Woodland; examples include the Onondaga sites at Temperence House, Quirk, and Chase,
and the Seneca site at Richmond Mills (Bradley, 2005:49-50; Engelbrecht, 2003:133). The five
Iroquois nations likely began the process of forming the League of the Iroquois during the
Protohistoric (Engelbrecht, 2003:130).
Early historical events involving Indian groups living in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio
were heavily influenced by the European fur trade and the roles the Five Nations Iroquois played
in it. The French established a trading outpost at Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence River about
1600 A.D. and the Dutch settled around Albany by ca. 1620 A.D. The Dutch were later forced
out of their land holdings in the Northeast by the British in the 1660s. The Five Nations
benefited from trade with the French, Dutch, and British which, among other items brought them
European weapons. The European hunger for beaver pelts also drove Five Nations expansion to
areas to the west, and by the middle of the 1600s, they had largely dispersed/destroyed many of
their neighbors, including the Neutral and Erie in western New York (and probably northwestern
Pennsylvania) and the Algonquian groups living in northern Ohio (Engelbrecht, 2003:142-144;
Trigger, 1978; White, 1991). Meanwhile, the Iroquois suffered as a result of European epidemic
diseases; in some cases mortality rates were as high as 90 percent (Engelbrecht, 2003:158). In
the early eighteenth century, Iroquois relations with the French and British stabilized for a time,
Northern Border Activities H-25 July 2012