How Senecas live in Geneva, from 1688 to 1779

Today, Geneva’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station is a hotbed of botanical and horticultural research. But from about 1754 to 1779, about 500 Seneca Indians were living on the site at a settlement known as Kanadesaga.

Kanadesaga was the third Seneca settlement near Geneva between the years of 1688 — just after the French Marquis de Denonville had razed Indian settlements across the region — and 1779, when General John Sullivan’s campaign during the American Revolution again burned the Indians’ homes and food stores.

Kurt Jordan, assistant professor of anthropology and American Indian studies at Cornell University, has been studying the settlement areas since 1998, digging for building foundations, animal bones, artifacts and anything else that might give clues as to what life was like for the Senecas. Jordan summarized his findings in a lecture last week at the station.

Studying past societies requires more than just digging, said Jordan. In addition to archaeological digs, he studied historical documents and maps, oral traditions and accounts from early scholars and historians like George Stillwell Conover and Charles Foster Wray.

The spatial distribution of artifacts is also important, said Jordan.

Anthropologists can draw conclusions about Indians’ daily lives — where, how and what they cooked, for instance, or how they defended themselves — based on the location of structure foundations, animal bones and artifacts. Where things are found can be just as important as what was found, he said.

From about 1688 to 1715, there was a Seneca settlement in the Geneva area called White Springs. During this period, the Iroquois Confederacy — which included the Senecas — was often in conflict with Western tribes. It was also an era of political and economic uncertainty.

Only preliminary excavation has taken place at White Springs, but Jordan suspects future work will confirm the Senecas residing there lived in long, multi-family houses in a densely-populated, easily defendable hilltop village that was far away from their agricultural fields.

From about 1715 to 1754, the Geneva-area Senecas settled at a patchwork of sites known as the New Ganechstage Complex. It was, according to historical reports, a time of relative peace.

Structure remnants indicate that New Ganechstage was on a downslope, with the Senecas living in smaller neighborhoods of 250 to 500 people each. It was a less defensible setting than White Springs, but the relative peace of the time meant that defense wasn’t a paramount concern.

New Ganechstage also “represented a change in the use of domestic space,” said Jordan — houses were smaller and slightly farther apart, on larger lots. This created yards which allowed Seneca women to do some of their cooking and messier work outside. The men didn’t have to go far to hunt; deer were plentiful and close by, and abundant species like the passenger pigeon and American eel served as sources of food.

It was, said Jordan, “a relatively convenient daily life.”

In about 1754, the Senecas moved north to a settlement that would become known as Kanadesaga — a site that Jordan says is “historically, the best known, but archaeologically, the least.” The Senecas’ time at Kanadesaga included the Seven Years War and Pontiac’s Rebellion, and the 1779 Sullivan Campaign brought it abruptly to an end.

Archaeological findings suggest that Kanadesaga combined elements of the two previous settlements. Again, it was located on a hilltop for defense purposes. But houses were still smaller — and housing lots larger — than at White Springs.

One general trend Jordan found was that the Iroquois, wherever they lived, initiated “long term, intentional changes in the environment” through agriculture and practices such as controlled burns. And because they didn’t travel far when they moved from settlement to settlement — only about five miles each time, on average — their cumulative impact on the environment was intense.

Though the digs revealed a lot about the Seneca settlements between 1688 and 1779, there is still much to discover, said Jordan — particularly about Kanadesaga.

Hilary Smith can be reached at (585) 394-0770, Ext. 343, or at hsmith@mpnewspapers.com.