Sunday, May 18, 2008

Circular Ditch described in NY

by theseventhgeneration
The Delaware County, NY website has posted a publication entitled The History of Delaware County by W.W. Munsell. Click here for the link. Scroll down to the heading "Pakatakan and Its People". It describes the earthen works this way: "Near the place where Mill brook empties into the Delaware are the remains of earthworks, in the usual form of rude fortifications, which are certainly artificial formations, but by whom or when constructed is purely conjectural. The two are each of a circular form, and were surrounded with an embarkment inside of a deep ditch which contained four to six feet of water, supplied from a small stream in the rear of this fort." The Indian village referenced in the first paragraph of this section would have been located just west of where the circle is on the map in this post, at the meeting of the Bushkill and East Branch. The fourth paragraph in this section is also interesting, talking about an "artificial cave near Arkville" and how "Some fifty years ago a party of abut (sic) twenty Indians came to the town from one of the western reservations, and visited several places which have their interesting traditions."

3 comments :

pwax said...

Thanks for the reference. Those circles are much larger than the ones I showed in the previous post.

Norman said...

My first thought was, is anything left of these features? The circular ditch could be something that the Hopewell or the later Mississippian Indians constructed. Their earthen features are usually near water sources.

theseventhgeneration said...

I don't think so. Where the Mill Brook meets the East Branch is now under water...the Pepacton Reservoir. However, that nice rock pile and two others after that (which I haven't gotten back out to photograph yet) are only about 3 miles from where the Mill Brook enters the Pepacton.