Post by Okwes on Oct 31, 2006 11:12:29 GMT -5
Canandaigua Lake, N.Y.: Of Indian Legends and Sylvan Trails
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Clark’s Gully, a deep ravine at the south end of Canandaigua Lake, has no marker, so few know its meaning to the Senecas.
By BETH QUINN BARNARD
Published: October 1, 2006
ON a warm autumn day, the creek bed is a cool, dark tunnel. The stream underfoot moves sluggishly, pooling in a stone depression, splashing over a scatter of rocks. Lacy ferns spring from steep gray walls of layered shale. Overhead an arch of pine, beech and maple branches filters the golden sunlight.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times
As you walk through it, you would never know that according to ancient legend, this placid notch, unmarked and unheralded, is the birthplace of the world.
Modern hikers call it Clark’s Gully, a deep ravine near the south end of Canandaigua Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. The gully lies at the base of South Hill, which rises 1,100 feet above the waters of the long, narrow lake. In the Seneca tradition, the hill is called Nundawao, revered as the place where the tribe’s ancestors emerged from the earth; indeed, the Senecas’ word for themselves is Onodowaga, or “people of the great hill.”
Today, Clark’s Gully isn’t singled out with a sign, let alone a historical marker. Very few know of its significance. But hikers who explore this ravine follow ancient footsteps.
Clark’s Gully gains 900 feet in elevation over about two miles and requires cautious navigation, ending in a series of cascading waterfalls that get much bigger — and harder to reach — the higher you climb. At first, the creek bed is the trail, and although in autumn the waterfalls are more trickle than torrent, the season allows adventurous hikers to explore deeper into the narrow gorge. Shale ledges provide foot- and toeholds to climb a series of cascades ranging from 7 to 20 feet before hikers reach the first of two waterfalls, each of which drop more than 60 feet. Few choose to scale these highest falls.
According to Seneca legend, when the earth opened on Nundawao, the tribe’s founders emerged from the gorge below. They were at Kanandague, “the chosen spot” — a deep, 16-mile-long lake with fertile fields at one end and sacred hills at the other. On today’s maps it appears as Canandaigua (pronounced CAN-an-DAY-gwa).
“Our story talks about this emergence from the hill,” said Peter Jemison, a Seneca who is a manager of the nearby Ganondagan State Historic Site. “That gully is another really beautiful place with a still pretty much unspoiled view. It all ties into the notion that we come from this land, that this is our home, and this is where we began as a group of people.”
The Senecas were (and still are) the Keepers of the Western Door of the Iroquois Confederacy, whose governmental procedures helped inspire the Articles of Confederation adopted by the 13 colonies in 1777 and whose matriarchal society and tradition of property rights for women influenced the founders of the American feminist movement in the 1840’s.
Today, the nearest Seneca lands are in the westernmost portion of New York State, but the tribe tells its own story at Ganondagan State Historic Site, about 10 miles from the lake’s north end. Three trails illustrate Seneca history, society and agriculture at Ganondagan, a town of 150 communal longhouses destroyed by the French in 1687. Tribal members answer questions about the town and about Seneca life inside a replica bark longhouse, while outside the view includes the Senecas’ sacred hills rising above the blue waters of Canandaigua Lake.
Down at the other end of the lake, right next to South Hill, stands the 865-foot-high Bare Hill, known to the Senecas as Genundowa. Interpretive signs at the 298-acre Bare Hill Unique Area tell of Algonquin habitation that predates the Senecas. In autumn, Bare Hill is a riot of wildflowers: goldenrod, asters, sweet pea, Queen Anne’s lace, daisy fleabane.
But according to an Indian folk tale first recorded by a white author in the early 19th century, at one time a great serpent encircled an Indian village that once stood here. It trapped the people inside the fortress and swallowed those who tried to escape, until a young boy defeated the beast with one unerring shot from his bow. The great snake died hard, ripping up trees and clearing the hillside as it slid down the slope; it spat out the heads of its victims, which became the large round stones found around Canandaigua Lake today. In one version of the tale, the serpent still dwells in the deepest portion of the 276-foot-deep waters.
Bare Hill hikers have their choice of two trails. The lower trail skirts a small pond and dead-ends in a copse of trees. The upper trail offers panoramic views of the lake and hills burnished by the changing leaves.
CANANDAIGUA Lake is ringed today by farmlands and summertime cottages, set amid the many vineyards and wineries of the Finger Lakes. Unless you know where to look, you might never know that it is an old and sacred place. But the Seneca traditions are present, even among those people who spend only their summers here.
That upper trail at Bare Hill, for example, leads to a large boulder where, at 9 p.m. on the Saturday of every Labor Day weekend, the Senecas’ annual ceremony of thanksgiving for peace and abundant harvests is re-enacted. A bonfire is lighted at that hilltop boulder; then on the lake below, residents ignite red road flares all along the 32-mile shoreline, creating a “ring of fire” that links this chosen spot with its distant past.
It is a link you can feel as you stand atop Bare Hill or tramp through Clark’s Gully, where a people rose from the earth.
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Clark’s Gully, a deep ravine at the south end of Canandaigua Lake, has no marker, so few know its meaning to the Senecas.
By BETH QUINN BARNARD
Published: October 1, 2006
ON a warm autumn day, the creek bed is a cool, dark tunnel. The stream underfoot moves sluggishly, pooling in a stone depression, splashing over a scatter of rocks. Lacy ferns spring from steep gray walls of layered shale. Overhead an arch of pine, beech and maple branches filters the golden sunlight.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times
As you walk through it, you would never know that according to ancient legend, this placid notch, unmarked and unheralded, is the birthplace of the world.
Modern hikers call it Clark’s Gully, a deep ravine near the south end of Canandaigua Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. The gully lies at the base of South Hill, which rises 1,100 feet above the waters of the long, narrow lake. In the Seneca tradition, the hill is called Nundawao, revered as the place where the tribe’s ancestors emerged from the earth; indeed, the Senecas’ word for themselves is Onodowaga, or “people of the great hill.”
Today, Clark’s Gully isn’t singled out with a sign, let alone a historical marker. Very few know of its significance. But hikers who explore this ravine follow ancient footsteps.
Clark’s Gully gains 900 feet in elevation over about two miles and requires cautious navigation, ending in a series of cascading waterfalls that get much bigger — and harder to reach — the higher you climb. At first, the creek bed is the trail, and although in autumn the waterfalls are more trickle than torrent, the season allows adventurous hikers to explore deeper into the narrow gorge. Shale ledges provide foot- and toeholds to climb a series of cascades ranging from 7 to 20 feet before hikers reach the first of two waterfalls, each of which drop more than 60 feet. Few choose to scale these highest falls.
According to Seneca legend, when the earth opened on Nundawao, the tribe’s founders emerged from the gorge below. They were at Kanandague, “the chosen spot” — a deep, 16-mile-long lake with fertile fields at one end and sacred hills at the other. On today’s maps it appears as Canandaigua (pronounced CAN-an-DAY-gwa).
“Our story talks about this emergence from the hill,” said Peter Jemison, a Seneca who is a manager of the nearby Ganondagan State Historic Site. “That gully is another really beautiful place with a still pretty much unspoiled view. It all ties into the notion that we come from this land, that this is our home, and this is where we began as a group of people.”
The Senecas were (and still are) the Keepers of the Western Door of the Iroquois Confederacy, whose governmental procedures helped inspire the Articles of Confederation adopted by the 13 colonies in 1777 and whose matriarchal society and tradition of property rights for women influenced the founders of the American feminist movement in the 1840’s.
Today, the nearest Seneca lands are in the westernmost portion of New York State, but the tribe tells its own story at Ganondagan State Historic Site, about 10 miles from the lake’s north end. Three trails illustrate Seneca history, society and agriculture at Ganondagan, a town of 150 communal longhouses destroyed by the French in 1687. Tribal members answer questions about the town and about Seneca life inside a replica bark longhouse, while outside the view includes the Senecas’ sacred hills rising above the blue waters of Canandaigua Lake.
Down at the other end of the lake, right next to South Hill, stands the 865-foot-high Bare Hill, known to the Senecas as Genundowa. Interpretive signs at the 298-acre Bare Hill Unique Area tell of Algonquin habitation that predates the Senecas. In autumn, Bare Hill is a riot of wildflowers: goldenrod, asters, sweet pea, Queen Anne’s lace, daisy fleabane.
But according to an Indian folk tale first recorded by a white author in the early 19th century, at one time a great serpent encircled an Indian village that once stood here. It trapped the people inside the fortress and swallowed those who tried to escape, until a young boy defeated the beast with one unerring shot from his bow. The great snake died hard, ripping up trees and clearing the hillside as it slid down the slope; it spat out the heads of its victims, which became the large round stones found around Canandaigua Lake today. In one version of the tale, the serpent still dwells in the deepest portion of the 276-foot-deep waters.
Bare Hill hikers have their choice of two trails. The lower trail skirts a small pond and dead-ends in a copse of trees. The upper trail offers panoramic views of the lake and hills burnished by the changing leaves.
CANANDAIGUA Lake is ringed today by farmlands and summertime cottages, set amid the many vineyards and wineries of the Finger Lakes. Unless you know where to look, you might never know that it is an old and sacred place. But the Seneca traditions are present, even among those people who spend only their summers here.
That upper trail at Bare Hill, for example, leads to a large boulder where, at 9 p.m. on the Saturday of every Labor Day weekend, the Senecas’ annual ceremony of thanksgiving for peace and abundant harvests is re-enacted. A bonfire is lighted at that hilltop boulder; then on the lake below, residents ignite red road flares all along the 32-mile shoreline, creating a “ring of fire” that links this chosen spot with its distant past.
It is a link you can feel as you stand atop Bare Hill or tramp through Clark’s Gully, where a people rose from the earth.