In the town of Cambria, six miles west of Lockport, (1824,) a Mr.
Hammon, who was employed with his boy in hoeing corn, observed some
bones of a child, exhumed. No farther thought was bestowed upon the
subject for some time, for the plain on the ridge was supposed to have
been the site of an Indian village, and this was supposed the remains
of some child, who had been buried there. Eli Bruce, hearing of the
circumstance, proposed to Mr. H. that they should repair to the spot,
with suitable instruments, and endeavor to find some relics. The soil
was a light loam, which would be dry and preserve bones for centuries
without decay. A search enabled them to come to a pit, but a slight
distance from the surface. The top of the pit was covered with small
slabs of the Medina sandstone, and was twenty-four feet square, by
four and a half in depth—the planes agreeing with the four cardinal
points. It was filled with human bones of both sexes and all ages. They
dug down at one extremity and found the same layers to extend to the
bottom, which was the same dry loam, and from their calculations, they
deduced that at least four thousand souls had perished in one great
massacre. In one skull, two flint arrow heads were found, and many had
the appearance of having been fractured and cleft open, by a sudden
blow. They were piled in regular layers, but with no regard to size or
sex. Pieces of pottery were picked up in the pit, and had also been
ploughed up in the field adjacent. Traces of a log council house were
plainly discernable. For, in an oblong square, the soil was poor, as if
it had never been cultivated, till the whites broke it up; and where
the logs of the house had decayed, was a strip of rich mould. A maple
tree, over the pit, being cut down, two hundred and fifty concentric
circles were counted, making the mound to be anterior to as many years.
It has been supposed by the villagers that the bones were deposited
there before the discovery of America, but the finding of some metal
tools with a French stamp, places the date within our period. One
hundred and fifty persons a day visited this spot the first season,
and carried off the bones. They are now nearly all gone, and the pit
ploughed over. Will any antiquarian inform us, if possible, why these
bones were placed here? To what tribe do they belong? When did such a
massacre occur?
None of the bones of the men were below middle size, but some of them
were very large. The teeth were in a perfectly sound state.