Island of Doom

Cayugas dressed in their finest

I have never found an arrowhead, which I guess is a poor record for a former Cub and Explorer Scout.  Many have been found over the years on a little island near the junction of the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers, a quiet place known as Duncan's Island.  It is barely an island anymore, with the channel between it and the west shore of the Susquehanna now shallow and narrow. You pass close by it on Route 11/15 heading north; a sign identifies it as part of State Game Lands No. 290, accessible by a causeway which you  might not know has been there a very long time.  Open to the public unlike the bird propagation sanctuary on the much larger Haldeman's Island to its south, it is home to waterfowl, songbirds and snapping, wood and painted turtles.  And a lot of poison ivy to discourage your disturbance of those creatures.

Why have arrowheads, spear points and hand axes been found by the hundreds on this sleepy, quiet islet?  Low and alluvial, it does not seem to be inviting to so much Native activity.  The reason can be teased out of the mists of prehistory, and it is not rabbit hunting -- it's much more sinister.

Called Juneauta by the Iroquois or Yuchniada by the Delaware (Leni Lenape), it was the site, as the tale was told by older Natives to early settlers, of a multi-day battle between those two constant antagonists.  The waters, they said, ran red and the Cayugas finally prevailed.  The old story was proven true during the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal a century later, when earth was moved and hundreds of skeletons were uncovered.  From Watson's Annals:  "I saw a mound covered with trees, from which were taken many cartloads of human bones...there were also among them beads, trinkets, etc."  Another century later, in 1916, an archaeological expedition found even more.

When did it happen and why, at such a great cost?  We do not know, but I would guess it was after the Great Peace of 1700, when the Iroquois of central New York agreed to end their relentless attacks on French Canada and turned their attentions south.  The Tuscaroras had  moved to Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio from North Carolina after their 1713 defeat by the colonial militia, and after a period of probation were accepted into the confederacy as the Sixth Nation.  This alliance gave the Iroquois a perfect excuse (which they really did not need) to expand their power down to the head of the Chesapeake Bay.  Captain John Smith was the first Englishman to encounter them there; his impression was "they had a hellish voice, sounding from them as a voice in a vault."  Oddly, they used no lip sounds but spoke from the throat.  "..They made war with all the world."

Colonial farmers eventually moved onto many of the river islands, and on one the Duncan family built a mansion (In the 19th century, suffragist Lucretia Mott stayed there).  A causeway was built up early on to move grain to the mainland by pack animal and later by wagon.  A small village, Benvenue, grew up but there remains nothing but the name today

But do the spirits of the warriors remain while all else has passed away?