Note: This post is entirely off-subject for this blog, but I'm feeling a bit nostalgic, so here goes. Over at this post at ER's place, the comment section went off on a tangent, and I mentioned a local landmark from my childhood - Spanish Hill in South Waverly, PA. The mural in the above photo is in the vestibule of the Waverly, NY Post Office, and that is Spanish Hill in the background. A glacial moraine - Waverly was about as far south as the glaciers got in my neck of the woods - the Hill stands out because, unlike the surrounding hills, it sits in the Susquehanna/Chemung Rivers flood plain, where the four communities we call "The Valley" are located.
A local historian has created a website dedicated to Spanish Hill, which you can find here. I will just highlight a couple things of interest, and allow any who might be interested to go and explore the site.
First, as to its name, from the site:
Some people believe that Spanish explorers followed the Susquehanna looking for gold and silver to take back to Spain, and ended up making camp at Spanish Hill either for the winter or for a stand off in a battle with the Iroquois. Whatever the real story is - this hill has had the name Spanish Hill as far back as our local history has recorded its existence.
One of the legends that I heard growing up was that, during an archaeological excavation there, the helmet of a Spanish conquistador was found there. I see no reference to that on the site, however, so that is probably local legend.
Even without the whole "Spanish" thing, the history of this little flat-top prominence is long and storied:
The village of Carantouan was placed in our history books by Samuel Champlain. Champlain wrote about all of his travels in the New Word in a 6 volume collection called "Voyages." In this text, Champlain refers to the nation of Carantounnais in the year 1615, which he subsequently sent his young interpreter Etienne Brule to secure 500 warriors for a battle. Many local historians believe Spanish Hill to be the location where Brule met the Carantouans.
Just to put this in perspective for you - - the Pilgrims will not have landed on Plymouth Rock(1620) for another 5 years at the time Brule made this trip.... - And that is why this is so important for our history. Spanish Hill very well was the first place the white man visited in Pennsylvania.
In 1878 General John S. Clark - a noted historian and surveyor - was in search if this place called Carantouannais, and in the end claimed that Spanish Hill was without a doubt the location of Carantouan.
However over the years following Clark's claim, there were others who questioned his findings and overturned them in some historians minds. Since then, the location of Carantouan has been questioned to this day.
Although Spanish Hill's history is vastly rich with or without this connection to Brule, the discrepancies concerning it as the location of Carantouan is still a heated debate. With strong feelings both for and against the location of Carantouan being located at Spanish Hill.
Finally, there is the whole mystery, related to the Carantouans, of the giant skeleton (the site uses the plural, but only one was supposed to have been found, and it has disappeared in the 91 years since it was allegedly discovered):
There is no doubt in my mind that after reading numerous accounts of these gigantic skeletons being found throughout this area, that this is not a "legend," it is a fact. These Susquehannocks (Andastes) were GIANTS especially to the men of average height (4- 5.3 feet) of that time period, but also seemed "huge" to the people who dug them up over the past 100 years. The Andaste's AVERAGE height seems to be between 6 and 7 feet, with some exceptional human specimens being recorded to be about 8 feet in height.
Think about that for a minute -
That would be around at least TWO FEET TALLER THAN MANY OTHER MEN AT THAT TIME. And it would still be considered to be HUGE by our standards today.
There were also reports of the skeleton found near Sheshequin having horns, a la the devil, etc., and you can still find people in the Valley who insist it is true, but that is not the case. Still, it is intriguing, and begs all sorts of questions for which there are too few answers.
On a related, personal note, the woman who runs the Spanish Hill site also has founded a historical society - the Susquehanna River Archaeological Center - rooted in her initial interest in Spanish Hill (the Hill is private property, and the folks who own it are a bit testy about people traipsing up and down it looking for rocks). If you go here, you will see a pdf document concerning the donation of my Uncle's huge collection of artifacts - mostly arrowheads, but also mortars, pestles, and other sundry stone pieces - to the SRAC. The item pictured is one of the many framed pieces that used to hang on the walls of his house. He had a room upstairs with boxes filled with stuff that never saw the light of day. All of it is where it belongs now - in a museum for people to see and historians and others to research.
