Workshop a Huge Success!

What a GREAT Saturday moving party!
Who would have thought we would have had such a great turnout for our first workshop Saturday in our new building?

On Saturday, December 8th, we had 15 people volunteer time to help us use two U-Haul trucks and move furniture that was being stored in three different locations to our new building. Special thanks to Joe Vaselli, Ken Myer, and Rick Fiacco for scheduling time on their Saturday to allow us to come and to finally pick up all of the items that we had in storage at their respective locations!

The Village of Waverly welcomed us by blocking off the parking areas around our building in order for our trucks to easily park and to allow us the easiest access to unload.


Our Inga Welles kept everyone organized and as each team came in, made sure that the floor was well managed to keep things moving.



Tom Valillee and Jack Rowe (above) lead the team of movers with the first truck which included myself, Dave Santas, Mike Bunyak, and Les Rolfe.

While Duane Welles led the truck for the second team which included Jessica and Joe Quinn, Luke Rae, and Mike Geiss.


Back at the building, Inga, Susan Fogel, Glora Reigal (who also drove truck for us for a while!) and Dick Cowles organized, cleaned and kept things going there...

At lunch we were pleasantly surprised by our new neighbors at the Rail House (Ruth Burgess and employee, Caroline) who made and donated two pizzas to feed our crews! THANK YOU!

We also had several people stop in to welcome us and to see how we were doing. Don and Carol Merrill stopped in and stayed a while and even made a donation while they were there.


SRAC is so blessed to have so many friends that have come to our side in times of need. I want to personally thank all that came out on Saturday and invite all that are interested to join us this coming Saturday (the 15th) to continue working on getting the building in order.

( ;

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

A Boy Scout's Mom Tasked With Creating a Learning Activity...

"To the SRAC Team -

I want to thank you so very much for extending your ideas and resources to me as I helped with a Native Indian Studies Cub Scout activity and field trip back in November. I also learned quite a bit myself!

Our lesson began with your trifold of The Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash), showing the intelligence of how the Indians grew their crops together and how each plant depended on each other to thrive...which is a model to us all as we live out our lives. One of the pictures in the trifold showed how the Indians would dry out their corn in their long houses, which was reinforced as the kids discovered the previous Saturday as they crafted a paper long house as an activity at the Tioga Point Museum, which you suggested to me for our field trip around Native Indian Studies.

After that lesson, we read the Thanksgiving story about Squanto and the events around his lifetime, which then followed by each child having the opportunity to grind corn that you grew in your own garden (just as the Indians did) with your natural stone mortar and stone pestal that were once used by Indians in our area. What a rich experience that was to show, touch, and also use the tools that were used every day and so very long ago.

So I want to thank you again for your support and pursuing your passion of native indian history and making it more incredible each and every day with your website, your Drumbeats in Time events, your research, books, your teachings, your networking with other historians, and most importantly your sharing. Keep up the great work--this snowball you've started just keeps growing and growing-- and that is exhilarating!

May your torch continue to burn and that your torch is passed on for many other generations to come. "

With many thanks and pride,

Janice Bennett (SRAC member)

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

Saturday Workshops In Waverly

For those who have not heard yet. -we have a new home now at 345 Broad Street, Waverly, NY!

After incorporating in Pa and getting our 501c3 in 2005, we finally got enough saved up to have enough to put down on a place we can call our own! ~~WHEW!!!~

Right now I am working on two grant requests, one for our public restrooms and one for basic seed money to start renovations in the rest of the main floor. We also have a couple of other requests in for monies to help us with some basic expenses of the startup, printing, and so on...But none of these grants will pay for the basic help we need to clean, paint, move things in and so on.

That kind of help can only come from those of you who choose to offer the help.

We have decided to make the next few Saturdays workshop days for SRAC and we hope you can muster up some help for us.

This Saturday (December 8th) from around 9am til 6pm, stop in for an hour or two....we will need help cleaning, painting, doing some light construction, and moving furniture that we had stored until we could get into the building...but hey Inga might have some other things to do as well! Trust me when I say we have something for everyone - and it will be a chance for you to see what we are up to and chat a while!

If you have questions, please call us at 607-565-2536.

Hope to see you Saturday!

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

More on Red and Yellow Ocher (Ochre)

Recently I had posted a request for people to submit their thoughts on the existence of red and yellow ocher in burials in our area.

to read that article - - click here.

I just received this commentary and thought it was interesting and wanted to share it...I really had never considered the fact that ocher colors could have been manipulated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hematite is a mineral in the hematite group. They are trigonal, metallic oxides,and are composed of one or more metals and oxygen, and resemble each other structurally. Corundum (Aluminum oxide), Eskolaite (Chromium oxide) and Karelianite (Vanadium oxide) are also in the Hematite group. Hematite is the primary ore of iron.

Hematite occurs in many different habits, including numerous crystal forms, massive, and earthy, which is called ocher.

Ocher (ochre) occurs in 4 major forms. Yellow ocher is hydrated iron oxide. When yellow ocher is heated, driving off the water, it turns red. Both occur naturally, but the red ocher found with other artifacts, could have been "made" by the people who used it. Red ocher can also be purple, due to particle size. There is also brown ochre, which is partially hydrated iron oxide and is more commonly known as common rust. There are other colors, such as grey or orange, etc., all with their own names, and resulting from different amounts of water.

There would have been little native hematite in the valley area, except for glacial deposits, trade pieces, or very small amounts obtained from "rusted" pyrite (iron sulfide) that occurs sporadically in some sedimentary rocks, as in the pyritized fossils found in western NY."

- Don M.(SRAC member)

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

Giving Back

When I first started researching Spanish Hill a few years ago, the first thing that really struck me was that we do not discuss our local prehistory in our region. Not only that - but the information was VERY hard to even find!

Since then SRAC has been formed by a group of us who really feel that there is a need in our area to educate our surrounding communities of all ages.

You may not know this , but SRAC has spoken to elementary schools as well as nursing homes. We in fact send a bunch of our newsletters every month to a local senior care community. We have also spoke in the local high school as well as any other community group that has invited us! Here is a letter from a person who attended our presentation at Lockheed Martin last week:

"Deb and Ted, Thank you so much for the interesting and educational presentation you gave at Lockheed Martin last week. I could have listened to Ted all afternoon. You inspired me to join SRAC. I have a life-long interest in Native American culture. I will plan to visit the new museum in Waverly as soon as it is open. I have a few points that I would love to have Ted look at some time. One is a spear point that was actually found in the Susquehanna in Afton, NY. " - Thanks again, Tom Moberg

We also have a huge display case set up in the local elementary school filled with artifacts that the teachers can actually take out and use for hands on learning. Additionally, we created an online learning module about those artifacts for teachers to use. This is because we have had certain parts of our collection donated with the expressed wish that the artifacts be used with kids, and we believe it is a great thing to do.

We also loan out a a smaller display of artifacts and learning materials to go with them for boy scout troops, teachers, and even teaching students that may want to use them for a shorter period of time upon request.

Here is a letter that we just received from Jason Munn, who is working on his Master's in education and whom we loaned out artifacts and learning materials for a presentation he was doing towards that goal.

"Kudos and Bravo to the SRAC and Deb Twigg! Thank you so much for the educational materials that you provided me with. The presentation my group and I gave on the Andastes was a big success. The audience consisted of about 30 education professionals all in a graduate class on multiculturalism in Education at Mansfield University. I think that we presented them with quite a few eye-openers including the Andaste's themselves, John Smith's account, and the history of Spanish Hill. The hands-on materials and artifacts you provided us with really brought the presentation home as well. There was much discussion and interest generated following the presentation on the indigenous tribes of the area and how advanced they were along with local history in general. It is wonderful to know that there are groups like the SRAC and the people involved with it that care so greatly about preserving our local history, and what a history it is! I think that the audience took away a sense of that history and hopefully will want to educate their classes about it as well. Thanks again and keep up the great work!" - Jason Munn

If you would like to sign out some educational materials and artifacts for a school project and or to have SRAC come to your school (in our region,) give us a call at 607-727-3111 or email us at info@SRACenter.org!

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

A Week in the Life of SRAC!

I want to apologize for not getting more info out this week - but it has been a little busy. As I sat down to write this morning, I thought it might be neat to give all of you a look into the past week in the life of SRAC!

Early in the week, board member Jessica Quinn had notified us that 30 - some outdoor plastic chairs had been donated to us from the Church of the Redeemer in Sayre, PA and Mike Bunyak - SRAC member picked them up and delivered them to our storage area. Also, Dick Cowles has been finishing up plans on removing windows and casings out of a building and renting a lift to extract 8-10 huge display cases out if a third story window in the old Corning/Painted Post museum in Erwin, NY! (They were donated to us by the Corning Painted Post Museum and that is the way they were placed in the building years ago!)

Tuesday board members Ted Keir and Dick Cowles spoke at the Southern Tier Retired Lions Club luncheon meeting in Fisherville, NY. They gave out newsletters and SRAC magnets and Ted gave his "Woolly Mammoth" slide show program about a dig he was part of at Spring Lake, near Wyalusing, PA.

Wednesday, Ted Keir picked me up at work and we made a trip over to Lockheed Martin in Owego, NY, and did a luncheon presentation for 120 staff members. We also brought a carload of Ted's artifacts, and it was a big hit. The following is a photo from that event:


As they entered the auditorium, we allowed the staff to come in and walk around the artifacts and then they had a buffet lunch while we presented. I did a talk about SRAC and our mission. Ted followed by giving the audience a great chance to hear him talk about the artifacts that we brought, what they were believed to be used for, and many times where he had found them. This item shown in Ted's hand below is part of a baby woolly mammoth tooth that was found locally.

Many Lockheed employees stayed after the program to ask questions as well. Unfortunately, I take vacation time from my real job for this stuff and had to get back, or I am sure we could have stayed quite a bit longer!

Thursday was spent getting ready for the upcoming events on Friday and Sunday...which involves printing and binding more SRAC books, making more raffle tickets and raffle baskets and getting inventory and rocks ready to be transported. We also were notified by another local business owner who has around 30 large tempered glass shelves and some miscellaneous furniture that we need to get a truck and pick up next week, so we had to find the volunteers to get that planned out. Lastly I was called by our lawyer and we need to do some last minute paperwork and planning for our closing on our new building next week!

Friday was an event for the kids at the Lynch/Bustin School in Athens, PA which board member Inga Welles headed up for SRAC and the Chehanna Rock Club with Ted Keir. It was a kids night out and hundreds of kids attended. SRAC had three raffle baskets in a FREE raffle - the raffle tickets were just to fill out their names and contact info to drop in the basket, and then they kept the other half of the ticket with our website and blog address to learn more about us.

Inga and Ted also had the kids making fossils with shells and clay and digging in sand for a scoop filled with different minerals and other cool stuff. Here is Inga below with one of the friends she made at the event:

Friday evening for me was filled with more paperwork, (mostly more printing and binding ~ ugh!) and then I had to balance the SRAC checking acct for the past month as well as input and mail out the membership packets to the latest memberships we received this week. Oh - yeh - on my way home from work, I also met with a teacher who was returning some artifacts, a display board, etc that SRAC loaned to him for a presentation he was doing for Master's degree earlier this week. (stay tuned for more on this later!)

And so there you have a quick and dirty account of the past week in the life of SRAC -Whew!

I hope that you can see just how committed and active we are in our mission and our surrounding communities....Just this week we covered an area that stretched from as far west as Fisherville, NY, as far east as Owego, NY, and as far south as Athens, PA, and will be in Sayre tomorrow (Sunday) at the Craft Fair all day.

We are really blessed to have the board that we have with the different talents they bring to our organization, but it doesn't stop there - - we also have a great bunch of 100 members of which many volunteer to help us at events and setups, moving and so on...The neat thing is that we are a family in many ways already, just because we all have worked so hard together for the past years to get us to where we are today. I guess what I am trying to say is that while many members show their support for SRAC by being a part of one of our most important annual sources of revenues - memberships, I am surprised at how many our our members also want to physically be involved with our efforts in the community.

And this is why I am excited to get the keys to our new building. SRAC is "chomping at the bit" to do even more that a location of our own will allow us to do.

If all goes well - we will have the keys to our new home early next week, and SRAC will begin another new chapter in our existence...I hope you consider being a part of the excitement today!

I redid our whole SRACenter.org website last weekend and you can even join online now!

Subscribe to SRAC River, Rocks, and Time by Email

Ellsworth Cowles and Spanish Hill

As most of you may know, for me, the beginning of my interest and later co-founding of SRAC all was the result of my interest (ok - some would call it an obsession...) in a place in South Waverly, Pa, called Spanish Hill.

Spanish Hill - around 1915

Spanish Hill in the 70's

The east side facing us in the picture above shows where they removed the side for highway fill. In fact, they were going to take the whole hill for highway fill at one time, but a bunch of concerned citizens teamed up with Mr. Ellsworth Cowles went to the state archaeologist and had that plan revamped to only take the side. Ellsworth also made some audio tapes seemingly for the radio to support the cause - You can listen to the first clip here and the second clip here in my podcasts in iTunes.

The way that the state archaeologist was convinced to change the highway fill plans was by having Ellsworth bring actual artifacts from Spanish Hill itself. You see, Ellsworth was our local amateur archaeologist and well noted historian for over 50 years, and he actually found the ancient village site that was located at the foot of Spanish Hill in 1933.

Ellsworth and his sons and nephew at the site in 1933

You can read his own 1933 description of the site here. As well as see a survey of the site here.

Ellsworth also was convinced that he had found an effigy shape of a horned animal around a fire pit made of coconut sized granite boulders that were not native to the river flats area that they were found on. Here is Ellsworth's drawing of the effigy hearth -


And here is an actual photo of the effigy hearth:


I found it strange then as I was doing so much work to uncover information about the hill..I mean it didn't exist anymore for the average person to find - and even more important - why wasn't I told about all this when I was there on my field trip in fourth grade? But when I fianlly read the past PA archaeologist Barry Kent's book "Susquehanna's Indians" the light finally came on - THIS was the source that said that Spanish Hill was not the site of Carantouan. (Which I later rebuked in PA Archaeologist) You see, I had studied enough to know what I was reading in this book was clearly incorrect. Strangely, I found myself in a place of knowing that although Mr. Kent knew ALOT about the Susquehannocks, he did not do the research I had concerning Carantouan and/or Spanish Hill, or the two sources he uses to make his claims.

Even worse, in just a few paragraphs over pages 300 and 301 in that book, Mr. Kent had closed the door on Spanish Hill and the story of Carantouan, and had made a comment about a local amateur archaeologist and historian, Mr. Ellsworth Cowles that I could not forget, because when I read this paragraph about Ellsworth, it sounded like a personal attack:

• "...Cowles conducted investigations in the vicinity of Spanish Hill. As a result, the Carantouan myth continued to have at least some local perpetuation." (Kent:1984)

I had to wonder, "Why such strong feelings?" "Why so disrespectful to Mr. Cowles?" And most importantly...."Why call a documented historical event, a MYTH?"

By early spring in 2004, I had contacted Bobby Rockwell of the Rockwell Museum in Corning and asked him if he had any info on Ellsworth Cowles. Sadly, he told me that Ellsworth had passed in 1992, but his son Dick was alive and well in Caton, NY, and Bobby asked Dick to allow me to call on him. I did so a few months later, and to my surprise, Dick had all of his dad's artifacts still in his basement (which became the base artifact collection for SRAC later,) along with documents, letters, maps and just about everything that you could imagine...


When I finally brought up the Barry Kent quote about Ellsworth, his son Dick pulled out some old letters between Ellsworth and Ted Keir, who in 1984 had submitted a request to the PA Historical and Museum Commission to preserve Spanish Hill as a historical landmark. Interestingly, Barry Kent's book came out in 1984 as well, and in these letters that I read, Ted and Ellsworth actually were discussing what Kent had said about Spanish Hill and Carantouan, as well as what he said about Ellsworth.

Even more importantly in 1984, the same Barry Kent cast the deciding vote on the request made by Ted Keir to preserve the hill...His exact words on the "decision sheet" for Spanish Hill's need for preservation for it's historical significance can be seen here (at the bottom of the page.)

They say:
"This is not the site of Brule's Carantouan and very little archaeological material has been found on the hill. It is a significant geological feature, but only by misinterpretation has it become a place of historical interest." BCK 10/10/8

And so you now know why the hill found itself in jeopardy and could have actually been highway fill if it had not been for Mr/ Ellsworth Cowles...

As I read Ellsworth's letter to Ted that day that was 15 pages long with a whole time line drawn out of when the Carantouans (Susquehannocks) would have left this region and why, as well as when the fur trade and guns to the Iroquois had occurred and so on...I smiled and knew that Ellsworth Cowles - whom I found out also that day was also voted as one of the top ten people to ever live in Corning, NY - knew what he was talking about.

Unfortunately, Ellsworth's life by that time had other priorities, and he never went to battle with Barry Kent on the story of Carantouan and Spanish Hill. That year his wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and soon his eldest son would die as well...

While Ellsworth Cowles was as his granddaughter has told me recently "the type of man that when he walked in, he could fill the room," I know that he was not yet satisfied with all that he had hoped to accomplish in his life. I know of other research he was doing right up to the end of his life concerning Spanish Hill and Carantouan and that truly saddens me to think he died before having time to be able to do what he had set out to do...especially when he knew he could.

And so when Dick, Ellsworth's son handed me the piece of paper one Sunday at our SRAC board meeting, the realization of what my article in the Pennsylvania Archaeologist which challenges Kent's book "Susquehanna's Indian's" claims about Carantouan, Spanish Hill and yes - Mr. Ellsworth Cowles has meant, not just to me, but to everyone who has been involved with this issue for the past 100 years.

You see, the piece of paper Dick handed me was a copy of the front inside page of Ellsworth's bible...all tattered and torn with notes all over it and with just one quote above his name that I could now understand...



Note: This piece of paper now resides in my copy of "Susquehanna's Indians," between pages 300 & 301.

Thank you to the Cowles family for allowing me to be inspired by Ellsworth, a man I am sorry I never got a chance to meet.

Ellsworth Cowles (1897-1992) and son Dick Cowles (current Board Chairman and Co-founder, SRAC)
in 1933 at the Spanish Hill site.



I have since written a book called
"Spanish Hill and Carantouan: The History, the People and the Politics"
and it is available here
~~ALL proceeds benefit SRAC.~~

Click here to receive SRAC River, Rocks, and Time articles by Email!