{"id":3743,"date":"2026-07-26T22:58:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T22:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/?p=3743"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:29:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:29:37","slug":"the-native-burial-mound-of-tonawanda-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/the-native-burial-mound-of-tonawanda-island\/","title":{"rendered":"The Native burial mound of Tonawanda Island"},"content":{"rendered":"(Read time:<\/span> 8<\/span> minutes)<\/span><\/span>
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Autumn 1833, Niagara River.<\/strong> Lumber businessmen Stephen White and Lewis F. Allen<\/em> on an inspection of Grand Island and Tonawanda Island<\/em>.<\/em> An imagined scene based on documented people, places and circumstances.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The sidewheel steamer churned the emerald water. Stephen White and Lewis F. Allen of the East Boston Timber Comany stood at the forward rail of the promenade deck, dressed, as always\u2014indeed, almost since they were out of swaddling\u2014in crisp dark coats, waistcoats and trousers. Along the riverbanks, beyond the pale-yellow willows at the water\u2019s edge, maples burned orange among bronze beeches and dark hemlocks. On Grand Island, the great white oaks had only begun to turn, wine-colored at their crowns and still green beneath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they approached the much smaller island (currently known as “Carney’s Island”) a following wind drove the steamer\u2019s smoke and vapor across their view. For several moments they saw only fragments of the shore: trees, a strip of pebbly beach, the roof of Carney\u2019s cabin. Then the plume thinned and disclosed the great swelling of earth beyond it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen White gripped the rail and leaned forward as far as his judgment would permit. \u201cWell\u2014what in Creation do you make of that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allen pressed his gloved fingertips together and raised one shaggy eyebrow. \u201cAn Indian mound, I should think. I told you it was prominent. It makes a picturesque object from the river, though the summit wants shaping.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProminent? It is colossal<\/em>.” White began to laugh. “Pilot, put her in toward the head!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allen continued to survey the shore. \u201cThe cabin is of no consequence. As for the mound, we might carry a walk around it. A small plantation here would soften the slope\u2014or perhaps take several feet from the summit and build a ramp for\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White no longer heard him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind them stood the wealth of Grand Island: rank upon rank of immense white oak, some already shaped by nature into the knees, curves and compass timbers coveted by shipbuilders. He saw the trees felled and squared, the new mill driving its gangs of saws, the canal bearing the timber eastward toward Albany, New York and Boston. He saw docks, storehouses, workmen\u2019s cottages and an island settlement rising around the enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before him, the ancient mound loomed over a bluff. White did not take it for an obstacle, much less a warning. It appeared instead as a monument already raised at the entrance to his prospective domain\u2014as though the island had been awaiting him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, no,\u201d White said. \u201cWe\u2019ll leave it. It\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Native traces<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first white settlers of the Tonawandas encountered evidence of Native life all around them. Near the mouth of Tonawanda Creek, nineteenth-century plowing exposed an acre of flint chips, broken points and unfinished tools. Around Goundry Street and Payne Avenue, residents also reported \u201cnumerous\u201d arrowheads and pieces of flint. In 1884, two human skeletons were uncovered during construction of the DeGraff mansion there; four years later, workers digging the cellar for Charles Weston\u2019s house on the opposite corner found more remains. All were believed at the time to be Native, leading some to conclude that this fashionable enclave of lumbermen\u2019s mansions had once been an “Indian” burying-ground. The most striking discovery of all, however\u2014and the one that attracted the most sustained attention and inspired the wildest flights of fantasy\u2014was the feature rising near Tonawanda Island\u2019s southern end: a great Native burial mound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
AI-generated illustration of the Tonawanda Island burial mound based on contemporaneous descriptions. The mound was later estimated to have been fifteen feet tall, and perhaps forty feet wide. Excavation would reveal grouped and de-fleshed human bones, flint chips, broken projectile points, worked deer antler and traces of fire.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stephen White’s Beechwater mansion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Illustration of the mound on Tonawanda Island. Harper’s Monthly Magazine<\/em>, May 1860<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bones and all<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While doing business on Grand Island, Stephen White of Boston purchased or leased Tonawanda Island, mound, bones and all. White built an incongruously lavish mansion there at great expense in 1835, dubbing it “Beechwater.” The burial mound was incorporated into the surrounding pleasure grounds, amid the fruit trees, ornamental shrubs and walking paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1837 map detail showing White’s mansion and pleasure grounds at the southern end of Tonawanda Island, with the “Indian Mound” prominently labeled.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Digging for relics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The burial mound was hardly preserved as a respectful feature of the landscape. By 1849, it had already been reduced to six or eight feet, its center excavated \u201cat different periods, in search of relics,\u201d according to Orsamus Turner\u2019s Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase<\/em>. A \u201clarge number of human bones,\u201d together with arrows, beads, hatchets and other objects, had been carried away. The genteel White household that cultivated the grounds and entertained Daniel Webster also appears to have treated the burial as its own cabinet of curiosities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so-called “giant” chief<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Stephen White died in 1841, shortly after his timber company declared bankruptcy. Beechwater was immediately offered for lease and operated by White’s widow, Mary (his second wife). She was said to have dug out the skull and bones of a giant human body from the mound with her own hands. The remains were afterward displayed as those of an eight-foot \u201cIndian chief,\u201d on the authority of unnamed \u201cscientific men.\u201d Such discoveries encouraged speculation that the mound had been built by a race of ancient Goliaths\u2014or some other vanished civilization. According to modern mysteriophile Mason Winfield, sensational accounts in frontier newspapers claimed at least two “very bizarre skulls” were excavated from the enclosure, with a “portentous, protruding lower jaw and canine forehead,” and buried in a way inconsistent with the traditions of the locals.\u00a0I have not located these accounts, but if nothing else, Winfield’s interest shows the fascination the mound continues to hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mound remained an item of public curiosity, attracting a visit from pioneering archaeologist and journalist E. G. Squier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archaeological analysis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What E. G. Squier found<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The E. G. Squier collage absolutely nobody asked for.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the autumn of 1848, E. G. Squier\u2014a self-educated journalist, antiquarian and pioneering field archaeologist\u2014came to the Buffalo area while surveying the ancient earthworks of Western New York. He published his findings the following year, including this description of the island mound:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was fortunate enough to discover one upon Tonawanda Island, in Niagara River, which had escaped [relic hunters’] midnight attentions. It was originally about fifteen feet in height. At the base appeared to have been a circle of stones, perhaps ten feet in diameter, within which were several small heaps of bones, each comprising three or four skeletons. The bones are of individuals of all ages, and had evidently been deposited after the removal of the flesh. Traces of fire were to be discovered upon the stones. Some chippings of flint and broken arrow-points, as also some fragments of deers\u2019 horns, which appeared to have been worked into form, were found amongst the bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York<\/a><\/em>, Smithsonian Institution (1849)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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AI-generated illustration of Squier’s description of the interior of the burial mound.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Squier\u2019s claim that the mound had escaped the \u201cmidnight attentions\u201d of relic hunters is difficult to square with Turner\u2019s report that its center had already been dug into \u201cat different periods,\u201d Whatever its condition when Squier arrived, enough remained for him to recognize a deliberate communal burial: several grouped deposits of human bones whose flesh had been removed (or had decayed) before placement, representing people of all ages, enclosed within a ring of stones. He tentatively connected this “secondary burial” practice to the Northern Iroquoian “Feast of the Dead,” though the connection is at best distant one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A relic of the Neutral (Attawandaron) people?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An 1865 presentation before the Buffalo Historical Society claims the mound is of Neutral (also known as “Attawandaron”) origin. The Neutrals were a Northern Iroquoian people whose principal villages lay west of the Niagara River. They were essentially wiped out by the Seneca by the 1650s (already weakened by disease and famine). In 1909, Niagara Frontier archaeologist Frederick Houghton also attributed the mound to the Neutral. The evidence is thin. The Neutrals were known to practice secondary burial, but so did many Northern Iroquoian peoples, and the mound produced no specific artifacts to positively ID its builders or time period it was built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, unless new evidence emerges, Houghton\u2019s attribution is probably as close as we will come to identifying the builders of the Tonawanda Island mound. Squier had examined it while it still stood, but no modern archaeological excavation ever would. Within forty years, the island\u2019s transformation into an industrial lumber district erased the mound\u2014and maybe whatever evidence remained beneath it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tonawanda Island transformed by the lumber market<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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South end of Tonawanda Island, with White’s mansion. The mound is not visible. Even at this late date, the island retained most of its rural character. Sketch by Amos W. Sangster (1887).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lumber piles cover the northwestern section of Tonawanda Island. Facing south. Postcard of Tonawanda Island, c.1908.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tonawanda Island is soon swallowed whole by the lumber business. In 1886, Smith, Fassett & Company purchased the island from William Wilkeson for $45,000. The natural harbor formed by Tonawanda Island and the Little River was perfect for stacking, processing and moving around lumber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith and Fassett promised to reserve twenty acres around the old mansion for residential use. Fassett and his wife moved into the renovated mansion. One of the new owners even declared that they would keep \u201cthe inroads of business\u201d from encroaching upon the mound. Yet grading was already exposing other human bones across the island, while docks, railroad tracks, factories and lumber yards advanced around the supposedly protected relic. The promise would not hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mound is last measured in 1888; excavated and apparently obliterated in May 1889. The mansion is soon abandoned and believed haunted. It is torn down in April 1907.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Beauchamp, William M. Aboriginal Occupation of New York<\/em>. New York State Museum Bulletin 32, vol. 7. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1900.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houghton, Frederick M. \u201cThe Indian Occupancy of the Niagara Frontier.\u201d Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences<\/em> 9, no. 3 (1909): 261\u2013375, especially 317 and 324\u201325.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn Excavating for the Cellar of Mr. Chas. Weston\u2019s New House.\u2026\u201d Tonawanda Herald<\/em>, May 24, 1888, p. 3. Reproduced in \u201cHuman Remains Discovered in Goundry Street Area,\u201d North Tonawanda History<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndian Bones Uncovered.\u201d Buffalo Express<\/em>, August 14, 1884. Reproduced by North Tonawanda History<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noble, William C., and Michelle Filice. \u201cNeutral Confederacy.\u201d The Canadian Encyclopedia<\/em>, March 14, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Squier, Ephraim George. Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New-York: Comprising the Results of Original Surveys and Explorations, with an Illustrative Appendix<\/em>. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Squier, Ephraim George. \u201cAncient Monuments in the United States.\u201d Harper\u2019s New Monthly Magazine<\/em> 20, no. 120 (May 1860): 737\u2013753.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTonawanda Island: Its Origin and Early Occupants, Both Red and White.\u201d Buffalo Courier<\/em>, October 9, 1887. Reproduced by North Tonawanda History<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTonawanda, or White\u2019s Island.\u201d Gleason\u2019s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion<\/em>, 1853. Reproduced by North Tonawanda History<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner, Orsamus. Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase of Western New York<\/em>. Buffalo: Jewett, Thomas & Co., 1849.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTuesday Forenoon the Bones of a Skeleton.\u2026\u201d Tonawanda Herald<\/em>, August 7, 1884, p. 3. Reproduced in \u201cHuman Remains Discovered in Goundry Street Area,\u201d North Tonawanda History<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Marian E. \u201cThe Orchid Site Ossuary, Fort Erie, Ontario.\u201d Bulletin of the New York State Archeological Association<\/em>, no. 38 (November 1966): 1\u201323.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Marian E. \u201cOn Delineating the Neutral Iroquois of the Eastern Niagara Peninsula of Ontario.\u201d Ontario Archaeology<\/em> 17 (1972): 62\u201374.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winfield, Mason. \u201cThe Search for the Lost Giants (in WNY), Part 2.\u201d Buffalo Rising<\/em>, February 15, 2015. Accessed July 27, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Read time:<\/span> 8<\/span> minutes)<\/span><\/span> Once rising near the southern end of Tonawanda Island, a great Native burial mound drew lumbermen, relic hunters, archaeologists\u2014and no shortage of wild speculation. This is what they found, what they destroyed, and what the vanished mound may still tell us about the Tonawandas before settlement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3743"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4141,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions\/4141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nthistory.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}