Indian Paths in the Great Metropolis
On the east side of the line of this roadway, at 234th street, W. L. Calver, with the writer, found a shell-pocket with pottery fragments, evidently marking the site of a small camp alongside the trail.
The path curved around Tetard hill as Albany avenue now runs, crossing near 238th street a small brook descending the hillside, and thence extending on a nearly straight course northward toward Van Cortlandt Park, where it found a practicable crossing over the Mosholu brook at 242d
INDIAN NOTES
THE BRONX
street.14 This was probably effected by stepping-stones at the foot of the cascade where in 1700 a dam and a sawmill were erected by Van Cortlandt, thus creating the present lake. In Indian days the brook made its way through a marshy tract extending half a mile back to our present city boundary.
Here the trail connected with a considerable village-site (19) which covered a space of several acres on the level land west of the lake. On this area, when the regrading of the present playing-field was undertaken in 1890, J. B. James found many fire-pits, a number of native human interments, and several dog-burials. The name of this village is not recorded: it may have been Mosholu, by which name the surrounding locality has been known to recent times, but more probably was included in the title of the tract of Keskeskick, that formed the first sale by the local natives to the Dutch West India Company in 1639. That sale was made by Taquemack, the local sachem, but was also agreed to by Reckgawack, indicating its connection with the