While doing research, I came across a series of articles that appeared in the Jamestown Evening Post from November 1919 through February 1920. The were simply entitled "Old Jamestown" or "Old Jamestowners" and dealt with the early history of the city.
The following deals with the first dam on the Chadakoin, built sometime in the 18th century by French soldiers, prior to the Revolutionary War.
Old Jamestown
(Jamestown Evening Post – Jan. 6, 1920)
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| Seneca Chief Cornplanter |
Dredging the Chautauqua Lake outlet through Jamestown, which has not yet been finished and possibly never well be, is a task almost one hundred years duration. It was first begun in 1822, when an attempt was made to deepen the channel. At this time there was discovered a row of white plank piles driven firmly into the earth across the stream.
Cornplanter, the famous Indian Chief, informed the early settlers that these had been driven in order to raise the water in the lake so as to permit troops to pass down the lake and hence on down the river to Pittsburgh. The town of Ellicott was the site of an important Indian village long before the Revolutionary War. It was located in what is now the town of Kiantone and on the Prendergast flats. This was in the later years of the 17th Century. It was one of the granaries of the of the Five Nations.
When the French soldiers passed down the Conewango river on their was to Fort Duquesne, Cornplanter was only 18 years old; nevertheless he led a party of 16 Indians to the defense of the fort, embarking his warriors at what has been known as Oxbow Bend on the Conewango, about a mile north of what is now known as Fentonville.
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