Ganondagan

Located within Victor, New York, Ganondagan was one place I visited in 2010 while on a historical and archaeological tour.  During my New York childhood, I had pretty much grown up learning about the Iroquois and their dealings with European colonists.  The 2010 tour was a pretty good refresher course.

I decided that Ganondagan would be a stop on my recent road trip.  As I approached the place, I noticed that there were cars parked along the nearby roads.  After I did the same with my car, I walked into the visitors center (and through its full parking lot) and learned that there was a festival going on.  I payed the admission fee and then walked around the site and learned (or maybe re-learned) that it had been inhabited by people of the Seneca tribe, the westernmost of the five founding tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, until it was destroyed in 1687 by a French army invading from Canada.

I soon recognized the reconstructed long house, which had been there in 2010.  Here's its south side and east end.

Here's the north side and some visitors walking out of the west end.

These statues of a Seneca family, and the visitors center, in the background, were not there in 2010.

A mile or so west of the main site is Fort Hill.  Once used to store corn, this place was called Gadayanduk, which means "there was a fort here".  A trail leads from a small parking lot to the top of the hill, where it meets a trail extending back to the main site.  The top is a relatively flat area of about 40 acres, of which the next picture shows merely a part.

Here's part of the trail leading up from the parking lot.

For more about Ganondagan, go to Visit Finger Lakes and New York State Parks.