Celebrating Seneca

Legends of the Lake

Sea serpents, immortal natives, underground passageways — stuff like that.

Did you hear the one about the frat house that fell into the lake? It never happened.

Seneca Lake, mysterious and imposing, possesses more than its share of myths and legends. The following stories ripple through the ages. Of course, there isn’t one of them that contains a shred of truth.

The Echo of Agayentah. In the early years, Hobart students embraced the legend of Agayentah, the bygone Seneca chief struck down by a bolt of lightening. As the story goes, both the chief and the tree where he took refuge were swept down a creek and into the lake. The following day, as storm clouds again gathered, a large tree trunk floated upright "slowly and majestically around the lake, like a funeral barge," according to the writer Arch Merrill. From then on, the tree was said to reappear in the "deathlike stillness that precedes the storm." A manuscript by George M.B. Hawley (Class of 1892) in the HWS archives cites reputable observances of the floating stump, then known, for no apparent good reason, as "The Wandering Jew."

There were some who said Agayentah had somehow angered the God of Thunder, who orchestrated his demise. "As he died," reads the Hobart H Book, "the echo of his cry reached the shore." In the 1850s, Echo of the Seneca became the title of the Hobart yearbook, which was then adorned with images of the Iroquois Nations.

Legend also has it a spirit boatman paddles the lake on moonlit nights, a spectral reminder of natives who narrowly escaped a party of Continental soldiers by climbing down a sheer cliff to canoes waiting below. The cliffs, located near Hector, were painted by the natives, supposedly to commemorate their good fortune.

Lake Drums. The low, distant booms said to occur on still summer evenings almost certainly exist, but explanations vary. Some explain them as gases bubbling up from the lakes depth and escaping with thunderous reports. Native Americans heard them variously as the drums of the ancestors, manifestations of evil spirits, or divine messages from the God of Thunder.

Passageways. A person drowns in Cayuga Lake and turns up in Seneca — such stories support the belief that underground passages connect the Finger Lakes with one another, and perhaps with the Atlantic Ocean (which would explain the lake’s high salinity, too). Jack Jones, a reporter from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, researched the topic and became convinced underwater passages in Seneca Lake are a "geological impossibility." William Ahrnsbrak, professor of geoscience concurs — cracks in the bedrock might release salt and allow subterranean seepage, but nothing more.

The Serpent. According to newspaper report in 1900, a Captain Herendeen (perhaps one of the many Hobart Herendeens) was skippering the steamship Otetiani on Seneca one hot summer afternoon when he spied what looked like wreckage of another vessel floating on the surface. While the crew prepared a boat to investigate, the "wreckage" moved. Herendeen called full ahead and the Otetiani bore down on the object, which suddenly reared its head.

A number of prominent citizens were on board that day, including the manager of the phone company, the police commissioner, and the president of the board of public works. One Professor George Elwood, from Ontario, was also there, and described the creature as serpent-like with a head "four feet long . . . armed with two rows of triangular white teeth. . . . The body was covered with a horny substance . . .much like the carapace of a terrapin. . . .

"The belly . . . was cream white. Its eyes round like those of a fish, and it did not wink."

Herendeen gunned the engines and twice rammed the creature at full speed, the second blow proving fatal. As the serpent floated, men from the Otetiani roped it and attempted to hoist it from the lake. Unfortunately, one rope slipped and the serpent sunk to the bottom.

The Geneva Gazette and Rochester Herald reported the incident, the former bemoaning the creature’s demise: "It should have been captured alive and squirming, brought to Geneva and exhibited."

The Geneva Daily covered the incident only later, observing that the boat may well have visited wine cellars along Seneca's shores, thus preparing passengers and crew alike for visions of "creatures and monsters of all sizes."

On occasion, divers will still report observing the lake serpent. Don Woodrow, professor of geoscience, attributes it to oversized carp which, when turned over to sun themselves, "look bizarre." — P.R.

The Seneca Lake series was researched and written by Dana Cooke and Peter Rolph '85 — writer/editors in the Office of College Relations. Portions of the series also appear in the Fall '97 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey. To request a copy, e-mail Susan Murad at murad@hws.edu.