SEH-GA-HUN-DA

In between waterfalls we stopped at a look-out.

The first inhabitants are known by the Native people as the “Old Ones”. The first Old Ones followed the great Mastodons (such as the Pike Mastodon found in the Park’s Museum) and other animals to the Valley when it still resembled an arctic tundra. Then as the landscape warmed and changed, these Paleo-people, as the archaeologists know them, adapted to new ways of life. This new way of life became known as the “archaic stage”. Artifacts from this era of the Park history have been found throughout the Valley. Eventually the nomadic hunting and gathering gave way to a more settled life based upon the Three Sisters – corn, beans, and squash.

It was these Woodland People who became the O nodowa’ga, or the Seneca People. Although they, like their ancestors, had long hunted and fished along the Genesee, it was not until the late 1600’s that Seneca villages appeared in the part of the Valley they called “Sehgahunda”, or the “Vale of Three Falls” 

Letchworth Park History