Once upon a time, there was a painted post.

*This was a shaped and embellished tree trunk, standing in a Native American town where the rivers (Conhocton, Canisteo, Tuscarora) came together to form the Chemung. European folks called it the Town by the Painted Post, and the surrounding space they called the Painted Post Country.

*When Steuben County was erected in 1796, Painted Post was one of six “supertowns” that were each eventually subdivided into half a dozen smaller towns. When that process was pretty much done, the Town of Painted Post changed its name to the Town of Corning, after the major landowner.

*The old name passed into history, until a Village was incorporated within the Town of Erwin (part of the original supertown, and also named for a major landowner). The Painted Post name came officially back onto the map, and there it has stayed ever since.

*The rivers were highways back in the early days, and also power sources, as the nearby “gang mills” demonstrated. Painted Post’s position where eastbound/southbound traffic came together… or where westbound/northbound traffic divided… made it a perfect point to stop, to rest, to do business.

*Unfortunately, of course, it was also a perfect spot for flooding. And flood it did, repeatedly, until one flood did away with what remained of the original “painted post.”

*To commemorate that landmark, villagers commissioned one of their neighbors to create a sheet-metal Indian in two-dimensional silhouette… they paid him one cow. This figure watched over the community for decades until a newer version was created. In the late 19th century came a fully-rounded cast-metal statue that actually looked like an Indian, or at least like what someone in a factory THOUGHT an Indian looked like.

*After that statue blew down and got damaged during a 1948 wind storm, a local art teacher created the statue that we know today. Like its predecessor, the new statue stood right smack in the middle of Monument Square, tangling traffic on Water and Hamilton Streets.

*That space (and much of the rest of the village) had flooded in 1901, and catastrophically in 1935, 1946, and 1972. After that last flood the river was moved, and so was the statue, finally out of traffic to the northwest corner of the Square, by the urban-renewal Village Square Shopping Center, replacing a couple of blocks lost to Hurricane Agnes.

*ALL THREE of the 19th-century Indians are in the Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot, which doubled as a makeshift morgue in 1972, accomodating the remains of 14 of the 19 Steuben County residents lost in that terrible night.

*When the Erie Canal opened in 1833, the river routes became quaint memories, making Painted Post a sleepy little place. But that changed in 1851 when the Erie RAILROAD came through, connecting Lake Erie with New York City. A few years later Painted Post also became the start/end point for the Erie’s Rochester Branch. Routes 15 and 17… now succeeded by Routes 415, I-86, and I-99… continue Painted Post’s history as a major transportation hub.

*“I have fallen in love with American names,” wrote Stephen Vincent Benet. “Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman’s Oast, it is a magic ghost you guard. But I am sick for a newer ghost: Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.”

*We love Painted Post too, and at 4 PM on Friday, June 15, I’ll be leading a historic walking tour of the Village, starting in the Museum at the Depot (where we’ll see those three early Indian figures), winding down to Water Street and Monument Square before making our way back to West High Street Cemetery, where we’lll hear from our own “Cemetery Lady,” Helen Kelly Brink. This free Steuben County Historical Society walk was postponed from June 1, when we had torrential downpours. We hope to see you June 15 – weather permitting!