an interesting factoid

I have been reading a book on the Iroquis League of Nations.  A few paragrapshs of the Onadaga tribe mentioned that they had allies called the Tyadaghtons (Tiadaghtons? from the Pine Creek area?) who watched over a "great and inexhaustible silver mine on a tributary of a tributary on the Susquehanna River.  The Tyadaghtons were not  Iroquis League members, but they were a protectorate of the League and provided, as a tribute, all the silver the Iroquois needed.  The amount was prodigious.  Then a great tragedy came one day and the earth opened up and swallowed the little isolated tribe completely, and they disappeared to the last individual without a trace.  At the same time the shifting of the earth sealed the mouth of the mine that produced the silver and the tools of the Iroquiis were never sufficent to reopen it." 
A footnote in the back of the book stated:  "Since there is no recorded instance of an earthquake having occurred in the area, the story of the Tyadaghtons and their silver mine is probably apocryphal, yet the Iroquois evidently did have a good source of silver, which has never been located.  Dr. Lyman C. Draper, who investigated this just after the Civil War, kept notes that the mine was located "near Elmira, New York, on Pine Creek where it is joined by Elk Run"
 
I may have to spend some time out there with my metal detector!