During the Colonial period, the valleys of the Chemung River tributaries were the domain of the Senecas, a unit of the Iroquois Confederacy called a door of the Six Nations through which communications passed with the west and the south. The Border Wars brought white settlers into this region, and during the American Revolution visitors found on this site an oak post that was square to a height of 4 feet and then octagonal to the top, painted red and decorated with 28 black figures without heads and 30 black figures with heads on. Numerous allusions regarded the painted post as a memorial to a fallen chieftain, a marker for assemblies, and a war post around which dances were held, and the original post gave this place a name that endured. By 1808 the first post had disintegrated, and in 1824 Capt. Samuel Erwin commissioned John Wygant to fashion a symbol for the site, a sheet-iron Indian tribesman in headdress, jacket, and leggings that swung on a pole near the place where the first post stood for half a century. In 1880 a second sheet-iron Indian was erected at the southeast corner of Water and Hamilton Streets, a life-size chief in a red jacket and buckskin trousers with a bow and tomahawk, attached to the top of a tapered octagonal post 18 feet high and painted red; this served as a landmark for 4 decades before a later memorial replaced it after W. War 1. In the summer of 1893 a subscription was circulated to build a stone monument surmounted by the metal replica of an Indian chief, dedicated June 21, 1894, to perpetuate the name of Painted Post, preserve its traditions, and honor the memory of its early settlers. After a violent wind on Nov. 20, 1948, toppled the chief from its pedestal and shattered the figure, citizens of the Village of Painted Post and Town of Erwin approved its replacement at an Apr. 7, 1949 town meeting, and a new memorial modeled by Norman B. Phelps was erected in 1950 by popular subscription to commemorate the founding of Painted Post and preserve for posterity the traditions of its heritage.