The history of these rocks begins in the years immediately following the American Revolution. The painted rocks, located at the southern end of Seneca Lake on the eastern cliff face, depict an American Flag, Tee-pee, and several Iroquois. In the late 1700s when General John Sullivan was avenging the Wyoming and Cherry-Valley Massacres, he chased a group of renegade Iroquois, up from present day Athens, Pennsylvania, then known as Tioga Point, through the Seneca valley to a point somewhere along the cliffs. The Indians escaped down a narrow footpath to canoes that they had hidden earlier in the underbrush. They used these canoes to paddle across the lake to safety. The remains of the footpath are seen in that diagonal line across the flaking limestone above the paintings. Later the Iroquois returned and painted the precipice in commemoration of their escape. The paintings found along the bottom of the cliff are the originals while the American Flag and the Tee-pee were added in 1929 during the Sullivan Sesquicentennial.