According to William Stuart, "The history of Kanestio Castle constitutes the genesis of Steuben County". It is the first place in what became Steuben County to be mentioned in writing. Just what the word "castle" means is not clear, and precisely where it was is not known either. There is no mention of any castle in the European sense of a large stone building. It may mean nothing more than that it was a permanent, as opposed to transitory, settlement. The earliest description, from a French colonial historian of about 1690, is that Kanestio consisted of "'several score of houses built of timber, each having four stone chimneys, adjoining a natural meadow of several hundred arpents.' Kanestio Castle!". Another modern writer reports the same information as "a luxurious castle of logs, long by wide", now with four fireplaces. The stone chimneys are unquestionably a European artifact. The same French historian, describing an expedition south from what is today Kingston, Ontario, says that Kanestio was a community of European outlaws: "“A more worthless lot of renegades and villains, who had no hope of heaven or fear of hell, we never saw.” They were from diverse backgrounds, and speaking different languages ("polyglot").