Table of Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

		PAGE
Cooperstown, from the northwest	Joseph B. Slote	Frontispiece
The Cooper Grounds	Arthur J. Telfer	2
Council Rock	Arthur J. Telfer	8
The Otsego Iroquois Pipe		13
At Mill Island	Charles Frederick Zabriskie	21
Joseph Brant, from the Romney portrait		52
Site of Clinton's Dam	A. J. Telfer	71
Otsego Lake, from Cooperstown	A. J. Telfer	78
The Oldest House	Charles A. Schneider	86
William Cooper, from the Stuart portrait		91
Averell Cottage	C. A. Schneider	104
The Worthington Homestead	Forrest D. Coleman	110
Christ Church	A. J. Telfer	127
The House at Lakelands, as originally built		131
Mrs. Wilson		133
Lakelands	C. A. Schneider	137
Pomeroy Place	J. Patzig	141
Ambrose L. Jordan		151
Jordan's Home, and his Law Office	C. A. Schneider	156
The Home of Robert Campbell	J. B. Slote	158
Father Nash		171
Leatherstocking Monument	A. J. Telfer	185
Natty Bumppo's Cave	C. A. Schneider	188
Riverbrink	C. A. Schneider	193
Edgewater	A. J. Telfer	212
Residence of W. H. Averell and Judge Prentiss	C. A. Schneider	221
Woodside Hall	Forrest D. Coleman	226
The Gate-Tower at Woodside	Walter C. Stokes	228
Swanswick	A. J. Telfer	230
Shadow Brook	James W. Tucker	233
Hyde Hall	A. J. Telfer	238
Hyde Clarke, from the Emmet portrait		243
A Wedding Day at Hyde	A. J. Telfer	246
Base Ball on Native Soil	A. J. Telfer	249
The Original House at Apple Hill (now Fernleigh)		256
Fenimore	A. J. Telfer	259
Otsego Hall, from an old drawing		260
James Fenimore Cooper		263
The Chalet	A. J. Telfer	265
The Novelist's Library, a drawing by G. Pomeroy Keese		267
A Page of Cooper's Manuscript		269
The Home of Nancy Williams	C. A. Schneider	271
Three-Mile Point	A. J. Telfer	282
The Call for the Indignation Meeting		284
The Cooper Screens in Christ Church	F. D. Coleman	293
At Fenimore Cooper's Grave	Alice Choate	297
Samuel Nelson, LL.D.		300
The Home of Justice Nelson	C. A. Schneider	314
Nelson Avenue	A. J. Telfer	320
Christ Churchyard, from the Rectory	Alice Choate	327
The Cooper Plot, in Christ Churchyard	A. J. Telfer	334
A Funeral in Christ Churchyard	J. B. Slote	337
Main Street, Looking West from Fair Street, 1861		347
Fernleigh	A. J. Telfer	357
Kingfisher Tower	M. Antoinette Abrams	359
The Lake, From the O-te-sa-ga	J. B. Slote	365
Fishermen's Shanties on the Frozen Lake	A. J. Telfer	374
Hop-Picking	Elizabeth Hudson	378
Map of Otsego Lake	Henry L. Eckerson	381
The Susquehanna, near its Source	A. J. Telfer	383
Leatherstocking Falls	A. J. Telfer	387
Five-Mile Point	A. J. Telfer	388
Mohican Canyon	M. Antoinette Abrams	389
Gravelly Point	A. J. Telfer	391
Bishop Potter	A. F. Bradley	395
The Rectory	C. A. Schneider	396
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of New York	A. J. Telfer	405
Byberry Cottage	C. A. Schneider	407
The Clark Estate Office	A. J. Telfer	409
The Lyric at Cooper's Grave	J. B. Slote	420
Cooperstown, from Mount Vision	A. J. Telfer	430
Map of Cooperstown	H. L. Eckerson	432

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The Story of Cooperstown

CHAPTER I

THE INDIANS

The main street of Cooperstown traverses the village in a direction generally east and west. While the street and its shops are far superior to those of most small towns, the business centre, from which the visitor gains his first impression, gives no hint of the quaint and rustic beauty that makes Cooperstown one of the most charming villages in America.

Following the main street toward the east, one reaches the original part of the settlement, and the prospect is more gratefully reminiscent of an old-time village. In summer the gateway of the Cooper Grounds opens a pleasing vista of shaded greensward, while the cross street which runs down to the lake at this point attracts the eye to a half-concealed view of the Glimmerglass, with the Sleeping Lion in the distance at the north.

The historical associations of the village, from the earliest times, are centered in the Cooper Grounds. Within this space, when the first white man came, were found apple trees, in full bearing, which Indians had planted, showing an occupation by red men in the late Iroquois period. On these grounds the first white settler, Col. George Croghan, built in 1769 his hut of logs. During the Revolutionary War it was upon this spot that Clinton's troops were encamped for five weeks before their spectacular descent of the Susquehanna River. On this site William Cooper, the founder of the village, built his first residence, and afterward erected Otsego Hall, which later became the home of his son, James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist.

Beyond the Cooper Grounds, on the main street, the buildings seen on either hand belong to the earlier period of village history, except the Village Club and Library, which gracefully conforms to the older style. After passing the next cross-street, the main thoroughfare leads across the Susquehanna River, and, beyond the bridge, becomes identified with the old road to Cherry Valley. Keeping on up the incline, one finds Mount Vision rising before him, and begins to gain fascinating glimpses into the grounds of Woodside Hall, whose white pillars gleam amid the pines above the Egyptian gate-tower, and whose windows, commanding the whole length of the main street westward, reflect the fire of every sunset.

Just before reaching Woodside, one observes a road which makes off from the highway at the right, and runs south. Opening from this road to Fernleigh-Over, and quite close to the corner, is a small iron gate that creaks between two posts of stone. The gate opens upon a path which leads, a few paces westward, to a large, terraced mound, well sodded, and topped by two maple trees.

Sunk into the face of this mound is a slab of granite which bears this inscription:

These lines offer a fitting introduction to the story of Cooperstown. There is enough of truth and poetry in them to touch the heart of the most indifferent passer-by. No sense of pride stirs the soul of any white man as he reads this pathetic memorial of an exiled race and its vanished empire. From this region and from many another hill and valley the Indians were driven by their white conquerors, banished from one reservation to another, compelled to exchange a vast empire of the forest for the blanket and tin cup of Uncle Sam's patronage.

The mound in Fernleigh-Over is probably an Indian burial site of some antiquity. In 1874, when the place was being graded, a number of Indian skeletons were uncovered in various parts of the grounds. The owner of the property, Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, caused all the bones to be collected and buried at the foot of the mound. Some years afterward she marked the mound with the granite slab and its inscribed epitaph.

The lines were composed by the Rev. William Wilberforce Lord, D.D., a former rector of Christ Church, in this village, once hailed by Wordsworth as the coming poet of America. He had written some noble verse, but wilted beneath the scathing criticism of Edgar Allan Poe,[1] and after becoming a clergyman published little poetry. This epitaph alone, however, fully justifies Dr. Lord's earlier ambition, for no poet of his time could have included more of beauty and truth and pathos within the compass of so brief an inscription.

In a comment upon the placing of this tablet, Mrs. Clark afterward wrote: "The position of the stone is misleading, and gives one an idea that the mound contains the bones—whereas they are buried at the foot of the mound. I have sometimes wondered if this rather curiously shaped mound, with the two maple trees thereon, might not contain undisturbed skeletons; and I feel sure that throughout this strip of land, which the grading only superficially disturbed, there are many bones of the Iroquois, for in 1900, when we cut down some trees, a skull was found in the fork of a root."

Mrs. Clark's record shows that the mound existed prior to 1874, and since this particular corner of ground was unoccupied before that date except, for a period, by the barns and stables of Lakelands across the way, it is reasonable to suppose that the mound was made by the Indians. While the mounds of New York State cannot be compared in size and extent with those of the West, writers on Indian antiquities, from Schoolcraft[2] onward, have identified as the work of red men many such formations within the Empire State. The mounds were commonly used by the Indians as places of burial, and sometimes as sites for houses, or as fortifications.[3] The mound in Fernleigh-Over may be reasonably regarded as a monument erected by the Indians to the memory of their dead.

Two Indian skeletons were found in Fernleigh grounds in 1910, when a tennis court was being made, and the skeletons of Indians have been unearthed in some other parts of the village. A concealed sentry keeps vigil not far away from Fernleigh. The garden at the northwest corner of River and Church streets, nearly opposite to Fernleigh, has had for many years, on the River Street side, a retaining wall. When Fenimore Cooper owned the property this wall was his despair. For at a point above Greencrest, the wall, which then consisted of dry field stone, could never be kept plumb, but obstinately bulged toward the east; and as often as it was rebuilt, just so often it tottered to ruin. There was a tradition that this singular freak was caused by the spirit of an Indian chief whose grave lay in the garden, and whose resentment toward the village improvements of a paleface civilization found vigorous expression in kicking down the wall. It was at last decided to replace the retaining wall with one of heavier proportions and more solid masonry. On tearing down the wall the tradition of former years was recalled, for there sat the grim skeleton of an Indian, fully armed for war! The new wall included him as before, but to this day there is a point in the wall where stone and mortar cannot long contain the Indian spirit's wrath. This Indian sentinel was first discovered by William Cooper when River Street was graded, and four generations of tradition in the Cooper family testified to his tutelary character.

The banks of the Susquehanna, near the village, and the shores of Otsego Lake, have yielded a plentiful harvest of Indian relics in arrow-heads and spearpoints, with an occasional bannerstone, pipe, or bit of pottery. Often as the region has been traversed in search of relics, there seems always to be something left for the careful gleaner; and the experienced eye, within a short walk along riverbank or lakeshore, is certain to light upon some memento of the vanished Indian, while every fresh turning of the soil reveals some record of savage life.

Morgan describes an Indian trail as being from twelve to eighteen inches wide, and, where the soil was soft, often worn to a depth of twelve inches. Deeply as these trails were grooved in the earth by centuries of use, it is to be doubted if many traces of them now remain, although over the summit of Hannah's Hill, sheltered by thick pine woods, just west of the village, there runs toward the lake a trail, which, though long disused, is clearly marked, and is believed to have been worn by the feet of Indians. It is indeed possible that this is a remaining segment of the great trail from the north, which, as Morgan's map[4] shows, here touched Otsego Lake, and bent toward the southwest. For, in 1911, a likely trace of it was found by Frank M. Turnbull while clearing the woods on the McNamee property west of the village. In line with the trail on Hannah's Hill, and southwest of it, were two huge hemlocks that bore upon their trunks the old wounds of blazes made as if by the axes of Indians. The blazes were vertical, deeply indented, and the thick bark had grown outward and around them, forming in each a pocket into which a man might sink his elbow and forearm. These patriarchal trees of the forest were about four feet in diameter at the base, and on being felled showed, by count of the rings, an age of nearly three hundred years.

When Fenimore Cooper, in The Deerslayer, describes Council Rock as a favorite meeting place of the Indians, where the tribes resorted "to make their treaties and bury their hatchets," he claims a picturesque bit of stage setting for his drama, but also records an early tradition. This rock, sometimes called Otsego Rock, standing forth from the water where the Susquehanna emerges from the lake, had been a favorite landmark for the rendezvous of Indians. As one views it now, from the foot of River Street, it lifts its rounded top not quite so high above the water as when Cooper described it in 1841. The damming of the Susquehanna to furnish power for the village water supply has raised the whole level of Otsego Lake, and gives an artificial fullness to the first reaches of the long river.

Whether Cooperstown stands upon the site of an old Indian village is a debated question. Richard Smith's journal describes his visit at the foot of Otsego Lake in 1769, before the time of any considerable settlement by white men, and makes no mention of any Indian residents of the place. He saw many Indians here, but gives the impression that they were come from a distance to visit the Indian Agent whose headquarters lay at the foot of Otsego Lake. On the other hand, a stray hint comes from the papers of William Cooper, among which is a memorandum including various notes relating to population and other statistics, jotted down apparently in preparation for a speech or article on early conditions here, and containing the item, "Old Indian Village." A more significant record appears in the Chronicles of Cooperstown, published in 1838, in which Fenimore Cooper asserts that "arrow-heads, stone hatchets, and other memorials of Indian usages, were found in great abundance by the first settlers, in the vicinity of the village." In The Pioneers, his description of Cooperstown includes, in a location to be identified with the present Cooper Grounds, fruit trees which he says "had been left by the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination of age," when the first settlers came.

The fruit trees would indicate permanent though late occupation of this site by Indians; "stone hatchets in great abundance" would suggest that a prehistoric village was here. But it is difficult to understand how so little trace should now remain of the one-time "great abundance" of hatchets. Such is not the case at any other permanent prehistoric site in the general region, where pestles and hatchets continue to be found even in streets, as well as in yards, and well-tilled gardens.

Every few years the inhabitants of ancient villages in the east were wont, for various reasons, to build new cabins on new ground, though not far removed from the old. Not all the sites of ancient Otesaga, if ancient Otesaga existed, can have been covered by Cooperstown. Some fields should still produce something out of "an abundance" of village debris. Yet only one hatchet has come, in many years, from all the foot of the lake.[5] Many points, spear and arrow, have been found on all shores of Otsego; for beyond doubt the lake, from very early time, was a resort for aboriginal hunters and fishermen. But points indicate only camp sites.

On the whole, by reason of the notable absence at this time of stone relics indicating permanent residence, it seems possible that the statement concerning their original abundance was exaggerated, and there is no good reason for supposing, on the strength of this statement alone, that there was a prehistoric village on the site of Cooperstown. Perhaps in early times, during the contests with Southern Indians, the place lay too much in the way of war parties. But the apple trees, concerning which there is no doubt, would indicate rather conclusively an occupation by Indians within the historic period, which, as in the case of many another of the later villages, might have left small trace.[6]

In 1895 two young men of Cooperstown who afterward adopted callings in other fields of science, Benjamin White, Ph.D., and Dr. James Ferguson, conducted amateur archeological expeditions which resulted in the discovery of a regular camp site formerly used by the Indians. This lies within the present village of Cooperstown, on a level stretch along the west bank of the Susquehanna, in what used to be called the Hinman lot, but now belongs to Fernleigh, a few rods south of Fernleigh House. It includes an even floor of low land not far above the level of the river, containing a spring on its margin, and forming a plot perhaps two hundred yards in length and half as much in breadth. The ground begins thence to rise rather steeply toward the north and west, sheltering from wind and storm the glen below, while affording points of observation, looking up and down the stream.

The young explorers went carefully over the surface of this ground, digging to a considerable depth in some parts, and using an ash-sifter for a thorough examination of the debris. "We found spearheads, game and war points in large numbers," says Dr. White, "as well as drills, punches or awls, scrapers, knives, hammer-stones, and sinkers. Deer horn, bones, and thick strata of ashes were found, the latter in one place only. Whether or no this was the site of an Indian village, I cannot say. Altogether it must have yielded six or eight hundred implements of various sorts. Fernleigh-Over, Riverbrink, and Lakelands yielded arrow-heads and sinkers, but no other implements. The present site of the Country Club was a profitable field for arrow-heads."

Dr. Ferguson, referring to the same spot, writes, "I have long had an idea that there had been a small Indian village located in what we knew as Hinman's lot. After the land was ploughed we found many arrow-heads, awls of bone and flint, and fragments of pottery. There were several areas where fires had been located, the soil being well baked, with mingled charcoal and burned bones. There were also about the fire sites fragments of deer horn, bears' teeth, and much broken pottery. Spear heads were rather few, sinkers and hammer-stones more numerous. I never found any perfect axes, but did find fragments."

The great number of imperfect arrow-heads and flint chips found here, as well as on the flat northeast of Iroquois Farm house, and on the low land between the O-te-sa-ga and the Country Club house, shows the frequent occupation of these places as Indian camps.

In 1916 David R. Dorn conducted a more intensive examination of the plot explored by Dr. White and Dr. Ferguson. His investigation revealed a site that showed two distinct layers of Indian relics, the lower and more ancient being of Algonquin type, while the signs of later occupancy were Iroquois. At about eighteen inches beneath the surface was found the complete skeleton of an Iroquois Indian. With the skeleton was unearthed a pipe, of Iroquois manufacture, which Arthur C. Parker, the State archeologist, declared to be one of the most perfect specimens known.

Taking all the evidence together, it may be asserted that the present site of Cooperstown was from ancient times the resort of Indian hunters and fishermen, and at a later period, more than a generation before its settlement by white men, as indicated by the size of the apple trees which they found, included a settled Indian village.

On Morgan's map of Iroquois territory as it existed in 1720, he shows a village at the foot of Otsego Lake to which he gives the Indian name Ote-sa-ga.[7] Our present form, Otsego, is a variant of the same original. Morgan wrote the word in three syllables, adding the letter "e" after the "t" merely to make sure that the "o" should be pronounced long. It seems certain that Morgan never pronounced the word as "O-te-sa-ga." This form of the name, however, when the third syllable carries the accent and a broad "a," is defensible on the ground of its majestic euphony, for it should be permitted to take some liberties with a name that has been spelled by high authorities in a dozen different ways.

The explanation of Otsego, or Otesaga, as signifying "a place of meeting" has been generally abandoned by scholars, in spite of the vogue which Fenimore Cooper gave it along with the interpretation of Susquehanna as meaning "crooked river." But as to the latter the doctors disagree, some claiming that Susquehanna, which is not an Iroquois but an Algonquin word, means "muddy stream"; others, following Dr. Beauchamp, that it is a corruption of a word meaning "river with long reaches." It must be confessed that Cooper credited the Indian words with intelligible and appropriate meanings, so that, in the absence of agreement among the specialists, the interpretations which he made popular will continue to satisfy the ordinary thirst for this sort of knowledge.

Assuming the existence of an Indian village on the present site of Cooperstown, before the coming of the white man, the question of the probable character of its inhabitants opens another field of study. Most of the relics found in this region belong to the Algonquin type. On the other hand Otsego is an Iroquois word, and it seems to be generally agreed that the Otsego region was included, in the historic period, in the possessions of the Iroquois, as the league of the Five Nations was called by the French. The league included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; and took in also, in the eighteenth century, as the sixth nation, the Tuscaroras.[8] While the village at the foot of the lake would properly be called Mohawk, owing obedience to the council of the original Mohawk towns, it might well have been composed largely of Indians from other tribes. Fragments of shattered tribes found refuge with the Iroquois in the latter days. Some were adopted; some stayed on sufferance. The Minsis, a branch of the Delawares, as well as the Delawares proper, were allowed to occupy the southern part of the Iroquois territory. It will be recalled, in this connection, that Cooper's favorite Indian heroes, Chingachgook and Uncas, are of Delaware stock.

It is quite possible that, near the beginning of the eighteenth century—basing the date, among other things, on the appearance of the apple trees when the first white man came—there was a cosmopolitan Indian community at the foot of Otsego Lake. Besides Mohawks, there would have been included Oneidas, their nearest neighbors on the west; and probably Delawares, or Mohicans. There might have been also some one-time prisoners, adopted by the Iroquois, but belonging originally to distant nations.[9]

All writers on the history of the Eastern Indians agree in assigning the highest place to the Iroquois. Parkman asserts that they afford perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from the primitive condition of the hunter. Morgan declares that in the width of their sway they had reared the most powerful empire that ever existed in America north of the Aztec monarchy. The home country of the Iroquois included nearly the whole of the present State of New York, but at the era of their highest military supremacy, about 1660, they made their influence felt from New England to the Mississippi, and from the St. Lawrence to the Tennessee. Within this league, the tribal territory of the Mohawks extended to the Hudson River and Lake Champlain on the east, northward to the St. Lawrence, and westward to a boundary not easily determined, but which included Otsego Lake. In the great league of the Iroquois the name of the Mohawk nation always stood first, and of all the Iroquois nations they were the most renowned in war. Joseph Brant, whom John Fiske calls the most remarkable Indian known to history, was a Mohawk chief.

Although the field of Iroquois influence was so wide, and their military fame so great, it is a mistake to imagine that the forests of their time were thickly peopled with red men, or that they were perpetually at war. The entire population of the Iroquois throughout what is now the State of New York probably never numbered more than 20,000 souls. Of these the whole Mohawk nation counted only about 3,000, grouped in small villages over their wide territory.[10] The avowed object of the Iroquois confederacy was peace. By means of a great political fraternity the purpose was to break up the spirit of perpetual warfare which had wasted the Indian race from age to age.[11] To a considerable degree this purpose was realized. After the power of the Iroquois had become consolidated, their villages were no longer stockaded, such defences having ceased to be necessary.

Otsego has witnessed other aspects of Indian life than those of war and the chase. The Iroquois were agriculturists, and they, or rather their women, cultivated not only fruit trees, but corn, melons, squash, pumpkins, beans, and tobacco.[12] They had other human interests also, not unlike our own. As the young people grew up amid sylvan charms that are wont to stir romantic feelings in the heart of youth to-day, one is tempted to imagine the trysts in the wood, the flirtations, the courtships, among Indian braves and dusky maidens, that touched life with tender sentiment in the days of the red man's glory. During many summers before the white man came the breath of nature sighing through the pines of Otsego, the winding river murmuring lovelorn secrets to the flowers that nodded on its margin, the moon rising over Mount Vision and shedding its splendor upon the lake, were subtle influences in secret meetings between men and maidens, in whispered vows beneath the trees, in courtships on the border of the Glimmerglass, in lovemaking along the shores of the Susquehanna.

The greater part of the Iroquois were allies of the British in the Revolutionary War, although some Mohawks remained neutral, and most of the Oneidas and Tuscaroras became engaged on the side of the Americans. It is not strange that, in a war whose causes they could not understand, the Iroquois should have been loyal to the King of England, with whom their alliances had been made for nearly two centuries. The Indians had nothing to gain in this war, and everything to lose. They lost everything, and after the war were thrown upon the mercies of the victorious Americans. The Iroquois confederacy came to an end, and few of the Mohawks ever returned to the scene of their council fires, or to the graves of their ancestors.[13]

Many friendly relationships were established between the white men and the Indians, both before and after the Revolutionary War. In 1764 there was a missionary school of Mohawk Indian boys at the foot of Otsego Lake under the instruction of a young Mohawk named Moses, who had been educated at a missionary institution for Indians at Lebanon. A report of one of the missionaries, the Rev. J. C. Smith, written at this time, gives a glimpse of the Indians as they came under civilizing influence on the very spot where Cooperstown was afterward to flourish:

"I am every day diverted and pleased with a view of Moses and his school, as I can sit in my study and see him and all his scholars at any time, the schoolhouse being nothing but an open barrack. And I am much pleased to see eight or ten and sometimes more scholars sitting under their bark table, some reading, some writing and others studying, and all engaged to appearances with as much seriousness and attention as you will see in almost any worshipping assembly and Moses at the head of them with the gravity of fifty or three score."[14]

Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of the novelist, says that for some years after the village was commenced, Mill Island was a favorite resort of the Indians, who came frequently in parties to the new settlement, remaining here for months together. Mill Island lies in the Susquehanna a short distance below Fernleigh, near the dam, where the river reaches out two arms to enclose it, and with so little effort that it is difficult to distinguish the island from the mainland. In the early days of the village the island was covered with woods, and the Indians chose it for their camp, in preference to other situations. Miss Cooper thinks it may have been a place of resort to their fishing and hunting parties when the country was a wilderness. In Rural Hours, writing in 1851, she gives a curious description of a visit made at Otsego Hall by some Indians who had encamped at Mill Island. There were three of them,—a father, son, and grandson,—who made their appearance, claiming a hereditary acquaintance with the master of the house, Fenimore Cooper.

"The leader and patriarch of the party," says Miss Cooper, "was a Methodist minister—the Rev. Mr. Kunkerpott. He was notwithstanding a full-blooded Indian, with the regular copper-colored complexion, and high cheek bones; the outline of his face was decidedly Roman, and his long, gray hair had a wave which is rare among his people; his mouth, where the savage expression is usually most strongly marked, was small, with a kindly expression about it. Altogether he was a strange mixture of the Methodist preacher and the Indian patriarch. His son was much more savage than himself in appearance—a silent, cold-looking man; and the grandson, a boy of ten or twelve, was one of the most uncouth, impish-looking creatures we ever beheld. He wore a long-tailed coat twice too large for him, with boots of the same size. The child's face was very wild, and he was bareheaded, with an unusual quantity of long, black hair streaming about his head and shoulders. While the grandfather was conversing about old times, the boy diverted himself by twirling around on one leg, a feat which would have seemed almost impossible, booted as he was, but which he nevertheless accomplished with remarkable dexterity, spinning round and round, his arms extended, his large black eyes staring stupidly before him, his mouth open, and his long hair flying in every direction, as wild a looking creature as one could wish to see."

After the period of which Miss Cooper writes, Indians were even more rarely seen in Cooperstown, and their visits soon ceased altogether. It is a far cry from the Chingachgook and Uncas whom Fenimore Cooper imagined to the Rev. Mr. Kunkerpott and other Indians whom his daughter saw and described. So much so that Cooper has been accused of creating, in his novels, a sort of Indians which never existed either here or elsewhere. There is no doubt, however, that he studied carefully such Indians as were in his day to be found, and had some basis of fact for the qualities which he imparted to the Indians of his imagination. Miss Cooper says that her father followed Indian delegations from town to town, observing them carefully, conversing with them freely, and was impressed "with the vein of poetry and of laconic eloquence marking their brief speeches."

Brander Matthews says that if there is any lack of faithfulness in Cooper's presentation of the Indian character, it is due to the fact that he was a romancer, and therefore an optimist, bent on making the best of things. He told the truth as he saw it, and nothing but the truth; but he did not tell the whole truth. Here Cooper was akin to Scott, who chose to dwell only on the bright side of chivalry, and to picture the merry England of Richard Lionheart as a pleasanter period to live in than it could have been in reality. Cooper's red men are probably closer to the actual facts than Scott's black knights and white ladies.[15]

Cooper himself comes to the defense of his Indians in the preface of the Leather-Stocking Tales. "It is the privilege of all writers of fiction," he declares, "more particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the beau-ideal of their characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to be represented only in the squalid misery or in the degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer."

Our early history has been less sympathetic toward the Indian. The story of the massacre which occurred at Cherry Valley, not many miles from Cooperstown, in 1778, although the Tories who took part in it were quite as savage as their Indian allies, has made memorable the darker side of Indian character. But although many innocent victims were exacted by his revenge both here and elsewhere, it was not without cause that the Indian resorted to bloody measures against the whites. Americans of to-day can well afford a generous appreciation of the once powerful race who were their predecessors in sovereignty on this continent. The league of the Iroquois is no more, but in the Empire State of the American Republic the scene of their ancient Indian empire remains. It is left for the white man to commemorate the Indian who made no effort to perpetuate memorials of himself, erected no boastful monuments, and carved no inscriptions to record his many conquests. Having gained great wealth by developing the resources of a land which the Indians used only as hunting grounds, the white man may none the less appreciate the lofty qualities of a race of men who, just because they felt no lust of riches, never emerged from the hunter state, but found the joy of life amid primeval forests.

The League of the Iroquois has had a strange history, which is part of the history of America—a history which left no record, except by chance, of a government that had no archives, an empire that had no throne, a language that had no books, a citizenship without a city, a religion that had no temple except that which the Great Spirit created in the beginning.

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CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MEN

Within six years after Hendrik Hudson sailed up the river which bears his name, and some five years before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, the first white men looked upon Otsego Lake, and saw the wooded shore upon which Cooperstown now stands. It was in 1614, or in the year following, that two Dutchmen set out from Fort Orange (Albany) to explore the fur country, and crossing from the Mohawk to Otsego Lake, proceeded down the Susquehanna.[16] From this time, first under the Dutch, then under English rule, traders came frequently to the foot of Otsego Lake. Soon after the traders, Christian missionaries ventured into the wilderness, ministering at first chiefly to the Indians. Later came the first settlers.

That the influence of traders was not always helpful to Christian missionaries is illustrated by an incident in the missionary journey of the Rev. Gideon Hawley, a Presbyterian divine, who, with some zealous companions, came from New England to preach to the Indians of the Susquehanna in 1753. They reached the river at a point where was a small Indian settlement near the present village of Colliers, seventeen miles below Cooperstown. Here they were joined by a trader named George Winedecker, who had come down from Otsego Lake with a boat-load of goods, including rum, to supply the Indian villages down the river. During the night the red men, full of Winedecker's rum, became embroiled in a murderous orgy. The missionaries were awakened by the howling of the Indians over their dead, and in the morning saw Indian women skulking in the bushes, hiding guns and hatchets, for fear of the intoxicated Indians who were drinking deeper. "Here, in one party, were missionaries with the Bible and a trader with the rum—the two gifts of the white man to the Indian."[17]

Susquehanna lands were first conveyed to white men by the Indians in 1684 as a part of a treaty of alliance with the English, although the Indians retained the right to live and hunt on the river. The granting of land titles by the Provincial government began not long afterward.[18] The first recorded patent on Otsego Lake was obtained in 1740 by John J. Petrie at the northern end. John Groesbeck, an officer of the court of chancery, acquired in 1741 a patent lying northeast of the lake, including what afterward became the Clarke property and the site of Hyde Hall. Nearly the whole east side of the lake, with the present Lakelands tract just east of the Susquehanna at its source, was covered by the patent which Godfrey Miller obtained in 1761, and upon which, according to the journal of Richard Smith, twelve persons were resident eight years later.[19]

Early in the eighteenth century it is probable that traders were from time to time resident at the foot of Otsego, but the first attempt toward a permanent settlement on the present site of Cooperstown was made by John Christopher Hartwick in 1761. In that year Hartwick obtained from the Provincial government a patent to the lands which, southwest of Cooperstown, still perpetuate his name, and began a settlement at the foot of Otsego Lake under the misapprehension that the site was included in his patent. It was not long before Hartwick discovered his error, and withdrew to the proper limits of his tract, but this attempt to found a village upon the spot which William Cooper afterward selected connects with the history of Cooperstown a unique character and memorable name.

Hartwick, who was born in Germany in 1714, came to America at about thirty years of age as a missionary preacher, and in his time was as famous for his eccentricities, as he afterward became for his pious benefactions. He held some settled charges, but, except for twelve years at Rhinebeck, he seems for the most part to have been a wandering preacher, and the records of his pastorates extend from Philadelphia to Boston, and from Virginia and Maryland to the distant coast of Maine.

If Hartwick would not be long tied down to a settled pastorate, he was even more fearful of matrimonial bondage, and shunned women as a plague. It was not an uncommon thing for him, if he saw that he was about to meet a woman in the road, to cross over, or even to leap a fence, in order to avoid her. On one occasion when he was disturbed in preaching by the presence of a dog, he exclaimed with much earnestness that dogs and children had better be kept at home, and it would not be much matter, he added, if the women were kept there too![20] Seeking shelter one night at a log hut not far from the present Hartwick village, he was cheerfully received by the occupants, a man and his wife, who gave up to their guest the one bed in the only bedroom, and stretched themselves for the night upon the floor before the kitchen fire. The night grew bitter cold, and the wife, awaking, bethought her of the guest, whether he might not be too lightly covered. She went silently to his room, and spread upon his bed a part of her simple wardrobe. Hartwick promptly arose, dressed himself, made his way out of the house to the stable, saddled his horse, and rode away in the darkness.

His contemporaries agree in representing Hartwick as slovenly in his habits, often preaching in his blanket coat, and not always with the cleanest linen; eccentric in his manners, curt, and at times irritable in his intercourse with others—an exceedingly undesirable addition to the social and domestic circle, so that his hosts were accustomed to tell him plainly, at the beginning of a visit, "You may stay here so many days, and then you must go."[21] In some quarters his visits were dreaded because of his excessively long prayers at family worship.[22]

One may dwell without malice upon the eccentricities of this singular man, for they are qualities that set him forth from his more staid contemporaries, without detracting from the virtues which gave permanence to his work. Hartwick was a lover of God and men. Although rough and unpolished, he was a man of learning, being well versed in theology, and as familiar with the Latin language as with his own.

The great purpose of Hartwick's career was the founding of a community for the promotion of religion and education, the building in the wilderness of a Christian city whose halls of learning should influence the coming ages. The roving life that brought Hartwick into contact with the Indians awakened his desire to Christianize and educate them, and the influence which he gained among them opened the way, through the acquirement of land, for the carrying out of his favorite project. The patent that he obtained from the Provincial government in 1761 covered a tract of land, substantially the present town of Hartwick, which he had purchased from the Indians for one hundred pounds in 1754. In settling the land Hartwick required each tenant to agree to a condition in the lease by which the tenant became Hartwick's parishioner, and acknowledged the authority of Hartwick, or his substitute, as "pastor, teacher, and spiritual counsellor." Owing to his desultory business methods and the weight of advancing years, Hartwick after a time found himself unequal to the management of this estate, and in 1791 William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, became his agent, with authority to dispose of the property to tenants. By this arrangement Hartwick was cut off from his original design of being the spiritual director of his tenants, and came to the end of his life without building the city of which he dreamed.

Hartwick's last will and testament, however, shows that he never abandoned his design, but determined that it should be carried out after his death. The will is one of the most curious documents ever penned, a mixture of autobiography, piety, and contempt of legal form. A lawyer to whom he submitted it pronounced it "legally defective in every page, and almost in every sentence." But Hartwick's only amendment of it was to add a perplexing codicil to seven other codicils which already had been appended.[23] The will provides for the laying out of a regular town, closely built, to be called the New Jerusalem, with buildings and hall for a seminary.

Hartwick died in 1796, in his eighty-third year. The task of administering the estate according to the will was found to be almost hopeless. The executors, aided by a special act of legislature, set about to carry out its evident spirit. Preliminary to the establishment of a seminary, the executors sent the Rev. John Frederick Ernst, a Lutheran minister, to Hartwick patent, to preach to the inhabitants, and to assist in the education of their youth. In connection with this work Mr. Ernst came to Cooperstown in 1799, held religious services in the old Academy, on the present site of the Universalist church, and had some youngsters of the village under his instruction. His descendants lived in Cooperstown for more than a century after him.

The main building of Hartwick Seminary was erected in 1812, at the present site, near the bank of the Susquehanna River, about five miles southward of Cooperstown, and some four miles eastward from Hartwick village. The school was opened in 1815, and received from the legislature a charter in 1816. It is the oldest theological school in the State of New York, and the oldest Lutheran theological seminary in America. In addition to being a theological school, Hartwick Seminary is now devoted to general education, and includes among its pupils not only boys, but, in spite of the prejudice of its founder, young women.

Among the original trustees named in the charter of Hartwick Seminary was the Rev. Daniel Nash, the first rector of Christ Church, Cooperstown. Judge Samuel Nelson, and Col. John H. Prentiss, of Cooperstown, were afterward trustees for many years, and in their time there was among the people of this village a lively interest in Hartwick Seminary, the literary exercises at the end of each scholastic year being largely attended by visitors from Cooperstown. It is significant of the close relation which formerly existed between the two villages that the street which runs westward from the Presbyterian church in Cooperstown, now called Elm Street, was at one time known to the inhabitants as "the Hartwick Road."

Local history has wronged[24] the memory of John Christopher Hartwick by the oft repeated statement that he committed suicide. It is true that a man named Christianus Hartwick took his own life in 1800, and that his grave lies in Hinman Hollow, only a few miles from Hartwick Seminary. But John Christopher Hartwick, after whom the town and seminary are named, died a natural death at Clermont, N. Y., four years before the suicide.