The Pioneers | Page 3

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Prepared by Gary Rezny, [email protected]

THE PIONEERS
Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna
A Descriptive Tale
By J. FENIMORE COOPER

INTRODUCTION

As this work professes, in its title-page, to be a descriptive tale, they
who will take the trouble to read it may be glad to know how much of
its contents is literal fact, and how much is intended to represent a
general picture. The author is very sensible that, had he confined
himself to the latter, always the most effective, as it is the most
valuable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have
made a far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and
perhaps he may add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth,
there was a constant temptation to delineate that which he had known,
rather than that which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to
truth, an indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the
charm of fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by
the latter had better be done by delineations of principles, and of
characters in their classes, than by a too fastidious attention to
originals.

New York having but one county of Otsego, and the Susquehanna but
one proper source, there can be no mistake as to the site of the tale. The
history of this district of country, so far as it is connected with civilized
men, is soon told.
Otsego, in common with most of the interior of the province of New
York, was included in the county of Albany previously to the war of
the separation. It then became, in a subsequent division of territory, a
part of Montgomery; and finally, having obtained a sufficient
population of its own, it was set apart as a county by itself shortly after
the peace of 1783. It lies among those low spurs of the Alleghanies
which cover the midland counties of New York, and it is a little east of
a meridional line drawn through the centre of the State. As the waters
of New York flow either southerly into the Atlantic or northerly into
Ontario and its outlet, Otsego Lake, being the source of the
Susquehanna, is of necessity among its highest lands. The face of the
country, the climate as it was found by the whites, and the manners of
the settlers, are described with a minuteness for which the author has no
other apology than the force of his own recollections.
Otsego is said to be a word compounded of Ot, a place of meeting, and
Sego, or Sago, the ordinary term of salutation used by the Indians of
this region. There is a tradition which says that the neighboring tribes
were accustomed to meet on the banks of