The Story of Cooperstown | Page 3

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