The Story of Cooperstown | Page 4

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.
[Illustration: COUNCIL ROCK]
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