The Story of Cooperstown | Page 6

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