The Story of Cooperstown | Page 8

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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Poe. Works, "William W. Lord," Vol. vii, p. 217
(Amontillado Ed). Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his Poets of America,
p. 41, 123, champions