g "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 o