The Pioneers; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna Read online

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  THE PIONEERS

  Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna

  A Descriptive Tale

  By J. Fenimore Cooper

  INTRODUCTION

  As this work professes, in its title-page, to be a descriptive tale,they who will take the trouble to read it may be glad to know how muchof its contents is literal fact, and how much is intended to representa general picture. The author is very sensible that, had he confinedhimself to the latter, always the most effective, as it is the mostvaluable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have madea far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and perhaps hemay add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth, there wasa constant temptation to delineate that which he had known, rather thanthat which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to truth, anindispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm offiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind bythe latter had better be done by delineations of principles, and ofcharacters in their classes, than by a too fastidious attention tooriginals.

  New York having but one county of Otsego, and the Susquehanna but oneproper source, there can be no mistake as to the site of the tale. Thehistory of this district of country, so far as it is connected withcivilized men, is soon told.

  Otsego, in common with most of the interior of the province of NewYork, was included in the county of Albany previously to the war of theseparation. It then became, in a subsequent division of territory, apart of Montgomery; and finally, having obtained a sufficient populationof its own, it was set apart as a county by itself shortly after thepeace of 1783. It lies among those low spurs of the Alleghanies whichcover the midland counties of New York, and it is a little east of ameridional line drawn through the centre of the State. As the watersof New York flow either southerly into the Atlantic or northerlyinto Ontario and its outlet, Otsego Lake, being the source of theSusquehanna, is of necessity among its highest lands. The face of thecountry, the climate as it was found by the whites, and the manners ofthe settlers, are described with a minuteness for which the author hasno other apology than the force of his own recollections.

  Otsego is said to be a word compounded of Ot, a place of meeting, andSego, or Sago, the ordinary term of salutation used by the Indians ofthis region. There is a tradition which says that the neighboring tribeswere accustomed to meet on the banks of the lake to make their treaties,and otherwise to strengthen their alliances, and which refers the nameto this practice. As the Indian agent of New York had a log dwelling atthe foot of the lake, however, it is not impossible that the appellationgrew out of the meetings that were held at his council fires; the wardrove off the agent, in common with the other officers of the crown;and his rude dwelling was soon abandoned. The author remembers it, a fewyears later, reduced to the humble office of a smoke-house.

  In 1779 an expedition was sent against the hostile Indians, who dweltabout a hundred miles west of Otsego, on the banks of the Cayuga. Thewhole country was then a wilderness, and it was necessary to transportthe bag gage of the troops by means of the rivers--a devious butpracticable route. One brigade ascended the Mohawk until it reached thepoint nearest to the sources of the Susquehanna, whence it cut a lanethrough the forest to the head of the Otsego. The boats and baggagewere carried over this "portage," and the troops proceeded to theother extremity of the lake, where they disembarked and encamped. TheSusquehanna, a narrow though rapid stream at its source, was much filledwith "flood wood," or fallen trees; and the troops adopted a novelexpedient to facilitate their passage. The Otsego is about nine milesin length, varying in breadth from half a mile to a mile and a half. Thewater is of great depth, limpid, and supplied from a thousand springs.At its foot the banks are rather less than thirty feet high theremainder of its margin being in mountains, intervals, and points. Theoutlet, or the Susquehanna, flows through a gorge in the low banks justmentioned, which may have a width of two hundred feet. This gorgewas dammed and the waters of the lake collected: the Susquehanna wasconverted into a rill.

  When all was ready the troops embarked, the damn was knocked away, theOtsego poured out its torrent, and the boats went merrily down with thecurrent.

  General James Clinton, the brother of George Clinton, then governor ofNew York, and the father of De Witt Clinton, who died governor of thesame State in 1827, commanded the brigade employed on this duty. Duringthe stay of the troops at the foot of the Otsego a soldier was shotfor desertion. The grave of this unfortunate man was the first place ofhuman interment that the author ever beheld, as the smoke-house was thefirst ruin! The swivel alluded to in this work was buried and abandonedby the troops on this occasion, and it was subsequently found in diggingthe cellars of the authors paternal residence.

  Soon after the close of the war, Washington, accompanied by manydistinguished men, visited the scene of this tale, it is said with aview to examine the facilities for opening a communication by water withother points of the country. He stayed but a few hours.

  In 1785 the author's father, who had an interest in extensive tracts ofland in this wilderness, arrived with a party of surveyors. The mannerin which the scene met his eye is described by Judge Temple. At thecommencement of the following year the settlement began; and from thattime to this the country has continued to flourish. It is a singularfeature in American life that at the beginning of this century, when theproprietor of the estate had occasion for settlers on a new settlementand in a remote county, he was enabled to draw them from among theincrease of the former colony.

  Although the settlement of this part of Otsego a little preceded thebirth of the author, it was not sufficiently advanced to render itdesirable that an event so important to himself should take place in thewilderness. Perhaps his mother had a reasonable distrust of the practiceof Dr Todd, who must then have been in the novitiate of his experimentalacquirements. Be that as it may, the author was brought an infant intothis valley, and all his first impressions were here obtained. He hasinhabited it ever since, at intervals; and he thinks he can answer forthe faithfulness of the picture he has drawn. Otsego has now become oneof the most populous districts of New York. It sends forth its emigrantslike any other old region, and it is pregnant with industry andenterprise. Its manufacturers are prosperous, and it is worthy of remarkthat one of the most ingenious machines known in European art is derivedfrom the keen ingenuity which is exercised in this remote region.

  In order to prevent mistake, it may be well to say that the incidents ofthis tale are purely a fiction. The literal facts are chiefly connectedwith the natural and artificial objects and the customs of theinhabitants. Thus the academy, and court-house, and jail, and inn, andmost similar things, are tolerably exact. They have all, long since,given place to other buildings of a more pretending character. Thereis also some liberty taken with the truth in the description of theprincipal dwelling; the real building had no "firstly" and "lastly."It was of bricks, and not of stone; and its roof exhibited none of thepeculiar beauties of the "composite order." It was erected in an agetoo primitive for that ambitious school of architecture. But the authorindulged his recollections freely when he had fairly entered the door.Here all is literal, even to the severed arm of Wolfe, and the urn whichheld the ashes of Queen Dido.*

  * Though forests still crown the mountains of Otsego, the bear, the wolf, and the panther are nearly strangers to them. Even the innocent deer is rarely seen bounding beneath their arches; for the rifle and the activity of the settlers hare driven them to other haunts. To this change (which in some particulars is melancholy to one who knew the country in its
infancy), it may be added that the Otsego is beginning to be a niggard of its treasures.

  The author has elsewhere said that the character of Leather-Stocking isa creation, rendered probable by such auxiliaries as were necessary toproduce that effect. Had he drawn still more upon fancy, the lovers offiction would not have so much cause for their objections to his work.Still, the picture would not have been in the least true without somesubstitutes for most of the other personages. The great proprietorresident on his lands, and giving his name to instead of receiving itfrom his estates as in Europe, is common over the whole of New York.The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than correctedby experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self-denying,laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious,envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother ofthe profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless,bargaining, discontented seller of his "betterments;" the plausiblecarpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to all who haveever dwelt in a new country.

  It may be well to say here, a little more explicitly, that there was noreal intention to describe with particular accuracy any real charactersin this book. It has been often said, and in published statements, thatthe heroine of this book was drawn after the sister of the writer, whowas killed by a fall from a horse now near half a century since. Soingenious is conjecture that a personal resemblance has been discoveredbetween the fictitious character and the deceased relative! It isscarcely possible to describe two females of the same class in life whowould be less alike, personally, than Elizabeth Temple and the sister ofthe author who met with the deplorable fate mentioned. In a word, theywere as unlike in this respect as in history, character, and fortunes.

  Circumstances rendered this sister singularly dear to the author. Aftera lapse of half a century, he is writing this paragraph with a pain thatwould induce him to cancel it, were it not still more painful to have itbelieved that one whom he regarded with a reverence that surpassed thelove of a brother was converted by him into the heroine of a work offiction.

  From circumstances which, after this Introduction, will be obvious toall, the author has had more pleasure in writing "The Pioneers" than thebook will probably ever give any of its readers. He is quite aware ofits numerous faults, some of which he has endeavored to repair in thisedition; but as he has--in intention, at least--done his full share inamusing the world, he trusts to its good-nature for overlooking thisattempt to please himself.