Sunk into the face of this mound is a slab of granite which bears this
inscription:

WHITE MAN, GREETING!

WE, NEAR WHOSE BONES YOU STAND,
WERE IROQUOIS. THE WIDE LAND
WHICH NOW IS YOURS WAS OURS.
FRIENDLY HANDS HAVE GIVEN BACK
TO US ENOUGH FOR A TOMB.

These lines offer a fitting introduction to the story of Cooperstown.
There is enough of truth and poetry in them to touch the heart of the
most indifferent passer-by. No sense of pride stirs the soul of any
white man as he reads this pathetic memorial of an exiled race and its
vanished empire. From this region and from many another hill and valley
the Indians were driven by their white conquerors, banished from one
reservation to another, compelled to exchange a vast empire of the
forest for the blanket and tin cup of Uncle Sam's patronage.

The mound in Fernleigh-Over is probably an Indian burial site of some
antiquity. In 1874, when the place was being graded, a number of Indian
skeletons were uncovered in various parts of the grounds. The owner of
the property, Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, caused all the bones to be
collected and buried at the foot of the mound. Some years afterward she
marked the mound with the granite slab and its inscribed epitaph.

The lines were composed by the Rev. William Wilberforce Lord, D.D., a
former rector of Christ Church, in this village, once hailed by