tradition. This rock, sometimes called Otsego Rock, standing forth from
the water where the Susquehanna emerges from the lake, had been a
favorite landmark for the rendezvous of Indians. As one views it now,
from the foot of River Street, it lifts its rounded top not quite so
high above the water as when Cooper described it in 1841. The damming of
the Susquehanna to furnish power for the village water supply has raised
the whole level of Otsego Lake, and gives an artificial fullness to the
first reaches of the long river.

Whether Cooperstown stands upon the site of an old Indian village is a
debated question. Richard Smith's journal describes his visit at the
foot of Otsego Lake in 1769, before the time of any considerable
settlement by white men, and makes no mention of any Indian residents of
the place. He saw many Indians here, but gives the impression that they
were come from a distance to visit the Indian Agent whose headquarters
lay at the foot of Otsego Lake. On the other hand, a stray hint comes
from the papers of William Cooper, among which is a memorandum including
various notes relating to population and other statistics, jotted down
apparently in preparation for a speech or article on early conditions
here, and containing the item, "Old Indian Village." A more significant
record appears in the _Chronicles of Cooperstown_, published in 1838, in
which Fenimore Cooper asserts that "arrow-heads, stone hatchets, and
other memorials of Indian usages, were found in great abundance by the
first settlers, in the vicinity of the village." In _The Pioneers_, his
description of Cooperstown includes, in a location to be identified with
the present Cooper Grounds, fruit trees which he says "had been left by
the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination of
age," when the first settlers came.

The fruit trees would indicate permanent though late occupation of this