educated at a missionary institution for Indians at Lebanon. A report of
one of the missionaries, the Rev. J. C. Smith, written at this time,
gives a glimpse of the Indians as they came under civilizing influence
on the very spot where Cooperstown was afterward to flourish:

"I am every day diverted and pleased with a view of Moses and his
school, as I can sit in my study and see him and all his scholars at any
time, the schoolhouse being nothing but an open barrack. And I am much
pleased to see eight or ten and sometimes more scholars sitting under
their bark table, some reading, some writing and others studying, and
all engaged to appearances with as much seriousness and attention as you
will see in almost any worshipping assembly and Moses at the head of
them with the gravity of fifty or three score."[14]

Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of the novelist, says that for some
years after the village was commenced, Mill Island was a favorite resort
of the Indians, who came frequently in parties to the new settlement,
remaining here for months together. Mill Island lies in the Susquehanna
a short distance below Fernleigh, near the dam, where the river reaches
out two arms to enclose it, and with so little effort that it is
difficult to distinguish the island from the mainland. In the early days
of the village the island was covered with woods, and the Indians chose
it for their camp, in preference to other situations. Miss Cooper thinks
it may have been a place of resort to their fishing and hunting parties
when the country was a wilderness. In _Rural Hours_, writing in 1851,
she gives a curious description of a visit made at Otsego Hall by some
Indians who had encamped at Mill Island. There were three of them,--a
father, son, and grandson,--who made their appearance, claiming a
hereditary acquaintance with the master of the house, Fenimore Cooper.