When it is remembered that the Dutch (who first
settled New York), the English, and the French, all gave appellations
to the tribes that dwelt within the country which is the scene of this
story, and that the Indians not only gave different names to their
enemies, but frequently to themselves, the cause of the confusion will
be understood.

In these pages, Lenni-Lenape, Lenope, Delawares, Wapanachki, and
Mohicans, all mean the same people, or tribes of the same stock. The
Mengwe, the Maquas, the Mingoes, and the Iroquois, though not all
strictly the same, are identified frequently by the speakers, being
politically confederated and opposed to those just named. Mingo was a
term of peculiar reproach, as were Mengwe and Maqua in a less degree.

The Mohicans were the possessors of the country first occupied by the
Europeans in this portion of the continent. They were, consequently,
the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these
people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the
inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls
before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen
them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the
use that has been made of it.

In point of fact, the country which is the scene of the following tale
has undergone as little change, since the historical events alluded to
had place, as almost any other district of equal extent within the whole
limits of the United States. There are fashionable and well-attended
watering-places at and near the spring where Hawkeye halted to drink,
and roads traverse the forests where he and his friends were compelled
to journey without even a path. Glen's has a large village; and while
William Henry, and even a fortress of later date, are only to be traced
as ruins, there is another village on the shores of the Horican. But,
beyond this, the enterprise and energy of a people who have done so much
in other places have done little here. The whole of that wilderness,
in which the latter incidents of the legend occurred, is nearly a
wilderness still, though the red man has entirely deserted this part of
the state. Of all the tribes named in these pages, there exist only a
few half-civilized beings of the Oneidas, on the reservations of their
people in New York. The rest have disappeared, either from the regions
in which their fathers dwelt, or altogether from the eart