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
site by Indians; "stone hatchets in great abundance" would suggest that
a prehistoric village was here. But it is difficult to understand how so
little trace should now remain of the one-time "great abundance" of
hatchets. Such is not the case at any other permanent prehistoric site
in the general region, where pestles and hatchets continue to be found
even in streets, as well as in yards, and well-tilled gardens.

Every few years the inhabitants of ancient villages in the east were
wont, for various reasons, to build new cabins on new ground, though not
far removed from the old. Not all the sites of ancient Otesaga, if
ancient Otesaga existed, can have been covered by Cooperstown. Some
fields should still produce something out of "an abundance" of village
debris. Yet only one hatchet has come, in many years, from all the foot
of the lake.[5] Many points, spear and arrow, have been found on all
shores of Otsego; for beyond doubt the lake, from very early time, was a
resort for aboriginal hunters and fishermen. But points indicate only
camp sites.

On the whole, by reason of the n