n the heart of youth to-day, one is
tempted to imagine the trysts in the wood, the flirtations, the
courtships, among Indian braves and dusky maidens, that touched life
with tender sentiment in the days of the red man's glory. During many
summers before the white man came the breath of nature sighing through
the pines of Otsego, the winding river murmuring lovelorn secrets to the
flowers that nodded on its margin, the moon rising over Mount Vision and
shedding its splendor upon the lake, were subtle influences in secret
meetings between men and maidens, in whispered vows beneath the trees,
in courtships on the border of the Glimmerglass, in lovemaking along the
shores of the Susquehanna.

The greater part of the Iroquois were allies of the British in the
Revolutionary War, although some Mohawks remained neutral, and most of
the Oneidas and Tuscaroras became engaged on the side of the Americans.
It is not strange that, in a war whose causes they could not understand,
the Iroquois should have been loyal to the King of England, with whom
their alliances had been made for nearly two centuries. The Indians had
nothing to gain in this war, and everything to lose. They lost
everything, and after the war were thrown upon the mercies of the
victorious Americans. The Iroquois confederacy came to an end, and few
of the Mohawks ever returned to the scene of their council fires, or to
the graves of their ancestors.[13]

Many friendly relationships were established between the white men and
the Indians, both before and after the Revolutionary War. In 1764 there
was a missionary school of Mohawk Indian boys at the foot of Otsego Lake
under the instruction of a young Mohawk named Moses, who had been
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 M