th original Indian forms of words. The Mohawk word for "rock" is
"ostenra"; the Oneida would be "ostela." The first with the locative
terminal "ga," gives "ostenraga"; the second, "ostelaga." Both are far
removed from "Ostaga." Ostaga is more naturally derived from the Mohawk
"otsata," or "osata," both which forms occur in Bruyas. Otsataga, by
elision, readily becomes Otstaga, and again Ostaga. The change is even
simpler with Osataga. The meaning of Ostaga, thus explained, would be
"place of cloud," by extension "place of storm"--in contrast, perhaps,
with the little lakes, which were _waiontha_, "calm." (Bruyas,
64).--_Willard E. Yager._]

[Footnote 8: _League of the Iroquois_, Lewis H. Morgan, Lloyd's Ed.,
Vol. I, p. 93.]

[Footnote 9: Yager.]

[Footnote 10: _The Old New York Frontier_, Francis W. Halsey, 16.
_League of the Iroquois_, II. 227.]

[Footnote 11: _League of the Iroquois_, I. 87.]

[Footnote 12: do., I. 249-251.]

[Footnote 13: _The Old New York Frontier_, 150.]

[Footnote 14: _The Old New York Frontier_, 75, 160.]

[Footnote 15: _Address at the Cooperstown Centennial._]

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE WHITE MEN

Within six years after Hendrik Hudson sailed up the river which bears
his name, and some five years before the Pilgrim fathers landed at
Plymouth, the first white men looked upon Otsego Lake, and saw the
wooded shore upon which Cooperstown now stands. It was in 1614, or in
the year following, that two Dutchmen set out from Fort Orange (Albany)
to explore the fur country, and crossing from the Mohawk to Otsego Lake,
proceeded down the Susquehanna.[16] From this time, first under the
Dutch, then under English rule, traders came frequently to the foot of
Otsego Lake. Soon after the traders, Christian missionaries ventured
into the wilderness, ministering at first chiefly to the Indians. Later
came the first settlers.

That the influence of traders was not always helpful to Christian
missionaries is illustrated by an incident in the missionary journey of
the Rev. Gideon Hawley, a Presbyterian divine, who, with some zealous
companions, came from New England to preach to the Indians of the
Susquehanna in 1753. They reached the river at a point where was a
small Indian settlement near the present village of Colliers, seventeen
miles below Cooperstown. Here they were joined by a trader named George
Winedecker, who had come down from Otsego Lake with a boat-load of
goods, including r