Delawares. The descendants of those who were left at
Stockbridge are now assembled with some of the Munsees on a
reservation at Green Bay, Wis. They are truly the "last of the
Mohicans." Cooper's story of that name dealt with the earlier
period of their dispersal.

In the early days Douw's Point on the right bank, a few miles below
Albany, was the head of steamboat navigation. Passengers for Albany used
to transfer at this point to the stage. It was here that the "Half Moon"
reached its farthest point on its northward trip up the Hudson.

Theodore Roosevelt in his _History of New York_ says: "During the
"Half Moon's" inland voyage her course had lain through scenery
singularly wild, grand and lonely. She had passed the long line
of frowning battlemented rock walls that we know by the name of
the Palisades; she had threaded her way round the bends where the
curving river sweeps in and out among cold peaks--Storm King,
Crow's Nest, and their brethren; she had sailed in front of the
Catskill Mts., perhaps thus early in the season crowned with
shining snow. From her decks the lookouts scanned with their
watchful eyes dim shadowy wastes, stretching for countless
leagues on every hand; for all the land was shrouded in one vast
forest, where red hunters who had never seen a white face
followed wild beasts, upon whose kind no white man had ever
gazed."

In modern days the channel has been enlarged, deepened and protected by
concrete dykes, which are seen at intervals along the upper river, so
that the Hudson is now utilized for navigation as far as Troy. On the
left bank just above Parr's Island is the estuary of the Normans Kill,
which flows through the valley of Tawasentha, where, according to Indian
tradition, once lived the "mighty Hiawatha."

Hiawatha (the word means "he makes rivers") was a legendary
chief, about 1450, of the Onondaga Tribe of Indians. The
formation of the League of Five Nations, known as the Iroquois,
is attributed to him by Indian tradition. He was regarded as a
sort of divinity--the incarnation of human progress and
civilization. Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha" embodies the more
poetical ideas of Indian nature-worship. In this version of the
story, Hiawatha was the Son of Mudjekeewis (the West Wind) and
Wenonah, the daughter of Nakomis, who fell from the moon.

142 M. RENSSELAER, Pop, 10,82