CHAPTER INTRODUCTION


As this work professes, in its title-page, to be a descriptive tale,
they who will take the trouble to read it may be glad to know how much
of its contents is literal fact, and how much is intended to represent
a general picture. The author is very sensible that, had he confined
himself to the latter, always the most effective, as it is the most
valuable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have made
a far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and perhaps he
may add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth, there was
a constant temptation to delineate that which he had known, rather than
that which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to truth, an
indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm of
fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by
the latter had better be done by delineations of principles, and of
characters in their classes, than by a too fastidious attention to
originals.

New York having but one county of Otsego, and the Susquehanna but one
proper source, there can be no mistake as to the site of the tale. The
history of this district of country, so far as it is connected with
civilized men, is soon told.

Otsego, in common with most of the interior of the province of New
York, was included in the county of Albany previously to the war of the
separation. It then became, in a subsequent division of territory, a
part of Montgomery; and finally, having obtained a sufficient population
of its own, it was set apart as a county by itself shortly after the
peace of 1783. It lies among those low spurs of the Alleghanies which
cover the midland counties of New York, and it is a little east of a
meridional line drawn through the centre of the State. As the waters
of New York flow either southerly into the Atlantic or northerly
into Ontario and its outlet, Otsego Lake, being the source of the
Susquehanna, is of necessity among its highest lands. The face of the
country, the climate as it was found by the whites, and the manners of
the settlers, are described with a minuteness for which the author has
no other apology than the force of his own recollections.

Otsego is said to be a word compounded of Ot, a place of meeting, and
Sego, or Sago, the ordinary term of salutation used by the Indians of
this region. There is a tradition which says that the neighboring tribes
were accustomed to meet on the banks of the lake to make their treaties,
and otherwise to strengthen their alliances, and which refers the name
to this practice. As the Indian agent of New York had a log dwelling at
the foot of the lake, however, it is not impossible that the appellation
grew out of the meetings that were held at his council fires; the war
drove off the agent, in common with the other officers of the crown;
and his rude dwelling was soon abandoned. The author remembers it, a few
years later, reduced to the humble office of a smoke-house.

In 1779 an expedition was sent against the hostile Indians, who dwelt
about a hundred miles west of Otsego, on the banks of the Cayuga. The
whole country was then a wilderness, and it was necessary to transport
the baggage of the troops by means of the rivers--a devious but
practicable route. One brigade ascended the Mohawk until it reached the
point nearest to the sources of the Susquehanna, whence it cut a lane
through the forest to the head of the Otsego. The boats and baggage
were carried over this "portage," and the troops proceeded to the
other extremity of the lake, where they disembarked and encamped. The
Susquehanna, a narrow though rapid stream at its source, was much filled
with "flood wood," or fallen trees; and the troops adopted a novel
expedient to facilitate their passage. The Otsego is about nine miles
in length, varying in breadth from half a mile to a mile and a half. The
water is of great depth, limpid, and supplied from a thousand springs.
At its foot the banks are rather less than thirty feet high the
remainder of its margin being in mountains, intervals, and points. The
outlet, or the Susquehanna, flows through a gorge in the low banks just
mentioned, which may have a width of two hundred feet. This gorge
was dammed and the waters of the lake collected: the Susquehanna was
converted into a rill.

When all was ready the troops embarked, the damn was knocked away, the
Otsego poured out its torrent, and the boats went merrily down with the
current.

General James Clinton, the brother of George Clinton, then governor of
New York, and the father of De Witt Clinton, who died governor of the
same State in 1827, commanded the brigade employed on this duty. During
the stay of the troops at the foot of the Otsego a soldier was shot
for desertion. The grave of this unfortunate man was the first place of
human interment that the author ever beheld, as the smoke-house was the
first ruin! The swivel alluded to in this work was buried and abandoned
by the troops on this occasion, and it was subsequently found in digging
the cellars of the authors paternal residence.

Soon after the close of the war, Washington, accompanied by many
distinguished men, visited the scene of this tale, it is said with a
view to examine the facilities for opening a communication by water with
other points of the country. He stayed but a few hours.

In 1785 the author's father, who had an interest in extensive tracts of
land in this wilderness, arrived with a party of surveyors. The manner
in which the scene met his eye is described by Judge Temple. At the
commencement of the following year the settlement began; and from that
time to this the country has continued to flourish. It is a singular
feature in American life that at the beginning of this century, when the
proprietor of the estate had occasion for settlers on a new settlement
and in a remote county, he was enabled to draw them from among the
increase of the former colony.

Although the settlement of this part of Otsego a little preceded the
birth of the author, it was not sufficiently advanced to render it
desirable that an event so important to himself should take place in the
wilderness. Perhaps his mother had a reasonable distrust of the practice
of Dr Todd, who must then have been in the novitiate of his experimental
acquirements. Be that as it may, the author was brought an infant into
this valley, and all his first impressions were here obtained. He has
inhabited it ever since, at intervals; and he thinks he can answer for
the faithfulness of the picture he has drawn. Otsego has now become one
of the most populous districts of New York. It sends forth its emigrants
like any other old region, and it is pregnant with industry and
enterprise. Its manufacturers are prosperous, and it is worthy of remark
that one of the most ingenious machines known in European art is derived
from the keen ingenuity which is exercised in this remote region.

In order to prevent mistake, it may be well to say that the incidents of
this tale are purely a fiction. The literal facts are chiefly connected
with the natural and artificial objects and the customs of the
inhabitants. Thus the academy, and court-house, and jail, and inn, and
most similar things, are tolerably exact. They have all, long since,
given place to other buildings of a more pretending character. There
is also some liberty taken with the truth in the description of the
principal dwelling; the real building had no "firstly" and "lastly."
 It was of bricks, and not of stone; and its roof exhibited none of the
peculiar beauties of the "composite order." It was erected in an age
too primitive for that ambitious school of architecture. But the author
indulged his recollections freely when he had fairly entered the door.
Here all is literal, even to the severed arm of Wolfe, and the urn which
held the ashes of Queen Dido.*

  * Though forests still crown the mountains of Otsego, the bear, the
    wolf, and the panther are nearly strangers to them.  Even the innocent
    deer is rarely seen bounding beneath their arches; for the rifle and
    the activity of the settlers have driven them to other haunts.  To
    this change (which in some particulars is melancholy to one who knew
    the country in its infancy), it may be added that the Otsego is
    beginning to be a niggard of its treasures.

The author has elsewhere said that the character of Leather-Stocking is
a creation, rendered probable by such auxiliaries as were necessary to
produce that effect. Had he drawn still more upon fancy, the lovers of
fiction would not have so much cause for their objections to his work.
Still, the picture would not have been in the least true without some
substitutes for most of the other personages. The great proprietor
resident on his lands, and giving his name to instead of receiving it
from his estates as in Europe, is common over the whole of New York.
The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than corrected
by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self-denying,
laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious,
envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of
the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless,
bargaining, discontented seller of his "betterments;" the plausible
carpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to all who have
ever dwelt in a new country.

It may be well to say here, a little more explicitly, that there was no
real intention to describe with particular accuracy any real characters
in this book. It has been often said, and in published statements, that
the heroine of this book was drawn after the sister of the writer, who
was killed by a fall from a horse now near half a century since. So
ingenious is conjecture that a personal resemblance has been discovered
between the fictitious character and the deceased relative! It is
scarcely possible to describe two females of the same class in life who
would be less alike, personally, than Elizabeth Temple and the sister of
the author who met with the deplorable fate mentioned. In a word, they
were as unlike in this respect as in history, character, and fortunes.

Circumstances rendered this sister singularly dear to the author. After
a lapse of half a century, he is writing this paragraph with a pain that
would induce him to cancel it, were it not still more painful to have it
believed that one whom he regarded with a reverence that surpassed the
love of a brother was converted by him into the heroine of a work of
fiction.

From circumstances which, after this Introduction, will be obvious to
all, the author has had more pleasure in writing "The Pioneers" than the
book will probably ever give any of its readers. He is quite aware of
its numerous faults, some of which he has endeavored to repair in this
edition; but as he has--in intention, at least--done his full share in
amusing the world, he trusts to its good-nature for overlooking this
attempt to please himself.