Cooper himself comes to the defense of his Indians in the preface of the _Leather-Stocking Tales_. "It is the privilege of all writers of fiction," he declares, "more particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the _beau-ideal_ of their characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to be represented only in the squalid misery or in the degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer." Our early history has been less sympathetic toward the Indian. The story of the massacre which occurred at Cherry Valley, not many miles from Cooperstown, in 1778, although the Tories who took part in it were quite as savage as their Indian allies, has made memorable the darker side of Indian character. But although many innocent victims were exacted by his revenge both here and elsewhere, it was not without cause that the Indian resorted to bloody measures against the whites. Americans of to-day can well afford a generous appreciation of the once powerful race who were their predecessors in sovereignty on this continent. The league of the Iroquois is no more, but in the Empire State of the American Republic the scene of their ancient Indian empire remains. It is left for the white man to commemorate the Indian who made no effort to perpetuate memorials of himself, erected no boastful monuments, and carved no inscriptions to record his many conquests. Having gained great wealth by developing the resources of a land which the Indians used only as hunting grounds, the white man may none the less appreciate the lofty qualities of a race of men who, just because they felt no lust of riches, never emerged from the hunter state, but found the joy of life amid primeval forests. The League of the Iroquois has had a strange history, which is part of the history of America--a history which left no record, except by chance, of a government that had no archives, an empire that had no throne, a language that had no books, a citizenship without a city, a religion that had no temple except that which the Great Spirit created in the beginning. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Poe. _Works_, "William W. Lord," Vol. vii, p. 217 (Amontillado Ed). Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his _Poets of America_, p. 41, 123, champions Lord.] [Footnote 2: _Notes on the Iroquois_, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Chap. vi.] [Footnote 3: Major J. W. Powell, _The Forum_, January, 1890.] [Footnote 4: Lewis H. Morgan's map, 1851, in the _League of the Iroquois_.] [Footnote 5: From Fernleigh garden, near the river, 1895.] [Footnote 6: These opinions are quoted from a communication kindly written by Willard E. Yager, of Oneonta.]