[Footnote 7: Ote-sa-ga was probably derived, by transposition very common in like case, from the first map name of Ostega (Ostaga), 1770-1775. Dr. Beauchamp sought to derive this from "otsta," a word for which Schoolcraft was his authority, and which was supposed to be Oneida for "rock," the Mohawk form "otsteara." But Schoolcraft, as Beauchamp himself elsewhere shows (Indian Names, p. 6), sometimes took liberties with 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.