Cooper’s Cave

Cooper’s Cave. Wilderness Beginnings. , "Aye, there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below... [The water falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles; there, it skips; here, it shoots; in one place 'tis white as snow, and in another 'tis green as grass; hereabouts it pitches into deep hollows, that rumble and quake the 'arth; and thereaway, it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gullies in the old stone.... First it runs smoothly,...then it angles about and faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward.... (The ] river fabricates all sorts of images, as if, having broken loose from order, it would try its hand at every thing... [But] after the water has been suffered to have its will for a time….., it is gathered together by the hand that made it,...and you may see it all, flowing on steadily towards the sea, as was foreordained from the fit foundation of the 'arth!" , Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Chapter 6., In the Beginning , Glens Falls was once known by Mohican Indians as chepontuc a hard place to get around. The two branches of the falls are separated by an island of harder rock where you are standing. In the midst of the island is Cooper's Cave (actually two connected caves) , vividly described in James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans., Once at the northern end of lands occupied by the Mohican (Mahican) Nation, this area came under Iroquois (Mohawk) control in the early 1600s. In 1788 Col. John Glen of Schenectady bought the land and built the first mills here., War in the Wilderness , From 1755-1759 England and France struggled for control of the region between Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. Their European armies, aided by militias enlisted from their American colonies, and by Native American allies, fought for ultimate control of North America in what is often called the "French and Indian War.", It was in this war that the colonial militias of New York and New England gained military experience vital to their success in the American Revolution a quarter of a century later. But though the war ended in victory at Quebec in 1759, it included a major British/American defeat, at Fort William Henry on Lake George, that became a rallying cry for generations, like The Alamo and Pearl Harbor in more recent times., Fort William Henry , Half way between the French base on Lake Champlain (later called Fort Ticonderoga) and the British base at Fort Edward (a few miles east of Glens Falls) stood the British-held log fortress of Fort William Henry. on Lake George. It was commanded by Lt. Col. Monro of the British army, aided by militia units from New England., In August 1757 a French army under General Montcalm, aided by hundreds of Indian allies, besieged and captured Fort William Henry. Although Montcalm promised Col. Monro's surrendered troops a safe conduct back to Fort Edward, he failed to prevent some of his Indian allies from attacking and killing some of them, and their families, and carrying off others as captives., From History to Literature , In 1826, already famous for his best-selling tales of the American Revolution, the young New York writer James Fenimore Cooper made the "massacre" at Fort William Henry the central event of what would become his best known book, The Last of the Mohicans. And in it he included a critically important scene set right here, in "Cooper's Cave" at Glens Falls. Featured in a novel still being read in over thirty languages, and replicated in numerous movies, the events at "Cooper's Cave" have made Glens Falls famous throughout the world.