Some tense situations in the story of the Deerslayer are associated with Three-Mile Point, the present picnic resort of Cooperstown; and a full understanding of the events described as having taken place on this spot almost depends upon some reference to the actual conformation of the land. It was on the northern side of the projecting point that Hetty had landed on the errand just referred to, setting her canoe adrift. Wah-ta-wah promised to meet her Delaware lover, Chingachgook, at the same landing-place, on the next night, at the moment when the planet Jupiter should top the pines of the eastern shore. Here came Chingachgook and Deerslayer in their canoe, at the appointed time, to steal the maiden from the Hurons, but found that she could not keep the tryst. Around this point Deerslayer gently propelled his canoe southward until he gained a view of the fire-lit camp, which the Hurons had moved from the region of Blackbird Bay to the southern slope of Three-Mile Point. Back again to its northern side he paddled softly, and having joined Chingachgook, they left the canoe on the beach near the point, and made their stealthy detour, approaching the camp from the west, in the shadow of the trees, informing Wah-ta-wah of their presence by Chingachgook's squirrel-signal. The spring that still bubbles for the refreshment of picnickers on the northern shore of the Point was the one which Wah-ta-wah made a pretext to draw away from the camp the old squaw who guarded her, and here Deerslayer throttled the vigilant hag, while Chingachgook and his Indian sweetheart raced for the canoe. Here, when Deerslayer released his grip to follow them, the squaw alarmed the camp. Along the stretch of beach he ran eastward to the place where the lovers were already in the canoe awaiting him, and from this point Deerslayer pushed their canoe to safety, yielding himself to capture.
Five-Mile Point
It was at Five-Mile Point that the Hurons were afterward encamped when Deerslayer, whom they had released on parole, returned at the appointed hour to redeem his plighted word. Back of Five-Mile Point is a picturesque rocky gorge called Mohican Canyon, through which a brook ripples, with clumps of fern and rose peepingfrom the crevices of its rugged walls. Having fulfilled his pledge, Deerslayer soon ventured the dash for liberty that so nearly succeeded; and, after making a circuit of the slope, it was along the ridge of Mohican Canyon that he ran at top speed to try a plunge for the lake, with the whole band of Indians in pursuit.
In the open area of Five-Mile Point, after his recapture, Deerslayer was bound to a tree, and became a target for the hairbreadth marksmanship of Huron tomahawks, preliminary to being put to torture.
North of this spot, and along the shore, Hutter's Point is of interest to the reader of the Leather-Stocking Tales, for here is the path by which Deerslayer reached the lake at the beginning of his romantic history, and gained his first view of the Glimmerglass. In the second chapter of the Deerslayer, Cooper's famous description of the lake as it was when the first white man came, based upon his own recollection of it when nine-tenths of its shores were in virgin forest, was conceived from the angle of Hutter's Point.
M. Antoinette Abram