The valley of the Mohawk River provides one of the best routes for
crossing the Empire State, from the Hudson over to Lake Erie. Within
sight of the Hudson, the Mohawk pours down its noble cataract at
Cohoes. This is a waterfall of nearly a thousand feet width, the
descent being seventy-eight feet. The banks on either side are quite
high, with foliage crowning their summits, and between is a
perpendicular wall of dark-brown rocks making the cataract, having a
sort of diagonal stratification that breaks the sombre face into
rifts. In a freshet this is a wonderful fall, the swollen stream
becoming a dark amber-colored torrent with adornments of foam, making
a small Niagara. The river is dammed about a mile above, so that at
times almost the whole current is drawn off to turn the mill-wheels of
Cohoes, making paper and manufacturing much wool and cotton, one of
its leading establishments being the "Harmony Knitting Mills." In
digging for the foundations of its great buildings alongside the
river, this corporation several years ago exhumed one of the most
perfect skeletons of a mastodon now existing, which is in the State
Museum at Albany. Cohoes has about twenty-five thousand population,
and its name comes from the Iroquois word Coh-hoes, meaning a "canoe
falling." A brisk rapid runs above the falls, and a touching Indian
legend tells how the rapid and fall were named. Occuna was a young
Seneca warrior (one of the Iroquois tribes), and with his affianced
was carelessly paddling in a canoe at the head of the rapid, when
suddenly the current drew them down towards the cataract. Escape being
impossible, they began the melancholy death-song in responsive chants,
and prepared to meet the Great Spirit. Occuna began: "Daughter of a
mighty warrior; the Great Manitou calls me hence; he bids me hasten
into his presence; I hear his voice in the stream; I see his spirit in
the moving of the waters; the light of his eyes danceth upon the swift
rapids." The maiden responded, "Art thou not thyself a great warrior,
O Occuna? Hath not thy tomahawk been often bathed in the red blood of
thine enemies? Hath the fleet deer ever escaped thy arrow, or the
beaver eluded thy chase? Why, then, shouldst thou fear to go into the
presence of the Great Manitou?" Then said Occuna, "Manitou regardeth
the brave, he respecteth the prayer of the mighty! When I selected
thee from the daughters of thy mother I promised to live and die with
thee. The Thunderer hath called us together. Welcome, O shade of
Oriska, invincible chief of the Senecas. Lo, a warrior, and the
daughter of a warrior, come to join thee in the feast of the blessed!"
The canoe went over the fall; Occuna was dashed in pieces among the
rocks, but the maiden lived to tell the story. The Indians say that
Occuna was "raised high above the regions of the moon, from whence he
views with joy the prosperous hunting of the warriors; he gives
pleasant dreams to his friends, and terrifies their enemies with
dreadful omens." Whenever the tribe passed the fatal cataract they
solemnly commemorated Occuna's death.