5. James Fenimore Cooper Legends

James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans, wrote an adventure tale set along the banks of the Kalamazoo River during the War of 1812. The book, titled The Oak Openings; or, the Bee Hunter, was especially popular in the Saugatuck area. Local fans studied the novel and concluded various area sites were the locations of scenes in the book. Some of these locations were copied into old Chamber of Commerce brochures.

James Fenimore Cooper had at least one local connection — H. H. Comstock, an early owner of the Kalamazoo River lighthouse site, was married to the author’s niece. Through Comstock, Cooper invested in Michigan real estate, and visited nearby Kalamazoo in an attempt to recoup some of his money.

But villages all over Michigan claim to have been visited by Cooper. Supposedly the model for the bee hunter character lived in Kalamazoo. Cooper is said to have stayed with a judge in Schoolcraft, at the Walker Tavern at Cambridge Junction and at his niece’s home in Otsego. There are also tales that he visited Singapore where he wore a raccoon hat with the tail attached, and stayed on the second floor to keep away from Indians who peeked into the ground-floor windows. It is also said that he frequented the Tisdale house on Ferry Street and used its surroundings as a setting in one of his novels. Unfortunately, scholars who studied Cooper’s letters and diaries have concluded that none of the events mentioned above ever took place, nor did he ever travel in Michigan west of Kalamazoo.