The Leatherstocking Tales and Indian Removal: a Study

THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES AND INDIAN REMOVAL: A STUDY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER'S LEATHERSTOCKING TALES IN THE LIGHT OF UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARDS THE AMERICAN INDIAN

by

JAMES DOUGLAS MANLY B.A., University of British Columbia, 1954 B.D., Union College of British Columbia, 1967

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

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Date April 17, 1976 ABSTRACT Because of his portrayal of noble and heroic Indians in the Leatherstocking Tales, James Fenimore Cooper has often been regarded as a writer very sympath• etic to the Indian people in their struggle against dispossession by white society. Because they include many statements which support concepts of aboriginal land rights for the Indians, the Leatherstocking Tales appear to support this understanding of Cooper. However during the time in which Cooper wrote and published the five Leatherstocking Tales, Pioneers (1823), Last of the Mohicans (1826), Prairie (1827), Pathfinder (1840), and Deerslayer (1841), the United States debated and adopted a policy of Indian removal. As a result of this policy, most Indian peoples living east of the Mississippi were removed to unfamiliar lands west of the Mississippi. While some Indians agreed to this policy, others, most notably the Cherokee, objected and tried to maintain themselves as a people on their traditional lands. A treaty, endorsed by an unrepresentative minority of the Cherokee people, ceded these lands and the Cherokee were expelled from their homeland; some four thousand Cherokee people died on this "Trail of Tears" to their new home.

Although Cooper was politically active and aware, he did not protest the actions of the government. In Notions of the Americans (1828), a fictional travel narrative, the presumed author, who, in many respects, can be identified with Cooper, speaks of removal as a "great, humane, and . . . rational project." Otherwise, Cooper does not appear to have addressed himself to the removal controversy.

The thesis, therefore, re-examines the Leather- stocking Tales in the light of the removal controversy; it seeks to determine what understanding these novels give of the Indian people, of Indian-white relations, and of Indian rights to the land. The first three Leatherstocking novels were written during the debate on Indian removal. Although Indian rights to the "land are frequently mentioned, other aspects of these novels work to deny the validity of the Indian claim. The last two Leatherstocking novels, written after the removal policy had come into effect, do not have as much rhetoric about Indian land rights; like the earlier Leatherstocking Tales, however, they see the Indian and white civilization as mutually exclusive. Although Cooper presents good and noble Indians, in opposition to his Indian villains, they lack the necessary qualities to become a happy and worthwhile part of American life and culture.

Critics accused Cooper of patterning his Indians too much after those described by Rev. John Heckewelder, one of Cooper's major sources. However, as this thesis iv

shows, Cooper significantly altered Heckewelder's view of the Indians and of Indian-white relations; Cooper plays down the importance of white savagery, which Heckewelder had stressed and detailed, and, in contrast, emphasizes and details Indian acts of savagery and cruelty. The thesis concludes that Cooper saw the Indian primarily as material for romance; wrongs done to the Indian and statements about Indian rights to the land are included in the novels because they added to the picture of the Indian as a romantic figure. Basically, Cooper did not have any political or social commitment to the Indian people. V

TABLE OF CONTENTS chapter page I Introduction and Historical Background ... 6 II The Early Leatherstocking Novels 26

A. The Pioneers 26 B. The Last of the Mohicans 41 C. The Prairie 60 D. Notions of the Americans 82 III The Later Leatherstocking Novels 91 A. The Pathfinder 91 B. The Deerslayer 106 IV Cooper's Use of Material from Heckewelder 127 V Conclusions 142 Footnotes 160 Selected Bibliography 176 LEAVES 1-5 OMITTED IN PAGE NUMBERING. CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

This thesis examines the relationship between two things: first, the protest in James Fenimore Cooper's

Leatherstocking Tales against white usurpation of Indian lands, and second, the removal by the United States government of Indian peoples from their ancestral lands in the eastern United States to unfamiliar territory west of the Mississippi River.

This removal took place during the time when

Cooper wrote the Leatherstocking novels. In spite of protests in the novels about white greed for land in earlier periods of history, and in spite of his involve• ment in Jacksonian politics, Cooper made no public protest over the removal policy. Nor do the six volumes of i

The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper indicate any private feelings of concern or opposition. This curious gap between stated concern over injustice done to the Indians in the past and a seeming insensitivity to similar injustice in Cooper's own time requires a re-examination of the Leatherstocking Tales. This thesis maintains that protests against dispossession of the

Indian, and statements which support Indian land claims must not be taken at face value in these novels, but must be examined in terms of the total effect that the novels 7

make upon the reader. The Leatherstocking Tales will be examined, not simply as romances of a passing frontier, but as documents which partly reflected, and partly helped to shape, political and social attitudes towards the Indians in the first half of the nineteenth century.

In one way or another, all literary art relates to the political process; the artist, however, is not always aware of the political implications of his art, which, very often, are quite different from, and even opposed to, his stated intentions. These implications, therefore, cannot be understood through a study which is limited to overt political statements; rather, the total work of art must be considered: plot, characterization, imagery, and the imaginative world which the writer creates.

In attempting to determine the relationship between the Leatherstocking Tales and the removal policy of the United States government, this thesis asks, "What understanding of the relationship between Indians and the rapidly developing white society of early nineteenth- century America finds expression in these novels?"

Cooper did not create his fictional Indians wholly from his own imagination, nor from detailed, first-hand memories of real Indians; rather, as Roy Harvey Pearce 2 claims, he took them "as his culture gave them to him." 8

Gregory Lansing Paine quotes Cooper's remark to an acquaintance: "You have the advantage of me, for I never was among the Indians. All that I know of them is 3 from reading and hearing my father speak of them." The author's daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, said in her 1861 book, Pages and Pictures from the Writings of James Fenimore

Cooper, with Notes: "His own opportunities of intercourse with the red men had been few; occasionally some small party of the Oneidas, or other representatives of the Five Nations had crossed his path in the valley of the Susquehanna, or on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he served when a midshipman in the Navy. And more recently, since the idea of introducing these wild people into his books had occurred to him, he had been at no little pains to seize every opportunity offered for observation. Fortunately for his purpose, deputations to Washington from the Western tribes were quite frequent at that moment; he visited these different parties as they passed through Albany and New York, following them in several instances to Washington, and with a view also to gathering inform• ation from the officers and interpreters who accompanied them. " (Quoted by Paine, pp. 19-20)

To compensate for this lack of first-hand information, Cooper read widely in the journals, reports, and travel narratives of explorers, missionaries, government agents, and travellers who had spent time among different

Indian peoples. Cooper's daughter gives an ambiguous, and sometimes wrongly spelled list of some of the authors whom 9

Cooper consulted. Correcting Susan Fenimore Cooper's account, John T. Frederick identifies these authors as follows: Rev. John Heckewelder, Rev. P.F.X. de Charlevoix,

William Penn, Captain John Smith, Rev. John Eliot,

Cadwallader Colden, as well as accounts of the expeditions of Stephen H. Long, Lewis and Clark, and Alexander 4 Mackenzie.

In addition to those writers named by Susan

Fenimore Cooper, Frederick suggests that Cooper would also have read "others equally available and equally prominent.

Among the most likely candidates are the lively narratives of Alexander Henry, John Long, and John Bradbury; the newly published works of James Buchanan and Joseph

Doddridge; and the officially sponsored reports of

Jedediah Morse and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft" (Frederick, pp. 1006-1007).

Frederick shows the extent to which Cooper depended upon his sources for the figurative expressions used by his Indian characters: "More than three-fourths of all the figures employed by Cooper appear also in the sources, and ... the remainder, with only the rarest exceptions, are closely modeled upon and harmonious with those for which he had the authority of firsthand observers"

(Frederick, p. 1009). 10

To understand how Cooper took the Indians "as his culture gave them to him", we must be aware not only of specific written sources which he consulted, but also of the total complex of popular American ideas about the

Indian people. These can be understood most easily through a brief historical survey.

Among other charges which the Declaration of

Independence brought against George III was the allegation that: "He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." The image of the "merciless

Indian savage", written into the most revered and best known of all American documents, thus became a basic constituent of America's understanding of the Indian people.

Thomas Jefferson, although the author of the

Declaration of Independence, had high hopes for the civilizing of the Indian people and looked for their eventual integration into American society. During his years as president (1801-09), he customarily spoke of them as "our Indian neighbours" and emphasized the value of good relations between Indians and white Americans.

At the same time, Jefferson was committed to western expansion and did not deal adequately with the contra• diction between such expansion and the desire to maintain 11

good relations with the Indians. The inevitable conflict between western expansion and Indian rights was largely- responsible for Indian hostility to the United States during the War of 1812.

During this war, when Cooper was in his early twenties, official attitudes again pictured the Indians as treacherous savages. In his messages to Congress in 1812 and 1813, President Madison constantly referred to the

Indians as "savages," "merciless savages," "bloodthirsty savages," and "hostile tribes of savages" (Israel, I,

116-117, 124-125). Condemning the British for using

Indian allies, Madison said, "the savages are employed with a knowledge . . . that their fury cannot be controlled"

(Israel, I, 116).

Opposing the image of the Indian as a merciless savage, some people, from the very beginning of European settlements in America, had hoped that Indians and whites could live next to each other in harmony. Admittedly, the price for such harmony was a high one for the Indian to pay: he would have to relinquish his own culture and accept the values of European civilization. Such hopes were continually frustrated, not only by the refusal of most Indians to pay such a price, but even more by the advancing frontier which refused to respect either the

Indian rights to their land, or previous treaties made 12

with Indian peoples.

In the period following the War of 1812, the official policy of the administration was one of encourag• ing the civilization and assimilation of the Indians; this was countered and opposed by the growing political power of the frontier, which demanded ever-increasing cession of

Indian lands. Andrew Jackson, who had already won fame as an Indian fighter in the Creek War of 1813-14, emerged as a prominent spokesman for this frontier attitude. When an 1816 treaty recognized Cherokee claims to land south of the Tennessee River, Jackson claimed that the government r was operating on a principle "of so carefully avoiding injustice to these tribes as even to be unjust to them• selves."^ At the same time, Governor McMinn of Tennessee began to promote seriously Jefferson's suggestion of removing eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River

(Horsman, p. 6).

In his 1817 message to Congress, President

Monroe pointed to several large land purchases "on conditions very favourable to the United States, and, as it is presumed, not less so to the tribes themselves"

(Israel, I, 152). In a passage that shows both a lingering awareness of obligation to civilize the Indian, and an ever-growing desire for Indian lands, Monroe 13

restated one of the classic justifications for taking those lands:

In this progress, which the rights of nature demand and nothing can prevent, marking a growth rapid and gigantic, it is our duty to make new efforts for the preservation, improvement, and civilization of the native inhabitants. The hunter state can exist only in the vast uncultivated desert. It yields to the more dense and compact form and greater force of civilized population; and of right it ought to yield, for the earth was given to mankind to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the wants of others more than is necessary for their own support and comfort. (Israel, I, 152)

The debate over the place of Indians in

American society intensified in 1820 when Georgia petitioned the federal government to extinguish Indian claims to some ten million acres in that state. Georgia had ceded western lands (now the states of Mississippi and Alabama) to the federal government in 1802; in return, the federal government had promised to extinguish, as soon as possible upon peaceful and reasonable terms, Indian claims upon land still within the state (Horsman, p. 11).

Thus, any claims that the government of the United States had a debt of honour to the Indian people as a result of treaties made after the War of 1812 were countered by the 14

claim that it had a prior debt of honour to one of its constituent states. The fact that the Creek and Cherokee

Indians of Georgia had gone further along the white man's road to civilization than had any other group of Indians intensified the debate between those who desired to civilize the Indian and those frontiersmen who wanted Indian lands.

In 1823, the year in which Cooper published

The Pioneers, the Cherokee Indians refused federal govern• ment proposals that they should give up their traditional lands and remove to the west of the Mississippi. When the

Cherokees restated their refusal in 1824, Governor Troup of Georgia asked for the use of force by the federal government, and the Georgia delegation in Congress denounced the entire policy of the federal government in attempting to civilize the Indians (Horsman, pp. 13-14).

In 1825, the pressure from Georgia, combined with that from other frontier states, forced President Monroe to present a plan for the removal of all the eastern Indians

(Horsman, p. 16).

The removal question dragged on during the presidency of John Quincy Adams (1825-29). Adams,

although no special friend of the Indians, was aware of

American obligations and was not about to capitulate to

the frontier spirit which had very nearly elected Jackson

instead of himself. Within the cabinet there were deep divisions on the subject of Indian policy: Henry Clay, 15

the Secretary of State, said that "he did not think them

as a race worth preserving" (Horsman, p. 17). On the

other hand, Secretary of War, James Barbour, who was

responsible for the administration of Indian policy, was

concerned with the integrity of previous American promises

to the Indian:

"They now see that our professions are insincere; that our promises have been broken; that the happiness of the Indian is a cheap sacrifice to the acquisition of new lands; and when attempted to be soothed by an assurance that the country to which we propose to send them is desirable, they emphatically ask us, What new pledges can you give us that we shall not again be exiled when it is your wish to possess these lands? It is easier to state than to answer this question." (Horsman, p. 17)

During the 1820*s, not all advocates of Indian removal were land-hungry frontiersmen and their politicians.

Many American people were concerned about the devastating effects that more sophisticated culture and technology were having upon the ever-dwindling Indian population in the older states. The idea of moving Indians away from the baneful influence of the surrounding whites appeared as a great philanthropic project. During the 1820's clergymen like Jedediah Morse (1761-1826), Jeremiah Evarts (1781-

1831), and Isaac McCoy (1784-1846) favoured removal for some of the Indian peoples, although their proposals differed significantly from those of the frontiersmen. 16

The Rev. Jedediah Morse had been commissioned by President Monroe in 1820 to conduct a survey and make a report on the condition of the Indians in the United

States. Throughout his report, Morse assumed that the object of the government was to civilize the Indians, and often he explicitly linked this with Christian conversion

Morse favoured a limited form of Indian removal which would bring together, for the purpose of education and civilization, small tribes and remnants of tribes which had been surrounded and debauched by frontier settlements

It is hard to escape the logic which Morse brought in support of this policy: surveying the Indian population he could point only to small, scattered bands of Indians in the older states which had once possessed large Indian populations. He now saw other tribes being engulfed in the same process which had destroyed the Indians in older settlements:

"Where the white man puts down his foot, he never takes it up again," is a shrewd and correct remark of an Indian Chief. The hunting grounds of the Indians on our frontiers are explored in all directions by enterprising white people. Their best lands are selected, settled, and at length, by treaty purchased. Their game is either wholly destroyed, or so diminished, as not to yield an adequate support. The poor Indians, thus deprived of their accustomed means of subsistence, and of what, in their own view, can alone render them 17

respectable, as well as comfortable, are constrained to leave their homes, their goodly lands, and the sepulchres of their father, and either go back into new and less valuable wildernesses, and to mingle with other tribes, dependent on their hospitality for a meagre support; or, without the common aids of education, to change at once all their habits and modes of life; to remain on a pittance of the lands they once owned, which they know not how to cultivate, and to which they have not a complete title. In these circumstances they become insulated among those who despise them as an inferior race, fit companions of those only, who have the capacity and the disposition to corrupt them. In this degraded, most disconsolate, and heart sinking of all situations in which man can be placed, they are left miserable to waste away for a few generations, and then to become extinct forever! This is no fancied picture. In a few years it will be a sad reality, unless we change our policy towards them; unless effectual measures be taken to bring them over this awful gulf, to the solid and safe ground of civilization. (Morse, pp. 65-66)

Believing that the Indians were "an intelligent and noble part of our race, and capable of high moral and intellectual improvement, Morse urged that they "ought to be saved from extinction, if it be possible to save them"

(Morse, p.73). Morse saw clearly, and felt keenly, that the national honour of the United States was involved in its dealings with the Indian people; unless the government and people were willing to live up to their obligations, said Morse, "Let us leave them to the unmolested 18

enjoyment of the territories they now possess, and give back to them those which we have taken away from them"

(Morse, p. 80). He thought of removal as a means whereby

smaller groups of Indians could be consolidated into

larger groups and given protection from whites. Consistent with this approach, and illustrating its difference from that of frontier politicians, is his statement that the

large southern tribes: Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and

Chickasaws, "are in situations and circumstances very favourable to be educated where they are, raised to the rank and privileges of citizens, and merged in the mass of the nation" (Morse, p. 32). His report, and the attached appendices, indicate both positive and negative responses from different Indian leaders on the subjects of education, civilization, and removal.

Jeremiah Evarts, corresponding secretary of the

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, had endorsed a limited form of removal which would safeguard

Indian rights. After Jackson was elected president in

1828, Evarts became opposed to the government's removal policy when he saw that it would deny those rights and involve forcible expulsion of the southern Indians. Using the pseudonym of William Penn, Evarts produced a series of articles for the National Intelligencer which defended

Indian title to their lands and opposed removal. 19

Isaac McCoy saw little hope in the civilizing activities of missionaries among Indians; he claimed that in spite of some individual successes, the total condition of the Indian tribes was becoming "more and more miserable 10 every year". McCoy blamed this situation on the proximity of Indians to white settlements and urged removal as the only method of saving the Indians from perishing. McCoy, however, exempted the Cherokees and the other "progressive" Indians of the southeast from the necessity of removal.

Lewis Cass (1782-1866), while Governor of Michigan

Territory, became an outspoken advocate of Indian removal; later as Secretary of War under President Jackson, he was responsible for implementing the removal policy. In an unsigned article in the North American Review, Cass presents a good summary of the main arguments in favour of removal. In addition to restating the issue as one of preserving a threatened Indian population from extinction,

Cass dwells on the incompatability of white civilization and Indian savagery, the superior use of land by whites, and the doubtful status of Indian title to the land.

In weighing the advance of white civilization against the cost to Indian people, Cass leaves no doubt as to his position: It would be miserable affectation to regret the progress of civilization and improvement, the (

20

triumph of industry and art, by which these regions have been reclaimed, and over which freedom, religion, and science are extending their sway. But we may indulge the wish, that these blessings had been attained at a smaller sacrifice; that the aboriginal population had accommodated themselves to the inevitable change of their condition, produced by the access and progress of the new race of men, before whom the hunter and his game were destined to disappear. But such a wish is vain. A barbarous people, depending for subsistence upon the scanty and precarious supplies furnished by the chase, 11

cannot live in contact with a civilized community.

Cass places the burden of accommodation between

Indian and white society entirely on the Indian; he takes

Indian failure to accommodate more rapidly as evidence of some inherent character flaw. As civilization shed her light upon them, why were they blind to its beam? Hungry or naked, why did they disregard, or regarding, why did they neglect, those arts by which food and clothing could be procured? Existing for two centuries in contact with a civilized people, they have resisted, and success• fully too, every effort to meliorate their situation, or to introduce among them the most common arts of life. Their moral and their intellectual condition have been equally stationary. And in the whole circle of their existence, it would be difficult to point to a single advantage which they have derived from their acquaintance with the Europeans. All this is without a parallel in the history of the world. That it is 21

not to be attributed to the indifference or neglect of the whites, we have already shown. There must then be an inherent difficulty, arising from the institutions, character, and condition of the Indians themselves. (Cass, pp. 72-73)

They would not, or rather they could not, coalesce with the strangers who had come among them. There was no point of union between them. They were as wild, and fierce, and irreclaimable, as the animals, their co-tenants of the forests, who furnished them with food and clothing. What had they in common with the white men? Not his attachment to sedentary life; not his desire of accumulation; not his submission to law; not his moral principles, his intellectual acquirements, his religious opinion. Neither precept nor example, neither hopes nor fears, could induce them to examine, much less to adopt their improve• ments. The past and the future being alike disregarded, the present only employs their thoughts. They could not, therefore, become an integral part of the people who began to press upon them. (Cass, p. 79)

Cass states that the Indian had possession of, but not title to, that land over which he roamed as a hunter. Arguing from a confident understanding of the

Divine Purpose, he justifies white appropriation of the

land for the superior uses of civilization (Cass, p. 77).

Repeatedly, Cass reassures his readers that the removal

policy would be implemented only with the consent of the 22

Indians themselves and that no force would be used

(Cass, pp. 76, 90, 92, 120).

Underlying all of the rhetoric which rational• ized previous dispossession and which favoured the removal policy, the final justification is one of power:

"Thus, without going back to the question of right derived from conquest or discovery, or resorting to the received doctrine respecting the duty of cultivating the earth, it is enough for our present view, that we are here; and that, whether the original system of colonization were right or wrong, a just regard to the safety of both requires that we should govern and they obey." (Cass, p. 94)

Indian people, aware of developing threats to their ownership of land, tried to protect themselves. The

Cherokees, continually pushed by the demands of the people and government of Georgia, adopted on July 26,

182 7, a written constitution which involved them in legal confrontation with the government of Georgia and 12 the Unxted States.

In 1828 gold was discovered in Cherokee territory and white prospectors showed no regard for

Cherokee rights. The State of Georgia passed legislation which denied the Cherokee people any effective control over their own land or communities. When the Cherokee

Indians brought this legislation before the Supreme Court, that court denied the right of the Cherokees to appeal to 23

it on the following grounds:

An Indian tribe or nation within the United States is not a foreign state in the sense of the constit• ution, and cannot maintain an action in the Courts of the United States ... If it be true that the Cherokee nation have rights, this is not the tribunal in which those rights are to be asserted. If it is true that wrongs have been inflicted, and that still greater are to be apprehended, this is not the tribunal which can redress the past or prevent the future. 13

The motion for an injunction is denxed.

The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 showed the political power of the frontier and indicated that

Indian rights would have low priority in government policy relating to expansion. In his 1829 message to

Congress, Jackson took a militant attitude towards the Cherokee people: I informed the Indians inhabitating parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States. (Israel, p. 310)

In advocating removal, Jackson advanced the usual arguments in its favour and disavows the use of force. However, his insistence upon Indian obedience to discriminatory state laws, and his disparaging comments upon Indian land claims, left the Indians little 24

alternative to removal.

In 1835 a small, unrepresentative minority of the Cherokees approved a treaty which ceded seven million acres of tribal land in return for a credit of four and one half million dollars. The majority of the Cherokee people refused to recognize this treaty and remained on their land. As a result, in 1838 General Winfield Scott went into Cherokee territory with seven thousand troops; the troops herded the people into camps from which they were forced to begin the long mid-winter journey to their new "home" in Arkansas. Livestock, farm and domestic goods were left to the rabble of white camp-followers who had come with the army.

John Collier's summary of the results gives some idea of the contrast between the reality of Indian removal and the easy optimistic view of the situation taken by the government:

Of about 14,000 who were herded into this "trail of tears," as it came to be called, 4,000 died on the way. While a hundred Cherokees a day were perishing of exhaustion and cold on that dreadful road, President Van Buren on December 3, 1838

session have had the happiest effects . . . . The Cherokees have emigrated without any apparent reluctance." The financial costs of the trail of tears were charged by the government against the 25

funds credited to the tribe pursuant to the 14

fraudulent treaty.

It was against this background of events in his own time that Cooper wrote the Leatherstocking novels. 26

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS

A. THE PIONEERS

Cooper's Leatherstocking novels were published in the following order: The Pioneers in 1823, The Last of the Mohicans in 1826, The Prairie in 182 7, The 1

Pathfinder in 1840, and The Deerslayer in 1841. The first three novels, therefore, were written during a time of intense debate about the place of the Indian vis-a-vis American society, while the last two were written after most of the tragic events of the removal policy had taken place.

As a series, the novels span the period from the early 1740's, when hostilities broke out between

France and England, to 1805, when the United States was consolidating its hold on the newly purchased Louisiana

Territory. Natty Bumppo, the linking character in all five novels, is known variously as "Deerslayer," "Hawkeye,"

"Pathfinder," "Leatherstocking," and "the Trapper" in accordance with the different phases of his career.

Bumppo lives on the frontier, apart from the civilization of his fellow whites, and associates most with Indians— some of whom he loves, trusts and befriends, and others of whom he dislikes, distrusts, and fights.

In the internal chronology of the five tales,

The Deerslayer comes first and tells of Natty's entrance to manhood; next, The Last of the Mohicans and The 27

Pathfinder relate incidents from his mature life; The

Pioneers shows him when he is old but still agile and strong, while The Prairie tells of the infirmity but independence of his extreme old age and of his eventual death. This thesis, concerned with the relationship between these novels and events in Cooper's own time, will examine the Leatherstocking Tales in the order in which Cooper wrote them rather than according to the internal order of events.

Written about American frontier society in the secondary stage of development, The Pioneers is concerned only peripherally with Indian-white relations. The

Indians have been dispossessed of their lands, and, apart from old Mohegan John, there are none left to arouse the pity or censure, much less the fear, of the settlers. As Mohegan himself said, "There will soon be no red-skin in the country. When John has gone, the last will leave these hills, and his family will be dead" (Pioneers, XXXVI, p. 419). The settlers contend against the trees and birds which they see as obstacles to progress, even as an earlier generation of settlers had seen the Indians.

In this situation, Judge Temple reveals his ambivalent attitude toward progress. Constantly he speaks for conservation; he warns his household against wanton destruction of the best trees for firewood; along 28

with Leatherstocking, he feels the waste involved in the mass slaughter of pigeons and in the seining of fish which will never be used; against popular opinion, he is determined to enforce game laws which prohibit hunting out of season. At the same time, as the benevolent father figure of the settlement at Templeton, he looks forward to progress and development: "To his

eye, where others saw nothing but a wilderness, towns, manufactories, bridges, canals, mines, and all the other

resources of an old country were constantly presenting

themselves"(Pioneers, XXIX, p. 331).

The moral conflict of the novel centers on Judge

Temple's attempt to establish the principles of an abstract

legal system in a territory where increasing population has

rendered obsolete the old natural law as exemplified by

Natty Bumppo. When he says to his daughter Elizabeth,

"Laws alone remove us from the conditions of the savages"

(Pioneers, XXXV, p. 397), Judge Temple not only shows the

high regard in which he held the law; he also reveals a

fear that frontier society could degenerate to a state of

savagery, and a determination that this should not happen.

The establishment of law reflects the economic change by

which the vague territory of the hunter is transformed

into the surveyed fields of the farmer.

The plot of the story depends on a case of 29

mistaken identity. The hero, Edward Oliver Effingham, disguises himself as a hunter, and taking the name of Oliver Edwards, conceals the fact that he is the son of Judge Temple's closest friend. In his rightful person, Effingham has a strong moral claim to the thousands of acres which the Judge has been holding in trust since the War of Independence. Because Mohegan John has said that Edwards has the blood of a Delaware chief, it is assumed that he has Indian ancestry; in fact, his grandfather, Major Effingham, had been only an honourary member of the Delawares. Working on this false assumption, the Judge and his household—as well as the reader—consider references to Edwards' ownership of the land to be references to aboriginal title. When Edwards refers to Leatherstocking's claim that the whites unjustly obtained the land from the Indians, the Judge dismisses the problem by referring it to the white man's law: "The Indian title was extinguished so far back as the close of the old war fi.e. the French and Indian War, 1754-1763]; and if it had not been at all, I hold under the patents of the royal governors, confirmed by an act of our own State legislature, and no court in the country can affect my title" (Pioneers, XXI, p. 241).

Considering that Edwards' own claim would have depended upon the extinction of the Indian title and upon royal patent, this dialogue is inappropriate to the development 30

of the plot. It does add, however, to the reader's and

to the Judge's misunderstanding of the nature of Edwards'

claim.

In a novel dealing with the establishment of

abstract law, it is incongruous for a young, well-educated

man, who gives no details of his life, to maintain a claim

upon the land without one piece of supporting information

beyond Mohegan's statement that he has the blood of a

Delaware chief. Even within the novel there is no

question but that the aboriginal title for this particular

land had been extinguished; as Mohegan John said to

Leatherstocking, "The land was owned by my people; we

gave it to my brother, in council—to the Fire-eater;

and what the Delawares give lasts as long as the waters run" (Pioneers, XXVI, p. 299). On this basis, Judge

Temple rebukes Edwards after the young man's passionate outburst about the rightful ownership of the land:

"Oliver Edwards, thou forgettest in whose presence thou standest. I have heard, young man, that thou claimest descent from the native owners of the soil; but surely thy education has been given thee to no effect, if it has not taught thee the validity of the claims that have transferred the title to the whites." (Pioneers, XXXI, p. 35 7)

By placing the discussion of aboriginal land rights within the context of a comic mistaken identity situation,

Cooper has denied, in a very effective manner, the 31

seriousness of the problem. He has invalidated Natty

Bumppo's concern for Indian rights by placing that concern within the context of Judge Temple's relationship with Oliver Edwards where it is irrelevant. Thomas

Philbrick makes the interesting point that "By the end of the novel, Oliver is not only the legal heir to the estate which Judge Temple has held in trust for Edward Effingham, but symbolically he is the inheritor of the Indian's 2 moral claim to the land." Thus the dynamic of the novel suggests that whatever rights to the land the Indians may once have possessed have been extinguished in a moral as well as a legal sense.

During the debate about removal, the American people discussed the extent to which the Indian could be

"civilized." The character of Mohegan John would indicate that Cooper felt that any such "civilization" was only superficial and temporary. The Pioneers emphasizes Mohegan's ideas of revenge (XII, pp. 134,

136-138); and his speeches make constant reference to his bloodthirsty past when he fought the Mingoes

(XXXVIII, pp. 437-438; cf. XIV, p. 163; XXXVI, p. 416).

The most realistic scene in the novel details

Mohegan's inability to handle alcohol. While Judge

Temple and his friends become properly jolly through drink, Mohegan progresses from melancholy, through 32

ferocity, to drunken stupor:

Mohegan continued to sing, while his countenance was becoming vacant, though, coupled with his thick bushy hair, it was assuming an expression very much like brutal ferocity. His notes were gradually growing louder, and soon rose to a height that caused a general cessation in the discourse ....

He shook his head, throwing his hair back from his countenance, and exposed eyes that were glaring with an expression of wild resentment. But the man was not himself. His hand seemed to make a fruitless effort to release his tomahawk which was confined by its handle to his belt, while his eyes gradually became vacant. Richard at that instant thrusting a mug before him, his features changed to the grin of idiocy, and seizing the vessel with both hands, he sunk backward on the bench and drank until satiated, when he made an effort to lay aside the mug with the helplessness of total inebriety. (Pioneers, XIV pp. 163-64)

At this point, Natty, observing John's behaviour, generalized on the inability of all Indians to handle liquor: "This is the way with all the savages; give them liquor, and they make dogs of themselves" (Pioneers, XIV, p. 164).

Since Mohegan is at the outer fringe of an exceedingly caste-conscious frontier society, the concern that Elizabeth, Judge Temple's daughter, shows for his welfare is quite remarkable:

"I grieve when I see old Mohegan walking about 33

these lands, like the ghost of one of their ancient possessors, and feel how small is my own right to possess them ....

"But what can I do? What can my father do? Should we offer the old man a home and a maintenance, his habits would compel him to refuse us. Neither, were we so silly as to wish such a thing, could we convert these clearings and farms again into hunting grounds, as the Leather-Stocking would wish to see them."

"You speak the truth, Miss Temple," said Edwards. "What can you do, indeed? But there is one thing I am certain you can and will do, when you become the mistress of these beautiful valleys—use your wealth with indulgence to the poor, and charity to the needy; indeed, you can do no more." (Pioneers, XXV, pp. 287-88)

This passage reveals that there are no essential differences between the views of Edwards, Judge Temple, or his daughter.

Between Edwards and the Judge there is a conflict over who

owns the land--but none over the uses to which the land

should be put. The Judge sees social harmony in terms of

abstract laws which are tempered by benevolence, while

Elizabeth plays the traditional feminine role which

emphasizes charity in contrast to the demands of the law.

All three, as Leather-Stocking well understands, are

firm believers in progress. Edwards' association with

Leather-Stocking has done no more than to give him what 34

Judge Temple already had—a nostalgic appreciation for a way of life that is no longer possible. This nostalgia is an ever-present part of the background which sets off the more immediate events of the novel. Certainly,

Mohegan would not wish to live as a dependent upon Judge

Temple and his family, and certainly, there can be no halting or turning back of progress. Along with Governor

Cass, Elizabeth Temple may "indulge the wish" that the blessings of progress "had been attained at a smaller sacrifice," but she does not stoop to the "miserable 3 affectation" of regretting that progress itself.

Although Mohegan poses no threat to anyone in

Templeton, Louisa Grant, the naive daughter of the Anglican clergyman, does express fear of his looks, "'I am startled by the manner of that Indian. Oh! his eye was horrid, as he turned to the moon'" (Pioneers, XII, p. 134). Cooper's description of Mohegan reveals contradictory attitudes at this point and therefore requires attention: As his swarthy visage, with its muscles fixed in rigid composure, was seen under the light of the moon, which struck his face obliquely, he seemed a picture of resigned old age on whom the storms of winter had beaten in vain, for the greater part of a century; but when, in turning his head, the rays fell directly on his dark, fiery eyes, they told a tale of passions unrestrained, and of thoughts free as air. The slight person of Miss Grant, which followed next, and which was but too thinly clad for the severity 35

of the season, formed a marked contrast to the wild attire and uneasy glances of the Delaware chief (Pioneers, XII, p. 132, italics mine).

The contradiction of "rigid composure" and "resigned old age" with "passions unrestrained," "thoughts free as air," and "uneasy glances" is the contradiction between the superficial appearance of the "civilized" Indian and the implied underlying reality revealed by his "fiery eyes."

Indeed those "fiery eyes" which startled Louisa that night are symbolically related to the "glaring eyes of a female panther" which caused the same Louisa to sink

"lifeless to the earth" in the following summer (Pioneers,

XXVIII, p. 315). The threat implicit in the Indian became explicit in the panther; Leatherstocking had to kill the animal which threatened the innocent lives of the two girls in the same way that he had killed many an Indian who had posed a similar threat to innocence. In The

Deerslayer one of the Indians killed by Natty Bumppo was known as "The Panther" (Deerslayer, XXVII, p. 492).

The one conflict involving John is spiritual and not physical; it centres around John's adherence to

Indian beliefs which contradict his conversion by the

Moravians. Rev. Mr. Grant, as Mohegan's antagonist in this struggle, expresses his horror at the Indian's notion of revenge: 36

"John, John! is this the religion that you learned from the Moravians? But no - I will not be so uncharitable as to suppose it. They are a pious, a gentle, and a mild people, and could never tolerate these passions." (Pioneers, XII, p. 134)

The only alternative is to suppose that John's conversion by the Moravians had not been complete; indeed, the language Cooper uses to describe that conversion would make it remarkable if it had been:

He had for a long time been an associate of the white man, particularly in their wars; and, having been, at a season when his services were of importance, much noticed and flattered, he had turned Christian, and was baptized by the name of John ....

From his long association with the white men, the habits of Mohegan were a mixture of the civilized and savage states, though there was certainly a strong preponderance in favour of the latter. In common with all his people, who dwelt within the influence of the Anglo-Americans, he had acquired new wants, and his dress was a mixture of native and European fashions. (Pioneers, VII, pp. 77-78)

Cooper bases John's conversion on a susceptibility to white flattery and thus implicitly denies the possibility of any but the most superficial changes from the state of

"savagery." The concept of civilizing the Indians is reduced to a picture of Indians wearing a ridiculous 37

mixture of both white and Indian clothing.

As John is dying, the Anglican minister inquires

of Leather-Stocking whether or not Mohegan's dying chants

and songs are Christian; Mr. Grant's horror at the idea of

John's reversion to Indian beliefs presents a dogmatic and

ludicrous contrast to Leather-Stocking's more philosophical

and humane approach:

"This is the moment, John, when the reflection that you did not reject the mediation of the Redeemer, will bring balm to your soul. Trust not to any act of former days, but lay the burden of your sins at his feet, and you have his own blessed assurance that he will not desert you."

"Though all you say be true, and you have Scriptur' gospels for it, too," said Natty, "you will make nothing of the Indian. He hasn't seen a Moravian priest sin' the war; and it's hard to keep them from going back to their native ways. I should think it would be as well to let the old man pass in peace." (Pioneers, XXXVIII, pp. 438-39)

John himself shows the full extent of his reversion when he says:-

"Hawkeye! my fathers call me to the happy hunting grounds. The path is clear, and the eyes of Mohegan grow young. I look, but I see no white skins; there are none to be seen but just and brave Indians. Farewell, Hawkeye! you shall go with the Fire-eater and the Young Eagle j^Major Effingham and his grandson, Oliver Edwards], to the white man's 38

heaven; but I go after my fathers. Let the bow and tomahawk, and pipe, and the wampum of Mohegan be laid in his grave; for when he starts 't will be in the night, like a warrior on a war party, and he cannot stop to seek them." (Pioneers. XXXVIII, p. 439)

This reference to a segregated heaven indicates Mohegan's feeling that he had no real place in the white man's world and that he could find fulfillment only among his own people - whether in this life or the next.

Small details indicate that Cooper wished his

readers to take a tolerant view of the Indian's dying

return to the beliefs of his people. The emotional

balance of the book lies with Leather-Stocking's tolerance

rather than with Mr. Grant's well-meaning but exclusive

dogmatism. For example, in his first sermon, several

months earlier, Mr. Grant himself had commended to his

congregation "'that feeling of universal philanthropy,

which, by teaching us to love, cause us to judge with

lenity, all men; striking at the root of self-righteousness,

and warning us to be sparing of our condemnation of others'"

(Pioneers, XI, pp. 125-26). When Mohegan spoke his last

words to Hawkeye, Mr. Grant asked whether he was trusting

"'his salvation to the Rock of Ages'" (Pioneers, XXXVIII,

p. 440). Although Hawkeye answers in the negative,

Mohegan, at the moment of death, is described as "reposing 39

against the rock" (Pioneers, XXXVIII, p. 442).

This tolerance, however, rested upon a "separate but equal" view of racial development; as such, it left very little room for the possibility of genuine conversion to Christianity or civilization (which were largely synonymous in Cooper's America). Consequently, it provided very little place in civilized, Christian

America for the Indian. Natty Bumppo's tolerant attitude suggests that the most an advancing civilization can do for the Indian is to let him live as best he can and die in peace. Developments in the nineteenth century showed that this was not possible. The Pioneers shows that

advancing civilization could not let even Natty Bumppo live and die in peace. Mr. Grant's evangelical zeal saw possibilities for the eventual assimilation of a civilized

and Christian Indian people; unfortunately, like so many

of his fellows who shared the same view, his devotion and

concern were directed towards the ideals of conversion

and assimilation rather than towards the Indian people

themselves.

The attitude finally expressed by the novel

therefore, is that of Elizabeth. Her sentimental charity

can only bewail the sad condition of Mohegan; it was

powerless to help him because, like the charity of the 40

American people in the nineteenth century, it was over- 4 ridden by the more dominant commitment to progress.

Edwards' epitaph for Mohegan, '"His faults were

those of an Indian, and his virtues those of a man"'

(Pioneers, XLI, p. 473), presents a good summary of the novel's understanding of the Indian. It suggests that,

as a race, the Indians had certain defects peculiar to

themselves but it makes no suggestion that they had any unique virtues: their virtues were common to humanity.

Thus, the Indian was defined negatively, in terms of his

faults.

In Mohegan John's degradation, Cooper showed

the final results of Indian-white relations as he

observed them in the first quarter of the nineteenth

century. As we have seen, many well-meaning white men,

viewing such degradation in the Indian peoples around

them, espoused a removal policy as the one way by which

the Indian peoples could be saved from complete extinction.

Cooper, by painting such a vivid picture of John's

drunkenness, his marginal status as a part of white

society, and his final reversion to Indian beliefs,

encouraged his readers to feel that the Indian had no

place in white civilization; in doing so, he contributed

to the growing sentiment for removal of the Indian people.

Mohegan John and Leather-Stocking are incidental 41

characters in The Pioneers; however, as Marcus Clavel has shown, critics expressed great enthusiasm for the portrayal of Leather-Stocking, and, to a lesser extent, for that of Mohegan. No doubt this enthusiasm encouraged

Cooper to give his readers more of the same."* In his youth, Mohegan had been known as "Chingachgook," which meant "the Great Snake" (Pioneers, VII, p. 78); although

Cooper presented Chingachgook as a much more heroic and romantic character in The Last of the Mohicans, The

Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, neither the reader nor the author can forget that the Indian's last days had already been set forth in The Pioneers. The Pioneers, therefore, has primary importance for an understanding of the direction in which the other Leatherstocking novels must move: the younger Chingachgook of the later novels is predestined to end his life as Mohegan John.

B. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

The Last of the Mohicans, more than any of the other Leatherstocking Tales, focuses on Indians; against the background of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and of the older conflict between Huron and Delaware

Indians, Hawkeye and his friends struggle against the evil Magua. Violence plays a large part in the story, and the novel comes close to equating Indian culture with 42

a love of violence, revenge, and torture.

In order to understand its presentation of

Indian life we will examine four different aspects of the novel: 1. Its picture of Indian character; 2. Its doctrine of race; 3. The discussion of Indian land rights; and 4. The elegaic mood it develops in connection with the Indian.

The total portrayal of Indians in the novel is greatly influenced by the predominant role of the

treacherous Huron, Magua. Magua speaks of his past contact with whites and blames the white man's alcohol for his depraved condition:

"Magua was born a chief and a warrior among the red Hurons of the lakes; he saw the suns of twenty summers make the snows of twenty winters run off in the streams, before he saw a pale-face; and he was happy! Then his Canada fathers came into the woods, and taught him to drink the fire-water, and he became a rascal. The Hurons drove him from the graves of his fathers, as they would chase the hunted buffalo . . . ."

"Was it the fault of Le Renard that his head was not made of rock? Who gave him the fire-water? Who made him a villain? 'Twas the pale-faces." (Mohicans, XI, p. 116)

Once, in the service of the British, Magua had become drunk and insubordinate; the whipping which the British officer, Major Munro, gave as punishment still offends 43

the Indian's sense of justice: "'Is it justice to make evil, and then punish for it? Magua was not himself; it was the fire-water that spoke and acted for him! but Munro did not believe it. The Huron chief was tied up before all the pale-faced warriors, and whipped like a dog'"

(Mohicans, XI, p. 117). This whipping provides Magua with his deepest motivation: the desire for revenge; in order to achieve this revenge he seeks to enslave Munro's daughter, Cora, in an Indian marriage. The major part of the novel describes the attempts by Hawkeye and his friends to free Cora and her sister, Alice, from Magua and his fellow Hurons.

Magua's malignant qualities are superimposed upon the traditional picture of the Indian; Cooper describes his villain with such stock words and phrases as "characteristic stoicism," "sullen fierceness,"

"swarthy lineaments," "native wildness," "cunning," and

"disdain" (Mohicans, I, pp. 9-10). Cora's first sight of him called forth "an indescribable look of pity, admiration, and horror" (Mohicans, I, p. 11). These three emotions are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they in easy harmony with one another; together, they form a complex emotional attitude which, perhaps, typified the 19th century response to the Indian. The

Indian aroused pity because he stood in the way of westward expansion and was doomed to see his own way of life disappear. He was admired because of his physical grace, his closeness to nature, and because he was perceived to enjoy the kind of primal heroic society which was no longer possible for those people who lived under the influence of a centuries-old civilization. He inspired horror in border warfare because he often exacted a heavy price from those who, in the vanguard of western expansion, were attempting to take his lands.

The bloody quality of his warfare produced an underlying attitude of horror, so that Cooper had only to mention the word, "horror,'* to bring it to the surface.

Although Magua blames his moral failure upon his weakness for the white-man's alcohol, Cooper shows that the Huron suffers from a much more basic corruption of spirit. "Far above the more vulgar superstitions of his tribe" (Mohicans, XXV, p. 315), Magua had not adopted any of the positive values of the white man as a replacement for the discarded reverence of his fellow tribesmen; on the contrary, as shown by his pious attitude towards the beaver colony (Mohicans, XXVII, p. 342), he had developed a Machiavellian character which knew how to counterfeit belief for its own ends.

On three different occasions, Magua makes cunning and artful speeches in which he deliberately plays on the emotions of his Indian audience; on two of these occasions, 45

he successfully seeks to arouse desire for revenge:

They ["his Indian audienceJ had answered his melancholy and mourning by sympathy and sorrow; his assertions by gestures of confirmation;,and his boastings, with the exultation of savages. When he spoke of courage their looks were firm and responsive; when he alluded to their injuries, their eyes kindled with fury; when he mentioned the taunts of the women, they dropped their heads in shame; but when he pointed out their means of vengeance, he struck a chord which never failed to thrill In the breast of an Indian. (Mohicans, XI, p. 122)

He paused, and looked about him in affected veneration for the departed, but, in truth, to note the effect of his opening narrative ....

Then Magua dropped his voice, which had hitherto been clear, strong, and elevated, and touched upon the merits of the dead. No quality that was likely to command the sympathy of an Indian escaped his notice .... He so managed his allusions, that in a nation, which was composed of so few families, he contrived to strike every chord that might find, in its turn, some breast in which to vibrate ....

Magua had so artfully blended the natural sympathies with the religious superstition of his auditors, that their minds, already prepared by custom to sacrifice a victim to the manes of their countrymen, lost - every vestige of humanity in a wish for revenge. (Mohicans, XXIV, pp. 300-302) On the third occasion, when several of the younger Huron chiefs wished to launch an immediate 46

surprise attack on the Delawares, Magua had to persuade them to choose his more devious policy:

When he perceived that, while the old men applauded his moderation, many of the fiercest and most distinguished of the warriors listened to these politic plans with lowering looks, he cunningly led them back to the subject which they most loved. He spoke openly of the fruits of their wisdom, which he boldly pronounced would be a complete and final triumph over their enemies. He even darkly hinted that their success might be extended, with proper ' caution, in such a manner as to include the destruction of all whom they had reason to hate. In short, he so blended the warlike with the artful, as to flatter the propensities of both parties, and to leave to each a subject for hope, while neither could say it clearly comprehended his intentions . . . .

All perceived that more was meant than was uttered, and each one believed that the hidden meaning was precisely such as his own faculties enabled him to anticipate. (Mohicans, XXVII, p. 340)6

In Magua, therefore, Cooper presents the Indian not simply as a savage, but as a corrupt and even diabolical being:

While others slept, ... he neither knew nor sought any repose. Had there been one sufficiently curious to have watched the movements of the newly elected chief, he would have seen him in a corner of his lodge, musing on the subject of his future plans .... Occasionally, the air breathed through the crevices of the hut, and the low flame that fluttered about the embers of the fire, threw their wavering light on the person of the 47

sullen recluse. At such moments, it would not have been difficult to have fancied the dusky savage the Prince of Darkness, brooding on his own fancied wrongs, and plotting evil. (Mohicans, XXVII, p. 341)

Hawkeye's Indian friends differ from Magua chiefly in the fact that their association with white men has not corrupted them; they still retain the older

Indian virtues. While Magua's treachery dominates his total personality and all of his relationships, the two

Mohicans are treacherous only to that degree which Hawkeye would call normal for an Indian. Thus, after Chingachgook had murdered and scalped a French sentry, Hawkeye comments philosophically, "''Twould have been a cruel and an inhuman act for a white-skin; but 'tis the gift and natur• of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be denied!'" (Mohicans, XIV, p. 161). Similarly, the feelings of Duncan Heyward, Cora, and Alice, when they first meet Uncas, are that while he "might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance," he

"could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery"

(Mohicans, VI, p. 54; italics mine).

Physically, Uncas is described in terms which suggest the "noble savage":

At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travellers anxiously regarded the upright, flexible 48

figure of the young Mohican, graceful and unrestrain• ed in the attitudes and movements of nature. Though his person was more than usually screened by a green and fringed hunting-shirt, like that of the white man, there was no concealment to his dark, glancing fearless eye, alike terrible and calm; the bold outline of his high, haughty features, pure in their native red; or to the dignified elevation of his receding forehead, together with all the finest proportions of a noble head, bared to the generous scalping tuft. It was the first opportunity possessed by Duncan and his companions, to view the marked lineaments of either of their Indian attendants, and each individual of the party felt relieved from a burden of doubt, as the proud and determined, though wild expression of the features of the young warrior forced itself on their notice. . . . The ingenuous Alice gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Heyward, though accustomed to see the perfection of form which abounds among the uncorrupted natives, openly expressed his admiration at such an unblemished specimen of the noblest proportions of man. (Mohicans, VI, p. 54)

Apart, however, from the hunting shirt, "the dignified elevation of his receding forehead," and "the generous scalping tuft," the picture is altogether lacking in specifics. For its effect it depends upon the emotional appeal of adjectives such as: "graceful," "fearless," 49

"terrible and calm," "bold," "haughty," "dignified,"

"proud and determined, though wild," "uncorrupted," and

"unblemished."

Like Magua, Uncas is no ordinary Indian; but whereas Magua is described in terms that suggest a repudiation of older beliefs with nothing to put in their place, Uncas is said to be a person who has been raised

above other Indians by the finer quality of his emotional life—the very part of Magua's personality which had been so badly corrupted. Thus, Cooper speaks of a "sympathy that elevated him far above the intelligence, and advanced him probably centuries before the practices, of his nation" (Mohicans, XII, p. 132). Again, however, apart from imputing to Uncas a romantic attraction and devotion to Cora, Cooper shows nothing in the Mohican's 7 conversation or action which justifies this description.

On the contrary, the attractive qualities which Cooper depicts in Uncas are precisely those heroic virtues traditionally associated with Indian society: loyalty, great physical endurance, and courage. Cooper gives no indication that Uncas could enter into American civiliz• ation on terms of dignity and equality; to the extent that Uncas became civilized he would become less than he already was.

Uncas could have no dignified part in American civilization because of the novel's implicit doctrine of 50

race. Of all the characters, Cora Munro presents the most liberal viewpoint on race-relations—a viewpoint which the plot of the novel invalidates. When her sister, Alice, and their friend, Duncan Heyward, show their distrust of

Magua, Cora asks, "'Should we distrust the man, because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?'" (Mohicans, II, p. 15). The reader, although responding positively to Cora's open attitude, is aware that her confidence is sadly misplaced because Magua has already been described in negative terms. Cora wants- people to be judged on their own merits, rather than on the basis of race; as she had given the benefit of this doubt to Magua, so she demands it for herself when the

Huron accuses the whites of destroying his character,

"'Am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist, whose shades of countenance may resemble mine?'"

(Mohicans, XI,. p. 116).

Similarly, in her interview with Tamenund, the aged Delaware chief, Cora introduces herself as, '"A woman. One of a hated race, if thou wilt—a Yengee.

But one who has never harmed thee, and who cannot harm thy people if she could; who asks for succour'" (Mohicans,

XXIX, p. 366). Since Cora, herself, has mixed blood, the phrase, "hated race," has a double reference: as her white ancestry was hated by the Indians, so her black ancestry was hated by the whites. By speaking in this way, Cora 51

indicates awareness of a darker and more tragic aspect of race; as the interview continues this understanding comes to the fore, "'Like thee and thine, venerable chief . . . the curse of my ancestors has fallen heavily upon their child'" (Mohicans, XXIX, p. 368). Here race is seen in a deterministic context; indeed, the latter part of the book is overshadowed by the idea of divine displeasure at certain races. The dynamics of the book all work to deny the liberal and optimistic view which

Cora articulates at its beginning.

In one situation, relating to black-white rather than Indian-white relations, Cooper indicates an under• standing of the deep roots of racist attitudes. When

Major Munro accuses Duncan Heyward of prejudice towards

Cora because of her mixed race, the omniscient narrator comments on the young officer's denial, "'Heaven protect me from a prejudice so unworthy of my reason!' returned

Duncan, at the same time conscious of such a feeling, and that as deeply rooted as if it had been ingrafted in

Q his nature" (Mohicans, XVI, p. 188). Cooper, however, does not pursue this flaw in Heyward's character, nor does he allow it to influence the picture of Heyward as a generally admirable character.

The novel itself shares with Heyward this concern for racial purity. Hawkeye repeatedly speaks of himself as 52

a "man without a cross." In his first "Preface" to the novel, Cooper explains that the Delawares, Mohicans, and other Wapanachki Indians called themselves the "Lenni 9

Lenape" which means an "unmixed people." Against this background, Duncan Heyward articulates the attitude of the book as a whole when he says that the thought of Cora being forced into marriage with Magua "*is worse than a thousand deaths'" (Mohicans, XI, p. 125). Magua's desire to make Cora his wife, a mixture of sexual passion and the desire for revenge, contrasts with the love, devotion, and admiration which Uncas showed for her. But, in spite of his admirable qualities, any proposed union between Uncas and Cora would have caused Major Munro,

Heyward, and Hawkeye almost as much anguish and disapproval as did the idea of her forced marriage to Magua. Hawkeye's opposition to a mixed marriage, even when it involves

Uncas whom he loves as his own son, reveals itself at the time of mourning for Cora and Uncas; when the Indian girls hint strongly of their heavenly union and future happiness Hawkeye "shook his head, like one who knew the error of their simple creed" (Mohicans, XXXIII, p. 416).

Although Hawkeye is the close friend of

Chingachgook and Uncas, he constantly maintains the distinction between white man and Indian. Always 53

emphasizing that he himself is a white man, he explains differences in terms of his doctrine of divinely appointed racial gifts. Thus he excuses Indian practices such as scalping by saying that this is in accordance with Indian gifts (Mohicans, XIV, p. 161). While he uses the concept of racial gifts to justify the action of his friends,

Hawkeye usually abandons such sophistry when he refers to his Huron enemies:

"A Huron! ... they are a thievish race, nor do I care by whom they are adopted; you can never make anything of them but skulks and vagabonds." (Mohicans, IV, p. 35)

"A Mingo is a Mingo, and God having made him so, neither the Mohawks nor any other tribe can alter him." (Mohicans, IV, p. 37)

"*Tis a safe thing to calculate on the knavery of an Iroquois." (Mohicans, IV, p. 38)

Through its emphasis on racial purity, its understanding of the deep roots of racial strife and prejudice, and its concept of racial gifts, therefore, the novel very strongly suggests that Indian and white races cannot exist harmoniously in close contact with each other.

At the same time the ever advancing frontier of white settlement made close contact between the two races more and more frequent. Throughout the novel several of the characters refer to this advancing frontier and to the white man's insatiable greed for land. Cooper 54

introduces Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook as the two friends discuss the opposing rights of Indians and whites to the land. The physical setting, within "that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July" (Mohicans, III, p. 23), and the context of the plot, where the two friends use the discussion to pass time while they await the arrival of Uncas, give the discussion the atmosphere of an interesting debate rather than that of a vital question of justice. By accepting Chingachgook's tradition that the Mohican people had originated west of the Mississippi and had taken their land in the east by conquest, Hawkeye attempts to justify the white conquest: "'Your fathers came from the setting sun, crossed the big river, fought the people of the country, and took the land; and mine came from the red sky of the morning, over the salt lake, and did their work much after the fashion that had been set them by yours; then let God judge the matter between us, and friends spare their words!" (Mohicans, III, pp. 25-26). The discussion then degenerates into an argument about the relative superiority of white over

Indian weapons; when Chingachgook mentions the white man's fire-arms, Hawkeye replies that an Indian with a bow and arrow was more dangerous than the average settler with a 55

rifle. In a more generous mood, he then admits his own ignorance of white history and asks Chingachgook to tell him "'What passed, according to the traditions of the red men, when our fathers first met'" (Mohicans, III, p. 27).

Chingachgook's response brings an air of romantic pathos to the story of his people's disinheritance:

"The first pale-faces who came among us spoke no English. They came in a large canoe, when my fathers had buried the tomahawk with the red men around them. Then Hawkeye,... we were one people, and we were happy. ... The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its deer and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us children; we worshipped the Great Spirit; and we kept the Maquas beyond the sound of our songs of triumph! . . .

"The Dutch landed and gave my people the fire• water; they drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet, and they foolishly thought they had found the Great Spirit. Then they parted with their land. Foot by foot they were driven back from the shores, until I, that am a chief and a sagamore, have never seen the sun but through the trees, and have never visited the graves of my fathers! . . .

"Where are the blossoms of those summers!—fallen, one by one: so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hill-top, and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the sagamores, 56

for my boy is the last of the Mohicans." (Mohicans, III, pp. 28-29)

Significantly, Chingachgook*s account gives very little detail about the way his people were "driven back from the shores;" instead it singles out their inability to handle liquor as the reason for their loss of the land. Emotionally, therefore, the passage arouses in the reader a nostalgic sympathy for a dispossessed and dying race; this sympathy, however, cannot become more than false sentiment since, intellectually, the reader has become aware that the Indians' own claim to the land is based on past violence and the dispossession of other peoples, and further, that the Indians' weakness for alcohol was partly responsible for their loss of the land.

In a moving speech Tamenund, the ancient

Delaware chief, states the fact of the white man's

"thirst" for land but does not condemn it; like the dialogue of Hawkeye and Chingachgook, this speech deals in nostalgic pathos rather than in detailed assessment of Indian rights and white wrongs. Only the villain,

Magua, states the Indian case against the whites with any vigour, and this is done within the discrediting context of demagoguery:

"With his tongue, he stops the ears of the Indians; his heart teaches him to pay warriors to fight his battles; his cunning tells him how to

get together the goods of the earth; and his arms 57

enclose the land, from the shores of the salt water, to the islands of the great lake. His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces." (Mohicans, XXIX, p. 362)

The death of Uncas at the end of the novel

illustrates the difficulty involved in romanticizing the

Indian in Cooper's day. Magua died ignobly in accordance with the dictates of popular art; he was evil, and evil

had to be vanquished. But Uncas was noble and heroic; he

died because he was not civilized and could not become

civilized without becoming less than he was. A civilized

and educated Uncas, within the romantic tradition, could do no more than cry with Holderlin's Hyperion:

"I reflect, and find myself and I was before— alone, with all the griefs of mortality; and my heart's refuge, the world in its eternal oneness is gone; Nature closes her arms, and I stand like an alien before her and understand her not. Ah! had I never gone to your schools! The knowledge which I pursued down its tunnels and galleries, from which, in my youthful folly, I expected the confirmation of all my pure joy—that knowledge has corrupted everything for me. Among you I became so truly reasonable, learned so thoroughly to distinguish myself from what surrounds me, that now I am solitary in the beautiful world, an outcast from the garden of Nature, in which I grew and flowered, drying up 58

under the noonday sun."

Indeed, the readers of Cooper are led to see themselves somewhat in the nature of Hyperion—looking back at a natural childhood which has been lost forever in the interests of a more mature, if less satisfying, adult• hood. Uncas appeals to us because he represents that childhood. In The Pioneers, Cooper attempted to justify this concept of maturity; in The Last of the Mohicans, he tried to show why childhood had to be left behind.

Uncas died in accordance with his father's pathetic understanding of the demise of his people; at the time when Uncas is introduced in the novel, his father foreshadowed his death when he said that Uncas was the last of the Mohicans—he does not suggest even the possibility that Uncas might have children. Uncas had to die because, in a growing America, there was no place for him which would not diminish his stature, make his nobility irrelevant, or pervert his generosity into a meanness and contempt similar to Magua*s. The only other possibility was that he might degenerate into a drunken memory of things past—as Cooper had already shown his father to be in The Pioneers.

f Although in his 1826 "Preface," Cooper refers to the Delawares as the "greatest and most civilized of the Indian nations, that existed within the limits of 59

the present United States, "J""L the book gives no evidence

to support this statement. Neither Chingachgook nor

Tamenund make any references to fields or agriculture;

the reader, therefore, infers that the "most civilized

of the Indian nations" lived entirely by hunting. For

all the nobility which Cooper ascribes to him, Uncas

remains a heroic savage whose political allegiance is

to the "right" cause for very inadequate reasons. In

spite of generalized statements about his nobility, Uncas

has no qualities which would allow him to become either

a happy, or a welcome, member of civilized American

society.

We have looked at The Last of the Mohicans to

examine its picture of Indian character, its doctrine of racial purity, its discussion of Indian land rights, and the elegaic aura it casts over the disappearance of

Indian peoples. The discussion of land rights and the picture of a dying tribe of Indians both help to generate a sympathetic understanding of Indian problems; however, both of these tend to vague feelings of good will rather than to any political commitment. At the same time they are overshadowed by the negative picture of

Indian character and the emphasis upon racial purity; these aspects of the novel indicate that the Indian could not find any firm place in a truly civilized society. 60

C. THE PRAIRIE

Published in 182 7, shortly after Cooper went to

France, The Prairie has special significance for this

study since it was the last of the Leatherstocking

Tales to be written before Indian removal became a brutal

fact. Although The Prairie presents a later stage in the

history of Natty Bumppo, and of American development, than

does The Pioneers, it depicts a frontier in an earlier

stage of development than does the 1823 novel. In The

Pioneers, the problem of Indian-white relationships has

been solved—by the disappearance of the Indian; in

The Prairie, the frontier has shifted westward and a new

cycle of Indian-white relations has begun. This shift

corresponds to Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis that

American history presents a series of continually

advancing frontiers. Important also is the fact that this novel deals with Indian-white relations during a period

of history which is closer in time to Cooper's writing

than that of any of the other Leatherstocking novels.

The question of land use and ownership plays an

important part in this novel, with five distinctive points of view represented by various characters: the Sioux

Indians wish to keep the land to themselves and to drive out any encroaching whites; the Pawnee Indians see the necessity of accommodating themselves to the westward 61

expansion of American civilization; the Trapper, Natty Bumppo, wishes to leave the land undisturbed as a refuge from the uncongenial ways of the settlements; Ishmael Bush, the squatter, wants to occupy good tracts of land with no concern for legal title; and Captain Middleton represents the authority of the United States over the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. A rather implausible plot brings these five viewpoints into contact with each other. Thus, in The Prairie Cooper had a major opportunity to deal with different and conflicting views of a frontier land. Our examination of The Prairie will concentrate on these viewpoints and then will look briefly at other factors in the Indian-white relationship. As in the other Leatherstocking Tales, Natty Bumppo thinks of Indians as good or bad and relates this goodness or badness to their tribal affiliations. The Sioux are identified as bad Indians from their first appearance when the Trapper speaks of "'a bloody band of accursed Sioux'" and goes on to refer to them as "miscreants," "thieves," "reptiles," "knaves," "devils," and "imps" (Prairie, III, pp. 34-37). The Trapper's attitude is also that of the book as a whole; Cooper describes the raiding party as "a band of beings, who resembled demons rather than men, sporting in their nightly revels across the bleak plain" (Prairie, III, p. 35). In another 62

editorial passage, Cooper, speaking of the Sioux as

"The Ishmaelites of the American deserts," implicitly

links them to Ishmael Bush and his kind:

From time immemorial the hands of the Sioux had been turned against their neighbours of the prairies, and even at this day, when the influence and authority of a civilized government are beginning to be felt around them, they are considered as a treacherous and dangerous race. At the period of our tale, the case was far worse; few white men trusting themselves in the remote and unprotected regions where so false a tribe was known to dwell. (Prairie, IV, p. 39)12

A twentieth century reader might suspect that

the basic reason for regarding the Sioux as "bad Indians"

lay in their opposition to the westward movement of

American settlement. Thus, although Cooper gives full

sentimental play to the idea of aboriginal title to the

land, only the Sioux are willing to carry this idea beyond the limits of sentimentality. Old Le Balafre

scornfully attacks the white man's insatiable appetite

for land: "Why cannot his people see everything, since

they crave all?" (Prairie, XXVIII, p. 383). The Sioux chief, Mahtoree, proposed that the Pawnee and the Sioux should no longer fight each other but rather should act together to prevent further white encroachment on Indian land:

"Does the wolf destroy the wolf, or the rattler 63

strike his brother? You know they do not; there• fore, Teton, are you wrong to go on a path that leads to the village of a Red-skin, with a tomahawk in your hand" ....

"The redman can never want an enemy: they are plentier than the leaves on the trees, the birds in the heavens, or the buffaloes on the prairies. Let my brother open his eyes wide: does he nowhere see an enemy he would strike? ....

"Now, let not the mind of my brother go on a crooked path. If a redskin strikes a redskin forever, who will be masters of the prairies, when no warriors are left to say, 'They are mine?' Hear the voices of the old men. They tell us that in their days many Indians have come out of the woods under the rising sun, and that they have filled the prairies with their complaints of the robberies of the Long-Knives. Where a Pale-face comes, a redman cannot stay. The land is too small. They are always hungry. See, they are here already!" (Prairie, XXX, p. 397-398)

By locating the action in Pawnee rather than Sioux territory, Cooper effectively denies the right of trespassing Sioux to condemn similar trespasses by the

Americans. As the Trapper pointed out to Weucha, if the land was Pawnee territory, then the whites were no more trespassers than the Sioux (Prairie, IV, p. 44).

Like the Sioux, the Pawnees do not like white usurpation of their lands. Hard-Heart, the Pawnee•chief, shows his abused sense of justice at the manner in which 64

France had sold the Louisianna Territory to the United

States; he asks "Where were the chiefs of the Pawnee-

Loups when this bargain was made? ... Is a nation to be sold like the skin of a beaver?" (Prairie, XVIII, p.

220).

In spite of this grievance the Pawnees were firm friends of Captain Middleton and his men. Repeated emphasis on the might of the American people gives an air of inevitability to the westward movement so that Hard-

Heart appears to be the voice of reason as well as of honour to friends, and hospitality to strangers. Yet, however reasonable, honourable, and hospitable Hard-Heart may have been, D.H. Lawrence's comment is most appropriate in this context: "The Red Man and the White Man are not blood-brothers: even when they are most friendly. When they are most friendly, it is as a rule the one betraying 13 his race-spirit to the other." Cooper was aware of this betrayal and reveals it in one of the most pathetic statements in the novel. As the victorious Pawnee are escorting their white friends to the Pawnee village, Cooper says: "The victors seemed to have lost every trace of ferocity with their success, and appeared disposed to consult the most trifling of the wants of that engrossing people who were daily encroaching on their rights and reducing the redman of the West 65

from their state of proud independence to the condition of fugitives and wanderers." (Prairie, XXXIII, p. 436)

Already, in his relations with his own tribe,

Hard-Heart has reduced himself to the role of a puppet apologist for the white man:

He compared their countless numbers to the flights of migratory birds in the season of blossoms, or in the fall of the year. With a delicacy that none knew better how to practice than an Indian warrior, he made no direct mention of the rapacious tempers, that so many of them had betrayed, in their dealings with the redmen. Feeling that the sentiment of distrust was strongly engrafted in the tempers of his tribe, he rather endeavoured to soothe any just resent• ment they might entertain, by indirect excuses and apologies. (Prairie, XXXIII, p. 439)

Thus, although The Prairie ends with a picture of the victorious Pawnees at peace with the white men, there is no doubt that Hard-Heart and his tribesmen have nothing to which they can look forward except the degradation which characterized Mohegan John in The Pioneers.

Richard Chase has pointed out the autumnal mood of 14

The Prairie. The elegiac tone which this mood engenders relates most directly to the final death of Natty Bumppo and to the unrealized dream, which he symboliz'ed, of white men living in harmony with nature and with the

Indians. In addition to its relation to Natty Bumppo, 66

however, this tone also relates to the Indians and to the prairie which the reader begins to see as the last locale in which these Indians could be seen in some of their original heroic grandeur.

The Trapper has no desire for either ownership

or possession of more land than was needed for his grave.

As he said to Le Balafre, when the old Indian had accused

all whites of possessing an insatiable greed for land:

"I understand you, chief; nor will I gainsay the justice of your words, seeing that they are too much founded in truth. But though born of the race you love so little, my worst enemy, not even a lying Mingo, would dare to say ... that I ever coveted more ground than the Lord has intended each man to fill." (Prairie, XXVIII, pp. 373-74)

In his ten years on the prairie, the Trapper

had not upset either the ecological or the societal

balance of the area. The arrival of Ishmael Bush and

his family signals a decisive change in this balance—

with their axes as the symbols and agents of this

change. As the sons of Ishmael quickly cut down a

small grove of trees, the Trapper "cast his eyes

upwards at the vacancies they left in the heavens, with

a melancholy gaze, and finally turned away, muttering to

himself, with a bitter smile, like one who disdained

giving a more audible utterance to his discontent"

(Prairie, II, p. 13). To escape this kind of destruction, 6 7

the Trapper had left the state of New York:

"They scourge the very •arth with their axes. Such hills and hunting-grounds as I have seen stripped of the gifts of the Lord, without remorse or shame! I tarried till the mouths of my hounds were deafened by the blows of the chopper, and then I came West in search of quiet. It was a grievous journey that I made, a grievous toil to pass through falling timber, and to breathe the thick air of smoky clearings, week after week, as I did. 'Tis a far country too, that state of York from this!" (Prairie, VII, p. 83)

He had hoped that the prairie desert would deter further

expansion of the frontier but now wonders if anything can

stay the march of the "choppers". He does not love the

prairie as he had once loved the forest, but he does take

a grim delight in looking at the desolation of the land•

scape as a sign of God's judgement on human waste:

"I often think the Lord has placed this barren belt of prairie behind the states, to warn men to what their folly may yet bring the land! Ay! weeks, if not months, may you journey in these open fields, in which there is neither dwelling nor habitation for man or beast. Even the savage animals travel miles on miles to seek their dens: and yet the wind seldom blows from the east, but I conceit the sound of axes, and the crash of falling trees, are in my ears." (Prairie, II, p. 19)

"What will the Yankee choppers say, when they 68

have cut their path from the eastern to the western waters, and find that a hand, which can lay the 'arth bare at a blow, has been here and swept the country, in very mockery of their wickedness. They will turn on their tracks like a fox that doubles, and then the rank smell of their own footsteps will show them the madness of their waste." (Prairie, VII, p. 83)

The Trapper's attitude to the land does not represent a political option as do the other view• points expressed in The Prairie. Instead, his view,

although impractical, stands in judgement upon these other views. We must note, however, that the novel cannot be construed as embodying such a judgement; rather, it remains in the realm of unfulfilled prophecy.

In opposition to Ishmael Bush, who recognized no ownership but that of possession, the Trapper constantly affirmed that the Indians were the rightful owners of the country (Prairie, II, p. 23; V, p. 64;

VII, pp. 84-86; XVIII, p. 220; XXV, p. 329). In spite of this view, he does agree that Bush should fight rather than retreat from the Sioux and he directs Bush to a rock which could be turned into a fort. In spite of the Trapper's opposition to the western movement of

American civilization, he is, in the final analysis, on the side of that civilization. He shows much less hesitation to fight the Sioux than he does to fight 69

Ishmael. Although he bewails the fact that "color, and property, and tongue, and 11arning should make so wide a difference in those who, after all, are but the children of one father!" (Prairie, V, p. 61), the

Trapper is not disposed to argue with Ishmael Bush's statement that "color should be something, when

Christians meet in such a place as this" (Prairie, V, p. 65) .

The Trapper's basic allegiance to the cause of the advancing whites is shown by the fact that he had joined the army of "Mad Anthony" Wayne and helped to defeat the Indians of the Old Northwest.

"I was passing from the states on the sea-shore into these far regions, when I crossed the trail of his army, and I fell in, on his rear, just as a looker-on; but when they got to blows, the crack of my rifle was heard among the rest, though to my shame it may be said, I never knew the right of the quarrel, as well as a man of threescore and ten should know the reason of his acts afore he takes mortal life which is a gift he never can return!" (Prairie, V, p. 67)15

The "right of the quarrel", which Bumppo had not bothered to investigate, concerned the rights of Indians to possession of their lands—rights which had been set forth in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 but never enforced by the American government. Following- the Revolutionary war, 70

settlers had moved into Indian lands north of the Ohio river. In the face of Indian opposition the Government sent in expeditions to protect the settlers. Under General Anthony Wayne, the Indians were defeated on August 20, 1794 and subsequently forced to cede almost two-thirds of the present state of Ohio as well as part of Indiana. Apart from superficial similarities such as having served with "Mad Anthony" and a dislike of law courts, Ishmael Bush and Natty Bumppo had nothing in common. Ishmael Bush and his family are portrayed as dull, rough, ignorant, and lawless frontiersmen. Although Bush is lawless, he is not an advocate of chaos; throughout the novel, one of his main concerns is to maintain order within his own family (cf. Prairie, VIII, p. 100). But while he recognized the need for domestic order, he was not aware of any larger social unit which could make similar claims upon his liberty. Ishmael Bush had no use for a legal system which was in opposition to his own desires. When a dispute arose between Abiram White and Ishmael's son, Asa, Ishmael promised justice according to the "law of nature":

"When the law of the land is weak, it is right the lav/ of nature should be strong. You understand me, Asa; and you know me. As for you, Abiram, the child has done you wrong, and it is my place to see 71

you righted. Remember; I tell you justice shall be done; it is enough. But you have said hard things agin me and my family. If the hounds of the law have put their bills on the trees and stumps of the clearings, it was for no act of dishonesty, as you know, but because we maintain the rule that 'arth is common property." (Prairie, VIII, p. 103)

Similarly, in an early dialogue with the

Trapper, Bush asserted his attitude to land ownership:

"I am as rightful an owner of the land I stand on, as any governor of the States! Can you tell me, stranger, where the law or the reason is to be found, which says that one man shall have a section, or a town, or perhaps a county to his use, and another have to beg for earth to make his grave in?" (Prairie, V, pp. 64-65)

Again, in an argument with his son, Ishmael refers to this lawless attitude in terms of a noble legacy:

"The world is wide, my gallant boy, and there's many a noble plantation on it, without a tenant. Go; you have title deeds sign'd and seal'd to your hand. Few fathers portion their children better than Ishmael Bush." (Prairie, VIII, p. 101)

Basing his claim on occupancy, Ishmael makes a powerful 1 6 appeal to the law of nature. His squatter's mentality had already involved him in trouble with the law in more settled regions; now it involves him in conflict with

Indians. He is, therefore, a representative of those frontiersmen who so often brought American frontier society 72

into bloody conflict with Indian peoples and made necessary government intervention in the form of both military force and land purchase. Intellectually, the book gives no sanction whatsoever to this view; emotion•

ally, however, The Prairie demands from the reader a

grudging admiration for Ishmael and his kind.

At the end of the book Cooper gives Bush and his family a certain tragic grandeur as Ishmael dispenses

justice, purges himself of the evil influence of Abiram,

and makes his way back to the moving edge of the agricult- 17 ural frontier. Hope for the future is suggested in the

last reference to the family where the novel states that

some of Bush's descendants "were reclaimed from their

lawless and semi-barbarous lives" (Prairie, XXXII, p. 326).

The reader suspects that, in another generation, the times will be right for these descendants to take possession of

the prairie.

The general character of the American frontiers•

man is further redeemed by Cooper's portrayal of the

honest, open, and generous Paul Hover. Thus, although

there might be occasional men like Abiram White on the

frontier, men who find the due reward for their misdeeds,

Cooper's total picture of the frontiersman in The Prairie

is not unfavourable. In an editorial passage, Cooper

speaks of the frontier and of frontiersmen as necessary 73

forerunners of the coming American civilization:

Here, and here only, is to be found that widely spread though far from numerous class which may be at all likened to those who have paved the way for the intellectual progress of nations, in the Old World. The resemblance between the American borderer and his European prototype is singular, though not always uniform. Both might be called without restraint; the one being above, the other beyond the reach of the law—brave, because they were inured to danger—proud, because they were independent, and vindictive, because each was the avenger of his own wrongs. It would be unjust to the borderer to pursue the parallel much farther. He is irreligious, because he has inherited the knowledge that religion does not exist in forms, and his reason rejects mockery.

The final point of view with respect to owner•

ship of the land is that of Captain Middleton. As the

symbolic representative of the government of the United

States, Middleton has an importance in The Prairie which

goes far beyond his insignificant role in the development

of the plot. Far from being an effective force for the

establishment of law and order, Middleton shows less

initiative than any other character in the novel. At

different times he is prisoner of the Sioux and of

Ishmael Bush; at other times Hard-Heart or the Trapper

rescue him from difficulties. His most active quality

is distrust, distrust even of allies like Hard-Heart. 74

Middleton shows the deep roots of this distrust and the

ease with which it comes to the surface when, in his

official capacity as an American soldier, he makes a

friendly return visit to the Pawnee village. Because no

welcoming party has been sent to meet him, he becomes

suspicious and orders his men to be ready for trouble:

"There is something remarkable in all this, . . . yonder boy has heard of our approach, or he would not fail to notify his tribe; and yet he scarcely deigns to favour us with a glance. Look to your arms, men; it may be necessary to let these savages feel our strength." (Prairie, XXXIV, p. 451)

In spite of the assurances of Paul Hover, the Captain

retains his suspicion even after his friendly but reserved

meeting with Hard-Heart. Finding the whole village—

including women and children—assembled in an open space

in the town, Middleton becomes even more suspicious and

concerned. The reason for the Pawnee failure to provide

a suitable welcome was, of course, the impending death of

their friend, the Trapper. Considering that the Pawnee

horses had all been left in the care of one young boy,

and that the entire tribe was assembled in the open to

meet a company of armed soldiers, the reader must think

that Middleton's apprehension was a little ridiculous.

In spite of "the consummate manner in which a savage could conceal his designs," (Prairie, XXXIII, p. 438) there was little in the situation to suggest violence. 75

Middleton, however, cannot be considered a ridiculous character; as we have said, he was the symbolic represent• ative of the American government and also of culture, education, and good breeding. His distrust of even friendly Indians must be regarded as having an importance which was appropriate to his symbolic role.

Middleton makes no direct statements about the land, or about land ownership, but his return to the prairie in 1806 indicates the government's desire to establish its authority over the newly acquired Louisiana

Purchase. One of the major threats to that authority was the influence of French-Canadian fur traders, who usually had better relations with the Indians than did the

Americans. This influence had already been mentioned as a corrupting influence on Mahtoree's character and caused

Middleton additional concern in his meeting with Hard-

Heart :

The meeting was friendly, though a little restrained on both sides. Middleton, jealous of his own consideration, no less than of the authority of his government, suspected some undue influence on the part of the agents of the Canadas; and, as he was determined to maintain the authority of which he was the representative, he felt him• self constrained to manifest a hauteur that he was far from feeling. (Prairie, XXXIV, p. 452)

The novel itself looks favourably at American 76

ownership and settlement of the prairie. The opening paragraph of the novel speaks of the wisdom of the Louisiana

Purchase:

While nature had placed a barrier of desert to the extension of our population in the West, the measure had made us the masters of a belt of fertile country, which, in the revolutions of the day, might have become the property of a rival nation. It gave us the sole command of the great thoroughfare of the interior, and placed the count• less tribes of savages, who lay along our borders, entirely within our control; it reconciled conflicting rights, and quieted national distrusts; it opened a thousand avenues to the inland trade, and to the waters of the Pacific; and, if ever time or necessity shall require a peaceful division of this vast empire, it assures us of a neighbour that would possess our language, our religion, our institutions, and, it is also to be hoped, our sense of political justice. (Prairie, I, p. 2; italics mine)

Although Cooper recorded the Trapper's judge• mental comments about the "choppers" advancing across the continent, his basic commitment in The Prairie was to the great task of building a nation, and to the potential greatness of that nation and its institutions. This commitment can be seen in an editorial passage where he extolls the noble ancestry of the American, outlines the need for agricultural development before the fuller 77

attainments of civilization can be reached, and then

speaks of "those distant, and ever-receding borders which

mark the skirts and announce the approach of the nation,

as moving mists precede the signs of day" (Prairie, VI,

p. 70). If, in those "moving mists," some values were

lost, it could be presumed that in the light of the new

day they would not be missed.

Several other features in The Prairie need to

be noted in addition to the attitudes towards land and

land ownership; these are: the Trapper's function as a

bridge between the two races, his scornful rejection of

education, the novel's double standard for describing

"good" and "bad" Indians, and the concern for racial

purity.

Throughout The Prairie, the Trapper functions as

a bridge between the Indian and the white man; in large

measure, however, this bridge carries traffic in only one

direction. That is, the Trapper serves to place the

Indian in a context which can be understood by the white

characters—and by white readers. He does not perform the

similar service of interpreting the whites to the Indians.

Cooper does not encourage his white readers to feel any need to explain themselves to the Indians; white

American culture is taken as normal and requires no explanation or justification. The burden of accommodation 78

between the two races is placed entirely on the Indian

who, through the mediation of the Trapper, must be

explained to the white.

The Trapper makes no explicit comments about

the possibility of educating the Indians so that they

could have a place in American civilization; however, his comments on the limitations of education indicate his belief that nothing can change nature:

"That, for your education! The time has been when I have thought it possible to make a companion of a beast. Many are the cubs, and many are the speckled fawns that I have reared with these old hands, until I have even fancied them rational and altered beings—but what did it amount to? The bear would bite, and the deer would run, notwithstanding my wicked conceit in fancying I could change a temper that the Lord himself had seen fit to bestow." (Prairie, XXII, p. 283)

Lacking education himself, and yet being aware of his own worth, the Trapper had a great respect for what he called

"nature;" he looked askance at any attempt to change what he thought was the basic order of nature. Since the novel contains statements which equate Indians with wild beasts, we must read the Trapper's comment about his unsuccessful attempts to change the nature of beasts into "rational and altered beings" as an implied criticism of similar attempts to educate Indians.

Cooper maintains the artificial distinction 79

between "good" and "bad" Indians partly through his use of language. Thus, in the Sioux encampment, the scene is dominated by "the withered and remorseless crones of the band ... in readiness to lend their fell voices, if needed, to aid in exciting their descendants to an exhibition, which their depraved tastes coveted" (Prairie,

XXV, p. 323).

Among the Sioux, Cooper records long demagogic speeches, details their methods of torture, and describes

Swooping Eagle's exploit when he beheads his fellow Sioux to prevent him from being scalped by the Pawnees:

A few strokes of the tomahawk, with a circling gash of the knife, sufficed to sever the head from the less valued trunk. The Teton mounted again, just in season to escape a flight of arrows which came from his eager and disappointed pursuers. Flourishing the grim and bloody visage, he darted away from the spot with a shout of triumph, and was seen scouring the plains, as if he were actually borne along on the wings of the powerful bird from whose qualities he had received his flattering name. (Prairie, XXX, p. 404-05)

In contrast, he describes the Pawnee village when Hard-

Heart and his men return after their victory over the

Sioux. Whereas he had described specific persons and vivid scenes in his treatment of the Sioux encampment,

Cooper is now content to deal in generalities and euphemisms. There are no old crones exulting in bloody 80

vengeance, no vain-glorious speeches recounting the

bloody deeds of the Pawnee; the whole scene is described

in favourable terms:

The exultation of the tribe was proportioned to its previous despondency. Mothers boasted of the honourable deaths of their sons; wives proclaimed the honour and pointed to the scars of their husbands; and Indian girls rewarded the young braves with songs of triumph. The trophies of their fallen enemies were exhibited, as conquered standards are displayed in more civilized regions. The deeds of former warriors were recounted by the aged men, and declared to be eclipsed by the glory of this victory. While Hard-Heart himself, so distinguished for his exploits from boyhood to that hour, was unanimously proclaimed and re-proclaimed the worthiest chief and the stoutest brave that the Wahcondah had ever bestowed on his most favoured children, the Pawnees of the Loups. (Prairie, XXXIII, p. 43 7)

By speaking of "The trophies of their fallen enemies"

and comparing these to captured flags, Cooper blurs the fact that these trophies were scalps. The fact is, that apart from Hard-Heart himself, Cooper does not portray any of the individual Pawnees. The Pawnees shared with the Sioux a common attitude to such practices as torture and scalping, but this could not be shown—except in the battle scene—without destroying the dichotomy between good and bad Indians.

The Prairie, like The Last of the Mohicans, 81

emphasizes the need for racial purity. Some situations,

involving white men and Indian women, place the question

in a comic perspective; others, involving the attraction

of male Indians for white women, are treated more

seriously. Thus, when the Trapper jocosely suggests

that Battius, because of his powers as a medicine man,

would be married to one or more of the Sioux women, the

scientist states his opposition "to all admixture of the

varieties of species, which only tend to tarnish the

beauty and to interrupt the harmony of nature" (Prairie,

XXI, p. 261). Esther Bush faces her husband with the

same question after he has cast a fond eye on Mahtoree's

discarded wife, Tachechana: "'Would ye disgrace color,

and family, and nation, by mixing white blood with red,

and would ye be the parent of a race of mules!'" (Prairie,

XXVII, p. 254). At several points in the novel, Cooper

mentions the attraction that the Indians, especially

Mahtoree and Hard-Heart, had for Inez (Prairie, XVIII,

p. 221-22; XX, p. 253-54; XXVI, p. 343; XXXIII, p. 438).18

In spite of the comic relief, miscegenation remains a dreaded possibility in The Prairie. Although this possibility is not exploited to the same extent as it had been in The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper still uses it and, in doing so, strengthens belief that the two races must be kept apart from one another. 82

D. NOTIONS OF THE AMERICANS

During the period between 1826 and 1833, when he was in Europe, Cooper continued to be aware of major

events in America. In the year following the publication

of The Prairie, Cooper wrote and published (1828) Notions 19

of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor.

While Cooper's views cannot be identified completely with

those of his fictional travelling gentleman, there is a

great similarity on most issues. Robert Spiller comments

as follows on Cooper's relationship to the book: Cooper was careful in his facts and studied reliable sources in preparation. He was one of the best informed men of his time on social conditions in his own New York State, and he tended to generalize for the nation in terms of the particular locale which he knew. This prejudice somewhat detracts from his reliability; but the more serious bias was his deliberate intention to present things in their most favorable light. The book may be accepted, however, not only for the value of its opinion, but for the light it throws on actual social conditions. The presumed author is an enlightened Englishman, a man of sound learning and aristocratic taste, but broad in his sympathies, a character familiar in various guises throughout Cooper's novels and easily to be identified with his own ideal ? 0 conception of himself.

One entire letter of this book is given over to

a discussion of the Indian problem, and there are other 83

references to Indians in an earlier letter about the visit to Cooperstown. This material furnishes both a confirm• ation of, and a corrective to the views which we have found expressed in the first three of the Leatherstocking

Tales. Trying to explain the degree of civilization to be found in New York State, the travelling gentleman remarks on the confusion of ideas about America in popular

European imagination; in this confusion "churches, academies, wild beasts, savages, beautiful women, steam• boats, and ships" are brought into "strange and fantastic collision." He then goes on to set the record straight with regard to the presence of Indians:

Once for all, dear Waller, I wish you to understand that—a few peaceable and half-civilized remains of tribes, that have been permitted to reclaim small portions of land, excepted—an inhabitant of New- York is actually as far removed from a savage as an inhabitant.of London. ... A few degraded descendants of the ancient warlike possessors of this country are indeed seen wandering among the settlements, but the Indian must now be chiefly sought west of the Mississippi, to be found in any of his savage grandeur. (Notions, p. 245)

In the letter relating to Indians, the gentleman points out how far the removal policy has already been effected for most of the Indians of the North-eastern states:

The lingering fragments of a hundred tribes are 84

certainly seen scattered over the immense surface of this country, living on greater or less tracts that had been secured to them, or dwelling by sufferance in the woods; but the only people now residing east of the Mississippi who can aspire to the names of nations, are the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, and the Seminoles. As a rule, the red man disappears before the superior moral and physical influence of the white. ... In nine cases in ten, the tribes have gradually removed west; and there is now a confused assemblage of nations and languages collected on the immense hunting grounds of the Prairies. (Notions, pp. 277-78)

For those Indians who did not remove, the letter had little hope:

Many linger near the graves of their fathers, to which their superstitions, not less than a fine natural feeling, lend a deeper interest. The fate of the latter is inevitable; they become victims to the abuses of civilization, without ever attaining to any of its moral elevation. (Notions, p. 2 78)

It goes on to describe the condition of an old Indian, known as "King Peter", who made his living by selling brooms and baskets in much the same way as did Mohegan

John in The Pioneers:

I found this Indian, dwelling with his family, in a wigwam of a most primitive construction. . . . The door was a covering of mats, and the furniture consisted of a few rude chairs, baskets, and a bed, 85

that was neither savage, nor yet such as marks the civilized man. The attire of the family was partly that of the one condition, and partly that of the other. The man himself was a full-blooded Indian, but his manner had that species of sullen deportment that betrays the disposition without the boldness of the savage. (Notions, pp. 280-81)

While there is an admission that Indians in the older

coastal areas have made some progress in civilization,

this is overshadowed by an earlier comment that Indians

seen in the interior were all a "stunted, dirty, and

degraded race" (Notions, p. 281).

I saw reservations in which no mean advances had been made in civilization. Farms were imperfectly tilled, and cattle were seen grazing in the fields. Still, civilization advances slowly among a people who consider labour a degradation, in addition to the bodily dislike that all men have to its occupations. (Notions, p. 282)

The letter maintains that the intentions of the

government are honest and result in policies which are

"sufficiently humane" for the Indians:

A great, humane, and, I think, rational project, is now in operation to bring the Indians within the pale of civilization. . . . Most, if not all of the Indians who reside east of the Mississippi, live within the jurisdiction of some State or of some territory. In most cases they are left to the quiet enjoyment of the scanty rights which they retain; but the people of their 86

vicinity commonly wish to get rid of neighbours that retard civilization, and who are so often troublesome. The policy of States is sometimes adverse to their continuance. Though there is no power, except that of the United States, which can effect their removal without their own consent, the State authorities can greatly embarrass the control of the general government. A question of policy, and, perhaps, of jurisdiction, lately arose on this subject between Georgia and the general government. In the course of its disposal, the United States, in order to secure the rights of the Indians more effectually, and to prevent any future question of this sort, appear to have hit on the following plan. West of the Mississippi they still hold large regions that belong to no State or territory. They propose to several tribes (Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, &c.) to sell their present possessions, improvements, houses, fences, stock, &c, and to receive, in return, acre for acre, with the same amount of stock, fences, and every other auxiliary of civilization they now possess. The inducements to make this exchange are as follow:--Perpetuity to their establishments, since a pledge is given that no title shall ever be granted that may raise a pretext for another removal; an organization of a republican, or, as it is termed, a territorial government for them, such as now exist in Florida, Arkansas, and Michigan; protection, by the presence of troops; and a right to send delegates to Congress, similar to that now enjoyed by the other territories. If the plan can be effected, there is reason to 87

think that the constant diminution in the numbers of the Indians will be checked, and that a race, about whom there is so much that is poetic and fine in recollection, will be preserved. . . . Should such a territory be formed, a nucleus will be created, around which all the savages of the west, who have any yearnings for a more meliorated state of existence, can rally. (Notions, pp. 285-87)

These are Cooper's most direct comments on the subject of removal; he looks on this policy as one that will benefit the Indian people as well as removing them from the older states as impediments to civilization. He does not deal with the details of removal, however, and is content to repeat the platitudinous hopes of other more involved advocates of the policy.

The attitude towards the Indian expressed in this letter differs in only one place from the attitude we have found in the novels; the travelling gentleman takes a complacent view of miscegenation:

As there is little reluctance to mingle the white and red blood, (for the physical difference is far less than in the case of the blacks, and the Indians have never been menial slaves,) I think an amalgamation of the two races would in time occur. Those families of America who are thought to have any of the Indian blood, are rather proud of their descent, and it is a matter of boast among many of the most considerable persons of Virginia, that they are descended from the renowned Pocahontas. (Notions, p. 287) 88

This passage gives some credibility to George Dekker's

contention that Cooper, personally, was not opposed to 21

miscegenation. While admitting that The Last of the

Mohicans expresses a horror of inter-racial marriage,

Dekker thinks, contrary to most critics, that The Wept

of Wish-ton Wish presents it in favourable terms. His

interpretation of that novel is not convincing. Quite

possibly, Cooper was not completely sure of his own

thoughts and emotions on this subject. Thus, on the

intellectual level, Cooper could agree with his travelling

gentleman writing in an urbane manner about inter-racial

marriage. On an emotional level, he appears to be

shocked at the idea of such marriage; it is this sense

of shock which we find in The Last of the Mohicans and,

to a lesser extent, in The Prairie.

In summary, when we consider the total view

of the early Leatherstocking Tales, and combine it with

that expressed in Notions of the Americans, we can conclude

that Cooper saw no reason to oppose the concept of

removal. We have already noted the implied threat to

the Indians in President Jackson's first annual Message to Congress in 1829. Cooper, writing to his artist friend, Horatio Greenough, on January 28th, 1830, comments: "Well, what do you think of old Hickory's

Message? It is a capital one—sound from beginning to 89

end" (Letters and Journals, I, 402). In another letter, dated April 9th, 1830, to Charles Wilkes a banker friend who had helped him negotiate with English publishers, Cooper referred to Jackson's message as "sound, constitutional, democratic and intelligible" (Letters and Journals, I, 411). Obviously, the threat to the rights of Indian peoples did not detract from Cooper's appreciation for the message. Cooper's picture of the Indian did not rise above current stereotypes of the Indian as savage; his Indian heroes are as limited by the savage aspects of their life as are his Indian villains. Cooper was never in doubt, and never left his readers in doubt, about the inferiority of savage life compared to that of civilization. The villains, Magua and Mahtoree, along with the pathetic character of Mohegan John, all illustrate the current idea that contact with whites tended to the disintegration of the Indian character rather than to any positive changes in the direction of civilization. Nowhere does Cooper show in these novels any Indian who has benefited either from casual contact with whites or from white education. Nowhere does he indicate that he thought Indians and whites could live in happy and prosperous proximity to each other. Nowhere does he seriously dispute the practical necessity of American advancement 90

to the west. Concerning the possibility of assimilating

Indians into American life, Lewis Cass in 1830 asked a rhetorical question, and then proceeded to give a series of very negative answers: What had they in common with the white man? Not his attachment to sedentary life; not his desire of accumulation; not his moral principles, his intellectual acquirements, his religious opinions. Neither precept nor example, neither hopes nor fears, could induce them to examine, much less to adopt their improvements. The past and the future being alike disregarded, the present only employs their thoughts. They could not, therefore, become an integral part of the people who began to press 22 upon them. Of Cooper's Indians also we can ask, "What had they in common with the white man?" The answer must be the same as that which Lewis Cass gives above. 91

CHAPTER III THE LATER LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS A. THE PATHFINDER Thirteen years intervened between the publication of The Prairie in 182 7 and the publication of the last two novels of the Leatherstocking saga (The Pathfinder, published in 1840, and The Deerslayer, published in 1841). In this period, Cooper had returned to America, become embroiled in personal litigation, grown increasingly unpopular with the reading public, and rethought many of his earlier, more optimistic views concerning American democracy. Indian removal had moved beyond a theoretical discussion concerning Indian land rights; it was now a fact of history. During this period, however, the Semin- oles, a Florida group of Creek Indians who had inter• married with escaped negro slaves, continued to oppose removal in what has been called the Second Seminole War (1835-42). American treachery during this war was exemplified by the seizure of the Seminole leader, Osceola, during a peace parley. Although Osceola died in prison early in 1838, the v/ar continued until 1842. After more than two thousand American soldiers had been killed and between forty and sixty million dollars had been spent, enough of the Seminoles surrendered and agreed to go west for the United States government to 92

feel that it had won a moral victory.^

Our examination of the last two Leatherstocking novels will ask whether the unfortunate results of the removal policy had any effects on Cooper's perception of

Indian-white relationships.

The Pathfinder contains many features which we have already noticed in The Last of the Mohicans and

The Prairie: a treacherous Indian guide, male Indian attraction for a white girl, scenes of Indian savagery, the presence of "good" Indians, and the final victory of

Natty Bumppo, or Pathfinder, and his friends. The Pathfinder differs from the other Leatherstocking novels in that much of the action takes place on the water instead of the land; it emphasizes white rather than Indian treachery; and the central concern of the novel is Natty Bumppo1s love for, and unsuccessful proposal to, Mabel Dunham, the daughter of an old army friend. It is to this last feature that we will direct our attention since the story of this courtship and its conclusion have important implications for our understanding of Cooper's hero and his function in the Leatherstocking saga. We will then look briefly at the novel's presentation of Indians and their relationship to whites.

As Natty symbolizes the frontier, so Mabel

Dunham symbolizes the growing civilization and culture of the eastern states which were being rapidly transformed 93

from their rude beginnings. On this level, therefore, the relationship between Natty and Mabel can be understood in terms of the continuing political dialogue between the eastern states and the frontier. Mabel, although the daughter of an enlisted soldier, had received training which tended to raise her above the class into which she had been born (Pathfinder,

VIII, pp. 111-112). This superior training resulted in a squeamishness which did not accept the necessity for armed conflict. During her time on the frontier, Mabel is able to maintain this attitude only through ignorance; "I know nothing of arms, and wish to live in ignorance of them" (Pathfinder, I, p. 12). When Mabel's father is in danger from an Indian ambush, Mabel talks with her Indian friend, Dew of June, about possible courses of action; June suggests that if Mabel had the nerve, or the "heart," she could scalp the Indian warriors when they got drunk:

"If Lily like June, might do much for her people." "I am like you, June, if a wish to serve my countrymen can make a resemblance with one as courageous as yourself." "No, no, no." muttered June in a low voice; "no got heart, and June no let you, if had. June's moder prisoner once, and warriors got drunk; moder tomahawk'd 'em all. Such the way redskin women do, when people in danger and want scalp." 94

"You say what is true," returned Mabel, shuddering, and unconsciously dropping June's hand. "I cannot do that. I have neither the strength, the courage, nor the will, to dip my hands in blood." (Pathfinder, XXII, pp. 380-381)

Cooper thus presents the bloody act of toma• hawking and scalping captors as an act which could be performed by an Indian, but not by a white, woman.

Historically, of course, as the story of Hannah Duston shows, white women had proven themselves quite capable of 2 this feat.

On the symbolic level, however, Cooper is quite right in ascribing this squeamishness to Mabel. By the middle of the eighteenth century, people living on the eastern seaboard had passed the period in which Hannah

Dustons were necessary. In Cooper's own time the major opposition to mistreatment of the Indians came from New

England and other eastern states; these areas no longer recognized the necessity for the violence of Indian wars, or for injustice similar to that which had been practiced by their own ancestors. Thus, Mabel represents the point of view of those who had opposed forcible removal of the Indians.

Mabel liked and respected Pathfinder, but she did not love him. The novel indicates that any marriage between them would be not only unwise,.but, in Mabel's 95

own word, "unnatural" (Pathfinder, XVIII, p. 287). As we have noted before, Natty Bumppo placed a great deal of stress upon conformity to the demands of nature; the description of a marriage as "unnatural", therefore, must be taken as a very serious criticism of such a match.

The unnatural element lay not in the age difference between Natty and Mabel but in the incompata- bility of two ways of life. Love for Mabel causes

Pathfinder to lose all sense of value; thus, in a desire to show Mabel his skill with the rifle, Pathfinder, in

a most wanton and useless manner, kills two gulls.

The Deerslayer relates the only other time in the

Leatherstocking novels when Natty Bumppo kills birds

or animals in such a senseless, destructive manner;

Natty, as a young man, is given his first chance to use

Hutter's famous rifle, "Killdeer". He shoots first a duck and then an eagle and immediately repents, feeling

that he is not worthy of such a weapon (The Deerslayer, 3 XXVI, p. 463). Pathfinder confesses that since he has

known and loved Mabel he has become increasingly derelict

in his duties as a scout: "I'm sometimes afeared it isn't wholesome for one who is much occupied in a very manly calling, like that of a guide or scout, or a soldier even, to form friendships for women—young women in 96

particular—as they seem to me to lessen the love of enterprise, and to turn the feelings away from their gifts and natural occupations." "Before we became so intimate, as I may say, I loved to think of my scoutins, and of my marches, and outlyings, and fights, and other adventures; but now my mind cares less about them; I think more of the barracks and of evenings passed in discourse, of .feelings in which there are no wranglings and bloodshed, and of young women, and of their laughs, and their cheerful, soft voices, their pleasant looks, and their winning ways. I sometimes tell the sergeant, that he and his daughter will be the spoiling of one of the best and most experienced scouts on the lines!" (Pathfinder, XIII, p. 199)

By spending time with her he had allowed French and

Indian spies near the English fort. Thus, Cooper presents

Mabel, the symbolic representative of civilization, as a siren luring Pathfinder away from his true vocation.

The inhibitions which Mabel arouses in Pathfinder are revealed in a dream which has definite implications for our understanding of Pathfinder's self-perception:

"The very last night we stayed in the garrison, I imagined I had a cabin in a grove of sugar maples, and at the root of every tree was a Mabel Dunham, while the birds that were among the branches sang ballads, instead of the notes that natur' gave, and even the deer stopped to listen. I tried to shoot a fa'n, but Killdeer missed fire, and the creatur* laughed in my face, as pleasantly as a young girl 97

laughs in her merriment, and then it bounded away, looking back as if expecting me to follow." (Pathfinder, XVIII, pp. 291-92)

While not attempting a detailed Freudian analysis of

Pathfinder's dream, I do not think it too much to suggest that it symbolizes a moment of extreme self doubt about 4 his manhood in relation to Mabel Dunham. As seen in the Leatherstocking tales, Pathfinder's role in life is to make America safe for Mabel Dunham and her kind.

Nevertheless, he is completely abashed in her presence; he feels that his way of life is not good enough for her.

He knows that he could provide a good subsistence living; at the same time he also knows that he could not provide those opportunities for growth and development for which he thought Mabel was destined: "'When all is remembered, age, looks, l'arning and habits, Mabel, conscience tells me I ought to confess that I'm altogether unfit for you, if not downright unworthy; and I would give up the hope this minute, I would, if I didn't feel something pulling at my heart-strings which seems hard to undo'" (Pathfinder

XXIX, p. 487).

The dream of impotence has two references: firs that Bumppo could not be a complete man in any situation but that of the frontier. We have already seen that in th

Templeton of The Pioneers he had lost a great deal of stature which he only regained on the frontier of The 98

Prairie. Second, if he married Mabel, he would not be able to function fully as a man on the frontier since he would be completely inhibited by Mabel's more squeamish values. If we can anticipate our discussion of The

Deerslayer, we will notice that Bumppo was originally

known as "Deerslayer". Thus, the image of Mabel as a

"fawn", which he could not kill, questions Natty's entire

understanding of himself as a man. Also in The Deerslayer,

Cooper described Natty Bumppo's first human kill as his

entrance into manhood; again, Mabel's ignorance and

dislike of arms questions this ideal of masculinity.

As we look at this abortive romance in terms of

the larger pattern of the Leatherstocking Tales, we must

ask what significance it has for Cooper's understanding

of American development and expansion. The answer which

I would suggest is found in a saying of Jesus:

"There are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." (Matthew 19:12)

This is the classical text used in the justification of

monkish celibacy; in the context of the Leatherstocking

Tales, we see Natty Bumppo as a man who has made himself

a monk for the sake of the kingdom of heaven which was to

be in America. For Natty, marriage would have been a

falling away from his calling as a man of the frontier. 99

Cooper very effectively leads the reader to sympathize with Pathfinder in his loneliness and in his awkward attempts at love, even as he has led the reader to recognize that it is best for Pathfinder to remain single, and for Mabel to marry Jasper.

The failure of Pathfinder's romance suggests a necessary division in American life between the virtues of civilization and those of the frontier. Each way of life has its own integrity; the violence of the frontier cannot be judged by the laws of civilization any more than

Pathfinder's way of life can be judged by Mabel's more delicate values. Cooper leads the reader to see how marriage would have destroyed Pathfinder as well as

Mabel; thus, he affirms the essential value of the scout's frontier way of life even while he denies it any permanence or posterity. Mabel's marriage to Jasper, and Jasper's subsequent career as a merchant, suggest that the values of the frontier will gradually give way to the superior values of civilization.

In the context of a transitory and ever-receding frontier the place of the Indian is tenuous indeed. On one occasion, Pathfinder tells a story which symbolizes the

Indians' continuing struggle for existence; Pathfinder and Chingachgook, along with a young Delaware had visited

Niagara Falls; in spite of their advice the young man ventured onto the river in a canoe: 100

"All we could say did not change his mind, and the lad had his way. To me, it seems, Mabel, that whenever a thing is really grand and potent, it has a quiet majesty about it, altogether unlike the frothy and flustering manner of smaller matters, and so it was with them rapids. The canoe was no sooner fairly in them, then down it went, as it might be, as one sails through the air on the 'arth, and no skill of the young Delaware could resist the stream. And yet he struggled manfully for life, using the paddle to the last, like the deer that is swimming to cast the hounds. At first, he shot across the current so swiftly that we thought he would prevail, but he had miscalculated his distance, and when the truth really struck him, he turned the head up stream, and struggled in a way that was fearful to look at. I could have pitied him even had he been a Mingo! For a few moments his efforts were so frantic, that he actually prevailed over the power of the cataract; but natur' has its limits, and one faltering stroke of the paddle set him back, and then he lost ground, foot by foot, inch by inch, until he got near the spot when the river looked even and green, and as if it were made of millions of threads of water, all bent over some huge rock, when he shot backwards like an arrow and disappeared." (Pathfinder. XIX, pp. 303-304)5

There was something "really grand and potent" about the expansion of the United States; no Indian, or group of Indians, no matter how valiantly they struggled against that stream, could deny its force. The image of the Indian, paddling against the force of Niagara, is a tribute to the desperate courage of the Indian people as they continued to struggle against dispossession; at the 101

same time, the image underlines the futility of such a struggle.

This image from The Pathfinder bears a striking similarity to one found in The Last of the Mohicans; Natty

Bumppo has shot a Huron who had climbed out onto the branches of an oak tree:

After a few moments of vain struggling, the form of the savage was seen swinging in the wind, while he still grasped a ragged and naked branch of the tree, with his hands clenched in desperation. ... All eyes, those of friends as well as enemies, became fixed on the hopeless condition of the wretch who was dangling between heaven and earth. The body yielded to the currents of air, and though no murmur or groan escaped the victim, there were instants when he grimly faced his foes, and the anguish of cold despair might be traced, through the intervening distance, in possession of his swarthy lineaments. . . . At length one hand of the Huron lost its hold, and dropped exhausted to his side. A desperate and fruitless struggle to recover the branch succeeded, and then the savage was seen for a fleeting instant, grasping wildly at the empty air (Mohicans, VIII, pp. 82-83).6

The picture of the Indian going over Niagara

Falls encapsulates the over-all effect of The Pathfinder on the reader's understanding of Indian-white relations.

The three Indian characters of the novel, Arrowhead, June, and Chingachgook, are all separated from their tribes.

They serve as pawns in the power politics of the English 102

and French rather than as independent actors who have their own political objectives.

Arrowhead, acting as a double agent for the French while in the pay of the English, unsuccessfully tries to manipulate the situation to his own advantage. Because he lacked tribal roots, as well as the demonic quality of

Magua, Arrowhead's defeat and death has neither historic nor mythic significance. This lack of tribal roots, and the absence of Indian political goals contrast sharply with the situation in The Prairie where the political scene is dominated by the struggle between the Sioux and Pawnee people.

The Pathfinder, through a series of comments, mostly from Natty Bumppo, sets forth a doctrine of race that stresses the exclusive nature of Indian and white.

Thus, at the beginning of the novel, Pathfinder says:

"Every skin has its own natur', and every natur' has its own laws, as well as its own skin. It was many years afore I could master all them higher branches of a forest edication; for redskin knowledge doesn't come as easy to white-skin natur' as what I suppose is intended to be white-skin knowledge. . . . The white man has his difficulties in getting redskin habits, quite as much as the Injin in getting white-skin ways. As for the real natur', it is my opinion that neither can actually get that of the other." (Pathfinder, II, p. 23)

At a later point in the story, Pathfinder remarks, '"I 103

tell the Sarpent, that no Christianizing will ever make even a Delaware a white man; nor any whooping and yelling convart a pale-face into a redskin'" (Pathfinder, VIII, p. 100). The implications of such a doctrine of racial exclusiveness are two-fold. It allows Pathfinder to accept Chingachgook*s love of revenge, his bloodthirst, and his desire for scalps as being somehow right and natural. Thus, when Chingachgook runs what Jasper considers unnecessary risk to obtain Iroquois scalps,

Pathfinder remarks:

"Chingachgook is not a Christian white man, like ourselves, but a Mohican chief, who has his gifts and traditions to tell him what he ought to do. . . . "'Tis his gift, and let him enjoy it. We are white men, and cannot mangle a dead enemy; but it is honour in the eyes of a redskin to do so. . . . "I have passed days thinking of these matters, out in the silent woods, and I have come to the opinion, boy, that as Providence rules all things, no gift is bestowed without some wise and reasonable end." (Pathfinder, VI, pp. 77-78)

Pathfinder's convictions about what a white man could and could not do sometimes lead him into a form of- casuistry which detracts from the picture of him as a naturally good man. For example, he tells of a time when he came across six Mingos sleeping in the woods. Pathfinder resisted both the temptation to scalp them, as Chingachgook would have done, and also the temptation to steal their 104

weapons:

"No, no; I did myself, and my color, and my religion, too, greater justice. I waited till their nap was over, and they well on their war• path again; and, by ambushing here, and flanking them there, I peppered the blackguards intrinsi• cally like. . . that only one ever got back to his village; and he came into his wigwam limping. Luckily, as it turned out, the great Delaware had only halted to jerk some venison, and was follow• ing on my trail; and when he got up he had five of the scoundrels' scalps hanging where they ought to be; so you see nothing was lost by doing right, either in the way of honor or in that of profit." (Pathfinder, XXVII, p. 465)

Although Pathfinder had maintained the line between what he and what an Indian could honourably do, he did so in such a legalistic and mechanical manner that any moral distinction was completely lost. The novel makes pointed comments about English and French use of Indians in warfare, and the fact that once aroused, the Indians could 7 not be restrained. On a personal level, however, Path• finder follows the same practice in his relations with

Chingachgook. Cooper is inconsistent at this point since he does not go beyond mild irony in his treatment of

Pathfinder's apology for Chingachgook.

Pathfinder's doctrine of exclusive racial gifts seems to make possible a cultural pluralism which modestly declines to judge Indian people on the basis of American 105

protestant standards. Thus, Pathfinder refuses to stand in judgement on his foes and dismisses them by saying,

"'I never knew an honest-minded Mingo; one that you could put faith in, if he had a temptation to deceive you.

Cheatin' seems to-be their gift, and I sometimes think they ought to be pitied for it, rather than parsecuted'"

(Pathfinder, XIV, p. 222). We should notice, however, that Pathfinder usually applies his cultural relativism to actions such as scalping and double-dealing, which Cooper's middle class white readers would find abhorrent. Path• finder's doctrine of gifts, therefore, does not lead to a true cultural pluralism, but rather to a perception of the Indian as a dehumanized being in a state of nature who cannot be changed by either Christianity or civilization.

If, in the light of the events surrounding the removal of the eastern Indians, Cooper had an uneasy mind about earlier optimistic statements favouring removal in

Notions of the Americans, nothing in The Pathfinder indicates this. The novel contains less rhetoric about the rights of Indian people to the land, and, at the same time, it presents less justification for their dispossession than do the previously written Leatherstocking novels. In his "Preface" to the novel, Cooper spoke of "the wonderful means by which Providence is clearing the way for the advancement of civilization across the whole American continent" (Pathfinder, VI). 106

As the relationship between Mabel and Pathfinder and the underlying symbolism of that relationship suggests, this novel shows the need for frontiersmen who must kill at times in order to lay the foundation for future civilization. That most frontiersmen were of an entirely different character from that of Pathfinder did not take away from this need, any more than did the protests of a more genteel and civilized eastern seaboard. If, as

The Pathfinder showed, the frontier was necessary, then it was also necessary and inevitable that the Indian people must give way to the advancing whites. Thus, at the end of the novel, Arrowhead is killed, June dies because she has nothing left for which to live, while

Chingachgook, without family or tribe, has only his friendly relationship to Pathfinder as a fragile contact with human society.

B. THE DEERSLAYER

The Deerslayer, published in 1841, the last written novel of the Leatherstocking series, deals with g

the earliest historical period, and celebrates Natty

Bumppo's entrance into manhood. The action is episodic rather than being tightly connected to a plot; throughout

the story, however, there is continuity of theme. The moral concern of the novel centres around Bumppo's, or 107

Deerslayer*s, search for a "true wilderness heart"

(Deerslayer, V, p. 83), that is, an ethic which would allow him to survive on the frontier without losing his sense of honour. Faced by the different moral standards represented by the other characters, Deerslayer seeks to plot his own course which, however, must harmonize with the values he was taught in his childhood and youth. Of all the Leatherstocking novels, The Deerslayer is the only one in which Natty is not the social inferior of some of the other major characters; here, apart from Captain Warley and the other soldiers who make a brief appearance at the end of the novel, Natty Bumppo is the social equal of

Hurry Harry, Tom Hutter and his two daughters, Judith 9 and Hetty.

Early in the novel, it becomes quite apparent that he neither accepts, nor is tempted by, the ethic of

Hurry Harry. Although Harry is a blatant racist, he does not scruple to adopt the Indian practice of scalping.

Deerslayer, by maintaining that God has given different gifts to different races, is able to respect the Indians without adopting their practice of scalping. In an early dialogue between Harry and Deerslayer, Cooper shows the difference between the two positions: "Here's three colors on 'arth: white, black, and red. White is the highest color, and therefore the best man; black comes next, and is put to live 108

in the neighborhood of the white, man, as tolerable, and fit to be made use of; and red comes last, which shows that those that made * em never expected an Indian to be accounted as more than half human." "God made all three alike, Hurry." "Alike! Do you call a nigger like a white man, or me like an Indian?" "You go off at half-cock, and don't hear me out. God made us all, white, black, and red; and, no doubt, had his own wise intentions in coloring us differently. Still, he made us, in the main, much the same in feelin's; though I'll not deny that he gave each race its gifts. A white man's gifts are Christianized, while a redskin's are more for the wilderness. Thus, it would be a great offence for a white man to scalp the dead; whereas it's a signal vartue in an Indian. Then ag'in, a white man cannot amboosh women and children in war, while a redskin may. 'Tis cruel work, I'll allow; but for them it's lawful work; while for us, it would be grievous work." "That depends on your inimy. As for scalping, or even skinning a savage, I look upon them pretty much the same as cutting off the ears of wolves for the bounty, or stripping a bear of its hide." (Deerslayer, III, p. 36)

When Hurry points to the colonial lav/ which places a bounty on Indian scalps and thus makes the practice legal, Deer- slayer places the law within a relativistic context subject to the absolute laws of God:

"Laws don't all come from the same quarter. God 109

has given us his'n, and some come from the colony, and others come from the King and Parliament. When the colony's laws, or even the Kings laws, run ag* in the laws of God, they get to be onlawful, and ought not to be obeyed. I hold to a white man's respecting white laws, so long as they do not cross the track of a law comin' from a higher authority; and for a redman to obey his own redskin usages, under the 10

same privilege. (Deerslayer, III, p. 37)

Harry, who is twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age and several years older than Deerslayer, constantly urges the younger man to prove his manhood. He first of all suggests in a good-natured way that Natty do this by eating: "'Fall to, lad, and prove your manhood on this poor devil of a doe with your teeth, as you've already done with your rifle'" (Deerslayer, I, p. 6). When Natty objects that "'there's little manhood in killing a doe'",

Hurry asks in a more challenging manner, "'Did you ever hit anything human or intelligible: did you ever pull

trigger on an inimy that was capable of pulling one upon you?'" (Deerslayer, I, p. 7). Deerslayer was forced to

answer that he had never killed a man.

Because of Deerslayer's lack of experience and

his objection to scalping Indians for the bounty, Tom

Hutter suggests that the young man does not yet have a

"true wilderness heart" (Deerslayer, V, p. 83). Similarly, when Hutter and Hurry are captured and Hutter wants

Deerslayer to look after his daughters by fortifying 110

himself in the "castle", Hurry Harry objects that Deer- slayer would not be of much use because he was "settlement- conscienced" (Deerslayer, VI, p. 102). Thus, in the minds of Hutter and Harry, the moral standards of the settlements are simply not applicable on the shifting frontier. This is shown also by Hutter's comment to

Hetty: "'Your heart is good, child, and fitter for the settlements than for the woods; while your reason is fitter for the woods than for the settlements'" (Deer• slayer , V, p. 83).

Deerslayer's understanding is completely different, but rather inconsistent; on the one hand, he believes that Indian gifts, such as scalping, are "more for the wilderness" (Deerslayer, III, p. 36); on the other hand, he maintains that the beauty of the wilderness should develop moral character in the whites who live in it. Thus, when he first sees Lake Glimmerglass, he remarks to Hurry, "'Your Judith ought to be a moral and well-disposed young woman, if she has passed half the time you mention in the centre of a spot so favored'"

(Deerslayer, II, p. 22). When Hurry refers to Judith's failings, Deerslayer responds, "'If she has—if she has,

Hurry, this is a school to set her mind right again'"

(Deerslayer, II, p. 22). In the same way, Hetty says,

"•I don't like settlements; they are full of wickedness and heart-burnings, while God dwells unoffended in these Ill

hills!'" (Deerslayer, XXII, pp. 387-88).

The book shows that Deerslayer is mistaken in his belief that a wilderness state of nature automatically promotes morality. Living in the midst of wild beauty has

not been sufficient to prevent Judith's fall from

innocence, and both Hurry Harry and Tom Hutter display

a violent and crudely materialistic disregard for all

human values.

Although the novel shows the naivety of Deer-

slayer's belief in the moral beneficence of the wilderness,

it does not entirely discredit that belief. Rather, by

contrasting Deerslayer's appreciation of natural beauty

with Hurry's complete disregard for it, the novel suggests

that, where the heart and mind of man are open to receive

its influence, nature is able to affect man's morality

for the better. Thus, in the following passage, Cooper

states that Deerslayer's moral stature was strengthened

by his open attitude to nature:

Untutored as he was in the learning of the world, and simple as he ever showed himself to be in all matters touching the subtleties of conventional taste, he was a man of strong, native, poetical feeling. He loved the woods for their freshness, their sublime solitudes, their vastness, and the impress that they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their Creator. He rarely moved through them without pausing to dwell on some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure, though seldom 112

attempting to investigate the causes; and never did a day pass without his communing in spirit, and this, too, without the aid of forms or language, with the infinite Source of all he saw, felt, and beheld. (Deerslayer, XVI, p. 283)

In contrast to Deerslayer's enthusiasm for

Lake Glimmerglass, Hurry reveals his insensitivity and lack of imagination when he observes in a matter of fact manner: '"Lakes have a general character, as I say, being pretty much water and land, and points and bays'"

(Deerslayer, II, pp. 30-31). Later, Cooper describes the early morning upon the lake; his description uses specifically religious terminology as he sets out the powers that such a scene should have upon those who witnessed it:

If any earthly scene could be presented to the senses of man that might soothe his passion and temper his ferocity, it was that which grew upon the eyes of Hutter and Hurry as the hours advanced, changing night to morning. There were the usual soft tints of the sky in which neither the gloom of darkness nor the brilliancy of the sun prevails, and under which objects appear more unearthly, and we might add, holy, than at any other portion of the twenty-four hours. . . . All this, however, Hutter and Hurry witnessed without experiencing any of the calm delight which the spectacle is wont to bring when the thoughts are just, and the aspirations pure. ... The whole was lost on the observers, who knew no feeling of 113

poetry, had lost their sense of natural devotion in lives of obdurate and narrow selfishness, and had little other sympathy with nature than that which originated with her lowest wants. (Deerslayer, XIX, pp. 3 31-32)

But if the frontiersmen remained blind to this beauty,

Chingachgook and Hist give themselves to a quiet enjoyment

and appreciation of the scene: "It disposed the young warrior to peace; and never had he felt less longings

for the glory of combat" (Deerslayer, XIX, p. 340).

The moral influence of the wilderness, therefore,

is purely subjective; at the same time the wilderness

lacks the legal restraint which is to be found in the 11 settlements. Thus, while Deerslayer finds that nature supports his moral character so that he is able to depend upon his understanding of the natural law, frontiersmen like Hutter and Hurry are completely lawless. Hurry is amazed at Deerslayer's confession that he had never killed a man: "What! did you never find a fellow thieving among your traps and skins, and do the law on him with your own hands, by way of saving the magistrates trouble in the settlements, and the rogue himself the cost of the suit?" (Deerslayer, I, p. 7)

He suggests that if some other suitor had the temerity to marry Judith, he himself would kill that man:

"When we live beyond the law, we must be our 114

own judges and executioners. And if a man should be found dead in the woods, who is there to say who slew him, even admitting the colony took the matter in hand and made a stir about it?" (Deer• slayer, I, p. 13)

For frontiersmen like Hurry Harry, the phrase "beyond the law" had metaphoric as well as geographic meaning.

Speaking of trappers and hunters as a class, Deerslayer says, "'Take 'em as a body, Judith, •arth don't hold a set of men more given to theirselves, and less given to

God and the law'" (Deerslayer, XXIV, p. 388).

For Judith, the wilderness has come to symbolize all of her lost innocence and virtue; it represents that happy and virtuous state of being in which she now can have no place except through the mediation of a strong

and virtuous man like Deerslayer. Thus her proposal to

Deerslayer is more than simply a proposal of marriage; it

is a plea for life, "a desperate effort to rescue herself

from a future that she dreaded with a horror as vivid as

the distinctness with which she fancied she foresaw it"

(Deerslayer. XXXII, p. 566).

The attitude of the white characters towards

nature corresponds with their attitude towards the Indians.

Hutter and Hurry share a complete contempt for all Indians

and feel no qualms about killing and scalping Indian women

and children in order to obtain the scalp bounty. Hurry's 115

reputation as one of the strongest men on the frontier

gives him a contempt for the Indians, who are his physical

inferiors. After Hurry had thoughtlessly shot a young

Huron girl, Cooper says of him that "it was the habit of

his mind to regard all Indians as being only a slight

degree removed from the wild beasts that roamed the woods,

and to feel disposed to treat them accordingly" (Deerslayer,

XIX, p. 330). Hutter, less impulsive, and more concerned

about profit, is annoyed at the useless shooting. During

his fifteen year residence on the lake, he had learned to

avoid needless risk; at the same time he was willing to take

chances if there was an opportunity for profit. Thus, he

plans to take Indian scalps in order to get the bounty.

"'If there's women, there's children; and big and little

have scalps; the colony pays for all alike'" (Deerslayer,

V, p. 77).

Hetty Hutter, on the other hand, is incapable of

either thinking or doing harm to anyone. Her approach to

the Indians, however, is simplistic and moralizing. She

does not interact with the Indians but simply comes and

goes among them as an ethereal presence with an uncom•

promising message of peace and forgiveness. Hetty

functions in the novel as a Christian missionary; thus,

her failure to alter significantly the conduct of either

the white or the Indian characters must be understood as 116

a comment upon the relative ineffectiveness of actual missionaries upon the frontier. Innocent, harmless, and likable, she comes and goes among the Indians in the same manner as she avoided mishap when she met a bear wi cubs:

It quitted the honey, and advanced to a place within twenty feet of her, where it raised itself on its hinder legs, and balanced its body in a sort of angry, growling discontent, but approached no nearer. Happily, Hetty did not fly. On the contrary, though not without terror, she knelt with her face towards the animal, and with clasped hands and uplifted eyes, repeated the prayer of the previous night. ... As the girl arose from her knees, the bear dropped on its feet again, and collecting its cubs around her, permitted them to draw their natural sustenance. (Deerslayer, X, pp. 169-70)

The bears then accompanied Hetty for nearly a mile as she made her way to the Huron camp. The entir episode is reminiscent of the famous eschatalogical passage in Isaiah 11:6-7:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall 12

eat straw like the ox.

Cooper, in his description of Hetty and the bears, and 117

in the implicit comparison of this event with her relations with the Indians,'suggests that she was not subject to the usual limitations of nature or history. Consequently,

Hetty's relationship to the Indians would be an appropriate model for other people to follow at the same time as--and no sooner than--her relationship to the bears would be.

In other words, Hetty functions in the novel as an eschatalogical, rather than as a historical, character.

While Deerslayer maintained that different

"gifts" made it lawful for Indians to scalp, Hetty holds to an absolute and uncompromising morality. As she says to Hist at their first meeting, "'God will not pardon in a redman what he will not pardon in a white man'"

(Deerslayer, X, p. 174). Within the Huron camp, Hetty reads to the Indians those passages from the Bible which enjoin forgiveness and love for the neighbour. To this,

Hist, who has been translating for the other Indians, responds: "'Neighbor for Injin no mean pale-face. . . .

Neighbor mean Iroquois for Iroquois, Mohican for Mohican, pale-face for pale-face. No need to tell chief anything else'" (Deerslayer, XI, p. 191). When Hetty persists,

Rivenoak, the Huron chief, asks the inevitable questions about the white-man's failure to live up to the precepts which he tries to teach the Indian:

If he is ordered to give double to him that asks 118

only for one thing, why does he take double from the poor Indians who ask for no thing? He comes from beyond the rising sun, with his book in his hand, and he teaches the redman to read it; but why does he forget himself all it says? When the Indian gives, he is never satisfied: and now he offers "gold for the scalps of our women and children, though he calls us beasts if we take the scalp of a warrior killed in open war." (Deerslayer, XI, p. 193)

When Hetty meets her father and Hurry Harry who are being held captive by the Hurons, the older man tells her: "'Preaching and the Bible are not the means to turn an Indian from his ways'" (Deerslayer, XI, p. 196). On this occasion, Tom Hutter articulates the general attitude of the book. As Cooper says in an editorial passage,

Hetty's preaching of love and forgiveness was "thrown away on beings trained in violence from infancy to manhood" (Deerslayer, XI, p. 196).

Hetty is quite consistent in her application of absolute Christian principles to the frontier. Thus, she opposes Hutter and Hurry in their plans to scalp Indians:

"Why should you and Hurry kill people—especially women and children?" "Peace, girl, peace; we are at war, and must do to our enemies as our enemies would do to us." "That's not it, father! I heard Deerslayer say how it was. You must do to your enemies as you wish your enemies would do to you. No man wishes his 119

enemies to kill him!" (Deerslayer, V. p. 81)

Nor is Deerslayer exempt from Hetty's moral censure. When the Panther, one of the Huron chiefs, hurled a tomahawk at Deerslayer, the white man caught it in mid-air and threw it back, killing the Indian.

Hetty's comment on this was a reproachful question:

"Why did you kill the Huron, Deerslayer? ... Don't you know your commandments, which say, 'Thou shalt not kill!' They tell me you have now slain the woman's husband and brother." "It's true, my good Hetty, 'tis gospel truth, and I'll not deny what has come to pass. But you must remember, gal, that many things are lawful in war, which would be onlawful in peace. The husband was shot in open fight; or open so far as I was consarned, while he had a better cover than common; and the brother brought his end on himself, by casting his tomahawk at an unarmed prisoner. Did you witness that deed, gal?" "I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer; for I hoped you wouldn't have returned blow for blow, but good for evil." "Ah, Hetty, that may do among the missionaries, but 'twould make an onsartain life in the woods." (Deerslayer, XXVIII, pp. 506-507)

Deerslayer's answer reflects his concern to find a code of ethics for wilderness survival. He rejects the heartless barbarism of Hutter and Hurry, but, at the same time, he also rejects the simplistic Christianity of Hetty.

Life in the woods was "onsartain" at the best of times; 120

Deerslayer fully realized the dangers involved and wished to avoid them. By placing the Quaker and Moravian doctrines of non-resistance to evil on the lips of Hetty,

Cooper has denied, in a very effective manner, that these doctrines could have any validity in a wilderness situation.

In conversation with Hurry Harry, Deerslayer set forth his understanding of what the Moravians taught:

"Some of their teachers say, that if you're struck on the cheek, it's a duty to turn the other side of the face, and take another blow, instead of seeking revenge, whereby I understand—" "That's enough!" shouted Hurry; "that's all I want, to prove a man's doctrine! How long would it take to kick a man through the colony—in at one ind, and out at the other, on that principle?" "Don't mistake me, March," replied the young hunter with dignity; "I don't understand by this any more than that it's best to do this, if possible. Revenge is an Injin gift, and forgiveness a white man's. That's all. Overlook all you can is what's meant; and not revenge all you can." (Deerslayer, V, pp. 78-79)

As he attempts to practice this ethic, Deerslayer is nearly killed in his first encounter with a Huron; after the Indian had fired from ambush and was reloading his gun,

Deerslayer had an opportunity to kill his opponent;

But every feeling of Deerslayer revolted at such a step, although his own life had just been attempted from a cover. He was yet unpracticed in the ruthless 121

expedients of savage warfare, of which he knew nothing except by tradition and theory, and it struck him an as unfair advantage to assail an unarmed foe. . . . "No, no—that may be redskin warfare, but it's not Christian gifts. Let the miscreant charge, and then we'll take it out like men." (Deerslayer, VII, pp. 108-09)

Instead of firing, therefore, he allowed the Indian to reload and advance into the open, at which point Deer•

slayer hailed him and the two men had an amicable conversation in which Deerslayer asserted his belief that

"'war isn't needfully massacre'" (Deerslayer, VI, p. 110).

After peacefully parting, the Indian once again tried to

shoot Deerslayer from ambush; this time Deerslayer did not stop to consider the ethical implications of his action; he fired and gave the Indian a mortal wound. As the

Indian was dying, Deerslayer said to him,

"I overlook altogether your designs ag'in my life; first, because no harm came of 'em; next, because it's your gifts, and natur', and trainin', and I ought not to have trusted you at all; and, finally and chiefly, because I can bear no ill-will to a dying man, whether heathen or Christian." (Deerslayer, VII, p. 115)

This passage reveals some of the implications of

Natty Bumppo's doctrine of gifts. Because of the Indian's gifts, nature, and training, Deerslayer says, "'I ought not to have trusted you at all.'" Thus, instead of leading to a healthy cultural pluralism, the doctrine promotes a racist 122

view of the Indian as a person who cannot be trusted.

Deerslayer did not again make the mistake of trusting an unknown Indian; by the end of the book he is quite willing

to be the first man to fire upon helpless Hurons trying to

escape from the encirclement of the British soldiers.

Although feeling that "'war isn't needfully massacre,'"

Deerslayer plays his full part in the resultant massacre

of the Hurons.

At the end of the novel, Deerslayer has also

modified his understanding of the Golden Rule. When

Sumach reviles him for killing her husband and brother,

Deerslayer replies, "'I raised my hand ag'in 'em on

account of what they were striving to do, rather than

what they did. This is nat'ral law, 'to do lest you

should be done by''" (Deerslayer, XXVIII, p. 515). Thus

a few days experience has taught Deerslayer to repudiate

his earlier opposition to Hurry Harry's "Do as you're done

by" ethic (cf. Deerslayer, V, p. 79).

When we consider all points of view we see that

the novel, taking the experience of Deerslayer as

paradigmatic, accepts the possibility of a "just war"

between whites and Indians. Deerslayer rejects the

possibility of total amity and avoidance of violence in

the same way as he rejects the notion that white men

should engage in the more bloody practices of Indian 123

warfare.

In many ways The Deerslayer presents a more

favourable view of Indian life and Indian people than does

any other of the Leatherstocking Tales. Rivenoak, the Huron

chief, combines a basic commitment to justice and fair play, with his political cunning. Thus, while he, like Magua and

Mahtoree, uses demagoguery to bring about his purpose,

these purposes are not debased and treacherous as were

those of the other two Indian leaders.

John P. McWilliams, Jr. underlines this difference

between The Deerslayer and the other Leatherstocking Tales:

Rather than scalping their white captives, the Hurons honourably ransom them for chessmen. The Mingos venerate Hetty Hutter; Hurry and Tom condescend toward her. When the Hurons declare war, they give forewarning through a bundle of bound pine knots. Hurry shoots indifferently and without warning. Harry and Hutter are the first to seek scalps; their method is to skulk after women and children during the night. In no previous tale has Cooper portrayed whites organizing a scalping expedition, invading Indian 13

camps, or shooting an Indian maiden.

The reader should note however, that Cooper does

not allow these two renegades to scalp any Indians; although

they are debited with the evil intention, it is left to

the Indians to capture the reader's horror with an actual

scalping—that of Hutter himself:

He was seated, reclining in a corner of a narrow 124

room, with his shoulders supported by the angle, and his head fallen heavily on his chest. Judith moved forward with a sudden impulse, and removed a canvass cap that was forced so low on his head as to conceal his face, and, indeed, all but his shoulders. The instant this obstacle was taken away, the quivering and raw flesh, the bared veins and muscles, and all the other disgusting signs of mortality, as they are revealed by tearing away the skin, showed that he had been scalped, though still living. (Deerslayer, XX, p. 364)

Cooper's comment on the situation exploits a basic fear and disgust of Indian warfare: "Hutter was simply scalped, to secure the usual trophy, and was left to die by inches, as has been done in a thousand similar instances by the ruthless warriors of this part of the

American continent" (Deerslayer, XXI, p. 366). Unfortunately,

Deerslayer is not present to comment that the act was

"in accordance with their gifts." By describing the effects of scalping in such detail, Cooper repudiates

Natty Bumppo's easy tolerance of the Indian practice.

Neither the failure of Hutter and Hurry Harry to scalp

Indians, nor the actual scalping of Hutter, appreciably affect the plot of The Deerslayer; however, they do affect the reader's perception of Indian and white-man. Cooper has left in the reader's mind a picture of Indian barbarity and cruelty which is not balanced by his editorial comments upon the crude violence and materialistic greed of the two frontiersmen. 125

The question of aboriginal land claims is not central to The Deerslayer anymore than it was to The

Pathfinder. Deerslayer and Hurry Harry establish the fact that Mohican, Mingo and white frontiersman all claim the land around Lake Glimmerglass; when Deerslayer raises the further question of formal ownership, Hurry replies,

"'Not a human being, the Lord excepted, owns a foot of sile in this part of the country. Pen was never put to paper consarning either hill or valley hereaway, as I've heard old Tom say time and ag'in, and so he claims the best right to it of any man 14

breathing.'" (Deerslayer, I, p. 8)

In the first three of the Leatherstocking Tales,

Cooper had developed considerable rhetoric about Indian rights to the land. As we have seen, the face value of this rhetoric was seriously undermined by the total effect of the books. In The Deerslayer, the disputed claim for the territory around Lake Glimmerglass subordinates the question of ownership to that of possession. Written in the 1840s, with the perspective of a century, the novel does not question the continuing advance of American possession and Indian dispossession. Instead it poses the question, "What kind of American is fit to enter in and take possession of this land?" The novel implies that

Hutter and Harry with their violent and lawless materialism are as unequal to the task as are Judith with her corrupted longing for luxury and Hetty with her simple-minded piety. 126

Only Deerslayer had the requisite strength of body, mind and spirit to survive in the land. 127

CHAPTER IV

COOPER'S USE OF MATERIAL FROM HECKEWELDER

We can often get an understanding of an author's interest and concern by examining his source material and the way he uses it. The Rev. John Heckewelder (1743-1823) provided Cooper with his most important written source of background information for the writing of the Leatherstock• ing Tales. In his 1826 Preface to The Last of the Mohicans,

Cooper refers to "the pious, the venerable, and the experienced Heckewelder" as a major source of information about the different groups of Indians who figure so prominently in that novel. A general review article in the North American Review, attributed to Lewis Cass, had already made the sarcastic observation that "'the last of the Mohegans' is an Indian of the school of Mr.

Heckewelder, and not of the school of nature." A later article, also attributed to Cass, is more explicit in its condemnation of Heckewelder•s influence on Cooper: and refers specifically to Uncas and Hard-Heart, the

Indian heroes of The Last of the Mohicans and The Prairie.

His Uncas, and his Pawnee Hard-Heart, for they are both of the same family, have no living prototype in our forests. They may wear leggins and moccasins, and be wrapped in a blanket or a buffalo skin, but they are civilized men, and not Indians. . . . They are the Indians of Mr. Heckewelder, 128

and not the fierce and crafty warriors and hunters, 2

that roam through our forests.

In the Preface to the 1850 edition of the five Leatherstock• ing novels, Cooper, rather than denying Heckewelder•s influence, accepts and justifies it: It has been objected to these books that they give a more favorable picture of the red man than he deserves. . . . One of his critics, on the appearance of the first work in which Indian character was portrayed, objects that its "characters were Indians of the school of Heckewelder, rather than of the school of nature." These words quite probably contain the substance of the true answer to the objection. Heckewelder was an ardent, benevolent missionary, bent on the good of the red man, and seeing in him one who had the soul, reason, and characteristics of a fellow-being. The critic is understood to have been a very distinguished agent of the government, one very familiar with Indians, as they are seen at the councils to treat for the sale of their lands, where little or none of their domestic qualities come in play, and where, indeed, their evil passions are known to have the fullest scope. As just would it be to draw conclusions of the general state of American society from the scenes of the capital, as to suppose that the negotiating of one of these treaties is a fair picture of Indian life. (Deerslayer, vi-vii)

Heckewelder, when he was in his late seventies, wrote two books, An Account of the History, Manners, and

Customs, of the Indian Nations who once Inhabited Pennsy- 129

lvania and the Neighbouring States (1819) , and Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians (1820).4 In these books, Heckewelder, who had been a Moravian Missionary to the Delaware Indians, sets out his understanding of Indian history, language, customs, and progress in civilization. Cass dismisses

Heckewelder's work as that of an old man "at the extremity of a long life," who had "enfeebled faculties."5

However, although the accuracy of Heckewelder•s knowledge may be questioned, the fact which concerns this study is that Cooper greatly depended upon his books.

The most obvious feature of Heckewelder's History, is the author's partiality towards the Delaware Indians and his antipathy to the Indians of the Six Nations. This partiality was adopted by Cooper, who used it as a convenient schema by which all Indians could be recognized as "good" or "bad", depending upon their tribal affiliation.

Thus, in The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The

Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, he pictures the

Delawares as "good" Indians, while showing the Iroquois— including their enemy cousins, the Hurons—as "bad". In

The Prairie he transposes this schema to the Plains

Indians so that the Pawnees are "good" and the Sioux are "bad".

From Heckewelder, Cooper took the account of 130

Delaware origins, the story of how the Iroquois made the

Delawares "women", and Heckewelder1s understanding of the relationship between different tribes. Heckewelder stressed that the Indians whom he describes in such glowing colours are not to be equated with those who would be seen at the time when he wrote:

This history, like other histories of former times, will not in every respect comport with the character of the Indians at the present time, since all these nations and tribes, by their intercourse with the white people, have lost much of the honourable and virtuous qualities which they once possessed, and added to their vices and immorality. Of this, no one can be a better judge than a missionary residing among them. (History, p. 7)

As we have seen this emphasis on past nobility, as compared with present degeneracy, is also an important feature of the Leatherstocking Tales. Beginning with the degenerate Mohegan John in The Pioneers, Cooper was able to project backwards to a time when this same person had been the Great Serpent, or Chingachgook. Even the name,

"Mohican John," which Cooper adapted to "Mohegan" in

The Pioneers, comes from Heckewelder (History, p. 77).

Similarly, Cooper shows that Magua, Mahtoree, and

Arrowhead had all been corrupted by contact with whites, while Rivenoak, living in an earlier period, still retained his native sense of dignity and honour. 131

Heckewelder does not deny the cruelty of Indian life:

It cannot but be acknowledged that the Indians are in general revengeful and cruel to their enemies. That even after the battle is over, they wreak their deliberate revenge on their defenceless prisoners; that in their wars, they are indifferent about the means which they pursue for the annoyance and destruction of their adversaries, and that surprise and stratagem are as often employed by them as open force. (History, p. 91)

He does, however, attempt to play down, explain, and even justify conduct which other writers had magnified as a central constituent of Indian character and society. In one passage he places the question of barbarity in a context of cultural pluralism which we more often associate with twentieth century anthropology than with the nineteenth century missionary movement:

They have a strong innate sense of justice, which will lead them sometimes to acts which some men will call heroic, others romantic, and not a few, perhaps, will designate by the epithet barbarous; a vague indefinite word, which if it means anything, might, perhaps, be best explained by something not like ourselves. (History, p. 89)

Although there are a number of crucial incidents in which Cooper shows the Indian practice of torturing prisoners at the stake, this emphasis is not something he found in Heckewelder, who denied the frequency of 132

such practice:

It is but seldom that prisoners are put to death by burning and torturing. It hardly ever takes place except when a nation has suffered great losses in war, and it is thought necessary to revenge the death of their warriors slain in battle, or when wilful and deliberate murders have been committed by an enemy of their innocent women and children, in which case the first prisoners taken are almost sure of being sacrificed by way of retaliation. (History, p. 211)

Heckewelder also gives examples of Indian opposition to whites who tried to incite them to wanton cruelty (History, pp. 337-8).

While it is important to examine the Heckewelder material which Cooper used, it is equally important to examine material which he ignored. While stressing the primacy of game in the Indian diet, Heckewelder also mentions "the maize, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, melons, and occasionally cabbages and turnips, which they raise in their fields" (History, p. 184).^

In 1742, at the beginning of the Moravian Mission at

Nazareth, Pennsylvania, there was, says Heckewelder "a fine large peach orchard" in the possession of the Indians

(History, p. 336). This peach orchard shows that the

Delawares had adopted some features of white agriculture at the earliest point in time of the Leatherstocking saga.

Cooper's closest approach to indicating that Indians grew 133

crops is a reference in The Pioneers to fruit trees

"of Indian origin" (Pioneers, III, p. 30), and three casual references to crops in The Deerslayer (Deerslayer,

XXIII, p. 409; XXVI, p. 471; XXVIII, p. 511).

In 1772, Moravian missionaries, with five Indian families, moved to Shonbrun on the Ohio river. Because of difficulties occasioned by the Revolutionary War, they were compelled to abandon this site a few years later.

Heckewelder's description of the village, however, gives an indication of the degree to which these Indians were adapting to the demands of white culture:

Shonbrun had been the largest and handsomest town the Christian Indians had hitherto built; containing upwards of sixty dwelling houses, most of which were of squared timbers. The street, from east to west, was long, and of a proper width; from the centre, where the chapel stood, another street run off to the north. The inhabitants had, for the greatest part, become husbandmen. They had large fields under good rail fences, well pailed gardens, and fine fruit trees; besides herds of cattle, horses and hogs. (Narrative, p. 15 7)

Nowhere in the Leatherstocking Tales does Cooper give evidence of any but the most superficial attachment of

Indians to white civilization. Obviously, it did not suit his purpose to follow Heckewelder at this point.

While detailing the opposition of some Indians to the work of the Moravians, Heckewelder also lays a 134

great deal of stress on the opposition of white frontiersmen who saw the Indians as the Canaanites of the New Israel: fjMoraviansJ were censured for endeavouring to civilize the savages, a race of being, which, (in their opinion) had no claim to Christianity, and whom to destroy, both root and branch, would not only be doing God a service, but also be the means of averting his wrath which they otherwise might incur by suffering them to live, they being the same as the Canaanites of old, an accursed race, who by God's command were to be destroyed. (Narrative, p. 42)

While not censuring the Moravians for their missionary activities, the Leatherstocking Tales suggest that such work was futile because of the Indians' involvement in cultural, intellectual and moral darkness.

Because of the importance which Cooper gives to scenes of Indian savagery, we should notice Heckewelder's description of similar atrocities by whites. After four

Sandusky warriors killed a white woman and child in 1781, a group of between one and two hundred Ohio frontiersmen came upon a group of Christian Indians who had returned to their old village to obtain corn. The whites assured the

Indians of their good intentions until the latter were in a position where they could not fight back. The whites then began a systematic massacre which Heckewelder describes as follows: "—One of the party now taking 135

up a cooper's mallet, which lay in the house (the owner being a cooper) saying: 'how exactly this will answer for the business', he began with Abraham, and continued knocking down one after the other, until he had counted fourteen, that he had killed with his own hands" (Narrative, p. 319). Heckewelder points out that the white frontiers• men on this occasion murdered some ninety people, one third of whom were children. In addition to the mass murder of the Muskingum River in 1782, Heckewelder details other incidents of wanton cruelty by whites. He tells of drunken militia officers and men murdering an Indian man, two women and a child in order to get their horses (History, pp. 333-34). He relates a white man's boastful story about a war party which included both whites and Indians:

The party with which he was, having taken a woman prisoner who had a sucking babe at her breast, he tried to persuade the Indians to kill the child, lest its cries should discover the place where they were; the Indians were unwilling to commit the deed, on which the white man at once jumped up, tore the child from its mother's arms, and taking it by the legs dashed its head against a tree, so that the brains flew out all around. The monster in relating this story said "The little dog all the time was making wee!" (History, p. 339)

Heckewelder quotes an eye-witness description of the 1763 murder by the Paxton Boys of the peaceful Conestoga Indians who for their own protection had been placed in the 136

Lancaster, Pennsylvania gaol:

"—Near the back door of the prison, lay an old Indian and his squaw, (wife) particularly well known and esteemed by the people of the town, on account of his placid and friendly conduct. His name was Will Sock; across him and his squaw lay two children, of about the age of three years, whose heads were split with the tomahawk, and their scalps all taken off. -Towards the middle of the gaol yard, along the west side of the wall, lay a stout Indian, whom I particularly noticed to have been shot in the breast, his legs were chopped with the•tomahawk, his hands cut off, and finally a rifle ball discharged in his mouth; so that his head was blown to atoms, and the brains were splashed against, and yet hanging to the wall, for three or four feet around. This man's hands and feet had also been chopped off with a tomahawk. In this manner lay the whole of them, men, women and children, spread about the prison yard: shot—scalped— hacked—and cut to pieces." (Narrative, p. 80)

We see, therefore, that Heckewelder, in his account of Indian-white relations, gives an important place to details of white savagery. Cooper, however, does not use this type of material; if a child's brains are to be knocked out, we can be sure that the child is white and the murderer Indian. As we have noticed, Cooper did not develop the potential for white savagery which he ascribed to Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry. He describes their brutal characters, speaks of their evil intentions, 137

and records conversation in which they plan wanton murder; apart from describing Hurry Harry's random shot which killed the Indian girl, Cooper does not show the whites acting out the savagery within them. In contrast, he pictures Indian savagery in its realized form rather

than leaving it in the realm of potentiality. This

racist bias becomes clear when we compare Cooper's vivid

portrayal of the Indian massacre of whites at Fort

William Henry in The Last of the Mohicans with his more

generalized description of the white massacre of Hurons

in The Deerslayer.

Cooper begins his account of the Fort William

Henry massacre by focussing on a specific act of Indian

brutality:

As the female crowd approached them, the gaudy colours of a shawl attracted the eyes of a wild • and untutored Huron. He advanced to seize it, without the least hesitation. The woman, more in terror than through love of the ornament, wrapped her child in the coveted article, and folded both more closely to her bosom. Cora was in the act of speaking, with an intent to advise the woman to abandon the trifle, when the savage relinquished his hold of the shawl and tore the screaming infant from her arms. Abandoning everything to the greedy grasp of those around her, the mother darted with distraction in her mien, to reclaim her child. The Indian smiled grimly, and extended one hand, in sign of willingness to exchange, while with the other he 138

flourished the babe above his head, holding it by the feet, as if to enhance the value of the ransom.

"Here—here—there—all—any—everything!" exclaimed the breathless woman; tearing the lighter articles of dress from her person, with ill-directed and trembling fingers—"take all, but give me my babe!"

The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering, but sullen smile, changing to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet. (Mohicans, XVII, p. 207)

When the Huron continued the horror of his work by tomahawking the mother, Magua gave a whoop calling some

2000 of his brothers to join in the carnage:

We shall not dwell on the revolting horrors that succeeded. Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects. Resistance only served to inflame the murderers, who inflicted their furious blows long after their victims were beyond the power of their resentment. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a gushing torrent; and as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight, many among them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly, hellishly, of the crimson tide. (Mohicans, XVII, p. 208)

In contrast to the specific act of Indian cruelty 139

at Fort William Henry, there is a vague and indefinite quality to the account of the trooper's massacre of

Huron women and children in The Deerslayer. Rather than dealing in specifics, Cooper emphasizes the confusion of the scene; he focuses attention on Deerslayer's concern for Judith, Hist, and Hetty, rather than on the slaughter of the Indians. "The scene that followed is not easily described. It was one in which wild confusion, despair, and frenzied efforts were so blended as to destroy the unity and directness of the action" (Deerslayer, XXX, p. 544).

As the English troops, with their "steady measured tramp" blocked the Huron's only way of escape,

Deerslayer began the shooting by killing two Hurons with a single shot.

This drew a general fire from the Hurons, and the rifle and war-cry of the Serpent were heard in the clamor. Still, the trained men returned no answer• ing volley, the whoop and piece of Hurry alone being heard of their side, if we except the short, prompt word of authority, and that heavy, measured, and menacing tread. Presently, however, the shrieks, groans, and denunciations that usually accompany the use of the bayonet, followed. That terrible and deadly weapon was glutted in venegeance. The scene that succeeded was one of those, of which so many have occurred in our own times, in which neither age nor sex forms an exemption to the lot of a savage warfare. (Deerslayer, XXX, p. 545) 140

By describing the scene in terms of Indian confusion, contrasted to English military discipline, and by avoiding description of the actual massacre, Coopers blurs the picture of white barbarity in war. Although he mentions the bayonet and its horror, Cooper does not make the reader an eye-witness of its use; any details appeal to the ear rather than the eye. His general statement about the terrors of a savage warfare attempts to place the entire episode within the normal bounds of frontier conflict. At this point he ends the chapter.

He opens the following chapter by saying that the forest, the smoke, and the approach of night all tended to make obscure a picture which Cooper had no intention of showing to the reader. Proceeding to describe the beauty of the following morning, he implies that the slaughter of a few Indians could not significantly alter the beneficent scheme of things:

When the sun rose on the following morning, every sign of hostility and alarm had vanished from the basin of the Glimmerglass. The frightful event of the preceding evening had left no impression on the placid sheet, and the untiring hours pursued their course in the placid order prescribed by the powerful Hand that set them in motion. The birds were again skimming the water, or were seen poised on the wing high above the tops of the tallest pines of the mountains, ready to make their swoops in obedience to the irresistible laws of their nature. (Deerslayer, XXXI, pp. 546-47) 141

Even the reference to the carrion birds which gather after a battle lacks any vivid or immediate quality. The entire account, from the "steady, measured tramp" of the

English soldiers, to the obedience of the birds "to the irresistable laws of their nature" suggests the inevita• bility—and rightness—of the Indian defeat.

When we consider Heckewelder1s reticence in mentioning, let alone detailing, scenes of Indian barbarity, and compare this with the frequency of detailed descriptions of such scenes in Cooper, we must conclude that Cooper's Indians were not altogether "of the school of Mr. Heckewelder." While Cooper often refers to the injustice that whites have done to the

Indians, these references are usually vague, indefinite, and abstract. When he refers to instances of Indian savagery, he is usually specific and vivid.

The question of Heckewelder's accuracy does not concern us in this study. Critics, such as Cass, long ago pointed out the inaccuracy of some of the details which Cooper took from Heckewelder. What does concern this study is the fact that while Cooper took a great deal of general information and specific detail from

Heckewelder, he materially altered Heckewelder's total picture of the Indians. He altered this picture to bring it more into conformity with the then current stereotypes of Indian savagery. 142

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS

From this survey, I conclude that although the

Leatherstocking Tales acknowledge injustice toward the

Indians in the past, especially with regard to their land rights, this acknowledgement is peripheral to the novels' dominant perception of Indian-white relations and would not, therefore, lead to active political concern for the problems of Indians in Cooper's own time. As we have seen, none of the discussion about Indian rights to the land is completely serious. In The Pioneers Indian right to the land is a pseudo-issue which obscures the real issue of Oliver Edwards' claim to the land. The Last of the Mohicans presents Indian land rights in three context a drowsy afternoon dialogue, a rabble-rousing speech by

Magua, and a nostalgic speech by Tamenund which sees the entire question as being predestined. In The Prairie the incursion of the Sioux into Pawnee territory not only destroys Sioux arguments against white interlopers, it also suggests that the Pawnees did not have effective sovreignty, or even possession, of their lands; thus the

Sioux presence raises questions about the Trapper's defense of Indian land rights. Neither The Pathfinder nor The Deerslayer give more than cursory attention to

Indian ownership of the land. 143

All five novels present other aspects of Indian life and of Indian-white relations which tend to dominate the reader's understanding and also to neutralize any suggestion of white injustice. Thus, The Pioneers emphasizes Mohegan's drunkenness and degradation and his very imperfect assimilation into white culture. The Last of the Mohicans highlights the massacre of women and children at Fort William Henry, Magua's treacherous and vengeful character, the fear and possibility of miscegen• ation, the fore-ordained death of "the last of the Mohicans" by the hand of another Indian, and the pathos of Tamenund.

The Prairie presents Indian life in terms of inter-tribal warfare, Sioux cupidity, thievery, and treachery, cruel preparations for torture, and Pawnee accommodation to the interests of the United States. The Pathfinder stresses Indian treachery, blood-lust, and drunkenness, while The Deerslayer also presents pictures of Indian treachery, the grizzly results of scalping, and preparations for, and the beginnings of torture. The last four of the

Leatherstocking novels, of course, also show the good and noble Indian: Chingachgook, Uncas, or Hard-Heart; in no way do they indicate that even these good Indians could find a useful or happy place in white society.

In all of the Leatherstocking novels, Natty

Bumppo is presented as a mediator between the two races.

George Dekker claims that Natty is "uniquely equipped to 144

bridge" the gap between Indian and white. "He can act as interpreter, he can serve as an example to both races of the good qualities of both. Indeed, he is living proof that the Indians and the white Christians are fundamentally more like than unlike." In actuality,

Bumppo is a very imperfect bridge which can handle only one-way traffic; he is able to help the white characters meet the Indians but does not and cannot help the Indians to meet the whites. In addition, the understanding of the

Indians which he gives his fellow whites is distorted; he presents a surface account of their actions and words but does not communicate the underlying meaning.

A symbol of Natty's total function in the novel is found in The Last of the Mohicans when he escorts his white friends to a hidden cave behind the waterfall at

Glenns. Natty had learned of the cave from the Delawares by sharing it with the other whites he opens it to 2 discovery by hostile Indians. Similarly in The Prairie he leads Ishmael Bush and his family to an idyllic campin spot—a spot which the Bush family proceeded to violate; later he reluctantly directs them to the rock formation which they turn into a fortress. By sharing Indian life,

Natty Bumppo is able to discover their secrets, which he later reveals to the whites; in the truest sense of the word he is a pathfinder. He reveals the secrets of the 145

Indians and their land, but he does not help whites to understand the meaning of these secrets.

If Natty helps whites in their encounter with

Indians, he cannot help Indians in their encounter with whites. Even where Natty Bumppo accepts white ways, burial customs for example, he does not appear to understand the inner meaning of these. As The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer show, Natty was unable to relate to white women in any manner except that of knight defender; this failure is both cause and result of his lack of deep relations with white society in general. In The

Deerslayer, Natty, in his late teens or early twenties, points out that he has been with Chingachgook and the

Delawares for some ten years. We are never told why

"providence" placed Natty among the Delawares at such an early age; probably he was either left as an orphan and adopted, or captured in a raid. In either case he was

separated from white society when he was at a very

impressionable age, and, as a result, his relations to

other whites, to Indians, to women, and to Christianity 3 have been fixated at a juvenile level. In spite of his

good intentions therefore, Natty is unable to provide a bridge between Indian and white peoples. This means that

in the Leatherstocking Tales there can be no effective

communication between the two races, no possibility of

dialogue. Natty, far from being an effective bridge

between the two races, belongs to neither and illustrates 146

in his own person, the belief of many people that the two races were incompatible. In this, and in other ways, Cooper portrayed the Indians as being more alien to white civilization than Heckewelder, one of his major sources, had indicated. He portrayed them as more alien to white civilization than they were in actuality. Ignoring any Indian developments in agriculture, Cooper portrays them as almost entirely dependent upon hunting, a state which one of his contemporaries described as "the zero of 4 society." Natty Bumppo's understanding of gifts implies a cultural chasm between the two races which cannot be bridged. Charles Boewe points out that in The Last of the Mohicans and The Prairie "gifts" are hereditary in nature; in The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer the emphasis is shifted to environmental and cultural factors.5 Natty's doctrine of "gifts" enables Cooper to present uncivilized and even inhumane Indian behaviour as a function of either race or culture. This double standard suggests to the reader that Indians cannot live in harmony with white society which follows different gifts. Because "the gifts of the whites are mostly virtues, those of the Indians mostly vices" (Boewe, p. 29), the burden of accommodation between the two races is placed entirely on the Indians. When Hutter and Hurry Harry plan a 147

scalping raid, Natty condemns this in terms of whites

misappropriating Indian gifts, rather than as a function

of their own greed.

It is important to note that a great many of

Cooper's Indian characters are isolated individuals

rather than persons firmly rooted in their tribal

traditions. Chingachgook, Uncas, Magua, Arrowhead, Dew

of June, and Hist are all separated from their own people;

even Hard-Heart is apart from his fellow tribesmen for

most of the action in The Prairie. White characters who

live and act apart from white society usually represent

a form of rugged individualism, and are, in effect, the

vanguard of that society; the isolated Indian, however

usually represents either a tribal remnant, or else an

element of personal degradation and shame.^

As a result of this isolation, the reader does

not think of the Indians as a people. Throughout the tales,

five scenes give the reader brief glimpses of Indian

society. Three of these scenes, the Huron village in

The Last of the Mohicans, the Sioux encampment in The

Prairie, and the Huron camp in The Deerslayer, show the

Indians as they prepare to torture prisoners; blood•

thirsty crones, self-seeking demagogues, and cowardly braggarts dominate each of these scenes. Nostalgic

recollection of past glory and preparation for war 148

dominate the fourth scene, that of Tamenund's Delaware village in The Last of the Mohicans. We have already noted that the fifth scene, showing the Pawnee village in The Prairie, lacks concrete and vivid detail, and that, even here, the suspicions of Captain Middleton arouse a great deal of anxiety in the sympathetic reader.

In addition to showing the Indians as isolated individuals and giving only very distorted glimpses of

Indian society, Cooper shows contact with whites to have had a disintegrating effect upon the Indian people.

Mohegan John, Magua, Mahtoree, and Arrowhead have all been corrupted by their contact with whites. In each of these cases, Indian weakness for white man's liquor is shown as a dominant factor; this implies that the Indian character was already flawed and unable to withstand the pressures exerted by a changing situation.

Conversely, Cooper does not show any situation where contact with the whites has been of lasting value to the Indian, or where the Indian character has been able to grow and develop under the stimulus of white culture.

In The Deerslayer, Hist remarked that although the

Moravians had tried to teach her to spell, she had resisted because it is "'No good for Delaware girl to know too much'" (Deerslayer, X, p. 176). Chingachgook had been half converted by the Moravians but relapsed 149

into his old beliefs as he approached death. Like the

Indians characterized by Lewis Cass, the Indians of the

Leatherstocking Tales can neither learn nor profit from their contact with the whites.

Cooper's Indian characters, although they possess splendid physiques, heroic virtues such as courage, stoic endurance to pain, and loyalty to friends, lack precisely those qualities which Cooper and his contemporaries thought necessary for participation in civilized life: thrift, prudence, literacy, adherence to Christianity, possession of private property, life in settled communities with an agricultural base, the habit of empirical thinking, and the willingness to do routine physical labour. Thus, in spite of the fact that they can be separated into "good" and "bad" categories, Cooper's Indians are all essentially barbaric.

Chingachgook, Uncas, and Hard-Heart show no more possibility of adapting to white society than do Magua and Mahtoree.

In each of the Leatherstocking Tales some of the

Indian characters indicate that they lived better and happier lives before they came into contact with white men and white society. As the novels move backward into history from The Pioneers to The Deerslayer, Cooper is able to portray his Indians with more virtues and fewer 150

vices; thus, Rivenoak's character in The Deerslayer is presented quite favourably even though he is an enemy of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook. Rivenoak's character is much closer to that of Chingachgook than it is to Cooper's earlier drawn portraits of later villains: Magua, Weucha, and Mahtoree. By suggesting that the Indians themselves are happier away from white society, Cooper contributed to those forces favouring

Indian removal as a way of saving the Indians.

In addition to presenting a picture of the

Indians which saw them as alien to white civilization, the Leatherstocking Tales also emphasize the inevitability and rightness of American expansion. The rightness of this expansion is brought out by the portrayal of characters such as Judge Temple, Paul Hover, Jasper

Western, Duncan Heyward, and Captain Middleton. In

The Pioneers, Leatherstocking himself is referred to as

"the foremost in that band of Pioneers, who are opening the way for the march of our nation across the continent"

(Pioneers, XLI, p. 477). At the same time, emphasis on the rightness of expansion is qualified throughout the

Leatherstocking Tales by numerous factors: pictures of waste and spoilage in The Pioneers and The Prairie;

Natty Bumppo's comments about settlers and their

"'wasty ways'" (Pioneers, XXXII, p. 369); and the 151

portrayal of materialistic and insensitive frontiersmen

like Ishmael Bush, Thomas Hutter, and Hurry Harry March.

Roy Harvey Pearce gives a helpful perspective.on Cooper's

attitude to the frontier:

Throughout his career, even as his specific political alignment changed, he held to a belief that society must progress toward the (perhaps unattainable) goodness of complex (i.e., civilized) forms and usages. . . . Civilization meant a devotion to higher cultural forms, never a turning away from those forms to a rude, down-to-earth egalitarianism. Specifically, the frontier . . . represents one stage in our movement toward the best life. ... The frontier of the Leatherstocking Tales is not something to which Cooper would recommend that men retreat; the good life of an agrarian, aristocratically dominated, intellectually developed society was not to be retreated from. It was a goal which Americans, above all, might achieve.

In this perspective, The Pathfinder can be seen

as a vindication of the frontier and. of frontiersmen who,

like Natty Bumppo, must engage in bloody practices which would not be acceptable in a more advanced state of

society. The Deerslayer, contains no such vindication.

If the English soldiers, with their steady and disciplined march, represent the coming of order to the wilderness,

it is an order which is destructive and anti-life. This

last novel does not question the inevitability of American 152

expansion--for that also is symbolized in the measured tramp of the soldiers—but it does question the manner in which that expansion is carried out. It questions not the "American dream" but whether the people are worthy of the dream. The Deerslayer, therefore, indicates something of Cooper's pessimism about America; the frontier is not vindicated but neither are the Indians.

While the Leatherstocking Tales recognize the injustice by which the Indian people had been dispossessed of their land, this recognition did not lead to active political concern for Indians who were threatened with removal in Cooper's time. Although Cooper was politically aware and active, this awareness and activity was not directed toward the question of justice for the Indian people. On March 15, 1840, Cooper wrote to President

Martin Van Buren warning of a possible Indian uprising about which he had heard from a Cooperstown Indian:

"He then told me that his brother at Green Bay had sent him word that British Agents had been sounding the tribes in that vicinity, to know if they would fight the Americans.

The argument was, the Americans keep driving you off your lands, whereas the English will permit you to remain"

(Letters and Journals, IV, p. 25). This letter represents

Cooper's most direct political involvement with Indian concerns. 153

On June 17th, 185 1, three months before his death, Cooper wrote in answer to a Mr. George Copway

(1818-c.-1863) who was planning to publish a weekly concerned with Indians. Although, because of his health,

Cooper could not promise any contributions, he did say,

"The red man has a high claim to have his cause defended, and I trust you will be able to do much on his behalf"

(Letters and Journals, VI, p. 274-5). This expression of mild interest represents the limit of Cooper's concern g to see justice done for the Indian people.

Like other Americans of his time, Cooper was committed to the idea of western expansion; like other

Americans of his time he thought of American history in three-dimensional terms, "progressing from past to present, from east to west, from lower to higher" (Pearce, Savages of America, p. 49). Committed as he was to this expansion, his concern for the integrity of his nation found expression not by questioning expansion itself, but only by questioning the way it was taking place. The Deerslayer represents a rejection of method and not of goal.

If we are to understand why Cooper, politically aware and concerned about the integrity of the United

States, could write so much about Indians in his novels and ignore them so completely in current events, we must examine the way Cooper saw and used Indians in his novels. 154

Thus, although Cooper was aware of America's ethical problem in the dispossession of the Indian, he did not give this awareness a central place in his thinking. He saw the Indian as a foil for white humanity.

As Eearce says, the early English writer saw in the

American Indian "what he himself would become did he not live according to his highest nature. The Indian became important to the English mind, not for what he was in and of himself, but rather for what he showed civilized men they were not and must not be" (Savages of

America, p. 5). In the same way, Cooper's interest was not "in the Indian as Indian, but in the Indian as a vehicle for understanding the white man, in the savage defined in terms of the ideas and needs of civilized life" (Savages of America, p. 202).

In addition, Cooper saw the Indian as authentic

American material for romance. G. Harrison Orians has outlined "the demand for literary productions of grandeur and power equal to the political principles for which the 9 republic stood." The nationalism arising from the War of 1812, coupled with enthusiasm for Scott's Waverley novels, the first of which was published in 1814, led

Americans to look to their past for indigenous romantic material. In this search, attention was soon directed to the Indians; Orians quotes from an optimistic article of

1820: 155

"From its offering so many advantages to the writer of imagination," the reviewer declared, "the history of the Indian will, hereafter, undoubtedly form the classic lore of American literature," an optimistic utterance he reinforced by perceiving in the border struggles occasions "for the most interesting and ingenious development of incident, and for the most striking and vigorous grouping of characters, and for the most splendid and glowing description of landscape ever offered to the imagination by the history of any people." (Orians, p. 418)

Cooper's Leatherstocking novels, therefore, as well as his novels of the sea, and of the Revolution, attempted to meet this growing American need for a romantic past.

Interest in the Indians was developed for this purpose and did not reflect concern for the Indians as people.

Cooper was not greatly interested in Indians except as they served his needs for romantic subject matter. Thus, in reply to a request for some information about the

Indians in north-eastern New York, the locale of The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper said, "'My acquaintance with your part of the State is very slight, nor am I very conversant with Indian history. I would recommend Mr. Schoolcraft to you'" (Letters and Journals, V, p. 401). In other words, Cooper exploited the Indian for his own uses in exactly the same manner that Judge Temple planned to exploit the land around Templeton. Neither Indian nor 156

land had value in themselves; their value lay in the use to which a civilized gentleman, such as Cooper or

Judge Temple, might wish to put them. With this in mind, we must reject as nonsense the claims of critics such as Dekker, who says—after acknowledging the moral issue of dispossession—that Cooper "was the greatest advocate the American Indian ever had precisely because he was a great patriot—one whose love for his country embraced the continent as well as the nation, its past as well as its future" (Dekker, p. 66).

Cooper was thought of as pro-Indian only because of his controversy with Lewis Cass about the nature of

Indian life and society. Cass's basic disagreement, as we have seen, was with Heckewelder; Cooper became involved when Cass suggested that Cooper, in his portrayal of Mohegan John, had been overly influenced by Heckewelder,

But, as we have seen, Cooper did not present as favourable a view of the Indians as did Heckewelder; it is only in comparison with someone like Lewis Cass, who had a very low opinion of Indians, that Cooper can in any way be considered pro-Indian!

Given Cooper's use of the Indians as raw material for romance, and given his commitment to westward expansion, along with his concern for the integrity of the United States of America, it is not unnatural that 157

his novels should reflect the uneasy tension between the real and the ideal in his perception of America. State• ments about the injustice which deprived the Indian people of their ancestral lands express an uneasy conscience on the part of the author and appeal to such a conscience in his readers. But acknowledging such injustice does not expiate the sense of guilt which has developed in white society. D. H. Lawrence put the situation most clearly:

Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad lands of America. At least I presume not. But his ghost will. . . .

The Red Man is dead, disbelieving in us. He is dead and unappeased. Do not imagine him happy in his Happy Hunting Ground. No. Only those that die in belief die happy. Those that are pushed out of life in chagrin come back unappeased, for revenge. (Studies In Classic American Literature, p. 44)

I believe that in this passage Lawrence speaks a great truth although it cannot be verified by empirical data. For this reason, I disagree with McWilliams and his apparent endorsation of what Cooper "knows":

Within the larger context of American history, however, Cooper knows that questions of Indian conquest, tribal differences, and the validity of Indian law are not of ultimate, continuing importance. Without forgetting white injustices and white slaughter, Cooper recognizes that, for the nation as a whole, the problem posed by the 158

Indian will steadily diminish in importance. The larger question of political justice that is argued in these novels is the kind of justice that the white man is bringing to the wilderness. In the total configuration of Cooper's border romances, the Indian per se is not as important as the white man's treatment of him. (McWilliams, pp. 241-42)

If McWilliams here gives a fair characterization of Cooper's position in the Leatherstocking Tales, as I think he does, then Cooper is able to affirm the westward movement of American civilization even while he acknowledges the injustice which it has left in its wake. The fictional travelling gentleman speaks for Cooper himself when he describes Indian removal as a "great, humane, and ... rational project ... to bring the Indians within the pale of civilization" (Notions, p. 285).

In the final analysis the Leatherstocking Tales must be seen as a sentimental and romantic retreat from the

realities of United States policy towards Indian people.

Instead of dealing with the concrete situation of the

Indian vis-a-vis white society, they deal with the

psychological situation of the white American; the novels

seek to give the assurance "that men in becoming civilized

had gained much more than they had lost; and that

civilization, the act of civilizing, for all of its

destruction of primitive virtues, put something higher

and greater in their place" (Pearce, Savages of America, 159

p. 85). The Leatherstocking Tales helped people to accept the proposition that Indians had their place in America's past but not in the present. When all factors in Cooper's depiction of Indians and their relations with whites were taken into account the average reader in Cooper's time would conclude that nothing needed to be or could be done about their contemporary situation. 160

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER I 1

The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore

Cooper, ed. James Franklin Beard, 6 vols. (Cambridge,

Mass.: Belknap Press, 1960-68). Hereafter cited as

Letters and Journals. 2 Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), p. 201. 3

Gregory Lansing Paine, "The Indians of the

Leather-Stocking Tales," Studies in Philology, 23 (1926),

19. 4 John T. Frederick, "Cooper's Eloquent Indians," PMLA, 71 (1956), 1006. 5

The State of the Union Messages of the

Presidents: 1790-1966, ed. Fred L. Israel (New York:

Chelsea House, 1966), ,1, 58, 64, 82, 85, 96.

^ Reginal Horsman, The Origins of Indian Removal

1815-1824, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,

19 70), pp. 5-6. 7

This claim of Georgia, however, was not prior to the Treaty of Hopewell (1785) and the Treaty of Holsten

(1791), both of which guaranteed federal government protection for Cherokee lands and rights. See "Worcester v. Georgia: Majority Opinion of Chief Justice John

Marshall (Official Summary)," This Country Was Ours, ed.

Virgil J. Vogel (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 127, 129. 161

° Jedediah Morse, A Report to the Secretary of

War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New Haven:

S. Converse, 1822), pp. 35, 61, 75, 78-9. o

Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., Salvation and the

Savage, (Lexington Ky.: University of Kentucky Press,

1965), p. 103. 10

McCoy is quoted at length in an unsigned article, "Documents and Proceedings, Relating to the

Fromation and Progress of a Board in the City of New York, for the Emigration, Preservation, and Improvement of the

Aborigines of America, July 22, 1829," North American

Review, 30 (January-April, 1830), pp. 113-114. Authorship of the article is attributed to Lewis Cass by William

Cushing, Index to the North American Review, Volumes

I-CXXV: 1815-1877 (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson and Son,

1878), pp. 54, 123.

11 "Documents and Proceedings," North American Review, 30 (January-April, 1830), p. 64. 12

Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1962), p. 231. 13 "Opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia," This Country was Ours, p. 118. 14

John Collier, Indians of the Americas, (New

York: New American Library, 1948), p. 124. 162

CHAPTER II i The five novels were published as follows:

The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna: A

Descriptive Tale by the Author of "Precaution," 2 vols.

(New York: Charles Wiley, 1823); The Last of the Mohicans:

A Narrative of 175 7, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea,

1826); The Prairie: A Tale, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey,

Lea, and Carey, 1827); The Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea,

2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840); The

Deerslayer, or, The First War-Path, 2 vols. (Lea and

Blanchard, 1841). There are no definitive editions of

Cooper; except where otherwise noted, this thesis uses

"The Works of James Fenimore Cooper," Mohawk edition

(New York: G.P. Putnam's Son's, 1895-1896, 1900), 33 vols.

The Mohawk edition is based on the Townsend text (1859-61), which incorporates Cooper's revisions for twelve of the novels, including the five Leatherstocking Tales; these had been published as "The Author's Revised Edition"

(New York: George P. Putnam, 1849-1851). The Mohawk edition is the most accessible edition of Cooper's fiction. Bibliographic information is available in

Robert E. Spiller and Philip C. Blackburn, A Descriptive

Bibliography of the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper

(New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1934). See also James

Franklin Beard, "James Fenimore Cooper," Fifteen American 163

Authors Before 1900: Bibliographic Essays on Research and Criticism, ed. Robert A. Rees and Earl N. Harbert

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971). All page references to the Leatherstocking Tales are cited in the text, which uses the following short titles:

Pioneers, Mohicans, Prairie, Pathfinder, and Deerslayer. 2 Thomas Philbrick, "Cooper's The Pioneers: Origins and Structure," PMLA 79 (1964), 593. 3 See pp. 13-14 above. 4 Roy Harvey Pearce claims that one of the tasks of authors in nineteenth century America was

at once publicly to admit that the Indian had been cruelly destroyed and to satisfy themselves and their readers that that destruction was part of a universal moral progress which it was the special destiny of America to manifest. The myriad Indian fictions after 1823 are so many attempts to expiate the sin rising from the cruelty which was a necessary quality of American progress westward. In the fictions of the Indian, American pity and censure came to find their fullest and most public expression. ... A story of an Indian, then, as in Cooper, would be meaningful primarily as a story of the tension between savagism and civilization (The Savages of America, p. 112). 5 Marcus Clavel, Fenimore Cooper and His Critics: (Aix-en Provence: Imprimerie Universataire de Provence,

1938), pp. 141-162. 164

Cooper projected on Magua all of his own dislike and distrust of the demagogue. The Indian demagogue, found also in The Prairie and, to a lesser extent, in The Deerslayer, is a counterpart to such unlikeable white characters as Steadfast Dodge and

Aristabulus Bragg in Home As Found (1838). In The

American Democrat (1838), Cooper describes the demagogue

as follows:

The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people. Sometimes the object is to indulge malignancy, unprincipled and selfish men submitting but to two governing motives, that of doing good to themselves, and that of doing harm to others. . . .

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management, instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes. (The American Democrat, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1969~| , pp. 154-56) .

7 An 1826 review of The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans in the North American Review, which 165

Cushing attributes to W. H. Gardiner, comments sarcast• ically on Uncas's romantic attachment:

No flower of ancient chivalry was ever possessed of more respectful devotion to his lady love than Uncas; no modern carpet knight ever expressed his sublimated affections by more delicate and refined attentions. ... Instead of scalping the dead, whom he had conquered in battle, he leaves it to his father to gather all the trophies of the field, and flies 'with instinctive delicacy' accompanied by Heyward, to the assistance of the sisters, and quickly releasing Alice, placed her in the open arms of Cora. The instinctive delicacy of an Indian is romantic enough, to be sure; but it will not serve for 'narrative.' (North American Review, 23 [July 1826^, 167-68).

It is highly ironical that Major Munro should

accuse Heyward of such prejudice when Munro himself had barely finished speaking about the "curse entailed on

Scotland, by her unnatural union with a foreign and trading people" (Mohicans, XVI, 188; italics mine). 9

This Preface can be found in The Last of the

Mohicans, "Introduction" by Van Wyck Brooks (New York:

Collier Books, 1962), p. 14. Hereafter cited as Collier edition. 10

Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion, or The Hermit in

Greece, trans. Willard R. Trask (Toronto: New American

Library of Canada Ltd., 1965), p. 23. 166

11 Collier edition, p. 15. 12

In an 1826 review which attacked Cooper's dependence upon Heckewelder, Cass says of the Osage

Indians, "They are the Ishmaelites of the Trans-

Mississippi country. Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against them" (North American

Review, 22 [january, 1826^ , 102). 13

D. H. Lawrence, Studies In Classic American

Literature (1923; rpt. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1953), p. 60.

Richard Chase, The American Novel and its

Tradition (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), p. 57. 15

From the context of the novel, I would identify this event with the "Battle of Fallen Timbers," fought on

August 20, 1794, in north-western Ohio. This involves some difficulties with Cooper's chronology; according to

The Pioneers (XLI, 466), Leatherstocking did not leave

Templeton until October of that year. John P. McWilliams,

Jr. understands Leatherstocking's comment as referring to the Revolutionary War (Political Justice in a Republic:

James Fenimore Cooper's America ^Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1972^, p. 266). However, both Natty's age at the time, "three score and ten," and the fact that he was leaving the older states argue against such an early date. 167

10 McWilliams points out that while Cooper affirmed a divinely implanted moral sense, this was completely absent from many of his Indian and frontier characters:

In work after work, Cooper shows how unrealizable is his own hope that man's moral sense is sufficient to govern him. The necessity of having the civil law, Cooper insists, arises from man's failure to live within the moral or divine law. Cooper is all too aware of the ease with which man misinterprets or perverts the terms "moral law" or "natural law." For Hurry Harry or Thousandacres, "moral law" signifies whatever he thinks is right and "natural law" whatever laws he cares to observe in nature. In Cooper's eyes, such misuses let down all barriers against personal relativism. Thus, Cooper's Yankees claim natural law as a sanction for squatter's rights, Natty refers to natural law to support his doctrine of use, but a Littlepage cites natural law in defense of property rights. (Political Justice in a Republic, pp. 20-21) 17 McWilliams also recognizes Cooper's partial rehabilitation of Ishmael Bush:

It is Ishmael Bush, not Natty Bumppo, who restores social order at the end of The Prairie. Because Ishmael belongs to society, even in its lowest form, he•can bring rudimentary forms of civil justice to the barbarous wilderness. . . . He openly delivers impartial justice according to a fixed and stated principle of moral law. . . . 168

Bush gains stature because the justice he provides is truly disinterested. He adheres to his conception of principle even after he recognizes that following that principle is no longer in his self-interest. (Political Justice in a Republic, pp. 268-69)

Kay Seymour House, taking an opposite view, says that

"Understanding only one rule from the Bible ('an eye for an eye1), Ishmael embodies the great American nightmare of the early nineteenth century" (Cooper's

Americans Columbus: Ohio State University Press,

1965 , p. 298). With retribution as the only principle for dispensing justice, many nineteenth century Americans feared that a frontier oriented society would break up into a number of hostile armed bands. 18

When Cooper referred to Inez as a "Creole"

(Prairie, XV, 144), that term did not connote mixed blood. It was a term often used in Louisiana, the West

Indies, and Spanish America to refer to a person of pure

French or Spanish ancestry. See H. L. Mencken,

Supplement One: The American Language (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), p. 597; see also OED. 19

Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a

Travelling Bachelor, with an Introduction by Robert E.

Spiller (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1963); hereafter cited in the text as Notions. 169

Robert E. Spiller, James Fenimore Cooper:

Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (New York: American Book Company, 1936), p. xxxi.

George Dekker, James Fenimore Cooper: The

Novelist (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), pp. 67-80. 22

"Documents and Proceedings", North American

Review, 30 (January-April, 1830), p. 79.

CHAPTER III

Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Indian Heritage of

America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 324. 2 Leslie A. Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), pp. 99-100. 3

Cf. Pioneers, I, p. 9.

4 Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land, (Chapel

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), pp.

106-07.

^ Natty had used the same image of going over

Niagara to describe his relationship to Mabel (Pathfinder,

XXVIII, p. 476). Accepting Mabel as a symbol of the developing civilization of the eastern colonies, we see that Natty saw civilization's threat to himself in the same terms as its threat to Indian people.

^ Cooper, himself, thought enough of this latter 170

image to recall it in The Prairie (XXII, 274).

7

These comments, however, lose some of their force because they are made by Mabel, who is shown to be very naive about the nature and necessity of border warfare (XIX, 326). g Cooper places the story in the years between

1740 and 1745 (The Deerslayer, I, 2); this brings him into some difficulty with his chronology. The novel presupposes well established Moravian missionary activity among the

Delawares and Mohicans, but 1740 was the earliest date of the Moravian mission to the Mohicans on the Connecticut

River (John Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission of the

United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians

^Philadelphia: M'Carty and Davis, 182OfJ, p. 32). 9 " ' See, however, the passage where Judith discovers that she is not Hutter's natural daughter and where Natty in return speaks of his own low station in comparison to hers (Pathfinder, XXIV, 439-40). 10

McWilliams claims that this "is the one passage in Cooper's writings in which the author seems explicitly to sanction civil disobedience. . Significantly, however, civil disobedience is condoned by a character who does not necessarily represent Cooper's opinion, and it is applied only to a law that antedates the American

Constitution" (Political Justice in a Republic, p. 281). 171

11 ' In this sense, perhaps, Cooper sees the wilderness as a symbol for America in general. In his

1822 "Preface" to the third edition of The Spy (New York:

Wiley and Halstead, 1822), he says, "Man is not the same creature here as in other countries. He is more fettered by reason and less by laws, than in any other section of the globe; consequently, while he enjoys a greater political liberty, he is under a greater moral restraint than his European brother". My attention was drawn to this by Arvid Shulenerger, Cooper's Theory of Fiction,

(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1955), p. 16. 12

In more than one hundred paintings of "Peaceable

Kingdom," Cooper's contemporary, Edward Hicks (1780-1849), had made a clear connection between these verses from

Isaiah and Indian-white relations in America. The left

side of one of these paintings shows William Penn and

other whites making a treaty with Indian people; the right

side of the painting shows an overgrown child playing with

both wild and tame animals. Many of these paintings were

done in the 1830's. (Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: Painter of

the Peaceable Kingdom £ Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl•

vania Press, 1952J, p. 41).

13 McWilliams, Political Justice in a Republic, p. 280. 14

This statement by Hurry Harry and a similar one

by Deerslayer that "'The country is claimed by both Mingoes 172

and Mohicans, and is a sort of common territory to fish and hunt through,'" (Deerslayer, I, 8), contradict

Mohegan's statement in The Pioneers, "'The land was owned by my people; we gave it to my brother, in council— to the Fire-eater'" (The Pioneers, XXVI, 299).

CHAPTER IV

Rev. of Manners and Customs of Several

Indian Tribes, by John D. Hunter, North American Review,

22 (January, 1826), 67. James Grossman comments, "We can appreciate the severity of the Western standard of

Indian naturalism when we consider that this ^Cass's sarcastic remarkj is apparently a reference to poor drunken John Mohegan of The Pioneers, whose only romantic qualities were his flowery rhetoric and his death in the fire, and not to the characters of The Last of the Mohicans which had been published only in February of that year"-- the month following Cass's article. James Grossman,

James Fenimore Cooper (New York: William Sloane Associates,

1949), pp. 47-48. 2 Rev. of Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, by Henry R. Schoolcraft, North American

Review, 27 (April, 1828), 376. 3

Transactions of the Historical & Literary

Committee of the American Philosophical Society, Held at

Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge (Philadelphia: 173

Abraham Small, 1819), I, 1-348. 4

Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians, (Philadelphia:

M'Carty & Davis, 1920).

5 North American Review, 27 (April, 1828), 373.

^ In another place Heckewelder says that children were taught to look to a "great, good and benevolent Spirit" who had given them game, and "that by one of his inferior spirits he had also sent down to them from above corn, pumpkins, squashes, beans and other vegetables for their nourishment; all which blessings their ancestors have enjoyed for a great number of ages"

(History, p. 99; italics mine).

CHAPTER V 1 George Dekker, James Fenimore Cooper: The Novelist (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 93. 2

Dekker, pp. 74-75.

3 Kolodny, pp. 108, 112-114. See also Robert

H. Zoellner, "Conceptual Ambivalence in Cooper's Leather- stocking," i^ericaJiJA^ 31 (1959-60), 403, 418-19. 4 Pearce, The Savages of America, p. 132. Pearce is quoting from Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-81), League of the Iroquois (Rochester: 1851), p. 143. 5

Charles Boewe, "Cooper's Doctrine of Gifts,"

Tennessee Studies in Literature, 7 (1962), 30. ^ I disagree at this point with Zoellner (p. 409), 174

who emphasizes the Indian characters* "consciousness of being part of a socio-tribal tradition stretching back far beyond the memory of the oldest warrior." My point is that most of the Indian characters in the Leatherstocking

Tales are alienated from their own tradition.

7

Roy Harvey Pearce, "The Leatherstocking

Tales Re-examined," South Atlantic Quarterly, 46 (1942),

525.

At this point an examination of Beard's

"Index to Volumes I-VI" of The Letters and Journals of

James Fenimore Cooper (VI, 355-460) is instructive.

There are no entries for such important Indian tribes, or tribal groupings, as the Delawares, Mohicans, Hurons,

Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas, Cayugas, Six Nations,

Pequods, Naragansetts, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws,

Choctaws, or Seminoles. There are no references to

Indians such as Black Hawk (1767-1838), or Osceola

(1804-38) who led unsuccessful attempts to halt frontier

expansion into their tribal lands. There are single

entries for each of the following: Mohawks, Osage, Sioux,

and Omawhaw; none of the letters to which these entries refer show any social or political concern for the Indian

people. This lack of interest in Indians can be contrasted with index entries showing Cooper's political and social

concern for such subjects as the United States Navy, the 175

Bank of the United States, and the constitutional powers of President and Congress; other significant entries are those dealing with his involvement in the French Finance

Controversy, his active participation on behalf of

Polish democracy, and his growing concern with American slavery. 9

G. Harrison Orians, "The Romance Ferment

After Waverley," American Literature, 3 (1931-32), 409. 176

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beard, James Franklin. "James Fenimore Cooper," Fifteen

American Authors Before 1900: Bibliographic Essays on

Research and Criticism. Eds. Robert A. Rees and

Earl N. Harbert. Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1971, pp. 63-96.

Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr. Salvation and the Savage: An

Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian

Response, 1787-1862. Lexington: University of

Kentucky Press, 1965.

Boewe, Charles. "Cooper's Doctrine of Gifts." Tennessee

Studies in Literature, 7 (1962), 27-35.

Cass, LewisJ. "Documents and Proceedings Relating to the

Formation and Progress of a Board in the City of

New York, for the Emigration, Preservation, and

Improvement of the Aborigines of America. July 22,

1829." North American Review, 30 (January, 1830),

62-121. Authorship attributed to Cass by Cushing.

"Rev. of Manners and Customs of Several

Indian Tribes, Located West of the Mississippi,

Including Some Account of the Soil, Climate and

Vegetable Productions; and the Indian Materia

Medica; to which is Prefixed the History of the

Author's Life during a residence of Several Years

among Them, by John D. Hunter; and Historical Notes 177

Respecting the Indians of North America, with

Remarks on the Attempts Made to Convert and

Civilize Them, by John Halkett." North American

Review, 22 (January, 1826), 53-108. Authorship

attributed to Cass by Cushing.

J . "Rev. of Travels in the Central Portions of

the Mississippi Valley; Comprising Observations on

its Mineral Geography, Internal Resources, and

Aboriginal Population, by Henry R. Schoolcraft;

and A Vindication of the Rev. Mr. Heckewelder's

History of the Indian Nations, by William Rawle."

North American Review, 27 (April, 1828), 357-378.

Authorship attributed to Cass by Cushing.

Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition.

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Anchor

Books, 1957.

Clavel, Marcel. Fenimore Cooper and his Critics: American,

British and French Criticisms of the Novelist's Early

Work. Aix-en-Provence: Imprimerie Universitaire de

Provence, 1938.

Clemens, Samuel L. "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences."

1895. Reprint. The Shock of Recognition: The

Development of Literature in the United States

Recorded by the Men Who Made It. Ed. Edmund Wilson.

2nd Ed. New York: The Modern Library, 1955, pp. 582-

594i. 178

Collier, John. Indians of the Americas: The Long Hope.

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