The Deerslayer

The Last of the Mohicans

The first thing to note about The Last of the Mohicans is that the ‘Mohicans’ never existed. James Fenimore Cooper fused, or rather ‘confused’, the names of two real Native American tribes – the Mohegan and the Mahican – to arrive at a hybrid name. In addition, the names are plural nouns not requiring an ‘s’. Set in the year 1757, The Last of the Mohicans is the second of five novels published between 1823 and 1841 featuring a character named Natty Bumppo. He is a frontiersman who finds himself in various adventures involving Native American Indians and European settlers at the time when the United States of America was in its embryonic stage. He had Caucasian parents but was raised by natives. As a result the author invented a character in possession of traits that he evidently thought were a perfect marriage – the courage and toughness of a tribesman and the perceived intelligence and cunning of the white Americans. Although by the standards of today, these kinds of stereotypes would be considered controversial, Cooper was writing for a primarily white readership, so his hero needed to appeal to their prejudices.

The eponymous last Mohicans are two tribesmen who assist Natty Bumppo in his exploits. They are Chingachgook and his son Uncas. Cooper seems to have erroneously believed that the Mohegan/Mahican had become extinct by his own lifetime. In fact both remained extant peoples, except that they had largely given up their hunter-gatherer lifestyles by that time. Also, the Mahican had become known as the Stockbridge Indians, having settled in the town of Stockbridge. Cooper was a city dweller, so was rather out of touch with anthropological accuracy. Besides, the title lent the story an air of romanticism and nostalgia, so Cooper may well have invented the myth to suit his literary ends.

The historical setting for the novel is the Seven Years War (1756–63), in which all of the European powers vied for supremacy on the world stage. In America it became known as the French and Indian War. It was actually fought between the British and the French, with the Native Americans siding with the latter. Ultimately the British won, which is why the official language of the US is English. The French took Canada. Central to the plot of the story is the kidnap of the British commander’s daughters by members of the Huron tribe. It is Chingachgook and Bumppo who rescue them and deliver them back safely, thereby living up to the idea of the noble savage. In a way, it was convenient for Cooper to kill the Mohicans off. In the early 19th century Native Americans were perceived as an inconvenience by the European descendants and were persecuted as an inferior race. By allowing the Mohicans to have died out Cooper preserved them as a kind of legendary tribe who were somehow above all others because their values were similar to the white-skins. Uncas, it is explained, is the last Mohican because there are no more pureblood female Mohicans with whom he can bear children.

In truth the Mohegan tribe did ally themselves with the English and there was a real chief named Uncas, although he lived a century before the character in Cooper’s story. Evidently Cooper brought a number of elements together in writing The Last of the Mohicans, but gave himself artistic licence to adapt and embellish. It is always important to be mindful of the fact that fiction is fictitious and designed to be entertaining. Cooper wasn’t writing a historical novel. He was writing an adventure story to capture the imaginations of an American population becoming increasingly divorced from its turbulent past. The US had only existed since 1789 and people had an appetite for those kinds of stories.

The Deerslayer

The Deerslayer (1841), although the last of Fenimore Cooper’s five Natty Bumppo novels – known collectively as the ‘Leatherstocking Tales’ – to be published, is chronologically the first, being set in the 1740s. Its subtitle, The First War-Path, makes it clear that this novel is a prequel to the others. The author uses this tale to establish the character of Natty Bumppo. He is a ‘White Indian’ (as opposed to a ‘Red Indian’), loosely based on Daniel Boone, a real-life frontiersman who adopted the ways of the Native Americans in order to exploit the resources available to him in the wilderness.

Bumppo also adopts the ethics of the aboriginal peoples of America, only hunting wildlife for what he needs and never wasting anything. In essence, he is at one with his environment, in marked contrast to the colonialists who are expanding New York like a manmade growth spreading across the land.

This first story sees Bumppo at odds with his mixed heritage. Both of his parents were white, yet he is culturally native. Other frontiersmen are not sympathetic to the plight of the Huron tribe who are besieging the colonialists in a bid to hold territory. They plan to invade the Huron camp and scalp their captives as proof of each killing they have made, but Bumppo is not party to this. When things go wrong, Bumppo helps to release some frontiersmen who have been captured. One of them is subsequently scalped by the Huron when they counterattack.

The Deerslayer tries to take an impartial view of the atrocities that occurred during the formative years of the US. On the one hand, the Huron have every right to defend their ancestral lands from the colonialists but, on the other hand, many of the colonialists are born and bred Americans by this time, so they simply view the Huron as the enemy. It is this contrast in perspectives that provides the running theme for Fenimore Cooper’s pentalogy of novels.

Cooper’s Legacy

Cooper’s work is not generally regarded highly for its literary merit, but rather for his ability to weave a good yarn. If anything, his characterization left something to be desired, especially his female characters, who are considered by many to be rather two-dimensional and clichéd. He did, however, always have an eye for the commercial appeal of his books. He was a professional writer, in that he churned out a prolific number of works and enjoyed the fiscal rewards. These days, the five ‘Leatherstocking Tales’ are considered to be the pinnacle of his achievement. Incidentally, the term ‘leatherstocking’ refers to the leather leg coverings worn by men to protect their legs while travelling through wilderness.

While some critics have praised Cooper for his evocation and romanticism, others have actively attacked his prose. Mark Twain felt so strongly that he actually wrote an essay titled ‘Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses’. Twain felt strongly that one should be able to tell a good story and write well to boot, but his criticisms appear to have been ignored as Cooper’s books held a special place in the affections of the US public. Artistic snobbery mattered little to a readership which had grown to love popular family books that harked back to a bygone era. They were the blockbusters of their time, filled with action, adventure, and easy-to-follow plotlines.

Cooper wrote more than 20 novels in total, along with many short stories and travelogues. For every person who disliked his populist style there were many fans. As a consequence Cooper has earned himself a place in the pantheon of great US writers, alongside Twain, despite Twain’s negativity towards his work.

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_571fbbba-97b8-5277-ac9c-d59b1fe3a566)

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore.

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal”

Childe Harold.

On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has traveled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for the venerable air that is already gathering around American annals. When the mind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history, the period seems remote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the links of recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation to a day so distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet four lives of ordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in the form of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within the limits of the republic. Although New York alone possesses a population materially exceeding that of either of the four smallest kingdoms of Europe, or materially exceeding that of the entire Swiss Confederation, it is little more than two centuries since the Dutch commenced their settlement, rescuing the region from the savage state. Thus, what seems venerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity when we come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time.

This glance into the perspective of the past will prepare the reader to look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he might otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry him back in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desire to delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on the eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and even Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a century since; and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, and within musket-shot of the wharves of Albany, a residence of a younger branch of the Van Rensselaers, that has loopholes constructed for defence against the same crafty enemy, although it dates from a period scarcely so distant. Other similar memorials of the infancy of the country are to be found, scattered through what is now deemed the very centre of American civilization, affording the plainest proofs that all we possess of security from invasion and hostile violence is the growth of but little more than the time that is frequently fulfilled by a single human life.

The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745, when the settled portions of the colony of New York were confined to the four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each side of the Hudson, extending from its mouth to the falls near its head, and to a few advanced “neighborhoods” on the Mohawk and the Schoharie. Broad belts of the virgin wilderness not only reached the shores of the first river, but they even crossed it, stretching away into New England, and affording forest covers to the noiseless moccasin of the native warrior, as he trod the secret and bloody war-path. A bird’s-eye view of the whole region east of the Mississippi must then have offered one vast expanse of woods, relieved by a comparatively narrow fringe of cultivation along the sea, dotted by the glittering surfaces of lakes, and intersected by the waving lines of river. In such a vast picture of solemn solitude, the district of country we design to paint sinks into insignificance, though we feel encouraged to proceed by the conviction that, with slight and immaterial distinctions, he who succeeds in giving an accurate idea of any portion of this wild region must necessarily convey a tolerably correct notion of the whole.

Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of the seasons is unbroken. Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, return in their stated order with a sublime precision, affording to man one of the noblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers of his far-reaching mind, in compassing the laws that control their exact uniformity, and in calculating their never-ending revolutions.

Centuries of summer suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and pines, sending their heats even to the tenacious roots, when voices were heard calling to each other, in the depths of a forest, of which the leafy surface lay bathed in the brilliant light of a cloudless day in June, while the trunks of the trees rose in gloomy grandeur in the shades beneath. The calls were in different tones, evidently proceeding from two men who had lost their way, and were searching in different directions for their path. At length a shout proclaimed success, and presently a man of gigantic mould broke out of the tangled labyrinth of a small swamp, emerging into an opening that appeared to have been formed partly by the ravages of the wind, and partly by those of fire. This little area, which afforded a good view of the sky, although it was pretty well filled with dead trees, lay on the side of one of the high hills, or low mountains, into which nearly the whole surface of the adjacent country was broken.

“Here is room to breathe in!” exclaimed the liberated forester, as soon as he found himself under a clear sky, shaking his huge frame like a mastiff that has just escaped from a snowbank. “Hurrah! Deerslayer; here is daylight, at last, and yonder is the lake.”

These words were scarcely uttered when the second forester dashed aside the bushes of the swamp, and appeared in the area. After making a hurried adjustment of his arms and disordered dress, he joined his companion, who had already begun his disposition for a halt.

“Do you know this spot!” demanded the one called Deerslayer, “or do you shout at the sight of the sun?”

“Both, lad, both; I know the spot, and am not sorry to see so useful a fri’nd as the sun. Now we have got the p’ints of the compass in our minds once more, and ’twill be our own faults if we let anything turn them topsy-turvy ag’in, as has just happened. My name is not Hurry Harry, if this be not the very spot where the land-hunters camped the last summer, and passed a week. See I yonder are the dead bushes of their bower, and here is the spring. Much as I like the sun, boy, I’ve no occasion for it to tell me it is noon; this stomach of mine is as good a time-piece as is to be found in the colony, and it already p’ints to half-past twelve. So open the wallet, and let us wind up for another six hours’ run.”

At this suggestion, both set themselves about making the preparations necessary for their usual frugal but hearty meal. We will profit by this pause in the discourse to give the reader some idea of the appearance of the men, each of whom is destined to enact no insignificant part in our legend.

It would not have been easy to find a more noble specimen of vigorous manhood than was offered in the person of him who called himself Hurry Harry. His real name was Henry March but the frontiersmen having caught the practice of giving sobriquets from the Indians, the appellation of Hurry was far oftener applied to him than his proper designation, and not unfrequently he was termed Hurry Skurry, a nickname he had obtained from a dashing, reckless offhand manner, and a physical restlessness that kept him so constantly on the move, as to cause him to be known along the whole line of scattered habitations that lay between the province and the Canadas. The stature of Hurry Harry exceeded six feet four, and being unusually well proportioned, his strength fully realized the idea created by his gigantic frame. The face did no discredit to the rest of the man, for it was both good-humored and handsome. His air was free, and though his manner necessarily partook of the rudeness of a border life, the grandeur that pervaded so noble a physique prevented it from becoming altogether vulgar.

Deerslayer, as Hurry called his companion, was a very different person in appearance, as well as in character. In stature he stood about six feet in his moccasins, but his frame was comparatively light and slender, showing muscles, however, that promised unusual agility, if not unusual strength. His face would have had little to recommend it except youth, were it not for an expression that seldom failed to win upon those who had leisure to examine it, and to yield to the feeling of confidence it created. This expression was simply that of guileless truth, sustained by an earnestness of purpose, and a sincerity of feeling, that rendered it remarkable. At times this air of integrity seemed to be so simple as to awaken the suspicion of a want of the usual means to discriminate between artifice and truth; but few came in serious contact with the man, without losing this distrust in respect for his opinions and motives.

Both these frontiersmen were still young, Hurry having reached the age of six or eight and twenty, while Deerslayer was several years his junior. Their attire needs no particular description, though it may be well to add that it was composed in no small degree of dressed deer-skins, and had the usual signs of belonging to those who pass their time between the skirts of civilized society and the boundless forests. There was, notwithstanding, some attention to smartness and the picturesque in the arrangements of Deerslayer’s dress, more particularly in the part connected with his arms and accoutrements. His rifle was in perfect condition, the handle of his hunting-knife was neatly carved, his powder-horn was ornamented with suitable devices lightly cut into the material, and his shot-pouch was decorated with wampum.

On the other hand, Hurry Harry, either from constitutional recklessness, or from a secret consciousness how little his appearance required artificial aids, wore everything in a careless, slovenly manner, as if he felt a noble scorn for the trifling accessories of dress and ornaments. Perhaps the peculiar effect of his fine form and great stature was increased rather than lessened, by this unstudied and disdainful air of indifference.

“Come, Deerslayer, fall to, and prove that you have a Delaware stomach, as you say you have had a Delaware edication,” cried Hurry, setting the example by opening his mouth to receive a slice of cold venison steak that would have made an entire meal for a European peasant; “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.”

“Nay, nay, Hurry, there’s little manhood in killing a doe, and that too out of season; though there might be some in bringing down a painter or a catamount,” returned the other, disposing himself to comply. “The Delawares have given me my name, not so much on account of a bold heart, as on account of a quick eye, and an actyve foot. There may not be any cowardyce in overcoming a deer, but sartain it is, there’s no great valor.”

“The Delawares themselves are no heroes,” muttered Hurry through his teeth, the mouth being too full to permit it to be fairly opened, “or they would never have allowed them loping vagabonds, the Mingos, to make them women.”

“That matter is not rightly understood—has never been rightly explained,” said Deerslayer earnestly, for he was as zealous a friend as his companion was dangerous as an enemy; “the Mengwe fill the woods with their lies, and misconstruct words and treaties. I have now lived ten years with the Delawares, and know them to be as manful as any other nation, when the proper time to strike comes.”

“Harkee, Master Deerslayer, since we are on the subject, we may as well open our minds to each other in a man-to-man way; answer me one question; you have had so much luck among the game as to have gotten a title, it would seem, but did you ever hit anything human or intelligible: did you ever pull trigger on an inimy that was capable of pulling one upon you?”

This question produced a singular collision between mortification and correct feeling, in the bosom of the youth, that was easily to be traced in the workings of his ingenuous countenance. The struggle was short, however; uprightness of heart soon getting the better of false pride and frontier boastfulness.

“To own the truth, I never did,” answered Deerslayer; “seeing that a fitting occasion never offered. The Delawares have been peaceable since my sojourn with ’em, and I hold it to be onlawful to take the life of man, except in open and generous warfare.”

“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!”

“I am no trapper, Hurry,” returned the young man proudly: “I live by the rifle, a we’pon at which I will not turn my back on any man of my years, atween the Hudson and the St. Lawrence. I never offer a skin that has not a hole in its head besides them which natur’ made to see with or to breathe through.”

“Ay, ay, this is all very well, in the animal way, though it makes but a poor figure alongside of scalps and ambushes. Shooting an Indian from an ambush is acting up to his own principles, and now we have what you call a lawful war on our hands, the sooner you wipe that disgrace off your character, the sounder will be your sleep; if it only come from knowing there is one inimy the less prowling in the woods. I shall not frequent your society long, friend Natty, unless you look higher than four-footed beasts to practice your rifle on.”

“Our journey is nearly ended, you say, Master March, and we can part to-night, if you see occasion. I have a fri’nd waiting for me, who will think it no disgrace to consort with a fellow-creatur’ that has never yet slain his kind.”