Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (6 page)

The novel ends, in a shift of perspective, fifteen years later when Deerslayer, Chingachgook (Hist has died in the meantime), and Uncas, the son of Hist and Chingachgook, revisit the scene of the previous action. They are stirred by memories and experience feelings of melancholy They find the ark wrecked and the castle in ruins, but Deerslayer finds a ribbon of Judith’s attached to the wreckage of the ark and ties it to his rifle. Deerslayer has a pang as he thinks of Judith. She is still on his mind when he inquires about her at a nearby garrison, and a soldier “who had lately come from England, was enabled to tell our hero, that Sir Robert Warley [the British officer of fifteen years before] lived on his paternal estates, and that there was a lady of rare beauty in the lodge, who had great influence over him, though she did not bear his name” (p. 522). Natty “never knew” whether this was Judith or some other victim of that officer, nor “would it be pleasant or profitable to inquire.” The friends make their way in silence toward the Mohawk “to rush into new adventures, as stirring and as remarkable as those which had attended their opening career on this lovely lake.” But lest we miss the larger point of this dark narrative, Cooper begins his final sentence with the admonition: “We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true....”

 

Bruce L. R. Smith
is a fellow at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University He previously was a professor of government at Columbia University (1966-1979), a deputy assistant secretary in the U. S. Department of State (1779-1880), and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (1980-1996). He is the author or editor of sixteen scholarly books, and he continues to lecture widely in the United States and abroad. He annotated and wrote the introduction for Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove in the Barnes & Noble Classics series.

1
On Cooper’s influence and his role in generating an audience for fiction, see James D. Wallace, Early Cooper and His Audience, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

2
Mark Twain forcefully expressed his views on the American Indian in Roughing It ( 1872). He also began a sequel to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), in which Huck and Tom, after reading a Cooper novel, go into the Indian territory to befriend the benevolent Indians portrayed in the novel, only to discover that the Indians were drunks, rapists, and criminals, and were generally treacherous.

3
Nina Baym disputes the whole notion that there was a unique American form, the romantic or the American Gothic style, and finds that America, in the antebellum period produced readers, reviewers, and authors similar to what prevailed in Britain during the period. See Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in
Antebellum
America, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.

4
Leslie Fiedler, “Introduction” to The Deerslayer, New York: Modern Library, 2002.

5
“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Defenses: Twain and the Text of the Deerslayer,” in Joel Myerson, ed., Studies in the American Renaissance (1988), pp. 401-417.

6
Seven of the thirteen children lived into adulthood. Between 1813 and 1819. all of James Cooper’s older brothers died, leaving him with the responsibility of caring for a number of widows and orphaned children and for settling his father’s debt-ridden estate.

7
The story of this remarkable figure is told in Alan Taylor’s excellent William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (see “For Further Reading”), which also includes much valuable material on James Cooper’s early life.

8
Alan Taylor disputes the legend in William Cooper’s Town (pp. 363-370) . He argues that the attack, if it actually occurred as the legend suggests, did not bring about the pneumonia.

9
Cooper himself believed the Leatherstocking novels to be his best. In the preface (p. 6) he states, “If anything from the pen of the writer of these romances is at all to outlive himself, it is, unquestionably, the series of The Leatherstocking Tales.”

10
Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923; reprint: New York: Viking Press, 1961.

11
A boat might have pulled beneath “the branches of dark Rembrandt-looking hemlocks” (p. 29). “The scene was such as a poet or an artist would have delighted in, but it had no charm for Hurry Harry” (p. 47). It did have charm, however, for Deerslayer to whom the thought did occur.

12
For an interesting discussion of why Natty bequeaths the rifle to Hist in The Deerslayer, and in The Prairie selects Hard-Heart, the Pawnee Indian Chief, as the recipient of his belongings, see William Owen, “Natty Changes His Will: Legacies and Beneficiaries in The Deerslayer and The Prairie,” paper presented at the Cooper Panel of the 2000 Conference of the American Literature Association held in Long Beach, California, originally published in James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers no. 13, July 2000, pp. 7-12 (available on the James Fenimore Cooper Society Web site:
www.oneonta.edu/external / cooper / artic1es.html
).

—“What Terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined
And sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.”
¹

Thomas GRAY
, The Bard, II.60-62

This series of Stories, which has obtained the name of The Leatherstocking Tales, has been written in a very desultory and inartificial manner. The order in which the several books appeared was essentially different from that in which they would have been presented to the world had the regular course of their incidents been consulted. In The Pioneers, the first of the series written, the Leatherstocking is represented as already old, and driven from his early haunts in the forest by the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settler. The Last of the Mohicans, the next book in the order of publication, carried the readers back to a much earlier period in the history of our hero, representing him as middle-aged, and in the fullest vigor of manhood. In The Prairie, his career terminates, and he is laid in his grave. There, it was originally the intention to leave him, in the expectation that, as in the case of the human mass, he would soon be forgotten. But a latent regard for this character induced the author to resuscitate him in The Pathfinder, a book that was not long after succeeded by The Deerslayer, thus completing the series as it now exists.

While the five books that have been written were originally published in the order just mentioned, that of the incidents, insomuch as they are connected with the career of their principal character, is, as has been stated, very different. Taking the life of the Leatherstocking as a guide, The Deerslayer should have been the opening book, for in that work he is seen just emerging into manhood; to be succeeded by The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. This arrangement embraces the order of events, though far from being that in which the books at first appeared. The Pioneers was published in 1822 ; The Deerslayer in 1841; making the interval between them nineteen years. Whether these progressive years have had a tendency to lessen the value of the last-named book, by lessening the native fire of its author, or of adding somewhat in the way of improved taste and a more matured judgment, is for others to decide.

If anything from the pen of the writer of these romances is at all to outlive himself, it is, unquestionably, the series of The Leatherstocking Tales. To say this, is not to predict a very lasting reputation for the series itself, but simply to express the belief it will outlast any, or all, of the works from the same hand.

It is undeniable that the desultory manner in which The Leatherstocking Tales were written, has, in a measure, impaired their harmony, and otherwise lessened their interest. This is proved by the fate of the two books last published, though probably the two most worthy an enlightened and cultivated reader’s notice. If the facts could be ascertained, it is probable the result would show that of all those (in America, in particular) who have read the three first books of the series, not one in ten has a knowledge of the existence even of the two last. Several causes have tended to produce this result. The long interval of time between the appearance of The Prairie and that of The Pathfinder, was itself a reason why the later books of the series should be overlooked. There was no longer novelty to attract attention, and the interest was materially impaired by the manner in which events were necessarily anticipated, in laying the last of the series first before the world. With the generation that is now coming on the stage this fault will be partially removed by the edition contained in the present work, in which the several tales will be arranged solely in reference to their connection with each other.

The author has often been asked if he had any original in his mind for the character of Leatherstocking.
²
In a physical sense, dif ferent individuals known to the writer in early life certainly presented themselves as models, through his recollections; but in a moral sense this man of the forest is purely a creation. The idea of delineating a character that possessed little of civilization but its highest principles as they are exhibited in the uneducated, and all of savage life that is not incompatible with these great rules of conduct, is perhaps natural to the situation in which Natty was placed. He is too proud of his origin to sink into the condition of the wild Indian, and too much a man of the woods not to imbibe as much as was at all desirable, from his friends and companions. In a moral point of view it was the intention to illustrate the effect of seed scattered by the wayside. To use his own language, his “gifts” were “white gifts,” and he was not disposed to bring on them discredit. On the other hand, removed from nearly all the temptations of civilized life, placed in the best associations of that which is deemed savage, and favorably disposed by nature to improve such advantages, it appeared to the writer that his hero was a fit subject to represent the better qualities of both conditions, without pushing either to extremes.

There was no violent stretch of the imagination, perhaps, in supposing one of civilized associations in childhood, retaining many of his earliest lessons amid the scenes of the forest. Had these early impressions, however, not been sustained by continued, though casual connection with men of his own color, if not of his own caste, all our information goes to show he would soon have lost every trace of his origin. It is believed that sufficient attention was paid to the particular circumstances in which this individual was placed, to justify the picture of his qualities that has been drawn. The Delawares only attracted the attention of the missionaries, and were a tribe unusually influenced by their precepts and example. In many instances they became Christians, and cases occurred in which their subsequent lives gave proof of the efficacy of the great moral changes that had taken place within them.

A leading character in a work of fiction has a fair right to the aid which can be obtained from a poetical view of the subject. It is in this view, rather than in one more strictly circumstantial, that Leatherstocking has been drawn. The imagination has no great task in portraying to itself a being removed from the everyday inducements to err, which abound in civilized life, while he retains the best and simplest of his early impressions; who sees God in the forest; hears Him in the winds; bows to Him in the firmament that o’ercanopies all; submits to his sway in a humble belief of his justice and mercy; in a word, a being who finds the impress of the Deity in all the works of nature, without any of the blots produced by the expedients, and passion, and mistakes of man. This is the most that has been attempted in the character of Leatherstocking. Had this been done without any of the drawbacks of humanity, the picture would have been, in all probability, more pleasing than just. In order to preserve the vraisemblable, therefore, traits derived from the prejudices, tastes, and even the weaknesses of his youth, have been mixed up with these higher qualities and longings, in a way, it is hoped, to represent a reasonable picture of human nature, without offering to the spectator a “monster of goodness.”

It has been objected to these books that they give a more favorable picture of the redman than he deserves. The writer apprehends that much of this objection arises from the habits of those who have made it. One of his critics, on the appearance of the first work in which Indian character was portrayed, objected that its “characters were Indians of the school of Heckewelder,
³
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 redman, 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 capitol, as to suppose that the negotiating of one of these treaties is a fair picture of Indian life.

It is the privilege of all writers of fiction, more particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the beau ideal
^a
of their characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the redman is to be represented only in the squalid misery or in the degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author’s privileges. Such criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer.