Chapter V: The Leather-Stocking Tales and Other Indian Stories

A French critic once remarked that nothing was so like a _chanson de geste_ as another _chanson de geste_. Readers have deplored the fact that nothing was so like a Leather-Stocking tale as another Leather-Stocking tale. But _The Pioneers_, the first of the series in order of composition, bears little resemblance to the others, and as a picture of life in a New York village at the end of the Eighteenth Century has a historical value. The narrative is firm in texture. The characters are thirty in number, and every man in his humor. The Judge, Cousin Richard, Mr. Grant the clergyman, all the town oddities, Monsieur Le Quoi, Major Hartmann, Doolittle, Kirby, and Benjamin are real and humanly interesting. The dialogue is fresh, racy, and appropriate. There is no effort at compression; winter evenings were long in 1824.

The book holds one by the scenes and characters rather than by the ‘fable.’ The mystery of ‘Edwards,’ and the coming to life of old Major Effingham, are well enough; but the strength of the story is in the episodes, such as that where Hiram Doolittle, supported by Jotham and Kirby, tries to serve the warrant on Natty Bumppo, in the trial of the old hunter, or the capital scene where Natty is put into the stocks, and the chivalrous major-domo, Benjamin, insists on sharing his punishment, and cheering the heart-broken old man with comfortable and picturesque words. Presently Doolittle came to enjoy the fruit of his victory. Venturing too near, he found himself in the tenacious grasp of the irate major-domo. Benjamin’s legs were stationary, but his fists were free, and he proceeded to work away with ‘great industry’ on Mr. Doolittle’s face, ‘using one hand to raise up his antagonist, while he knocked him over with the other;’ he scorned to strike a fallen adversary.

_The Pioneers_ would merit a high place in American fiction were it only on account of that original character, Natty Bumppo, or ‘Leather-Stocking.’ He is natural, easy, attractive. In the other books (always excepting _The Prairie_), there is more of invention. Putting it in another way, the first Natty Bumppo is like a study from life, while the others often leave the impression of being studies from the first study.

By changing the background, the costume, the accessories, and making his hero younger or older, Cooper found him available for more exciting dramas than that played in Templeton.

Leather-Stocking next appears as ‘Hawkeye,’ the scout, in _The Last of the Mohicans_, a narrative based on the massacre of Fort William Henry in 1757, and, all things considered, the most famous of Cooper’s novels. It is an out-and-out Indian story, good for boys and not bad for men, being vigorous, brilliant, and packed with adventure. The capture, by a band of Montcalm’s marauding Iroquois, of the two daughters of the old Scottish general, their rescue by Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas, their recapture, the pursuit and the thrilling events in the Indian villages, form the staple of a book which without exaggeration may be called world-renowned.

If _The Last of the Mohicans_ suffers from one fault more than another, it is from a superabundance of hair-breadth escapes. The novelist heaps difficulties on difficulties, all of which appear insurmountable, and are presently surmounted with an ease that makes the reader half angry with himself for having worried.

As might have been expected, in growing younger Natty has grown theatrical; he appears too exactly at the critical moment to perform the deed of cool bravery expected of him. It could hardly be otherwise; _The Last of the Mohicans_ is a romance, and in romances such things must be. Chingachgook, that engaging savage, has for so many years met the romantic ideal of the American Indian that it is unlikely he will ever be disturbed in his place in the reader’s esteem. His rôle of white man’s friend was played in _The Prairie_ by Hard-Heart, the young Pawnee chief.

_The Prairie_ has an originality all its own. This strange and sombre tale brings together an oddly assorted group of people, some of whom--the squatter and his family in particular--are drawn with rude strength. There are weak points in the plot. The carefully guarded tent with its hidden occupant is a poor device for compelling attention. Dr. Battius, endlessly talkative about genus and species, is a tiresome personage. The justification of the story as a work of art is to be sought in the descriptions of the ‘desert,’ in the impressions given of immeasurable distance and illimitable space, the abode of mystery and terror. The passages describing the stampede of a herd of buffalo, the night surprise of the trapper and his friends by the Sioux, the escape of Hard-Heart from the torture-stake, are all done with a masterly stroke.

Natty Bumppo figures in _The Prairie_ as an old man of eighty-seven. His eye has lost its keenness of vision and his hand its steadiness. But the heart is undaunted (‘Lord, what a strange thing is fear!’) and the mind fertile in expedients. At times the trapper appears in almost superhuman proportions; he is mythical, like a hero of antiquity. The attachment between the ancient hunter and his dog is exquisitely described. In the beautiful account of Leather-Stocking’s last hour no touch is more poetic than that where the dying man discovers that the faithful Hector is dead. He will not say that a Christian can hope to meet his hound again; but he asks that Hector be buried beside him; no harm, he thinks, can come of that.

Thirteen years after the publication of _The Prairie_ appeared _The Pathfinder_, and one year after that _The Deerslayer_. The series was now complete, forming ‘something like a drama in five acts.’ _The Pathfinder_ shows Natty in mature manhood, and (for the comfort of all who require this test of their heroes of fiction) a victim of unrequited love. Exposed to the wiles of the most treacherous of all Mingos, Cupid, the quondam hunter, hunted in turn, takes defeat like the man he is. In _The Deerslayer_ the chronicle is completed with a group of scenes from Natty’s youth. On the shores of Otsego Lake, while defending old Hutter’s aquatic home, the young man learns the first lessons in the art of war.

Cooper wrote yet other Indian stories. Two may be taken note of in this section: _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_, a narrative of the Connecticut settlements in ‘King Philip’s’ time, and _Wyandotté_, an episode of frontier life in 1775. The latter is realistic. Cooper was on his own ground and knew the Willoughby Patent and the Hutted Knoll much as he knew ‘Templeton’ and Otsego Lake. _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ is pure romance. In spite of the labored speech of the Puritan settlers and the metaphorical flights of Metacom and Conanchet, the story is enthralling. That is a genuinely pathetic scene where Ruth Heathcote seeks to awaken in the mind of Narramattah, her lost daughter, now the wife of the Narragansett chief, some faint memory of her childhood, and the account of Conanchet’s death at the hands of the Mohicans is a strong and dramatic piece of writing.