Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (86 page)

2
(p. 6) original in his mind for the character of Leatherstocking: The leading candidates that readers speculated on were Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, with perhaps a dash of Robin Hood from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) .

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(p. 8) “Indians of the school of Heckewelder”: The reference is to John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary and sympathetic observer of the American Indian tribes, on whom Cooper relied for his knowledge of Indian customs, mores, and history. Heckewelder was a kind of early anthropologist who greatly admired the Indian people he wrote about so knowledgeably. See John Heckewelder, An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States, Philadelphia, Abraham Small, 1819; reprinted as Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 12, Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1876; and reprinted most recently in New York by Arno Press and the New York Times in 1971.

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(p. 9) The Deerslayer [1850]: Cooper’s original 1841 preface to The Deerslayer is quite different in tone from the 1850 preface. Cooper states in the 1841 preface that “this book has not been written, without many misgivings, as to its probable reception.” The author hopes that if readers consider “this particular act not the best of the series,” they “will also come to the conclusion that it is not absolutely the worst.” The preface, which has an oddly defensive tone, even contains a reference to the temptation Cooper had “more than once to burn his manuscript, and to turn to some other subject.”

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(p. 12) The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745: This places the action around the time of, or a few years prior to, the start of the 1744 King George’s War, precursor to the French and Indian War. There were four wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries involving the French, British, and Indians in North America, culminating in the major war of 1756-1763, known in the United States as the French and Indian War and in Britain and elsewhere as the Seven Years’ War. The Treaty of Paris (1763) ended French control of Canada and the hostilities in North America east of the Mississippi. French trappers, however, continued to operate farther west for a number of years.

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(p. 15) while Deerslayer was several years his junior: Deerslayer is usually considered to be between twenty and twenty-two at this time, which makes him about thirty-seven in The Last of the Mohicans, which takes place in 1757. The ages of the characters and the chronologies of the Leatherstocking Tales, however, do not always quite square. The action in the last section of chapter XXXII of The Deerslayer (pp. 520-522), when Natty, Chingachgook, and Uncas revisit Lake Glimmerglass, would have to occur early in 1757, because Uncas is still alive. He is killed in Mohicans, which takes place in 1757. In Mohicans Uncas is pictured as a mature warrior, not a boy Even if the action of The Deerslayer takes place as early as 1742, Uncas could be at most fifteen when he appears in the final scene at Lake Glimmerglass with his father and Deerslayer. Cooper did not always match up his characters’ ages in the different tales, but Natty more or less ages properly. It is about right for Natty Bumppo to be a “septuagenarian” in The Pioneers; if the novel takes place in 1793, then Natty would be seventy-three, provided he is thirty-seven in Mohicans. It might require a slight stretch for him to be still alive as an octogenarian in The Prairie; if we date his death as 1806, he would have been eighty-six at the time.

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(p. 16) “I have now lived ten years with the Delawares”: Presumably, Natty grew up with his foster parents, the Moravian missionaries, until he was about twelve or fourteen and then went to live fulltime with the Delawares, where he acquired his linguistic skills. Natty did know his mother because Hetty reminds him of his mother, so we might guess that his parents died when he was three or four. Why didn’t the missionaries teach him to read and write? Maybe he would have felt more connected to society if he had mastered these gentlemanly white-man’s skills.

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(p. 22) “we must be our own judges and executioners”: This exchange clearly contrasts Harry’s purely instrumental morality, which is based on power, with Natty’s “higher law” conceptions. Harry, a hulking brute of a man, personifies the notion that the stronger rule by might. Deerslayer does not accept this idea and believes in a universal morality, but has some difficulty, as we shall see, in reconciling his universalism with his idea of “gifts,” in which elements of moral relativity are embodied.

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(p. 32) “in one affray with the redskins he lost his only son”: This history that Cooper gives us may help to explain Hutter’s willingness later to attack Indian women and children.

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(p. 36) He bethought him of his mother ... with a saddened mien: This is one of the rare passages in which Natty thinks back on his childhood. He has suffered a terrible loss. We do not get a similar tender recollection of his foster parents, the Moravian missionaries, but we know that Natty meets Chingachgook when both are very young, and the two are like brothers.

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(p. 42) “A white man’s gifts are Christianized, while a redskin’s are more for the wilderness”: Natty argues initially that there is a moral distinction between whites and Indians by virtue of the whites being Christianized. However, in his subsequent reply to Harry in this scene (several paragraphs down), he seems to make a more finely grained distinction by pointing out that, within the categories of whites and redmen, he does “not deny that there are tribes among the Indians that are nat‘rally pervarse and wicked, as there are nations among the whites.” The Mingos—Natty’s general descriptor for the Iroquois—belong in the wicked category, as do the French, perhaps. Natty would have some trouble with the Delaware or Mohicans—tribes he likes—inasmuch as they converted to Christianity in an ef fort to become assimilated into white society. But we do not encounter a discussion of this issue. Natty has no objection to Chingachgook taking scalps in Mohicans. Uncas in Mohicans, however, is more interested in seeing how the rescued ladies are doing than in taking the scalps of dead enemies. Natty is less solicitous than Uncas is; he is more interested in chasing and killing the fleeing enemies than in checking on the condition of the ladies.

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(p. 43) “A law can no more be onlawful, than truth can be a lie.... law coming from a higher authority”: Harry appears to have Natty trapped by a neat syllogism. The definition of “law” is that which is promulgated by the authorities. Natty’s response is again to refer to the “higher law” background of the American constitution. See Edward S. Corwin, The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1955.

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(p. 47) an artist would have delighted in ... sight of his light-minded beauty: Cooper is here contrasting Natty’s sensibility with Harry’s. Natty has the aesthetic sense to appreciate the scene, but Harry is unmoved. All he can think of is his sexual desire for Judith. This seems not quite fair to Harry; after all, unlike Deerslayer, he has seen Judith and is aware of her attractions. What is wrong with feeling attracted to such a desirable woman? Cooper, who dearly loved his wife and seems never to have been attracted to another woman, seems too ready to condemn Harry in this passage and to celebrate artistic over physical pleasure. As Henry James once remarked of his friend William Dean Howells, his work suffered from the fact that he had known only one woman in his life: his wife.

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(p. 58) “a question more easily asked than it is answered”: Natty is irritating here; although he has a strong sense of self, he agonizes excessively about his identity. He is “much too humble to be called on for opinions” by either the Indians or whites. But we know that he is not really that humble because he goes on to recite with some pride (on the following pages) the various names the Indians gave him, each of which denotes a special virtue.

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(p. 68) “might well have alarmed a sentinel so young and inexperienced”: This is the scene that Mark Twain parodies in his 1895 review. (See the Appendix.) Note that Chief Rivenoak is not quite as inept as Twain contends. Natty calls out a warning to Tom and Harry to pull harder on their towline, causing Rivenoak to land on the deck rather than the roof of the ark. He was doubtless going to cross the roof and cut the line, thus causing the ark to be pulled back into the river by the current. Moreover, Judith’s heroics in quickly pushing him overboard should be noted. Her quick thinking should have impressed Deerslayer and the others more than it apparently did. According to Richard Vanderbeets, “Cooper and the ‘Semblance of Reality’: A Source for The Deerslayer,” American Literature 42 (1971), pp. 544-546, this scene may derive from a similar incident in an 1827 captivity narrative by Charles Johnston, A Narrative of the Incidents Attending the Capture, Detention, and Ransom of Charles Johnston ... , New York, 1827.

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(p. 71 ) “canoe from their eyes”: The argument in this chapter is intricate, and it is a remarkable demonstration of a kind of “banality of evil” thesis in which Harry and Tom Hutter stumble onto their plan to secure scalps from the Iroquois, and persuade themselves that they would be justified in doing so. Hutter first thinks only in terms of defense against the Indians and declares that they are safe from attack in the middle of the lake. Natty points out that Hutter is underestimating the Indians, and Harry agrees with Natty that the Indians can indeed find the hidden canoes, increasing the chances of a successful assault. Hutter, flustered, accuses Harry of wanting to abandon him and his daughters (p. 73). Natty defends Harry and tells Floating Tom that neither he nor Harry would abandon him and the girls. Tom gets a promise of their help. Feeling secure for a moment, Hutter’s mind shifts to other options: “No sooner did he feel some security on this point, than the restlessness of man induced him to think of the means of carrying the war into the enemy’s country” (p. 75).

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(p. 88) the castle was seen, in the darkness, rising out of the water: The debates and the dinner of Chapter V take place on the ark. The castle is much more secure than the ark since it has very thick walls, as is described in chapter II. The actual shoals of Lake Otsego, as Cooper notes in his preface, lie somewhat to the north and east of the castle’s fictional location.

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(p. 89) keeping back the portion ... reserved for execution by Hurry and himself: The reserved portion refers to the scalping scheme. They left the discussion somewhat vague and unresolved in the previous chapter in an effort to hide their full intentions from Deerslayer. The duo of Old Tom and Hurry are, however, like “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” and we can be assured that they do not have a well-thought-through plan. Their immediate aim is to secure Deerslayer’s help in retrieving the hidden canoes.

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(p. 94) fire had been kindled at an encampment ... inferred that this encampment contained the women and children of the party: This is a key assumption that turns out to be mistaken. We are given no indication of what led Hutter to the inference that the Indian women and children would be left totally undefended. Deerslayer, for his part, does not question the surmise that a carefully concealed fire means no warriors are present. The Indian encampment, the first of three mentioned in the novel, is located toward the middle of the western shore of the lake.

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(p. 104) This was the moment the young man desired: This first encounter between Deerslayer and an Indian takes place at Gravelly Point on the eastern shore of the lake about two-thirds up toward the northern end. Deerslayer will encounter the slain Indian’s widow later in the novel.