[200 years ago Wednesday, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans was published. That’s one of many Cooper novels with a lot to tell us about his and our America, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Cooper novels. Leading up to a special weekend post on my favorite CooperStudying book!]
On two profoundly different depictions of Natty Bumppo, and one crucial throughline between them.
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826), first published 200 years ago today, wasn’t the first novel to feature Natty Bumppo (that would be 1823’s The Pioneers, about which I wrote yesterday); nor is it the earliest chronological depiction of the iconic character (that would be 1841’s The Deerslayer; or, the First Warpath, which I won’t be featuring in this week’s series). But there’s a reason why Mohicans is by far the most popular and enduring Bumppo book, and also the only one that Michael Mann has adapted into a film: Mohicans portrays the character first and foremost as an action hero, earning time and again nicknames such as Hawkeye and La Longue carabine (his signature rifle) through his sharpshooting and daring rescues and righteous revenge killings and other martial exploits. Mohicans certainly portrays its two titular Native American co-heroes in compelling ways, among other interesting layers to the story; but when it comes to Natty, he’s a badass warrior in this one, a character worthy of DDL’s flowing cinematic locks.
Just a year later—perhaps in part because thanks to Mohicans the character had gotten bigger than his creator, and what artist could be entirely okay with that?—Cooper published the chronologically last of the Leatherstocking Tales, The Prairie (1827). We know it’s the chronologically last not only because it’s set 50 years after Mohicans and features a nearly 90-year-old Natty, but also and especially because the book closes with Natty’s death and burial. Moreover, while Natty had always been both an opinionated and philosophical dude and one who preferred isolation and nature to the company of most fellow people, in The Prairie Cooper (himself only 38 when he wrote it) captures pitch-perfectly how much advancing old age can take such attributes up to 11. I’m not saying this aged Natty couldn’t still kick ass if he needed to (he does on occasion in The Prairie to be sure), but just that he’s much more likely to reminisce about his olden days of ass-kicking while complaining about how kids today can’t compare.
That change must have been quite striking for Cooper’s contemporary readers, who would (or at least could) have been reading The Prairie only a year after encountering the young, vibrant Natty of Mohicans. But there are also definite continuities and throughlines between the novels and especially their depictions of this iconic character, and probably the most clear and most crucial is this: wherever he goes, he always instinctively and passionately stands up for those who are more powerless; and no individuals nor communities fit that bill for Natty more consistently than do Native Americans. While Cooper has been understandably critiqued for the stereotypes he too often employs in his depictions of indigenous characters, and while as I argued long-ago in this space it’s important to complement his works with those of contemporaries such as Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1826), at the end of the day Natty’s firm allegiance to his Native American friends and allies makes for a truly striking contrast to much of the incipient Removal Era—and can be found in both of these otherwise quite different novels about the character.
Next CooperStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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