which is the scene of this story, and that the Indians not only gave different names to their enemies, but frequently to themselves, the cause of this confusion will be understood. In these pages, Lenni-Lenape, Lenope, Delawares, Wapanachki, and Mohicans, all mean the same people, or tribes of the same stock.37

Cooper was half right in this simplification; for by the last half of the eighteenth century, the Mahicans had disappeared, and many of the Mohegans had united with the Delawares. In strict accuracy, however, the title should be The Last of the Mohegans, for the young Uncas is represented as being the last chieftain of that tribe of Connecticut Indians formerly led by the great chief Uncas.

Heckewelder was not responsible for a second confusion which Cooper makes. Heckewelder states in several instances that the Delawares aided the French in the French and Indian War. This was a natural alliance, for the Delawares remembered with bitterness the wrongs perpetrated upon them by many of the English after the death of William Penn. Moreover, by taking the part of the French, the Delawares were enabled to fight their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois. In The Last of the Mohicans, however, Cooper has Delaware Indians fighting on both sides. Chingachgook and Uncas are with the English, and a band of Delawares are half-hearted supporters of the French. Cooper attempts to explain this as follows:

It is true that white cunning has managed to throw the tribes into great confusion, as respects friends and enemies, so that the Hurons and the Oneidas, who speak the same tongue, take the other's scalps, and the Delawares are divided among themselves; a few hanging about their great council fire on their river, and fighting on the same side with the Mingoes, while the greater part are in the Canadas, out of natural enmity to the Maquas, thus throwing everything into disorder and destroying all the harmony of warfare.38

In The Pathfinder, which is also a tale of the French and Indian War, Chingachgook is again fighting against the French and the Hurons. No Iroquois appear in this tale except the Tuscarora, Arrowhead.

Cooper's confusion in this matter was doubtless due to a real plot difficulty. Leather-Stocking, as a loyal subject of the King

37 The Last of the Mohicans, p. vii.

28 Ibid., p. 232.

and also as a patriotic colonial American, naturally fights on the side of the English and colonists against the French. Chingachgook, as a Delaware, is an enemy of the Iroquois, the allies of the English. But if Leather-Stocking and Chingachgook are to be represented as lifelong friends, they must fight as comrades. In both tales, therefore, Chingachgook enlists with Leather-Stocking on the side of the English colonists, and the Iroquois against the French and Hurons. In order to make this more plausible, Chingachgook is represented as a fierce warrior, with a hatred of all Indians that are not Delawares. To him, Hurons, Mohawks, Senecas, Tuscaroras, even the peaceable Oneidas, are "Mingoes," to be slain and scalped. On whichever side he fights there are confederate Indians to be suspected and enemy Indians to be tomahawked.

II

In the preceding discussion passing reference has been made to the alleged idealization of the Indians by Cooper. A brief review of the opinions of biographers and critics regarding this matter will show that a real difference of opinion exists and that the question is far from having been definitely settled. In his review of The Last of the Mohicans, W. H. Gardiner charged Cooper with presenting a false and ideal view of the Indian character." He questioned whether Uncas was true to any tribe, or any age, of Indian history. To him Chingachgook "smacks a little too much of civilization," and Maqua was "one of those licensed instruments of romance, which belong rather to the diabolical orders of creation, than to any tribe of human species, savage or civilized." 39

The other early reviewers of Cooper's works agree with Gardiner. Lewis Cass, whose reviews have been mentioned, charged Cooper with following the school of Heckewelder instead of the school of nature. Francis Parkman scorned Cooper's Indians as being "either superficially or falsely drawn." He held Cooper jointly responsible with Thomas Campbell "for the fathering of those heroes, lovers, and sages, who have long formed a petty nuisance in our literature." 40 After this contemporary criticism of Cooper,

39 Op. cit., pp. 150-197.

40" Review of the Works of James Fenimore Cooper," North American Review, LXXIV, 150.

little critical interest in his writings appeared until Professor Lounsbury wrote his biography in 1882. Although Lounsbury avoids discussing the Indian question, he indicates, perhaps indirectly, his belief in Cooper's idealization of the Indian character when he says that "if Cooper has given to Indian conversation more poetry than it is thought to possess, or to Indian character more virtue, the addition has been a gain to literature, whatever it may have been to truth." 41

W. C. Brownell takes an opposite view in maintaining that Cooper's Indians are not idealized. He says:

The verisimilitude of Cooper's Indians has been the main point of attack of his caricaturing critics. None of them has failed to have his fling at this. It is extraordinary what a convention his assumed idealization of the Indian has become. I say extraordinary, because it is a fact that the so-called noble red man," whom he is popularly supposed to have invented, does not exist in his books at all. Successful or not, his Indians, like his other characters, belong to the realm of attempted portraiture of racial types, and are, in intention, at all events, in no wise purely romantic creations.42

Brownell's virile championship of Cooper has influenced the critics since 1906. Miss Loshe says that the virtues which Cooper attributed to the Indians "are those with which they are generally credited by people who knew the Indian before he came in contact with the blessings of civilization as disseminated by the trader." 43

Not one of these critics has said the whole truth about the matter, as the comparison of Cooper's tales with Heckewelder's Indian Nations has shown. No critic seems to have observed that Cooper's method of Indian characterization in the Leather-Stocking Tales changes from a realistic treatment in The Pioneers (1823) to an increasing idealization through The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).**

41 Op. cit., p. 54.

Cooper," Scribner's Magazine, April, 1906. Also in American Prose Masters, New York, 1909, p. 21.

43 Loshe, L. D., The Early American Novel, New York, 1907, p. 89. "I have traced this development of Cooper's art in the unpublished theses, Realism in the Novels of James Fenimore Cooper, University of Chicago, 1920, and James Fenimore Cooper as an Interpreter and Critic of America, University of Chicago, 1924.

In another article I intend to present a study of Cooper's art in the creation and development of the character of Leather-Stocking.

In The Pioneers Chingachgook is the last lingerer of his race in a new settlement of unfriendly whites. There is little romantic glamour cast about this old Indian John, a broken-down, drunken vagrant, compelled to make brooms for sale to the hated despoilers of his hunting grounds. Although he has listened to the religious teachings of the white men, he has accepted more readily their whiskey. At times he gives hints of his former nobility and sagacity, or he awes his companions with outbursts of savage ferocity, but usually he is dull and spiritless. Only in dying is he picturesque. In war-paint and feathers, with a medallion of Washington hanging from his neck, he wraps his blanket around him and calmly awaits the flames of the approaching forest fire.

In The Last of the Mohicans Chingachgook is a warrior in prime manhood. As a scout he has the uncanny sixth sense of wild creatures in following mazy trails and in never getting lost. But with all his wonderful powers of body and skill in woodcraft, he does not seem superior to other Indians in history, for he does not show those powers of persuasion and leadership which great Indian chiefs possessed. In history there have been such chiefs as Joseph Brant, Red Jacket, Cornplanter, King Philip, and a score of others, who surpassed Chingachgook in ability.

In repre

In this book the character of Uncas is idealized. senting him as the last of the noble Mohegans, Cooper has invested him with all the powers of his father Chingachgook, and with some additional high traits besides. The main interest in Uncas, however, is a sentimental one-that so fine a young warrior and the last chief of his tribe should die in youth.

In The Pathfinder the character of Chingachgook is not materially changed. Perhaps he has more skill and cunning, for he is always able to outwit his Huron enemies. The Pathfinder has ever the highest praise for his trusted friend. He even half convinces the reader that Chingachgook is right in taking scalps because a red man's "gifts" differ from those of a white man.

In The Deerslayer the character of Chingachgook is most completely idealized. In this last book of the series, he is a young Indian chief, the ideal red man of the forest, strong and active in body, wise and cunning in the lore of the woods. He is placed in a natural setting of forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers, the

primeval condition of beauty and wildness before the despoliation by the white man. Chingachgook is engaged in a romantic adventure to rescue from the enemy the Indian girl whom he loves. In this quest he is assisted by Deerslayer. In the many exciting adventures which they share, Chingachgook shows that he possesses the ordinary white man's virtues, as well as the best traits of the Indian. In comparison with the ex-pirate, Tom Hutter, and the outlaw, Hurry Harry, he is noble and generous. No Indian is his superior; no white man, except Deerslayer, is his equal. The succession of his exploits culminates in one supreme act, when he silently enters the circle of his enemies, and calmly, heroically, stands by the side of Deerslayer at the torture post. Throughout the book, in every incident, Chingachgook appears as a high type of red man.

This, then, would seem to be the truth concerning Cooper's use and interpretation of Indian character: although he had slight first-hand knowledge of the Indians, he availed himself of every opportunity to obtain what he considered accurate information. In basing his early Indian characters, Chingachgook and Uncas, upon Heckewelder, he was following, according to his belief, the most reliable authority known at that time. Then, in the course of years, his creative imagination worked upon the character of Chingachgook, until this Indian hero assumed epic proportions and became the noble representative of a wronged and vanishing race, which, in Cooper's view, actually possessed qualities enabling it to assimilate the highest mental and moral attributes and attainments of the white man.

The University of North Carolina.