Line #118 Literature/TheLeatherstockingTales


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7
8	The book series by Creator/JamesFenimoreCooper.
9
10	One of the first [[SeriesFranchise Franchises]] of [[NineteenthCenturyLiterature modern literature]].
11
12	In chronological order, the books are:
13	* ''The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path: A Tale''\
14	-- 5th published
15	* ''The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757''\
16	-- 2nd published and most [[PopCulturalOsmosis famous]]
17	* ''The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea''\
18	-- 4th published
19	* ''The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna: A Descriptive Tale''\
20	-- 1st published ([[ColonCancer hence]] the [[InWhichATropeIsDescribed long subtitle]])
21	* ''The Prairie: A Tale'' -- 3rd published
22
23	They're probably most famous these days for [[TropeCodifier codifying]] the romantic concept of the [[MagicalNativeAmerican Native]] [[{{Eagleland}} American]] [[TheWildWest Frontier]], and for their [[HeroicFantasy heroic]], [[KnightInShiningArmor chivalrous]] [[PurpleProse prose]] being [[Literature/FenimoreCoopersLiteraryOffenses relentlessly mocked]] by Creator/MarkTwain. Nonetheless, Cooper became the father of the American novel and wrote the first real ''American'' adventure stories. He followed the lead of [[Creator/WalterScott Sir Walter Scott]], adapting it to an American environment and democratizing it: where Scott (like Shakespeare) limited his lower-class characters to comic relief roles, Cooper made commoners like Natty Bumppo central characters of the work they appeared in. He also instituted an American archetype, that of the misfit or outsider hero at odds with society. The Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841) are the ancestors of the {{Western}}. During his lifetime Cooper was the first American writer to achieve worldwide renown and commercial success, and also the first one to impress and influence European writers. Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe reread ''The Pioneers'' before describing a tiger hunt in his ''Novelle'' (1826).
24
25	The Leatherstocking Tales are one of the first literary appearances of the NobleSavage. (Montaigne was the first to apply this trope to the North American Indians, and the trope itself is OlderThanFeudalism--Classical Greek writers spoke of the Gauls this way.) Anyway, back then it was a [[FairForItsDay very progressive]] portrayal of Native Americans, and he was congratulated for presenting Chingachgook and his son Uncas as ''heroes'' (as opposed to thieving, cunning, drunken, heathen assholes). Of course, now we see it as just another stereotype--but Cooper ''was'' the [[OnceOriginalNowCommon first to use this in a novel]]. In many ways, his noble savages exemplify a way that European-descended North Americans made sense of the values dissonance between their society and that of the Native Americans, who from their point of view simultaneously and most irritatingly embodied both extremely repulsive (cruelty, vengefulness etc.) and attractive (hospitality, courage etc.) qualities. A constant theme in the novels is that Indians, while noble and eloquent [[note]]TruthInTelevision; the consensus nature of tribal government required leaders to be great public speakers to attain positions of influence[[/note]], are [[YourDaysAreNumbered doomed to be eclipsed]] by the technologically superior white man and fade away. Though real life has disproved this belief, Cooper had some justification for it- he lived in New York, a state whose Native American population really did dwindle dramatically during his lifetime.
26
27	The thing which ties the five books into a series is the recurring [[ArchetypalCharacter archetypal]] [[SupportingLeader character]] of [[MightyWhitey Natty Bumppo]], the [[TheGunslinger Long Rifle]], who also goes by the names of [[IHaveManyNames Deerslayer]], [[ImprobableAimingSkills Hawkeye]], [[ScarilyCompetentTracker Pathfinder]], [[LimitedWardrobe Leatherstocking]] and [[HunterTrapper The Trapper]]. In that order. (They're called The Leatherstocking Tales because he was known as Leatherstocking in ''The Pioneers'', the first book.) In four of the five books, he is joined by [[BigBrotherMentor Chingachgook]] ''("Great Serpent")'', and in ''Literature/LastOfTheMohicans'' by Chingachgook's son [[LastOfHisKind Uncas]], [[spoiler:the eponymous Last of the Mohicans, who dies in battle at the end of the novel]].
28
29	In the 19th century a number of Cooper's novels were adapted for the stage. Later the Leatherstocking Tales were adapted several times into films and television series. These include
30	* At least seven film versions of ''Film/TheLastOfTheMohicans''
31	* The 1913 American silent film ''The Deerslayer'', shot on the real location on Lake Otsego.
32	* ''Lederstrumpf'' (''Leatherstocking''), a two-part German adaptation of ''The Deerslayer'' and ''The Last of the Mohicans'' starring Creator/BelaLugosi as Chingachgook (1920).
33	* ''Chingachgook, die große Schlange'' (''Chingachgook, the Great Serpent'') (1967), an [[Film/DEFAWesterns East German adaptation]] of the former novel.
34	* ''Hawkeye'', a 1994 series from Creator/StephenJCannell.
35	----
36	!! The ''Leatherstocking'' series and Cooper's other works provide examples of:
37	* AdaptationalContextChange: As Colonel Munro from ''The Last of the Mohicans'' really existed, it was a ForegoneConclusion that he should die of heart failure before 1757, the year the novel is set in, is out. However, in the novel his death is attributed not to the exhaustions of the campaign, but to his grief over the death of his (fictional) daughter Cora.
38	%%* {{Adventure}}
39	* AllMythsAreTrue: Versions of this occur. In ''The Last of the Mohicans'' one is voiced by the Delaware women at Cora Munro's funeral. In ''The Prairie'' the dying Natty Bumppo is more doubtful, but in his discourse to Hard-Heart at least admits the possibility that the Christian God of the white men and the Great Spirit of the Pawnee will in the end be revealed as identical and that Natty and Hard-Heart will meet again in the afterlife.
40	* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Hurons are universally hostile to Natty and the rest of the heroes. One would expect the Iroquois in this role, but the Hurons were allies of the French, while the Iroquois, while hostile to the English, were mostly neutral in the Anglo-French question until they wiped out the Hurons in about the 1760s. The two cultures were very similar to each other, though; this is more a question of who's pointing a gun at the hero.
41	* AnachronicOrder: The last book published is the first in chronological order, and none of them were published sequentially.
42	* AnimatedAdaptation: Three of "The Last of the Mohicans" by Creator/HannaBarbera, Creator/BurbankFilmsAustralia and MondoTV respectively. The last of these three is the only one with a plot that resembles that of the book.
43	%%* AssholeVictim: Scalp-hunting former pirate Tom Hutter in ''The Deerslayer''.
44	%%* BigBrotherInstinct: Or sister. Cora towards Alice in ''The Last of the Mohicans''.
45	* BilingualBonus: ''The Last of the Mohicans'' contains quite a bit of GratuitousFrench.
46	* TheCaptivityNarrative: Subverted in the case of Alice and Cora being captured in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. In that novel it is actually played straighter with Magua's back story: He was captured by the Mohawks, adopted into their tribe, but eventually returned to the Hurons where he found that his wife had married someone else in the meantime.
47	%%* TheCavalry: The British army in ''The Deerslayer''.
48	%%* CavalryBetrayal: The garrison of Fort William Henry falls victim to this in ''The Last of the Mohicans''.
49	%%* CelibateHero: Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye, [[AdaptationDisplacement surprisingly enough]].
50	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: David Gamut, the Puritan psalmodist in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. Mistaking him for insane, the Hurons spare his life and allow him to roam their camp freely.
51	%%* ComeWithMeIfYouWantToLive: The Mohican rescue in ''Last of the Mohicans''.
52	%%* ComicRelief: David Gamut in ''The Last of the Mohicans'', [[AbsentMindedProfessor Dr. Obed Bat ("Battius")]] in ''The Prairie''.
53	* CompositeCharacter: Cooper's Mohicans confound the Mahicans of the Hudson Valley with the Mohegans of eastern Connecticut (both speakers of Algonquin languages), but that was something even the experts of the day did, including one of Cooper's prime sources, the Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, who assembled extensive first-hand knowledge of the Delaware (Lenni-Lenape) nations.
54	* CunningLinguist: Duncan Hayward is fluent in French, which enables him to fool a French sentry and also gets him the job of negotiating with the Marquis de Montcalm.
55	* DawnOfTheWildWest: Mostly set in the wilderness of northern and western New York during the middle to late 18th century. ''The Prairie'' is set in the Midwest, in the new territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase.
56	* DeadGuyJunior: Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton in ''The Prairie''. He's the grandson of two characters from ''The Last of the Mohicans''.
57	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Occurs quite a bit in Cooper's frontier and other historical novels. This is most noticeable in the rather different set of values held by the white and Native American societies side by side and at the same time. In ''The Deerslayer'' Natty Bumppo tries to dissuade Tom Hutter and Harry March from raiding a Huron camp to cash in on the bounties offered by the governor for Huron scalps. For him taking the scalps of enemies is okay for Indians (like Chingachgook) because it is part of their culture (or, in his terminology, part of the gifts of their nature), but it is entirely wrong for white Christians to do the same thing because it violates their values or "gifts".
58	* DressingAsTheEnemy: A half-comical example occurs in ''The Last of the Mohicans'', where it entails dressing up in the Huron medicine man's bear costume.
59	* {{Egopolis}}: ''The Pioneers'' is set in Templeton on Lake Otsego, which is lorded over by its founder Marmaduke Temple. It is an expy of the real-world town of Cooperstown, NY, which was founded by the author's father William Cooper.
60	* EndOfAnEra: Cooper's frontier novels to a large extent reflect the devastating impact of the advance of white civilization on traditional Native American culture and [[GreenAesop the landscape and wildlife]]. As Lenape prophet Tamenund sadly notes in the final words of ''The Last of the Mohicans'':
61	--> "It is enough," he said. "Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see [[TitleDrop the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans]]."
62	* EvenMooksHaveLovedOnes: In ''The Last of the Mohicans'', after a battle in which Hawkeye and his companions kill a number of nameless Hurons who for the most part are described without individual traits, the perspective switches to the Hurons and Magua eulogizes them in a speech to the other braves. The reader then learns that the dead have names and that they are and will be mourned by their friends and families, some of whom are also mentioned by name. Later on there is a scene which shows the deep emotional pain felt by the father of another Huron warrior. Because his only son was executed for cowardice and disowned by the tribe, the father is forced to deny he is his son and not to show sorrow over his death, but his pain is so palpable that the tribal elders show some consideration.
63	* FateWorseThanDeath: Subverted in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. Although according to Anglo-American standards of the time a white woman living with a "Heathen Savage" is considered this, Cora seriously considers acquiescing to becoming Magua's wife if that is what it takes to rescue her father and sister's lives.
64	* DrugsAreBad: That the white men teaching Indians to drink alcohol was not a good thing is demonstrated with Magua's life story in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. Even Chingachgook gets drunk along with the citizens of Templeton during the Christmas celebrations in ''The Pioneers''. (By the way, Cooper most probably was the first one to use "firewater" -- the translation of an Algonquian term for whisky -- in a work of fiction).
65	* GoingNative: Natty clearly feels most at home living among the Mohicans and later the Pawnees than among whites. In the process he even absorbed the Mohicans' hereditary enmity towards the Iroquois-speaking nations including the Hurons.
66	* TheGunslinger: First ever! And hence [[UnbuiltTrope rather lacking in some of the more fancy tricks]]. This might also have something to do with the fact that Natty uses a long rifle (then usually called a Pennsylvania Rifle, later a Kentucky Rifle).
67	* HalfBreedDiscrimination: Cora Munro, the daughter of a Scotch colonel and a Creole mother, in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. One of the first interracial romance plots in American literature. Her case is a subversion, as such discrimination is mentioned as existing and referenced by her father, but in the course of the novel Cora inspires love and admiration in pretty much anyone who meets her. And at her funeral the Delaware women see her mixed blood as something that makes her superior to her bland sister Alice. Ironically, the only person to actually display a prejudice against mixed blood is Hawkeye, who gratingly often takes pride in his own pure white blood and the pure Mohican blood of his friends Chingachgook and Uncas.
68	%%* HeterosexualLifePartners: Natty and Chingachgook. {{Retcon}}ned into adoptive father and son for [[Film/LastOfTheMohicans the film]].
69	%%* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Colonel George Munro (or Monro) and the Marquis de Montcalm in ''The Last of the Mohicans''.
70	%%* HistoricalFiction
71	%%* HunterTrapper
72	* IHaveNoSon: A tragic posthumous variation ("I ''had'' no son") occurs in ''The Last of the Mohicans'': Reed-that-bends, a young Huron warrior guilty of cowardice is condemned to be killed and forgotten by the tribe's elders. A short while after the execution, Magua arrives not knowing what occurred, and has the misfortune to mention his name, so suddenly everybody looks at Reed-that-bends' father, which obliges him to publicly disown his own son to uphold the warrior ethos. He manages to go through with this "bitter triumph", but it breaks him.
73	* ImprobableAimingSkills: Natty/Hawkeye, who can send an eighteenth century bullet right onto two others ''without fraying the edges of the bullet hole''.
74	* InjunCountry: Cooper's works can be seen at the TropeCodifier for Western literature, stressing how well the Native Americans are attuned to life in their environment through their "gifts".
75	* KarmicDeath: In ''The Deerslayer'' [[spoiler: Tom Hutter tries to make money by raiding a Huron camp for scalps. He ends up dying after being scalped alive by the Hurons.]]
76	* AKindOfOne: Hawkeye moves between the societies of the whites and the Native Americans without properly belonging to either, and he lives an autonomous life that makes it impossible for him to have a family. In the final chapter of ''The Last of the Mohicans'' he thus identifies with Chingachgook:
77	--> "The gifts of our colors may be different, but God has so placed us to journey in the same path. I have no kin, and I may also say, like you, no people."
78	%%* KnightInShiningArmor: Natty/Hawkeye.
79	* LastOfHisKind: Chingachgook after the death of Uncas. It should be noted that strictly speaking the kind in question is "Mohican warrior and chief", not "Mohican" per se, as Cooper in the foreword to ''The Last of the Mohicans'' pointed out remnants of the tribe were still living in New York, dispersed among other tribes, in 1826, i. e. after the death of Chingachgook in ''The Pioneers''.
80	* TheLastTitle: ''The Last of the Mohicans''.
81	* LightFeminineAndDarkFeminine: Taken almost to parody with Alice (Light Feminine, all the way to golden hair and utter helplessness) and Cora (Dark Feminine, at least as far as her looks and refusal to be anyone's doormat) Munro in "The Last of the Mohicans".
82	* LostInImitation: ''The Last of the Mohicans'' has been adapted into film so many times that the [[Film/LastOfTheMohicans 1992 film]] was explicitly based on an earlier 1936 screenplay in the credits, and [[BrokenBase praised for it]] -- due to avoiding perceived narrative pitfalls of the book. Of course, by making [[MightyWhitey Day-Lewis]] the romantic lead, the film also conveniently avoided the book's mid-19th century interracial romance subplot, although it added [[StarCrossedLovers another]].
83	* {{Malaproper}}: Cooper himself. Creator/MarkTwain has a LongList of examples, though literary experts cannot find some of the ones Twain professed to see.
84	* MartialPacifist: As ''The Deerhunter'' relates, Natty Bumppo used to be one, having been received his religious education from the pacifist Moravian Brethren. [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore This completely changed]] when he first killed a man (a Huron warrior) in self-defense.
85	* MistakenAge:
86	** Chingachgook is frequently portrayed as being elderly or middle-aged. In "The Pioneers", which is set in 1793, Chingachgook is stated to be seventy telling us he was born in 1723 and thus since "The Last of the Mohicans" was set in 1757, he was thirty-four at the time.
87	** Although this is more likely an example of WritersCannotDoMath or Cooper changing his mind between "The Pioneers" and "The Last of the Mohicans", in which Chingachgook's son Uncas is already a feared and famed warrior in his own right. With the added complication of "The Deerslayer" -- in which Chingachgook has to rescue his betrothed Wah-ta-Wah -- being set in 1740-1745. This in turn means that Uncas would have been seventeen at the oldest or twelve at the youngest when he was killed.
88	* MistakenForRacist: In ''The Last of the Mohicans'' Colonel Munro flies into a rage when Major Heyward asks for his daughter's hand in marriage and it turns out that the one he wants is not Cora (whose mother was part-black), but her younger-half sister Alice (whose mother was white). Heyward has a hard time convincing convincing Munro that he just happens to be attracted to Alice more than to Cora (the novel at that point already has established that he in fact greatly admires Cora for her spirit and inner strength). It did not help that Heyward is English, as the crusty Scotsman Munro sees racism against blacks and people with black ancestry as a very English prejudice.
89	* NamedAfterSomeoneFamous: In ''The Last of the Mohicans'', Uncas has the name of a number of historic Mohegan chiefs.
90	* NamedWeapon: Natty Bumppo's long rifle Killdeer.
91	* {{Neologism}}:
92	** [[NewerThanTheyThink The name "Cora."]] While not as popular as [[Literature/PeterPan Wendy]] or [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Jessica,]] it still went on to become a viable name after the novel.
93	** ''[[MondegreenGag Yengees]]''. The Algonquin word for [[{{Malaproper}} "English" (possibly via French "Anglais")]], aka [[GeniusBonus "Yankees"]].
94	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: It is the tragic paradox of Natty Bumppo and people like him that he helps to bring about the westward advance of a society he himself finds impossible to live in, which leads to the destruction of his hunting grounds and forces him to move further west, where he is once again followed by "civilized society".
95	%%* NobleSavage: Chingachgook in four novels, Uncas and Hard-heart in one each. Natty Bumppo has also on occasion been labeled one by readers and publishers.
96	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: As Cooper explained in a letter, Hard-heart (''The Prairie'') is based on the real-life Pawnee chief Petalasharo, an acquaintance of his.
97	* NonIndicativeName: At least to white Western tastes Chingachgook ("[[ReptilesAreAbhorrent The Great Snake]]") and Hard-heart, the Pawnee chief from ''The Prairie'', qualify.
98	* PistolWhipping: Natty has a habit of using his rifle as a club once he's fired. TruthInTelevision given that these things were pretty dang heavy and took a long time to reload.
99	* {{Prequel}}: ''The Last of the Mohicans'' to ''The Pioneers'', ''The Deerslayer'' to the other four Leatherstocking Tales.
100	* PrintLongRunners: Continuously in print since 1823.
101	* PropheticNames: David Gamut is a Puritan psalmodist. His first name is that of the Biblical king to whom most Psalms are credited, his last name is a musical term (a complete scale).
102	* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: The way different tribes and nations are portrayed to a large extent depends on whether they belong to the protagonists or antagonists of the novel in question. Cooper however does not paint the antagonists entirely without sympathetic qualities. And at one point in ''Last of the Mohicans'' the narration even chides Hawkeye for being unfair in his judgement regarding Hurons due to his prejudice against them when he denounces one for refusing to meekly let himself be killed.
103	%%* ProudWarriorRaceGuy
104	* PublicDomainCharacter: Tamenund in ''The Last of the Mohicans'' is based on the historic Lenni-Lenape chief Tamenend (died ca. 1701), who became a mythical figure as Tammany, the "Patron Saint of America". By now, Natty Bumppo, Chingachgook and others have become part of the public domain themselves.
105	%%* PurpleProse: Cooper wrote during the age of Romanticism, and his style often reflects that.
106	* RaceNameBasis: In ''The Last of the Mohicans'' members of different tribes will often address each other by their tribal name even if they know each other's names, e. g. Uncas addresses Magua as "Huron".
107	%%* ScarilyCompetentTracker: all of them.
108	* SoMuchForStealth: As famously noted by Creator/MarkTwain, almost any character trying to stay concealed will find a dry twig beneath their foot in short order.
109	%%* SpoonyBard: David Gamut in ''Last of the Mohicans''.
110	* SympatheticPOV: In ''The Last of the Mohicans'' this occurs despite the overall ProtagonistCenteredMorality. The passages which focus on Magua and the other Hurons make their motives more understandable and show that they have their own tragedies to bear, some of which have nothing to do with the novel's protagonists.
111	* TakeAThirdOption: In the 1850 preface to ''The Last of the Mohicans'' Cooper admitted that he had made up the name Horican for the lake on which Fort William Henry is situated. Disliking the names given by the Europeans (French: ''Lac du Saint-Sacrement'', British: ''Lake George'') and finding the Indian one a bit of a mouthful (Iroquois: ''Andia-ta-roc-te''), he renamed it after a tribe that once lived nearby.
112	* TogetherInDeath: [[spoiler: Cora and Uncas]] in ''The Last of the Mohicans''. The Delaware women at the funeral chant about how they will enjoy life together in the Happy Hunting Grounds.
113	%%* TragicVillain: Surprisingly, Magua.
114	* VagueAge:
115	** Uncas has got to be seventeen at the oldest or twelve at the youngest in "The Last of the Mohicans" since "The Deerslayer" is set between 1740-1745.
116	** Magua states that he had not seen a white person until he was twenty so the extent of our knowledge is that he is past twenty.
117	* VillainHasAPoint: Magua is the main villain of ''The Last of the Mohicans'', but he is on point in his [[ReasonYouSuckSpeech oration to the Huron elders]] where he expounds on the sufferings of black slaves and [[TakeThatAudience the insatiable greed for land of the whites]]. However since he wishes to make Cora, who has black ancestry, his wife and treat her like a slave he comes across as hypocritical at that point.
118	* TheWestern: The frontier novel genre launched by the Leatherstocking Tales developed into the Western genre or can be said to be Westerns ''avant la lettre''. Trying to make a distinction between the two tends to result in an arbitrary decision.
119	* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: A common staple of many of Cooper's novels. Subverted in ''The Deerslayer'', where Hawkeye proves unable to find out Judith's ultimate fate.
120	* WillNotTellALie: The Deerslayer.
121	-->Truth was the Deerslayer's polar star. He ever kept it in view, and it was nearly impossible for him to avoid uttering it, even when prudence demanded silence.
122	%%* TheWisePrince: Uncas of the Mohican tribe.
123	* YouAreACreditToYourRace: Or rather, "I Am a Credit to My Race" -- Hawkeye constantly talks about how he, "a man without a cross" of American Indian blood, can nonetheless fight effectively among them. The American Indians mostly ignore the subject...
124	%%* YourDaysAreNumbered: The Mohicans.
125

Context Literature / TheLeatherstockingTales