LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2003 sample student research project

LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project, fall 2003

Nancy Gordy
Literature 5535
American Romanticism
November 21, 2003

The American Indian in Romantic Literature

Nineteenth-century America is a period of time in American history when some of the greatest works of literature have been produced. This literary movement embraced nostalgia, the longing for the past. As Native American culture diminished, there was a desire by writers to preserve this heritage to retain this part of our country’s history. The development of the stereotypical American Indian emerged in Early Pre-Romanticism, and continued through Romanticism and Realism to form the modern image of the American Indian character. However, the American Indian in this Romantic canon is unique, by incorporating James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), author of the adventurous novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Albery Keiser wrote in The Indian in American Literature, “The writer who more than anyone impressed his conception of the Indian upon America and the world at large is James Fenimore Cooper” (Keiser 101). The Last of the Mohicans is unique in its description of the stereotypical American Indian as exclusive to American Romanticism.

The stereotypical characterization of the American Indian in Romantic literature is shaped by the attitudes of pre-romantic writers such as: Christoper Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Mary Rowlandson, and John Smith. These early American writers influenced the development of the Indian character by assigning generalizations relative to their experiences with the Indians. The most common genre of the pre-romantic influence on Romanticism is the captivity narrative.

The earliest depiction of the American Indian is contained in Christopher Columbus’ Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage. Columbus briefly mentions his encounter with the Native Americans as being without, “towns nor villages on the seashore, but only small hamlets, with the people of which could not have speech because they all fled immediately” (Norton Anthology 26). The Indians Columbus encountered were less sophisticated. Columbus concludes in his Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage in Jamaica, July 7, 1503, “Alone in my trouble, and encompassed about by a million savages, full of cruelty and our foes, and so separated from the holy Sacraments of Holy Church” (Norton Anthology 28). The Spanish motive to civilize and Christianize the Indians proved unsuccessful for Columbus. In the Western Anglo culture Christianity was a strong influence on the stereotypes assigned to the Indians. Since Indians were not Christians, they were labeled as savages, or less than human.

The pre-romantic literature of Cabeza de Vaca is another early American text that influenced the stereotypical character of the American Indian. The impression given toward the character of the Indians is recorded by Cabeza de Vaca, after years in captivity with the Native Americans of the Texas Gulf Coast, near Galveston Island. The expedition suffered many disasters; however, Cabeza de Vaca compared the American Indians of Texas, “As shrewd in battle as if they had been reared in Italy in continual feuds” (Norton Anthology 29). The unique character of the American Indian in Cabeza de Vaca’s journal is regarded as true representations of the way the Indians actually lived. Cabeza de Vaca reported that, “The people we came to know there are tall and well-built. Their only weapons are bows and arrows, which they use with great dexterity. Their women toil incessantly. All the Indians of this region were ignorant of the time, either by the sun or moon; nor do they reckon by the month of the year” (Norton Anthology 32- 33). Cabeza de Vaca presents the Indians he encountered as uneducated and unsophisticated. This pre-romantic captivity narrative suggests the stereotypes placed on this Indian race and culture.

Mary Rowlandson’s pre-romantic influence on the characterization of the American Indian is evident in her captivity narrative, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. “In The First Remove,” she describes her captors as, “Roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell” (Norton Anthology 138). In this example, Rowlandson compares the Native American Indians to demons. The stark contrast in color, black equals evil and white is good is suggested. The strange practices are unfamiliar to Rowlandson, who in captivity was forced to endure “bitter captivity, or present death, none escaped, save only one. It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, like a company of sheep torn by wolves” ( Norton Anthology 137). The Christian indoctrination of Puritan theology served as a way to create the mythical conditions with which the Indians were compared with devouring wolves, demons, and savage creatures that are deemed less than human.

The Indian in romantic literature is shaped by nature and heritage to create stereotypical characterization categories as a quick labeling system for the Native American as mythical, noble, savage, and demonic as viewed in literature particularly by James Fenimore Cooper. On the topic of religion, Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans contains the same stereotypical conflict between the Christianized whites and the polytheistic religions of the Native Americans. The view on religion is a conventional tool to tie into the preexisting stereotypes placed on the Indian character as, “The gift of nature; that distinguish good from evil. In courage Hawk-eye was the equal of his red associates, in warlike skill” (Jones 43).

The account of Rowlandson’s captivity was popular and revered as one of the most popular works of prose of the seventeenth-century, both in this country and in England. “It combined high adventure, heroism, and was the first in its narrative skill and delineation of character the best of what have become known as Indian captivities” (Norton Anthology 135). The racial and cultural misconceptions in Mary Rowlandson’s stereotypes helped mold the image of the mystical American Indian character.

Another pre-romantic influence on the creation of the Indian character is developed through the captivity narrative of John Smith. His captors, the Algonquian Indians, were the ancestors to the Delaware Indians, those portrayed in The Last of the Mohicans. John Smith presents the Indian as both noble and savage. In the six or seven weeks of Smith’s captivity, he describes his captors as “Barbarians” (Norton Anthology 48). In another instance he mentions the strange cultural practices of Powhatan’s tribe, “They cast themselves in a ring, dancing and singing in strange postures and yelling out hellish notes and screeches being strangely painted” (Norton Anthology 48-49). Smith also describes the Indians as “Barbarians with compassion” (Norton Anthology 52). In his description of Pocahontas, she is presented as being his savior. She prevents Powhatan from bashing his brains out (51). “She put his head in her arms and laid her own body upon his to save him from death” (Norton Anthology 51).

After the influence of the pre-Romantic writers, how did James Fenimore Cooper impress his conception of the Native American more than anyone else? James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans flourished with the ideological energy of American Romanticism. The rapid disappearance of the Native American culture created an atmosphere for nostalgia for a time before the Industrial Revolution. Cooper entertained his audience invoking nostalgia, a desire to reconnect to the distant past of the old world and the Native Americans in their natural environment. The desire and loss, or nostalgia for the past, is prevalent in The Last of the Mohicans. “The true passionate love for American soil that one day the demons of America must be placated, the ghosts must be appeased and the Spirit of Place atoned for” (Lawrence). The New England setting of The Last of the Mohicans provides the characteristic link between Native Americans and nature. The opening pages the novel place the location of the action around the Horican, or “Holy Lake.” In its name, the land surrounding the lakes of the Hudson links the spiritual ties and Indian heritage.

Stereotypes of the Indian character continue to dominate James Fenimore Cooper’s craft. In Deerslayer, the “just-minded Delaware is only a brave; respected, and even obeyed in some things, ‘tis true, but of a fallen race, and belonging to a fallen people. ‘Twould warm the heart within you to sit in their lodges of a winter’s night, and listen to the traditions of the ancient greatness and power of the Mohicans!”(Cooper 17). By the time Cooper wrote Last of the Mohicans, the Native Americans had become literally a fallen race. This excerpt from Deerslayer illustrates the Romantic longing for the past. Nostalgic mechanisms reconvene over and over throughout Last of the Mohicans, presenting the desire and loss theme as an avenue representing the Romantic Indian.

On the topic of nostalgia in James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Lathon Lewis, a fellow student in American Romanticism Fall 2000 wrote the following paper entitled; “The ‘Seduction of Nostalgia’ and the Unfulfilled Quest in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” Lewis argues that in Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, “many regard it as the prime moment of American Romanticism.” The protagonist “Natty Bumpo (Hawk-eye, La Longue Carabine, Leatherstocking) represents the definitive romantic hero. James Fenimore Cooper’s hero is the ultimate frontiersman and dwells among the Indians. Cooper’s novel helps perpetuate an American myth. That is, the white American male who both conquers and respects nature. The nostalgia in this novel could be explained as a medicine for that white psyche-a remedy to ease the pain of progress” (Lewis 3).What Lewis is trying to say here is that Cooper uses the character of Hawk-eye (Natty Bumpo) as “ultimate American-friend of the Indian as well as the White man. He can speak both languages and though the Mohicans are disappearing he can befriend the last of them and fully understand what is being lost as it is occurring” (Lewis 3).

The American wilderness in The Last of the Mohicans represents the boundary between civilization and the unknown. Instead of trees and wilderness teaming with unexpected “dark creatures” as John Smith described, there were already thriving cities by 1830. The American Romantic impulse of the nineteenth-century cried out for anything but the here and now, and nurtured the ideology of the individual being separate from society in nature. The Native Americans were separate from society existing out in the wilderness beyond the boundary of civilization. In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne illustrates the world in which the Indians lived, away from civilization. He writes, “There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree” (Norton Anthology 610). The dying wilderness and the disappearances of the Native American created a nostalgia supporting the figurative resurrection of the American Indian in literature. The rapidly diminishing natural land and those who inhabited it had faded. So, the Romantic impulse cried out for anything but the here and now, escape from society. The dying wilderness, nature untouched is lost, and desire for the past, for what once was is inconceivable, except in Romanticism.

In American Romanticism, instead of castles and mansions there are trees. American Romanticism supports the same ideologies as European Romanticism. Romanticism defined is, “The strange, exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, and nameless terror” (Berlin 17). Just as there are vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies in European Romantic fiction, in America, the quintessential character is the figure of the Indian.

In comparison to European Romantic literature, the sentimental American Indian referred as the noble savage, possess warrior-like qualities, just as knights in shining armor possess chivalry. Instead of castles, there are trees. In the Romantic perspective, Cooper places his “knights of the forest,” right in the midst of battle, warring Indian tribes. Tension is wrought when James Fenimore Cooper’s hero, Hawkeye agrees to aide the safe journey of Cora and Alice to the safety of their Colonel Munro, a distinguished British officer. This technique on an eco-social level shows that Cooper among others writes what is culturally relative, such as stereotypes. On a Romantic level, Cooper uses these stereotypical categories, on a standpoint favoring the English heritage in America. Since we do not speak French in this country, then that is the precise position Cooper leans.

Additionally, in Last of the Mohicans, he has a problem with names, one of which Mark Twain gripped about in Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses. From a Realist perspective, this is true. Mark Twain writes, “Cooper’s art has some defects. The conduct and conversation of personages shall justify the said description and use the right word, not its second cousin” (Norton Anthology 1432-33). Cooper commences by breaking the rules in Realism but allowed in Romanticism. He confesses that “while his texts do not reflect historical events, they preserve historical flavor” (Rissetto).

Cooper wrote in his preface to The Last of the Mohicans, “The greatest difficulty, with which the student of Indian history has to contend, is the utter confusion pervades the names” (White). Different names can apply to a single character. Hawkeye, is known as having other names in the Leatherstocking tales. Sometimes he is referred to as the “scout, Natty Bumpoo, Leatherstocking, La Longue Carabine, and the Long Rifle”. (Cooper). The same is true for Chickingook, Uncas, Magua, and Tamenund, as well as other characters. This serves to show that in the Romantic view Cooper takes, the American Indian can be typecast and molded into character type. Basically, Mark Twain’s argument is if your characters are important, then the author should get the names right and be consistent; however, Cooper is not portraying reality.

The character, Tamenund, is a historical Indian leader, presumably a Delaware, after which Tammany Hall in New York is named (White). Cooper dramatizes the character of Tamenund by alluding to a legendary figure in history, dating back to most likely around 1760s, the time setting of The Last of the Mohicans is twenty years before the Revolutionary War. Art imitates reality? Obviously it does. Tamenund’s character provides the namesake for present day Tammany Hall. It also proves how Romanticism paved the way for modern influence and thought through, art, literature, film and the media. It was the American Indian character which developed that provides the unique canon in American Romanticism versus European.

Romantics, such as James Fenimore Cooper wrote the epic series, the Leatherstocking novels as fictional representations of the Indian character. D.H. Lawrence explains that James Fenimore Cooper’s, The Last of the Mohicans is a sort of “American Odyssey, with Natty Bumpo as Odysseus” (Lawrence). The pulse with which Cooper drives his odyssey of the American Indian character has a kind of “yearning myth” (Lawrence). Cooper takes the savage and presents Indians with “Deep subjective desire, real in their way and almost prophetic” (Lawrence). This is what Lawrence is talking about. Not only did he write a lot, but a lot with Indian characters. “The Leatherstocking Novels have a kind of yearning myth.” Cooper makes the savage and presents them with “deep subjective desire, real in their way, and almost prophetic” (Lawrence). In The Last of the Mohicans, there is deviltry and Hawkeye is a “saint” according to Lawrence and the Indians are gentlemen through and through, they may take an occasional scalp” (Lawrence).

Continuing on the American Romantic canon, the journey that Uncas, Hawk-eye, and Chickingook strive for in The Last of the Mohicans is to protect the dying race of Mohicans. To preserve the Indian legacy, Cooper leads his audience to believe the setting and Indians he writes about are true. To do this, Cooper elaborates on the names in this text with poetic license to create characters to suit his purpose. D.H. Lawrence writes, “The Leatherstocking books are lovely. Lovely half-lies” (Lawrence).

Literature such as The Last of the Mohicans during Cooper’s day, flourished with the ideological energy of Romanticism, a distinct period of time where industrial gain meant nature’s loss. The desire and loss theme is a prevalent conventional tool that links the American Indian to having a special relationship with nature. Cooper weaves nostalgia for the past into the Indian personages of Hawkeye, Uncas, Chickingook, Magua, and Tamenund. These “five knights of the forest” reveal how Cooper integrates stereotypical Indian characters, pulling Romantic ideology ascribed as the universal “sentimental and demonized” American Indian (Rissetto).

In the Fall 2000 course of American Romanticism, on the topic of Last of the Mohicans, Jane Ftacnik, wrote in her essay, “The Dark Side of American Romanticism,” that “Romanticism reflects rebellion and individualism.” Within the characterization of Magua, representing the bad Huron, he is described as being both “fierce and beautiful” (Ftacnik). When he is introduced “sullen fierceness is mingled with the quiet of the savage” (Cooper 37). Ftacnik goes on to explain that the character Cooper creates in Magua is “developed through the comments and reactions from other characters” (Ftacnik). The scout (Hawk-eye) insults his Huron lineage saying, “they are a thievish race, skulks and vagabonds” (Cooper 37). The image of the stereotypical bad Indian in The Last of the Mohicans are compared with thieves and vagabonds, or people who wander, rather than settle as modeled in the dominate white culture.

In American Romanticism, instead of castles and mansions there are trees. In The Last of the Mohicans, the Delaware Indians who side with the British in this novel are said to be “good,” while those siding with the French, as the Hurons, are labeled as “bad” (White). This technique shows how Cooper demonstrates stereotypical judgments based on what was culturally relative to the time period of the nineteenth-century but also in the setting of the novel. In order to preserve legendary landscapes and the American Indian, Cooper utilized Indian characteristics of pre-Romantic literature and recreated the Indian character in Last of the Mohicans. The image of the stereotypical bad Huron Indians is suggested in the tragic account of the massacre of fort William Henry. “More than two thousand raging savages broke from the forest at the signal, and threw themselves across the fatal plain with instinctive alacrity. Death was everywhere.” (176). The flow of blood might be likened to the out-breaking of a torrent; and as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight, many among them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly, hellishly, of the crimson tide” (Cooper 176).

The pulse Cooper drives in the desire and loss nostalgia theme continues to affect the literature of the Native American. In modern literature the American Indian is making a come back. The American Indian has become the universal condition for nostalgia of the American past. The unique American Indian character in American Romanticism is still strong in presenting an understanding and respect for our heritage and the past. The same is true for Native American families. One good example of a modern text that links to the nostalgia to the old world Indians is Bless Me, Ultima, by Ruldolfo Anaya. Throughout Anaya’s novel, the Chicano culture developed today is a subgenre to preserve local color and heritage (Bedford129). The figure of Ultima, is that of the link of the family’s tie with the Native Indians and the medicine she renders to the whole family as example of the old traditions and culture. Throughout the novel, the diminishing Indian culture is discussed in a nostalgic manner, suggesting that it is slowly being lost. The character of Ultima, represents the Indian influence on American literature today. The impulse for nostalgia, desire and loss combine to create the nostalgic Indian character romanticized in American literature and realized in James Fenimore Cooper’s, The Last of the Mohicans.

In conclusion, the character, Tamenund sums it up the best: “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 the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans!” (Cooper 350). There is a tremendous connection with nature and heritage that the Native American Indian in American literature. Nostalgia for the past creates desire and loss thematically in American Romantic literature by both writers such as Cooper, and Native Americans. James Fenimore Cooper accomplishes the task of enlightening the character of Indian as being noble, savage, mythical, beautiful and demonic. Cooper wanted to “emphasize the tensions between mankind and the land, between natives and colonists, and between nature and culture” (Sparknotes) that capture the idealized portrait of the American Indian.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature 6^th Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticicm. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. New York: Penguin Books, 1826.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin Books, 1826.

Cooper, James Fenimore. Last of the Mohicans. Barnes and Noble Learning Network: Internet. Sparknotes. 2003. http://www.sparknotes.com.

Flacnik, Jane. Essay: “The Dark Side of American Romanticism.” American Romanticism Course LITR 5535 Craig White, UHCL. Fall 2000. Course website: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535.

Jones, Howard Mumford. Belief and Disbelief in American Literature. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London, 1967.

Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923. “Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels.”

Lewis, Lathon. Essay: “The Seduction of Nostalgia and the Unfulfilled Quest in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” American Romanticism Course LITR 5535 Craig White, UHCL. Fall 2000. Course website: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535

Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms 2^nd. Ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2003.

Rissetto, Adriana. “Romancing the Indian: Sentimentalizing and Demonizing In Cooper and Twain.” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Indians/first.html. 2003.

White, Craig. “American Romanticism.” University of Houston. Clear Lake, LITR 5535.