American Literature: Romanticism research assignment Student Research Submissions 2015 Conference Presentation

Roslynn Kelley
May 13, 2015

The Reconciliation of Magua

          It is Romantic to think of a man that represents the last of his kind, and this idea is what James Fenimore Cooper explores in The Last of the Mohicans.  The novel studies two different concepts of the extinction of a people.  My research is interested in how these separate ideas are pre and post lapsarian ways of considering what the Native American characters symbolize in the novel; that is a pre-lapsarian Native and a post-lapsarian Savage.  
           Through Uncas, Cooper examines the loss of an entire tribe, whereas through Magua, he considers the loss of an entire way of life for the Native Americans.  I feel Magua is important to examine because he is the most complex character.  His purpose in the novel may seem villainous, but he is not easily placed in the category of “bad Indian” or “Ignoble Savage,” his motivation is much more complicated: “The opposed characters of Uncas and Magua embody competing stories of North America—either a glorious history of one classical civilization built on another, or a rankling nightmare of despoliation and vengeance” (White 113).  White is on to something here and he is correct in casting Uncas and Magua into these two different dynamics; however, I think his analysis is flexible enough to accommodate how Magua’s character overlaps with Uncas’ and vice versa.   
          Magua is also an intricate part of the mythology surrounding the Native Americans. With limited availability of Native American legends, the few Iroquois origin stories that remain tell tales of two brothers, each possessing opposite qualities.  By using the Iroquois Origin stories to examine Magua, his duality becomes much more evident. Caught up in the folklore surrounding his past, his actions in the novel are similar to those of the bad brother persona found in Iroquois stories. In the stories I want to use for my research, the conflict between the brothers paints them as being distinctly “good” and “bad”; but in others, the difference is simply a matter of night and day.  Connecting Cooper’s authorship with these texts will reinforce my idea that the characters in Mohicans are conceptualized ideas of a pre-lapsarian Native and post-lapsarian Savage. 
          In the many criticisms of The Last of the Mohicans, some critics discuss Uncas as the noble savage because he does takes on the role of protector and he is an obvious friend to the Europeans.  He protects Cora and Alice from Magua and the other Natives that fight with him: “’Uncas is right! It would not be the act of men to leave such harmless things to their fate” (Cooper).  From Cooper, Uncas receives detailed descriptions about his body and abilities: “The young Mohican, graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature” (Cooper).  Uncas is an ideal model for a pre-lapsarian figure that fits in and through his cooperation with the settlers; he helps create a post-lapsarian space for the Europeans.  For Uncas, there is no desire and loss; there is only loss.  He is only a single aspect of the dynamic. Yet, he remains a heroic figure, but this does not necessarily suggest that he is the Romantic equivalent of the heroic individual. As far as Romanticism is concerned, Uncas fits into a kind of literary category, and provided he stay within the limits of its European tradition he will retain his good favor in literature. He is the last of his kind and, to some extent, his death does represents a fall of a pre-lapsarian America; he is supposed to exemplify the last of the innocent Natives that are willing to step aside and die for the Europeans.   
          I am not as interested in Uncas as I am in Magua because Uncas, although a glorious character, is one-dimensional.  He will always be the “good Indian or Noble Savagae...[he]…lives in nature yet recognizes the better angels of white culture” (White 113).  He is the Native American the Europeans want all Native Americans to represent.  Additionally, “the noble savage was one who accepted the inevitability of the white dominance and his own extinction” (Krauthammer 6).  Although Chingachcook is saddened by his son’s death, he had to know it was inevitable; and the cause of his death, avenging Cora, reinforces Krauthammer’s idea that the good brother/savage will die in order to make room for the whites.  This is an example of a traditional romantic conception of a pre-lapsarian Native giving the ultimate sacrifice; whereas the post-lapsarian Savage “is a survivor; he does not vanish.  He does not accept his role as mandated by whites” (Krauthammer 6). I do not cast Uncas as the pre-lapsarian Native figure, the idea I am hoping to convey is that although Uncas sacrificed himself, he did so willingly, whereas Magua refuses to bend.  I feel that with further study into the criticisms that discuss Magua as a Satan-figure—I have found numerous publications that explore his similarities to that of Satan in Paradise Lost.  I will find more evidence that will also show him as a man that embodies the Romantic ideal of heroic individualism and intersect with it, my conception of a pre and post-lapsarian representation of the Native American.   
          This also raises the question of whether or not Uncas is necessary to the story; that is, could The Last of the Mohicans have been about Magua and his internal conflict rather than a surface interpretation of Uncas versus Magua because Magua embodies all of the qualities of the noble savage.  Did Cooper create Magua as such a dynamic character that overshadows Uncas? 
          Cooper does not stay within the boundaries of the restrictive formula found in traditional European Romantic texts in his creation and use of Magua; “Cooper brilliantly removes him [Magua] from literary marginalization.  He becomes a character who is more than an extension of the European conceptualization of the world” (Krauthammer 7).  Other considerations for further analysis into how Cooper creates the characters of Uncas and Magua are novels that circulated during the time in which he was writing the novel.  Ann Krauthammer suggests that other novels published prior to Mohicans are sources of inspiration for Cooper:  “Novels of the ‘dark and bloody ground’ Romantic sub-genre such as Nick of the Woods contain the ignoble savage images embodied by Magua.  On the other hand, novels such as Hobomok and The Yamassee contain the vanishing noble savage images that inform the creation of Uncas” (4).¹  Krauthammer also suggests that  despite Cooper being an heir “to a whole body of literature that created Indians….based totally on white misperceptions” he is still able to portray “the savage other and his role in American society and coupled it with an equally extraordinary effort to erase the reality of his existence…and the issue of ethnicity to the nineteenth century American discourse on national identity” (5).  This idea is important because we can see that Magua is supposed to represent a certain kind of evil in the novel; however, he challenges this typical “anti-Christian… [and] anti-American” perception (Krauthammer 5).   
          Magua encompasses the two separate concepts of a pre-lapsarian Native and a post-lapsarian Savage.  Those two ideas coincide with the challenges Krauthammer suggests Cooper subverts the evil Magua is supposed to represent: that of the pre-lapsarian “anti-Christian” evil and the post-lapsarian “anti-American” evil.   Instead of creating a character that has to sacrifice himself—in every way--in the post-lapsarian America, Cooper does not deny Magua’s perceived threat on the developing society, instead he emphasizes the Huron’s desire to return to the pre-lapsarian innocence through a journey: “Cooper’s romance is not merely a pale imitation of something done earlier and better in Europe.  Mohicans also incorporates a narrative native to the Americas” (White 110).      Magua epitomizes many of the themes inherent in Romanticism; he is desire and loss, good and evil, the heroic individual, he signifies a “gothic dimension,” and, most important of all the Romantic, he is in conflict with himself and he must find a resolution:

Magua was born a chief and a warrior among the red Hurons of the lakes; He saw the suns of twenty summers makes the snows of twenty winters run off in the streams before he saw a pale face; and he was happy.  Then his Canada fathers came into the woods, and taught him to drink the fire-water, and h became a rascal.  The Hurons drove him from the graves of his fathers…(Cooper)

This passage is important because it illustrates the duality of Magua’s character; in the first sentence he describes his pre-lapsarian innocence that transitions to a post-lasparian world of experience and shame: “…the savage [Magua] becomes ignoble as a product of white civilization” (Krauthammer 7).   Driven by the dishonor, he feels is the fault of the white-man, he desires some kind of resolution and this desire propels Magua on a surface quest for “revenge… [and] that the ignoble savage appellation and it attendant, fixed characteristics will not [apply]” (Krauthammer 6).  What is important in this passage is the phrase, “ignoble savage appellation,” and that it seems to influence Magua’s character; Magua has several appellations, he is “Le Renard,” Le Subtil,” and he is a chief among the Huron.  His French names, the Fox and the Subtle are Magua’s post-lapsarian savage labels because he received them after his fall from innocence.  They define him only as far as he maintains his quest for revenge.  Magua wants to forsake the identity of those two titles and regain the title of his past, which is chief because there is no honor bearing the names given to him by the white European men.   
          Magua’s quest, although seemingly centered on brutality, is, in reality, a quest towards reconciliation; it is a desire to regain the loss of his innocence.  It is a kind of reverse bildungsroman in that he wants to “go back,” as it were, to his pre-lapsarian idea of innocence: “However the call [to a quest] is made, it signals the necessity of an awakening to destiny in the face of an individual” (Leeming). This is important because the call Magua receives is the call of desire and it awakens the loss he feels.  In order to balance the two, he must rectify his loss and fulfill his desire.  
          His desire is unlearn all he has experienced forget the loss he feels and start over.  The problem with this method of regaining the past is that quests do not function in circular time; they move forward because, like life, there are specific stages: “…simply to exist is to be a part of the great quest for survival.  For the human being another dimension is added by virtue of the existence in us of consciousness, specifically, consciousness of linear time.  To see a beginning, a middle, and an end is to see a ‘road of life,’…” (Leeming).  Trapped in a mythology of desire and loss, he cannot escape the appeal of circularity; he is in constant conflict with his past, present, and future.
          Based on this circular notion of revenge, his attempts to create his ideal pre-lapsarian future depend on a post-lapsarian way of thinking and acting: “’When Magua left his people his wife was given to another chief; he has now made friends with the Hurons, and will go back to the graves of his tribe…Let the daughter of the English chief follow, and live in his wigwam forever” (Cooper).   He wants to replace his first wife with Cora because she represents everything Magua hopes to conquer.  He does not wish to brutalize her; he wishes her to live with him in his home among his original people, and this is a significant request.  They will live and thrive together is a kind of return to an innocence he believes will erase all the shame he faces within and outside of himself: “Like the ascent to paradise in myth, the ritual marriage that ends…many quest tales [express] the achieved goal of wholeness” (Leeming 152).    Provided Cora agrees to this arrangement, this will mark the end of his journey towards what he believes is his pre-lapsarian life.  Magua makes a grave error when he tries to convince Cora to become his wife, this is a test in his journey because he should know to treat this matter with delicacy.  By suggesting he will torture her, he pushes her away: “When the blows scorched the back of the Huron, he would know where to find a woman to feel the smart.  The daughter of Munro would draw his water…[etc]…the body of the gray-head would sleep among his cannon, but his heart [Cora] would lie within reach of the knife of Le Subtil” (Cooper 11.46).  Magua is caught up in his post-lapsarian quest for vengeance and forgetting that the point of his journey is to unite the two conflicting aspects of his character.  He fails this test in his journey and although he recovers some of his dignity—by living through the fight with Chingachgook—he continues to pursue the path of a post-lapsarian narrative. 
          Magua is unsuccessful in reconciling his innocence and experience.  He fails because it is not possible, not within the context of a romance narrative—where anything is possible—but in the concept of unification.  The past pre-lapsarian Native cannot merge with the post-lapsarian European created Savage.  His quest, to some extent, was doomed from the start.  By creating a character such as Magua, Cooper changes the narrative from an anticipated—boring—quest story, into something that encompasses and subverts all that is traditional in European Romanticism. 

                                                       Notes
1. I am indebted to Anna Krauthammer because her book, Representation of the Savage, has been a crucial source of information.  I share many of her ideas and hope that I do her theories justice as I overlay my ideas with hers. 

The only problems with Krauthammer’s suggestion that these three novels speak to the creation of the characters of Magua and Uncas is that Hobomok (published in 1824) is the only one written prior to the first edition of The Last of the Mohicans.  Cooper’s novel, first published in 1826, predates Nick of the Woods, published in 1837 and The Yemassee published in 1835. 

                                                  Bibliography
Krauthammer, Anna. Representation of the Savage in James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville. New York, NY, USA: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 13 May 2015.
Leeming, David Adams. “Quests.” The Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. Vol. 12.   New York, NY. MacMillan Publishing. 1987. 146-152. Print
White, Craig. Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press       2006. Print.