The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [313]
4 (p. 126) “have one of my own on my hands afore that is settled”: Deerslayer’s innocence is puzzling. It is difficult to imagine a youth of twenty to twenty-two who has not had strong sexual attractions, even if he were still a virgin. He seems not to have thought about sex or love at all. It is even more puzzling that a man who has grown up with Indians as he has, and who has so few prejudices in other respects, would share the common taboo against Indian women (and we must also blame Cooper or the narrator, if we assume the narrator is a persona different from the author). Other novels of the 1820s, including Lydia Child’s Hobomok and Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, featured interracial marriages, though in these cases it was white women who married Indian men after having been abducted by Indians.
5 (p. 130) The distance between the castle and the rock was a little more than two leagues: A league can be any of various units of distance from 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (or 3.9 to 7.4 kilometers). Considering that the castle is located in the northern part of the lake and the Council Rock in the southern near the mouth of the river, and that the lake is some 7 miles long, we can take a middle range and estimate that they had to travel between 6 and 7 miles. The Council Rock today looks much as it must have looked to Cooper, worn smooth by the lapping of the water over many centuries, though no longer under overhanging tree branches.
Chapter IX
1 (p. 135) giants of the forest ... very many inclined so far as to steep their lower branches in the water: Today, though the vegetation has thinned and the giant trees are missing, even the casual observer of the banks of Lake Otsego can readily recognize Cooper’s description. The banks are so steep in many places that traveling by boat is faster than traveling on foot near the shore.
2 (p. 136) height of this rock could scarcely equal six feet: Today, the rocks extend only a foot or two out of the water. But I observed them one September after a very heavy rain. A tall pine no longer overhangs the rock.
3 (p. 137) Chingachgook was yet young on a warpath: Chingachgook and Natty Bumppo are roughly the same age.
4 (p. 145) “old Tamenund”: He is the wise old Delaware (Mohican) chief whose eloquent words end The Last of the Mohicans. Tamenund—or Tammany or Tamanen, as he was sometimes called—was a legendary seventeenth-century chief renowned for his ability to achieve harmony between Native American and white-settler cultures. The Tammany Society, a powerful political organization operating in New York City in the nineteenth century, was originally formed and named after him because of his symbolic appeal in promoting the American cultural “melting pot.” Tammany Hall, the Society headquarters, in the end became a symbol of urban political corruption.
Chapter X
1 (p. 153) at the distance of near a league from the outlet: This would appear to be Three Mile Point.
Chapter XI
1 (p. 170) a hostile blow before it finally retired: This paragraph does not entirely explain the Iroquois’s presence in the area. Are they, in fact, on a war footing once they get word of the outbreak of hostilities? If not, why did they wear war paint, as Deerslayer asks in chapter V?
2 (p. 181) “Why, then, does the paleface use them? ... My name is Rivenoak”: This discussion shows how Cooper, though devout, was uncomfortable with what he saw as the hypocrisy and empty rituals of much of organized religion. Rivenoak is the Indian who jumps onto