The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [317]
Chapter XXVI
1 (p. 434) “You’ll be Christianized one day”: Natty comments in chapter XII of The Pioneers that Chingachgook was Christianized by the Moravians at the time of “the last big war”—that is, the Revolutionary War.
Chapter XXVII
1 (p. 441 ) the point where the Hurons were now encamped, nearly abreast of the castle: This is the Indians’ final and most northerly encampment on the western shore of the lake, only about half a mile from the castle. The British, who came from the east, circle around the northern tip of the lake.
2 (p. 444) The arches of the woods ... man got its idea of the effects of Gothic tracery and churchly hues: Cooper was extremely fond of Gothic architecture. When he bought back Otsego Hall, the family mansion, in 1834, he redecorated it in a Gothic style. The Fenimore Art Museum houses before and after models of the mansion. The mansion was sold after Cooper and his wife Susan died (1851 and 1852, respectively); it burned down in 1853. Cooper seems to have gotten his taste for the Gothic style not from the woods but from his visit to Europe.
Chapter XXVIII
1 (p. 466) Bacon: The reference is to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), jurist, natural philosopher, lord chancellor of England, and author of Novum Organum.
Chapter XXIX
1 (p. 478) in the case even of Gesler’s apple: In the legend of William Tell, Governor Gesler of Austria, enraged by Tell’s refusal to obey an order, places an apple on the head of Tell’s son and orders Tell to shoot it off at a hundred paces. Tell does. The legend is celebrated in Guillaume Tell, Rossini’s 1829 opera, which Cooper probably saw while he was in Europe.
Chapter XXX
1 (p. 494) “miserable Briarthorn”: Briarthorn is the traitorous Delaware who betrays Hist, out of misguided love for her, and hands her to the Iroquois in an effort to deny her to Chingachgook.
2 (p. 498) the lot of a savage warfare: Cooper’s language in this paragraph—“the shrieks, groans, and denunciations” and “neither age nor sex forms an exemption”—leaves little doubt that the women and children were massacred along with the Indian men. The reference to “in our own times” presumably refers to President Andrew Jackson’s “Indian removal” policies and to President Martin Van Buren’s use of 7,000 federal troops in 1838 to drive more than 15,000 Cherokee Indians on a thousand-mile forced march to Oklahoma from the southeastern land guaranteed them by treaty More than 4,000 Indians died in the process.
Chapter XXXI
1 (p. 499) When the sun rose on the following morning ... the basin of the Glimmerglass: This is the sixth day after Deerslayer and Harry’s first arrival at the lake.
2 (p. 506) “The Delaware saw us on the shore, with the glass”: If Chingachgook saw the British, did Judith see them, too, or had she already left the castle? If she had sighted them, her mission as agent of the Queen could then be seen not as a quixotic gesture but as an effort to stall for time until the British arrived. From her speech to the Indians in chapter XXX, however, it does not sound as though she knew of the imminence of the British soldiers.
Chapter XXXII
1 (p. 514) “Do you really love war, Deerslayer, better than the hearth and the affections?”: Here, of course, Judith truly identifies what Deerslayer is—a man with a rifle (she has given it to him), a hunter, a fighter, a killer, an Achilles, and not a man for the hearth and home.
APPENDIX
Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
by Mark Twainm
The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper’s novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be