A Comparison of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans" and Robert Montgomery Bird's "Nick of the Woods" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (FASK (Fachbereich für Angewandte Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft)), course: "White on Red" - Representation of Native Americans in US Film and Fiction, language: English, abstract: Native Americans have played an important role in early American literature. After all, the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants have had to deal with Native Americans from the very beginning, since the land on which the United States of America would be proclaimed in 1776 was already inhabited by tribes which were generally referred to as "Indians." Over the decades and centuries, the image of Native Americans as depicted in novels and reports underwent quite a lot of dramatic changes. In this paper, the main focus will be laid on the image of Native Americans as it was drawn by two major novels of American literature: James Fenimore Cooper's "the Last of the Mohicans," which was first published in 1826, and Robert Montgomery Bird's "Nick of the Woods," which was published, eleven years after Cooper's work, in 1837. A reader familiar with both novels might notice that they represent two different approaches and attitudes towards Native Americans. On the one hand, there is Cooper who coined the term and image of the "Noble Savage," depicting Native Americans as dignified, noble, honorable and beautiful "sons of the forest." His work shows a comprehending attitude towards Native Americans, an attitude that is indicated in the introduction of his novel, where he claims that the native tribes were robbed of their territories by white settlers (Cooper 2). His image of Native Americans could be referred to as the "Eastern point of view." On the other hand, there is Bird and what we could call the "Western point of view." Bird directly attacks the image of Native Americans as Cooper drew it when he says in his introduction that
Cooper [...] had thrown a poetical illusion over the Indian character, [...]
[creating] a new style of the beau ideal - brave, gentle, loving, refined,
honorable romantic personages - nature's nobles (Bird 7). He claims that this picture is by no means an appropriate description of Native Americans and "that such conceptions as Uncas [...] are beautiful unrealities and fictions" (Bird 7). Another more subtle attack on Cooper's depiction of natives is found on page 43, where Bird mentions the tribes of the Delawares, Hurons and Shawnee. [...]