Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
After a poor showing in Precaution (1820), a novel of manners, Cooper found
his stride in The Spy (1821), a historical novel set during the American Revolution.
He did not plan to write the Leatherstocking novels as a series, but The Pioneers
was so popular that he followed it three years later with The Last of the Mohicans
(1826). Set during the French and Indian War, this novel has a quality of nostalgia
for chivalry embodied in the simple nobility of Natty Bumpo and his friendship
with the Native American Chingachgook. It also considers such social issues
as miscegenation and racial conict. In much of his work, Cooper exalted the
American way of life, democracy, and individual rights. Yet he faced unpleasant
truths about America, including growing demagoguery, unfair property rights, and
too-rapid urbanization.
From 1826 to 1833, Cooper lived in Europe, where he was acclaimed as “the
American Scott.” He wrote novels set in medieval Europe and contrasted American
and European governments in travelogues, including his Gleanings in Europe series
(1836–1838). This attention to Europe tarnished Cooper’s reputation in America,
yet he continued to write prolically until his death in Cooperstown in 1851.
4.4.1 The Pioneers
(1823)
Volume I, Chapter I
See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;
Vapours, and clouds, and storms.—
Thompson.
Near the centre of the great State of New-York lies an extensive district of
country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater
deference to geographical denitions, of mountains and valleys. It is among these
hills that the Delaware takes its rise; and owing from the limpid lakes and thousand
springs of this country, the numerous sources of the mighty Susquehanna meander
through the valleys, until, uniting, they form one of the proudest streams of which
the old United States could boast. The mountains are generally arable to the top,
although instances are not wanting, where the sides are jutted with rocks, that
aid greatly in giving that romantic character to the country, which it so eminently
possesses. The vales are narrow, rich, and cultivated; with a stream uniformly
winding through each, now gliding peacefully under the brow on one of the hills,
and then suddenly shooting across the plain, to wash the feet of its opposite rival.
Beautiful and thriving villages are found interspersed along the margins of the
small lakes, or situated at those points of the streams which are favourable to
manufacturing; and neat and comfortable farms, with every indication of wealth
about them, are scattered profusely through the vales, and even to the mountain
tops. Roads diverge in every direction, from the even and graceful bottoms of the
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