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Conservation in Cooper's The Pioneers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

E. Arthur Robinson
E. Arthur Robinson*
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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Extract

Cooper's third novel, The Pioneers, published in 1823, is usually considered to be his most realistic in reflecting actual scenes and events. The Effingham plot is fanciful, but numerous details as well as the general situation relate to family and community history. These factual elements involve all levels of the story: the setting, ranging from a description of Lake Otsego and its environs to such specific landmarks as the Bold Dragoon Tavern (Red Lion Inn) and the manorial hall; several characters, including Judge Temple (based upon the author's father, Judge William Cooper), the first sheriff Richard Jones (in actuality one Richard R. Smith), Major Hartmann, and the French merchant Monsieur Le Quoi (Mr. Le Quoy); and such contributing themes as the struggle over establishing a village church, the manufacture of maple sugar, and the danger of forest roads. Certain improbable details, such as the sheriff's arresting a gang of counterfeiters in the wilderness, are based upon fact toned down in the telling. Cooper apparently alluded to such reminiscent subject matter in his original Preface, which states that the book, in contrast to his first two, “has been written, exclusively, to please myself.” He further called attention to the novel's realism by subtitling it “A Descriptive Tale,” as he explained in a letter of 1822 to his London publisher: “I had announced the work as a ‘descriptive tale’ but perhaps have confined myself too much to describing the scenes of my own youth. … If there be any value in truth, the pictures are very faithful, and I can safely challenge a scrutiny in th[is?] particular.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 7 , December 1967 , pp. 564 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 For historical comparisons see Cooper's “The Chronicles of Cooperstown” (1838) in A History of Cooperstown (Cooperstown, N. Y., 1929), pp. 14, 17–18, 23, 25–27; also the testimony of Cooper's daughter in James Fenimore Cooper, The Legends and Traditions of a Northern County (New York, 1921), p. 211. Although Cooper alters details, in many instances he stays remarkably close to fact, as in emphasizing the bass and trout of Otsego Lake but not the pickerel which only later became plentiful (“Chronicles of Cooperstown,” p. 23). In a recognized source for Natty Bumppo, the “Chronicles” mentions that one “Shipman, the Leatherstocking of the region, could at almost any time, furnish the table with a saddle of venison” (p. 13). Robert E. Spiller analyzes the historical qualities of The Pioneers in his Fenimore Cooper, Critic of His Times (New York, 1931), pp. 12–25.

2 The Pioneers (New York: Rinehart, 1959), p. xxv. Unless otherwise noted, subsequent page references are to this edition, which is based upon that of 1825.

3 The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, ed. J. F. Beard (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), I, 85.

4 Introduction to The Pioneers (Boston, 1898), p. xxxiii.

5 James Fenimore Cooper (Minneapolis, Minn., 1965), p. 34.

6 The primary themes modern scholarship has found in the Leatherstocking Tales are the “myth” of the wilderness and the conflicts between innocence and experience, individualism and society. See Roy Harvey Pearce, “The Leatherstocking Tales Re-Examined,” SAQ, xlvi (Oct. 1947), 524–536; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (New York, 1957), pp. 64–76; R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago, 1955), pp. 98–105; Leon Howard, Introduction to The Pioneers (New York, 1959); Robert E. Spiller, Afterword to The Pioneers (New York: Signet, 1964). It is in relevance to these larger themes that The Pioneers is constructed about the narrower issue of conservation. Aspects of this issue are treated excellently in Edwin Harrison Cady, The Gentleman in America (Syracuse, N. Y., 1949), pp. 136–138, and Donald A. Ringe, James Fenimore Cooper (New York, 1962), pp. 32–37. Cady is concerned with the clash between two types of American “gentlemen” in the persons of Natty Bumppo and Judge Temple, and Ringe emphasizes the question of social discipline. In The Pioneers the main challenges to civil rule are connected with uses of nature; in later novels of the series, such as The Prairie, the subject of law vs. anarchy is presented in broader perspective.

7 Introduction to The Pioneers (1959), pp. viii–ix. See also Thomas Philbrick, “Cooper's The Pioneers: Origins and Structure,” PMLA, lxxix (Dec. 1964), 580–581, for Cooper's view of the American novel at this time.

8 Sketches of Eighteenth Century America (New Haven, Conn., 1925), p. 107.

9 Introduction to The Last of the Mohicans (Boston: Riverside, 1958), p. xiv.

10 The Chainhearer (Boston, 1880), p. 85.

11 A. B. Recknagel sums up this historical destruction thus: “Most of the great hardwood forests of the southern part of the State fell beneath the axes of the farmers, who burned the resulting brush and log heaps in order to clear the land for agriculture. It is bitter to think of the magnificent white oak, white ash, black cherry, and black walnut on the rich soils of the river valleys which were wasted in this way. Much land was laboriously cleared for farms which soon lost its fertility and might better have remained in forest.” The Forests of New York State (New York, 1923), p. 26.

12 A View of the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1794), pp. 90, 281, 413.

13 The Chainbearer, p. 193.

14 A View of the United States, pp. 452–453. The importance of burning felled timber as a cause of forest destruction may be estimated from William Cooper's testimony in 1810 that the ashes and first crop without tillage brought greater profits than an improved farm: “It is a general observation, that a man's profits are never greater than at the time of clearing his lands.” A Guide in the Wilderness (Cooperstown, N. Y., 1949), p. 39.

15 Bernhard E. Fernow, Economies of Forestry (New York, 1902), p. 369.

16 William F. Fox, A History of the Lumber Industry in the Slate of New York, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Forestry Bulletin 34 (Washington, D. C., 1902), pp. 13, 16.

17 Recknagel, p. 49.

18 J. P. Kinney, The Development of Forest Law in America (New York, 1917), p. 1.

19 Fernow, p. 370; see also Kinney, pp. 2, 21–22.

20 Fernow, pp. 371–372.

21 The Pioneers (Boston, 1898), pp. xxxiii, xxxvi.

22 Cooper's daughter, in an introduction of 1876, states that this book was lost at Otsego Hall and implies that Cooper through much of his lifetime had no copy available. In any case, the book was based on the Judge's letters to William Sampson of New York, and Cooper's almost verbatim use of passages is evidence of his having some written source at hand.

23 The Pioneers (Boston, 1898), p. 238. On Cooper's possible use of Lake Ontario sources, see Philbrick, p. 580.

24 The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, Columbia Univ. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, lxxxvi (1919), 136–141. The Cooper holdings were part of the movement which saw great landowners give their names to towns in New York State—Gouverneur Morris, Ogden, Piatt, Low, LeRoy (pp. 125–135). Cooper mentions this practice as still typical of New York State in his 1850 Introduction to The Pioneers.

25 A Guide in the Wilderness, pp. 6–7. Cooper virtually paraphrases these words in the first paragraph of the novel.

26 Letters from an American Farmer (London: Everyman's, 1912), pp. 25, 39.

27 A View of the United States, pp. 77–81. This letter was sent also to Benjamin Rush. On Judge Cooper's expectations and Dr. Rush's assistance see Legends and Traditions of a Northern County, pp. 139–140.

28 Natty Bumppo later violates this law in slaying a deer. Actually, seasons for deer hunting had been set in parts of New York State as early as 1705, although they were popularly regarded as trespassing upon personal rights and not until 1813 was there a law providing for the issuance of “search warrants to constables to look for evidence of illegal killing of deer.” Gurth Whipple, A History of Half a Century of the Management of the Natural Resources of the Empire State, 1885–1935, Conservation Dept. and New York State Coll. of Forestry (1935), pp. 106–113. This is the provision which leads to Natty's arrest, which Cooper places in 1794.

29 Whipple reports (pp. 43–44) that raiding forest lands continued in New York State until almost 1900, often with public connivance. Such plundering is a major theme in Cooper's The Chainbearer (1845).

30 Virgin Land, pp. 68, 138.

31 See Whipple, p. 106: “These early statutes and all subsequent acts [regulating hunting] were based on the premise that the ownership of all game is vested in the State.”

32 Philbrick, pp. 582–584.

33 Bracebridge Hall (Philadelphia, 1871), p. 278.

34 Ibid., p. 105.

35 Philbrick, pp. 584–587.

36 See Otis B. Wheeler, “Faulkner's Wilderness,” AL, xxxi (May 1959), 129, 134–136.

37 See Cady, p. 138.

38 The Last of the Mohicans (Boston, 1958), p. 13.

39 The Machine in the Garden (New York, 1964), p. 69.

40 The Machine in the Garden, p. 100.

41 The Last of the Mohicans, p. 9. The latter portion of this quotation expresses again the median between historical fact and “poetry” (myth) which Cooper sought in his fiction. In the preceding sentence he refers to Natty as “an important character of this legend.”

42 Both Roy Harvey Pearce (p. 527) and Donald A. Ringe (p. 36) point out the irony of Leatherstocking's flight from a civilization which he himself has assisted to follow and overtake him, as it does in The Prairie.

43 For definition of this controversy in relation to Cooper see Henry Nash Smith, Introduction to The Prairie (New York, 1950), p. xvi; Otis B. Wheeler, “Faulkner's Wilderness,” pp. 127–136; Robert H. Zoellner, “Conceptual Ambivalence in Cooper's Leatherstocking,” AL, xxxi (Jan. 1960), 397–420.