Case in point, this, from Cooper’s preface:
Every one who knows much of the history of the past, and of the influence of classes, must understand, that whenever the educated, affluent, and the practised, choose to unite their means of combination and money to control the political destiny of a country, they become irresistible; making the most subservient tools of those very masses who vainly imagine they are the true guardians of their own liberties.
Cooper is talking about tenants on gentried land, who have been taught to couch in the language of liberty their desire to abdicate the lawfully-binding covenants with their landlords and to take possession of the land they have worked and improved, sometimes over generations. But his words could just as easily be applied to today’s political movements of both the left and right, where different segments of the educated, affluent, and the practised are choosing to unite their means of combination and money to control the political destiny of a country, while the subservient masses imagine they are truly guarding their own liberties. Think of battles over the Second Amendment. Or Abortion.
But although Cooper isn’t dramatizing those thorny issues, he is dramatizing a kind of political science. Indeed, the first hundred pages or so of his manuscript read almost like a Platonic dialogue, in which spokespeople on both sides of the argument present and defend their positions. One of these voices, of course, is a Littlepage -- in this case Hugh Littlepage, the grandson of Mordaunt Littlepage, the protagonist of Cooper’s earlier work The Chainbearer, himself the son of Cornelius Littlepage, the protagonist of Cooper’s even earlier work Satanstoe.
At one point in this dialogue, Hugh, having just returned from Europe to his native estate in upstate New York, is learning from his uncle the extent to which some of the tenants of his estate are going to claim the lands for themselves. He is aghast that such unlawful conduct. He says:
“I wonder the really impartial and upright portion of the community do not rise in their might, and put this thing down -- rip it up, root and branch, and cast it away, at once.”
To which his uncle replies:
“That is the weak point of our system, which has a hundred strong points, while it has this besetting vice. Our laws are not only made, but they are administered, on the supposition that there are both honesty and intelligence enough in the body of the community to see them well made and well administered. But the sad reality shows that good men are commonly passive, until abuses become intolerable; it being the designing rogue and manager who is usually the most active. Vigilant philanthropists do exist, I will allow; but it is in such small numbers as to effect little on the whole, and nothing at all when opposed by the zeal of a mercenary opposition. No, no -- little is ever to be expected, in a political sense, from the activity of virtue; while a great deal may be looked for in the activity of vice.”
This will give you a taste of what I mean. It is a fictionalized dialogue, but in it you can hear the echoes of Edmund Burke, James Madison, and other political philosophers.
Hugh Littlepage is the novel’s narrator, and he, and therefore much of Cooper’s narrative voice, is clearly on the side of the landlords in the political dispute that frames the drama of The Redskins. At one point, in a discussion with his business agent, the agent says this:
“One thing has struck me in this controversy as highly worthy of notice; and it is the naivete with which men reconcile the obvious longing of covetousness with what they are pleased to fancy the principles of liberty! When a man has worked a farm a certain number of years, he boldly sets up the doctrine that the fact itself gives him a high moral claim to possess it forever. A moment’s examination will expose the fallacy by which these sophists apply the flattering unction to their souls. They work their farms under a lease, and in virtue of its covenants. Now, in a moral sense, all that time can do in such a case is to render these covenants the more sacred, and consequently more binding; but these worthies, whose morality is all on one side, imagine that these time-honored covenants give them the right to fly from their own conditions during their existence, and to raise pretensions far exceeding anything they themselves confer, the moment they cease.”
This is much of the sense of Littlepage’s opposition throughout the novel -- they are not just confused, or even duped by “the educated, affluent, and the practised” -- they are, in fact, sinful and immoral. They wish to take what is not theirs, and they wish to do it in the hypocritical guise of their own liberty. And there is one particular device that Cooper employs to illustrate this hypocrisy that helps to make this novel a very interesting read.
The Redskins
The title of the novel, The Redskins, is an allusion to this device. Some of the tenants, modeling themselves after the storied patriots of the Boston Tea Party, have taken to disguising themselves as Indians, and in that costume, have perpetrated night raids and vandalism on the property of their landlords. These Redskins, however, are not called that by any of the characters in the book. The term of reference is instead “Injins.” And in the long narrative arc of Cooper’s trilogy, this is not meant as a term of respect.
Here, Hugh is thinking about asking some true Native Americans to help him keep watch against an attack from these “Injins.”
If “fire will fight fire,” “Indian” ought to be a match for “Injin” any day. There is just the difference between these two classes of men, that their names would imply. The one is natural, dignified, polished in his way -- nay, gentleman-like; while the other is a sneaking scoundrel, and as vulgar as his own appellation. No one would think of calling these last masquerading rogues “Indians”; by common consent, even the most particular purist in language terms them “Injins.” “Il y a chapeau et chapeau,” and there are “Indian” and “Injin.”
For there are “Indians” in The Redskins -- in particular one Indian, who has been with the Littlepage story from the very beginning. His name is Susquesus, also known as Trackless, and when Hugh and his uncle first come across him, sunning himself in a clearing with an equally old companion, these are the comments that are offered:
“There are the two old fellows, sunning themselves this fine day!” exclaimed my uncle, with something like tremor in his voice, as we drew near enough to the hut to distinguish objects. “Hugh, I never see these men without a feeling of awe, as well as of affection. They were the friends, and one was the slave of my grandfather; and as long as I can remember, have they been aged men! They seem to be set up here as monuments of the past, to connect the generations that are gone with those that are to come.”
Cooper doesn’t get much more transparent than that. For Susquesus, and his companion, the slave Jaaf, are exactly that. Monuments to the past. And in that guise they serve several important functions. They are not just rocks that stand in the swift-moving stream, they are moral sentinels that stand watch over the changing generations; the unchanging and innate sense of truth and justice that lives at the heart of men.
A central action of the novel is a large sojourn of many Indians, all come to pay homage to the wisdom of the ancient Onondago chief Susquesus, and perhaps to take him back with them to the advancing wilderness. For as Cooper did so expertly in The Leatherstocking Tales, he does here again in The Littlepage Manuscripts. As the white man and his civilization encroaches deeper and deeper into the American continent, the wilderness, and the natural morality that attends it, flees farther and farther west.
Here is how Susquesus begins his much-anticipated speech to the gathered Indians:
“Brethren,” commenced Susquesus, “you are welcome. You have travelled on a long, and crooked, and thorny path, to find an old chief, whose tribe ought ninety summers ago to have looked upon him as among the departed. I am sorry no better sight will meet your eyes at the end of so long a journey. I would make the path back toward the setting sun broader and straighter if I knew how. But I do not know how. I am old. The pine in the woods is scarce older; the villages of the pale-faces, through so many of which you have journeyed, are not half so old; I was born when the white race were like the moose on the hills; here and there one; now they are like the pigeons after they have hatched their young. When I was a boy my young legs could never run out of the woods into a clearing; now, my old legs cannot carry me into the woods, they are so far off. Everything is changed in the land but the redman’s heart. That is like the rock which never alters. My children, you are welcome.”
Are you following that? Everything is changed in the land but the redman’s heart? You have travelled on a long, and crooked, and thorny path? We’re back to the idea of the moral pathfinder, the needle on the compass that responds not to magnetism but to the moral force; and not of man and his civilization, but of the natural world.
Nuther Tomahawk Nor Law
Against this ancient nobility the baseness of the “Injins” are continually shown in sharp relief. But it is not just the natural order that they have violated.
“Colonel, I can’t say that I do rightly understand the state of things down hereaway,” drawled out the interpreter, after yawning like a hound, and giving me the most favorite title of the frontier. “It seems to be neither one thing nor t’other; nuther tomahawk nor law. I can understand both of them, but their half-and-half sort of thing bothers me, and puts me out. You ought to have law, or you had n’t ought; but what you have should be stuck to.”
“You mean that you do not find this part of the country either civilized or savage. Not submitting to the laws, nor yet permitted the natural appeal to force?”
This is a discussion between Hugh Littlepage and a character called Manytongues, an interpreter brought in to help the disputants communicate with each other. And although he can speak all the appropriate languages -- those of the white man, the Injin, and the Indian -- he is unable to determine to which tribe the Injins belong. In their words and actions they have removed themselves both from the laws of man and from the natural order of things. In Hugh’s words, they are neither civilized nor savage. Nuther tomahawk nor law.
And Manytongues’s reaction to this reality is both interesting and predictable. Manytongues is a kind of pathfinder in his own right, used to helping others find their way down the “long, and crooked, and thorny path.” But there is no path to follow here, leaving each man to survive by his own wits and devices.
“There is no court and jury like this, colonel,” slapping the breech of his rifle with energy, “and eastern powder conspired with Galena lead, makes the best of attorneys. I’ve tried both, and speak on sartainty. Law druv’ me out upon the prer-ies, and love for them keeps me there. Down thisaway, you’re neither one thing nor tuther -- law nor rifle; for, if you had law, as law ought to be, you and I would n’t be sitting here, at this time of night, to prevent your mock Injins from setting fire to your house and barns.”
To these sentiments Hugh Littlepage can only accede and, in doing so, summarize the political lesson of the entire novel, which Cooper helpfully places in all caps so as not to miss it.
There was only too much truth in his last position of the straightforward interpreter to be gainsaid. After making some proper allowances for the difficulties of the case, and the unexpected circumstances, no impartial man could deny that the laws had been trifled with, or things never would have reached the pass they had; as Manytongues affirmed, we had neither the protection of the law, nor the use of the rifle. It ought to be written in letters of brass in all the highways and places or resort in the country, that A STATE OF SOCIETY WHICH PRETENDS TO THE PROTECTION THAT BELONGS TO CIVILIZATION, AND FAILS TO GIVE IT, ONLY MAKES THE CONDITION OF THE HONEST PORTION OF THE COMMUNITY SO MUCH THE WORSE, BY DEPRIVING IT OF THE PROTECTION CONFERRED BY NATURE, WITHOUT SUPPLYING THE SUBSTITUTE.
The Excesses of Popular Delusion
And the villains in all of this? They are not the anti-rent Injins themselves. Not according to Cooper. To Cooper, the real villains are the partisan demagogues who have hoisted the Injins onto their anti-rent petards by appealing to their sense of liberty and freedom.
America no longer seemed America to my eyes; but, in place of its ancient submission to the law, its quick distinction between right and wrong, its sober and discriminating liberty, which equally avoided submission to the injustices of power, and the excesses of popular delusion, there had been substituted the rapacity of the plunderer, rendered formidable by the insidious manner in which it was interwoven with political machinery, and the truckling of the wretches intrusted with authority; men who were playing into the hands of demagogues, solely in order to secure majorities to perpetuate their own influence. Was, then, the State really so corrupt as to lend itself to projects as base as those openly maintained by the anti-renters? Far from it: four men out of five, if not a larger proportion, must be, and indeed are, sensible of the ills that their success would entail on the community, and would lift up heart and hand to-morrow to put them down totally and without pity; but they have made themselves slaves of the lamp; have enlisted in the ranks of party, and dare not oppose their leaders, who wield them as Napoleon wielded his masses, to further private views, apostrophizing and affecting an homage to liberty all the while! Such is the history of man!
See what I mean? Is Cooper writing in the 1840s, or the late 2010s?
The Wisdom of the Stranger
But, for me at least, the novel does not end well. Susquesus seems to betray his very nature by ultimately siding not just with the laws of the white men, but with their God. Here he is responding to the requests of the sojourning Indians, who wish him to return with him to the advancing wilderness.
“My sons, the journey you ask me to make is too long for old age. I have lived with the pale-faces until one half of my heart is white; though the other half is red. One half is filled with the traditions of my fathers, the other half is filled with the wisdom of the stranger. I cannot cut my heart in two pieces, I must all go with you, or all stay here. The body must stay with the heart, and both must remain where they have now dwelt so long. I thank you, my children, but what you wish can never come to pass.
“You see a very old man, but you see a very unsettled mind. There are red traditions and pale-face traditions. Both speak of the Great Spirit, but only one speak of his Son. A soft voice has been whispering in my ear, lately, much of the Son of God. Do they speak to you in that way on the prairies? I know not what to think. I wish to think what is right; but it is not easy to understand.”
It is difficult for me to interpret this, as it seems to run counter to the subtext that I have seen throughout this work and many of Cooper’s others. Here is Susquesus, frequently called Trackless through the three Littlepage manuscripts because of his unerring ability to find his way through both environmental and ethical forests, succumbing to a kind of confusion. Apparently, as the soft voice of the white man’s “Son of God” whispers in his ear, he loses his ability to think and to understand.
But not, evidently, to render judgment.
“These men are not warriors,” continued Susquesus [speaking of the anti-rent Injins]. “They hide their faces and they carry rifles, but they frighten none but the squaws and pappooses. When they take a scalp, it is because they are a hundred, and their enemies one. They are not braves. Why do they come at all? What do they want? They want to land of this young chief [referring to Hugh Littlepage]. My children, all the land, far and near, was ours. The pale-faces came with their papers, and made laws and said ‘It is well! We want this land. There is plenty farther west for you redmen. Go there, and hunt, and fish, and plant your corn, and leave us this land.’ Our red brethren did as they were asked to do. The pale-faces had it as they wished. They made laws, and sold the land, as the redmen sell the skins of beavers. When the money was paid, each pale-face got a deed, and thought he owned all that he had paid for. But the wicked spirit that drove out the redman is now about to drive off the pale-face chiefs. It is the same devil, and it is no other. He wanted land then, and he wants land now. There is one difference, and it is this. When the pale-face drove off the redman there was no treaty between them. They had not smoked together, and given wampum, and signed a paper. If they had, it was to agree that redman should go away, and the pale-face stay. When the pale-face drives off the pale-face, there is a treaty; they have smoked together, and given wampum, and signed a paper. This is the difference. Indian will keep his word with Indian; pale-face will not keep his word with pale-face.”
It is fair, in other words, what the white men did to the Indians because they had no treaty or common law between them, but it is unfair what the anti-rent Injins did to the white landowners because they did have a treaty and a common law between them. Is that really the judgment that Susquesus wants to impart to his loyal followers? It certainly isn’t the kind of moral judgment I would expect from a trackless pathfinder -- but maybe that’s the point. Susquesus has lived so long with the white man, and has been so confused both by his laws and his willing contempt of them, that even he can no longer see things clearly.
Perhaps so. With his parting words to his Indian brothers, he appears to both acknowledge this and to try and reclaim his moral compass.
“My children, never forget this. You are not pale-faces, to say one thing and do another. What you say, you do. When you make a law, you keep it. This is right. No redman wants another’s wigwam. If he wants a wigwam, he builds one himself. It is not so with the pale-faces. The man who has no wigwam tries to get away his neighbor’s. While he does this, he reads in his Bible and goes to his church. I have sometimes thought, the more he reads and prays, the more he tries to get into his neighbor’s wigwam. So it seems to an Indian, but it may not be so.”
So it seems to an Indian -- an Indian, I suppose, that is serving not Cooper’s great narrative arc, but the political axe his wishes to grind. For indeed, in the end, Cooper will use this Indian to nail home the theme he began with, namely that liberty, proclaimed loudly and stridently, is often anything but.
“How is it with the pale-faces? They say they are free when the sun rises; they say they are free when the sun is over their heads; they say they are free when the sun goes down behind the hills. They never stop talking of their being their own masters. They talk of that more than they read their Bibles. I have lived near a hundred winters among them, and know what they are. They do that; then they take away another’s wigwam. They talk of liberty; then they say you shall have this farm, you shan’t have that. They talk of liberty, and call to one another to put on calico bags, that fifty men may tar and feather one. They talk of liberty, and want everything their own way.”
Liberty, both Susquesus and Cooper seem to be saying, to the white man, is something he takes a full measure of for himself, but leaves nothing behind for his neighbor.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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