Weaks – Cooper, Irving Blog

James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pioneers paints a much romanticized view of the Western Frontier, of its natural beauty, its abundance of wildlife and its vast wilderness. I quote Chapter 1, “and flowing from the limpid lakes and thousand springs of this region the numerous sources of the Susquehanna meander through the valleys until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States. The mountains are generally arable to the tops, although instances are not wanting where the sides are jutted with rocks that aid greatly in giving to the country that romantic and picturesque character which it so eminently possesses. The vales are narrow, rich, and cultivated, with a stream uniformly winding through each. Beautiful and thriving villages are found interspersed along the margins of the small lakes.”

In stark contrast to Cooper’s view, is the Puritan view of America’s bountiful wilderness. According to the notes provided by Dr. McCay, the Puritans viewed the wilderness as the home of the Devil, a place that must be tamed. I quote, “the Puritans saw the world in terms of religious symbology. The Wilderness was the abode of the devil; it was both a test for his Saints, a symbol of the struggle with the devil for the souls of men, and a reaffirmation that God would lead them through it as he led the Jews through the desert.” In Puritan times, it appears they found most of their natural beauty in images of their “God” and not in some of his most majestic creations.

A similar Puritan view of America’s wilderness also appears in Mary Rowlandson, The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682). In the Second Remove, Mary refers to the wilderness as barren and lifeless. Mary writes, “But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness.”

Returning to Cooper, we find in addition to his picturesque, his poetic, his almost quixotic view of the American wilderness, he was also concerned with its future. With the aid of Natty Bumppo, the protagonist of his novel, The Pioneers, Cooper paints himself as an early environmentalist concerned not only with the wanton destruction of the wilderness, but also with the annihilation of its inhabitants. Early on in Chapter 1, before a debate over who killed a deer, Bumppo mouths the following, “Ah! The game is becoming hard to find, indeed, Judge, with your clearings and betterments," said the old hunter, with a kind of compelled resignation. ‘The time has been when I have shot thirteen deer without counting the fa’ns standing in the door of my own hut; and for bear’s meat, if one wanted a ham or so, he had only to watch a-nights…”’ In this and other early passages, Cooper is acknowledging that man’s incursions into the wilderness are having a negative effect on them and their inhabitants.  

Cooper devotes part of Chapter 2 to the reacquisition of wealth by Judge Marmaduke. A fortuitous meeting and blossoming friendship between the judge’s son and the son of Edward Effingham was the catalyst that propelled the judge to vast material wealth as well as societal position. Following the revolutionary war, the property of many loyalists was confiscated and the judge stood ready to purchase that confiscated property at a very modest price. “When the estates of the adherents of the crown fell under the hammer, by the acts of confiscation, he appeared in New York, and became the purchaser of extensive possessions at comparatively low prices.” Settlers came and the Judge stood ready to sell his property at a huge profit. “His property increased in a tenfold ratio, and he was already ranked among the most wealthy and important of his countrymen.” This chapter was more about history and less about Cooper’s view of nature. However it is part of our assignment and I felt it necessary to include; I will now exit Chapter 2 and move to Chapter 22 and continue with the main focus of my blog.

In Chapter 22, we again find Cooper’s using his protagonist, Natty Bumppo, to voice his displeasure with the senseless destruction of a huge flock of pigeons. Cooper writes, “None pretended to collect the game, which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims. Leather-Stocking was a silent but uneasy spectator of all these proceedings…‘This comes of settling a country!’ he [Bumppo] said. ‘Here have I known the pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing --being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake…Well, the Lord won’t see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by.”’  In addition to the senseless destruction of the pigeons, Cooper is also acknowledging other environmental atrocities when he says, “and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others.” I feel Cooper’s respect and appreciation for America’s wilderness and his outrage at the destruction of that wilderness and the creatures inhabiting that wilderness is equally as important as his aggrandizement of America’s beauty to the rest of the world.  

In Cooper’s novel, The Pioneers, we are presented a romanticized vision of America’s wilderness, whereas in Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow we are presented the same romanticized vision of America, only on a smaller scale, a microcosm if you will, of the ideal American village, a late eighteenth century version of the twentieth century fictional town of Mayberry. Both Cooper and Irving are guilty of aggrandizing the beauty of America and life in America. Throughout The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, we are presented with pastoral scenes such as in the opening, “there is a little valley among high hills which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook murmurs through it and, with the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks the uniform tranquility. From the listless repose of the place, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow.”

Yet, lurking just below the surface of this late eighteenth century “Mayberry” is an air of the foreboding, the apprehension of what darkness holds, the perchance meeting of the Headless Horseman. There is a dark side to Sleepy Hollow, which was never present in Mayberry. No Aunt Bee here, just tales of witches, goblins and yes the ever present, yet rarely seen, Headless Horseman. In this respect, Irving is presenting an image somewhat similar to that in Mary Rowlandson’s, Narrative, although Irving’s depiction is fictional and on the lighter side, where as Mary Rowlandson’s is anything but; I quote Rowlandson’s  First Reserve, “Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.” I fully realize, it is a stretch to compare Irving’s Sleepy Hollow to the horrors that faced Mary Rowlandson, but the fear induced by the Headless Horseman is in some respects similar to the fear induced by the Indians. To Mary Rowlandson the Indians represent demons, they represent the devil and to the residents of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman represents the same.

Moving on to Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, we again see the aggrandizing of the American landscape. Irving paints pictures, with words, that would challenge the canvas of any great Hudson River School artist. Irving writes, “Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains…When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.”

What better way to end this blog then with Irving’s own words, “like a crown of glory?” That is a fitting tribute to America’s natural beauty and also an accurate description of some of the natural beauty still present in America’s great national parks. In 1872 Yellowstone National Park was established as the world’s first truly national park and many have since followed. Were Cooper and Irving really guilty of aggrandizing, or were they using words to paint true pictures of America’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth century landscape?