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LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Cooper's Corner

Natty Bumppo and the American Revolution

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T O P I C R E V I E W
CT•Ranger	Posted - December 21 2003 : 12:10:32 AM Why do you think Cooper didn't write a book about Natty and John Mohegan during the American Revolution? Are there any hints in "The Pioneers" or "The Prairie," as to what Natty and John were up to during the Revolution? Do you think Cooper had this novel planned but never got around to it? If Cooper had written this novel, where do you think their loyalties would have been? Would they have just sat it out, or joined the revolution? I don't think they could have been loyalists, since they were still living in New York after the war. Generally life was made so unpleasant for loyalists in America that they had to move to Canada or England.
6 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First)
Kurt	Posted - December 22 2003 : 12:58:26 PM To be fair, Robert Rogers did try to volunteer to serve the Colonial army but George Washington turned him down. Only after being rebuked did he form the Queen's Rangers and later the King's Rangers. His brother James, John Shepherd, and Stephen Holland were among the few officers who did not take the American side in the war. Robert Rogers' big victory during the war was capturing Nathan Hale.
hmacdougall	Posted - December 22 2003 : 10:08:00 AM Of course Robert Rogers (as well as his brother James Rogers) went on to fight for King and Country during the American Revolution, leading the "King's Rangers" that were heavily involved in the same kinds of activities as during the French and Indian Wars, but this time against the American rebels.
Kurt	Posted - December 22 2003 : 06:39:35 AM I'll always remember sinking to my waist in snow on the north side of Slide on a Boy Scout overnight hike in May, Chris. The snow was long gone and the temperature was in the 70s in the valleys. Woke up to the rattling of a porcupine. No need to leave Glimmerglass, Susquesus. In the 1700s if twenty people saw the lake, it was a lot. The map of New York at that time was ~10 miles either side of the Hudson and the Mohawk and much blank space. The shopkeepers in the towns know better than to have a political opinion so no need to range as far a Canada for powder and lead (and why run the Mingo gauntlet). Many officers of Rogers Rangers became important American generals.
susquesus	Posted - December 22 2003 : 02:07:25 AM I agree with you Kurt, I think Natty and Chingachgook would have been lying low during the revolution. They probably went hunting or visited pals in Canada. I guess it may come down to when they became Effingham's caretakers, he probably kept them from being too mobile. If Natty was not yet hutted at the Otsego I'm sure his latent distaste for clearings and the sound of the axe would have kept him deep within his wooded cathedral. Of course, if they did get involved, I'm sure they would have been with the Colonials. Plenty of folks that fought with the Royal Americans in "the old war" decided to take up with the colonials.
Chris	Posted - December 21 2003 : 7:20:20 PM Wow! A blast from the past: We could see Slide Mountain from our house when I was a kid, and my folks hunted there every year. Chris
Kurt	Posted - December 21 2003 : 08:22:10 AM I think nostalgia was Cooper's main reason for writing about Natty Bumppo. Cooper wanted to recount the stories of his youth and glorify the time before the American Revolution when life was so much simpler and everything was so much better. (Life one hundred years ago is always much simpler and much better for those who did not live it.) If Natty was in his seventies in "The Pioneers" which is set in 1793, he would have been in his fifties during the American Revolution. I would expect a fellow in his fifties who had spent the previous thirty years in a kill-or-be-killed world to fade back into the hills and lie low. From Natty's low opinion of townfolk and their laws, he had to depend on distance from civilization and old friends during the loyalist purges. (Well into the 1800s, a person could spend two weeks trying to get from the Hudson River to Slide Mountain and have to turn back in failure.) (Loyalty to old friends is what gets Natty in trouble in "The Pioneers".) Civilization in the form of Cooperstown didn't catch up to him at Glimmerglass untill 1786. Shortly thereafter, he fades west of the Mississippi.

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