Inter-Marriage and  <i>The Last of the Mohicans</i>, 1824-1992
10.13125/2039-6597/174
The essay covers a set of &ldquo;Indian narratives&rdquo; produced in that decade, focusing on four &ldquo;Indian novels&rdquo; that provide instances of trans-cultural sexual and/or sentimental encounters. The set includes novels by Lidia Maria Child (Hobomok), Catharine Sedgwick (Hope Leslie) and Fenimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish). Leaning on the work done on domesticity and sentimental novels by women writers, I focus on how the outcomes of intermarriage are represented in each text. Specifically, I consider the ways of resistance and survival offered (or not offered) to trans-cultural families and their children. As a result, it can be argued that the examined authors do not produce a unique answer to the problem of intermarriage. What they all share, however, is the sense that a deeply human possibility of growth is lost with the Indian removal. In this sense, I conclude by comparing their work to Michael Mann&rsquo;s 1992 The Last of the Mohicans to find that Mann&rsquo;s approach is no great improvement on the ideology of the 1820s.
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Anna Scannavini
Between
Inter-marriage and <i>The Last of the Mohicans</i>, 1824-1992
Text.Serial.Journal
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Myths and Themes of Crossing Over
2011-05-30
2011-05-30
2011-04-21
2011-05-30
1
Anna Scannavini
2011/05/30
10.13125/2039-6597/174
Università di L'Aquila
2039-6597
1
it
Inter-marriage and <i>The Last of the Mohicans</i>, 1824-1992
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/174/157
1
            Inter-marriage and
     The Last of the Mohicans, 1824-1992
                               Anna Scannavini

      Intermarriage between European colonizers and the native
inhabitants of the Americas can be found in American literature
starting from the colonial period, with many different outcomes. In this
essay I will consider intermarriage in a group of narrative works all
published before the 1830s. The main work will be The Last of the
Mohicans (referred to as the Mohicans from now on) both because of its
importance in literary criticism and because of its numerous
adaptations, among which Michael Mann’s 1992 film. I will define the
texts I discuss as “Indian novels.”
      The theme of intermarriage is important for two reasons. First, it
is interesting to see how it was developed in the narratives of the
beginning of the 19th century. Second, like inter-cultural marriage,
intermarriage is an institution and it has social consequences. The
authors of the Indian novels, including James Fenimore Cooper, are
well aware of the civil importance of intermarriage. The consequence is
that the institutional perspective of the sexual encounter puts into
question the mythic and/or symbolic interpretations of the Mohicans1.
      The studies on the civil role of marriage and domesticity came, in
the 1980s, from feminist criticism and the recovery of late 18th and
early 19th century narratives written by women. Research brought to
light two forgotten Indian novels of the early 19th century written by
Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Sedgwick — two well-known and
prolific writers who were largely successful during the whole century.
The recovery of their Indian novels creates a new literary series and
also underlines the role of women and of sentimental plots in Cooper’s
novels. Women have again started studying Cooper’s female
characters and demonstrated that he created “strong” female
characters2. The focus on women foregrounds the role that family
relationships play in Cooper’s novels and makes new readings and
links necessary (cfr. Wegener 2005). In particular, in the sentimental

      1
          Slotkin 1973. Contra Slotkin: Rans 1991.
      2
          Seymour House 1966. Tompkins 1985. Baym (1971): 698-709.


Between, vol. 1, n. 1 (Maggio/ May 2011)
Anna Scannavini, Inter-marriage and The Last of the Mohicans, 1824-1992



plot of the Mohicans, the problem of miscegenation is embedded in the
series of family relationships: between Commander Munro and Cora,
between Cora and her half-sister Alice, between the two Mohicans
Chigachgook and Uncas, and, metaphorically, between Hawkeye and
Uncas.
      In other words, the stories of marriage and sexual attraction (both
intra- and trans-cultural) do not occur in the Mohicans outside of
society, but are interweaved within the family space — just like in the
sentimental novel. At the same time, the very presence of the family
space complicates the discourse about the possibility or impossibility
of intermarriage: emotionally we are with Uncas also because he is
young and a “son”. I don’t mean to suggest that Cooper defends,
perhaps between the lines, mixed marriage – as did, instead, Lydia
Maria Child. But I do want to say that in the years of the Mohicans, the
discourse on Indians was not yet completely closed. There was still a
proto-ethnological push which produced, in novels, interesting
openings even if they forced their authors to perform almost
impossible ideological and narrative somersaults. In Cooper’s case, this
is shown by the fact that in the novel The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish of 1829
(Wept, from now on) he dealt again with the theme of intermarriage.
      The Indian novels I will consider here, all published before Wept,
all deal with the theme of intermarriage. The first is Hobomok by Child
published in 1824, two years before the Mohicans. Hobomok has all the
characteristics of the genre: it is a historical novel which takes place
during a critical passage of the nation’s foundation - the foundation of
Salem; this critical passage includes the native American populations.
The second is Hope Leslie by Sedgwick published in 1827, one year after
the Mohicans came out. Its story takes place against the background of
the extermination of the Pequods committed by the Massachusetts Bay
Colony (later to become Boston). Two years later, Cooper returned to
the same geographic places of Hobomok and Hope Leslie in a text, which
is now almost completely forgotten, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. The
canonic precedent of both Child and Cooper is Chateaubriand’s novel
Atala (1801). Besides this, I will look at Yamoyden an American poem
which, at its time, was considered a possible model for the new
American literature because it drew on the vast depository of Indian
epic3.
      Here is a summary of the stories of intermarriage in the different
texts cited above. Chateaubriand’s Atala is the daughter of a mixed
relationship. She falls in love with the son of a Spaniard and an Indian.
      3
      Child (1824) 1970, Sedgwick (1827) 1987, Wallis Eastbourn 1820, Cha-
teaubriand 1801, Cooper (1826) 1983, Cooper 1829.


2
                                                  Between, vol. I, n. 1 (Maggio/May 2011)



When she thinks she has discovered that she is the half sister of her
lover, she commits suicide. The two never had any sexual relationship
and obviously they didn’t have any children. The plot of Yamoyden
takes place during the King Philip War of 1674. Yamoyden’s encounter
is similar to the ones that dominate the books published in the1820s: a
white woman and an Indian lover/husband. The sachem nipmuc
Yamoyden marries the Bostonian Nora and the two have a son. The
couple dies but the son survives.
      In Hobomok, the protagonist Mary has a son from the Wampanoag
Hobomok, whom she has married with an Indian ritual. Mary’s ex-
lover Charles Brown reappears on the scene and Hobomok nobly lets
Mary marry him. Charles adopts the son born from the intermarriage.
The son grows up and goes to London to study. He virtually becomes
white and once he has returned home becomes a leader. Hope Leslie
contains the theme of abduction: a white woman being abducted and
more or less forced into marriage. Here, Faith, the sister of the
protagonist Hope, is kidnapped by Indians but is protected by Oneco,
the Pequod leader. The two fall in love with one another and get
married. After many events, the two are able to save themselves from
the persecutions of the Puritans and escape into the wilderness.
Finally, the marriage is accepted by Hope who reluctantly allows them
to go away. The novel has an open ending and does not say if they will
have any children. But the Indians in the novel are characterized by
loyalty and dignity. Furthermore, the sympathies of the author and the
full integration of Faith suggest that there will be a child and that he
will be loved because Indian societies, more than the white ones, are
flexible and able to accept, emotionally and intellectually, the other.
      None of these novels has the same ending. Something is always
different: all the protagonists die; no one dies; there are children but
they die; there are no children. The narrations revolve around the same
problem but the different solutions found don’t become permanent:
they are each time examined and discarded. The only recognizable
paradigm seems to be uncertainty and the uncertainty seems to be
between a “dialectic of negation” and the “double dialectic” of
reciprocal definition and the recognition of the other4.
      The only text that deals directly with the question of the children
of intermarriage is Child’s Hobomok. Mary and Hobomok’s son grows
up in England and loses his Indian name. However, he retains
Hobomok’s strength and nobility. Is it possible to say he adopts the
best parts of each culture? Perhaps, but the solution is uncertain. In the
first place, Hobomok is an Indian friend. In this light, he leaves space
     4
         Fanon (1961) 1962. For Atala, cfr. Moscovici 2001: 197-216.


                                                                                       3
Anna Scannavini, Inter-marriage and The Last of the Mohicans, 1824-1992



to his white antagonist. For this reason, he has to accept the tragic
necessity of losing himself outside the text in the still unexplored
continent. Hobomok’s loss tells us the European world has to absorb
the Indian “world,” but can’t be absorbed by it. In the following years,
Child returned to the same problem with much more radical solutions:
she would state that Indians have the right to resist and that the only
right and creative solution for the country is intermingling. But this is a
later development, which the plot of Hobomok does not yet support.
       In the Mohicans, the outcome of the encounter is the death of the
two protagonists. The story is well-known. Accompanied by Major
Duncan Heyward, Cora and her sister Alice get lost in the forest and
risk being abducted by the evil Huron Magua. The white hunter
Hawkeye with the Mohican chief Chigachgook and his son Uncas run
to their help. Cora and Uncas fall in love, but are killed in the fight
against Magua, who wants Cora for himself. Cora, in any case, would
not be fit to marry a white man because she has a mixed background.
He parents were the commander Munro and a lady from the West
Indies who had a distant African ancestor. Her half-sister does not
have the same problem. Alice is the daughter of Munro and his second
wife, a Scots woman. For this reason she is allowed to legitimately
marry the Virginian Hayward and start a new American line.
       The solution of the Mohicans expresses an abrupt prohibition,
which is very different from the openings of Child or Sedgwick and
from the 18th century Romanticism of Chateaubriand. But Cooper
returned to the problem with the publication of The Wept of Wish-Ton-
Wish. I have no proof that he wrote this book in response to Child or
Sedgwick or that he had read their works. But he earned his living
through writing and lived within the world of publishing around him.
Furthermore, Wept seems to be a rereading and comment on the
previous novels by Child and Sedgwick—and of the Mohicans. It was as
if, at the end of the decade, this issue needed further reflection.
       As I have said, Cooper set the plot of Wept outside the geographic
and cultural places he was most at home in. The events do not take
place in the state of New York but on the Connecticut River, in a
frontier household. The household resembles the frontier house from
which the Faith of Hope Leslie is kidnapped. Like in Yamoyden, the story
takes place during the war of King Phillip. One of the characters is an
Uncas who really existed: he was one of the historical leaders of the
Mohegan and was an ally and an accomplice of the Puritans in the war
against King Phillip. The ideological context is the doctrinal disputes of
the Puritans.
       But above all, the story revolves around a kidnapping, followed
by an Indian marriage. Just like Sedgwick’s Faith, the person “wept of”


4
                                           Between, vol. I, n. 1 (Maggio/May 2011)



mentioned in the title, Ruth, is kidnapped when she is a child and
becomes the adored wife of Conanchet, the chief of the Narraganset.
Like Faith, Ruth becomes completely Indianized. Despite this, she
becomes the object of a feud between two worlds and is loved and
wanted by both sides. But in Wept, there is no happy ending as in Hope
Leslie. Conanchet is King Philip’s ally and is killed by Uncas, his
Mohegan antagonist. Before dying he entrusts his beloved Ruth and
the son of their marriage to Ruth’s own mother.
      Conanchet’s death breaks Ruth’s heart and she also dies. But
before dying she loses her mind and memory. She thinks she is again
little Ruth in her mother’s arms. She returns to completely trust her
mother, and forgets her Indian husband. The outcome of the story at
this point should be straightforward: Ruth’s son will be brought up by
his white grandmother. But an astonishing narrative act occurs: the
narrator places Ruth’s son besides his dying mother – and leaves him
there. The child is not allowed to enter the epilogue. With a last minute
elimination, he literally disappears from the text. His erasure allows
the author/narrator to not tell us what will happen to the fruit of the
intermarriage. Cooper has a reputation for being, at times, imprecise,
but this disappearance is very meaningful. It’s as if the author had
decided to reexamine intermarriage, representing it in the novel, but
then is unable to find a solution to the problem he himself has decided
to tackle.
      I draw two conclusions from this. With Wept Cooper reclaims for
himself the terrain of the Indian novel and excludes the possibility of
solutions different from his. His solutions, however, remain open ones
and Wept and the Mohicans continue to speak eloquently of the ethic
unease concerning the conquest of the New World.
      We would expect today’s popular culture to accept Cooper’s
unease and to resolve it by permitting intermarriage and cultural
hybridization and reciprocity. On the five hundredth anniversary of
the conquest the challenge seemed to be confronted by, among others,
the director Michael Mann with his The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a
film “based” on the novel.
      The results are disappointing. Mann explicitly uses the script
written in 1936 by Seitz. In doing so he closes the elements of aperture
present in all the novels we have here considered, from Hobomok to
Wept. Seitz broke up the couples of the Mohicans and moved the love
intrigue from Cora-Uncas-Magua to the struggle between Hawkeye
and Major Heyward for Alice’s hand. Mann accepted the variations
with just one difference: in his film Hawkeye and Heyward fight over
Cora, while Uncas and the blonde Alice fall in love and die together
(along with Magua).


                                                                                5
Anna Scannavini, Inter-marriage and The Last of the Mohicans, 1824-1992



      In other words, Mann’s film changes the end of the book, but the
marriage remains between white people – in the film Cora is white.
The most important change is that Hawkeye takes the place of the
official gentleman Heyward. Even though Mann criticizes Seitz’s
negative depiction of Indians, he too moves the axis of the story from a
trans-cultural encounter to an encounter between Cora and Hawkeye.
For the film’s plot the trans-Atlantic union of the novel becomes intra-
cultural: the union between the English woman Cora and the
“American” frontiersman. The revisionist intent is clear: America will
be inherited by the two reconciled nationalities.
       Barker and Sabin, in their book on the Mohicans in mass culture,
argue that Mann’s film incorporates his environmental preoccupations.
The movie’s splendid natural scenery (itself a narrative element of the
film) makes this hypothesis very plausible. The film implicitly asks
how the survivors will treat the New World which is opening up in
front of them. It can be seen as a critical reappraisal of the
discovery/conquest on its five hundredth anniversary.
      But, regardless of his intentions, Mann ends up proposing an idea
of foundation which is as imperialistic as the one he is criticizing. A
metaphor of this imperialistic foundation is the donation ritual of the
last scene: Chigachgook, Cora and Hawkeye are on a ridge looking
over the endless continent. By throwing Uncas’s ashes into the wind,
Chigachgook ratifies the end of his lineage, legitimizes the union
between Cora and Hawkeye, and gives the future of the country to
them.
      In this scene, Mann seems to be the referring to the position of the
myth and symbol school. The American myth, according to this school,
is that genocide is justified by the necessity to devour and absorb
Indian virtues. But Mann reverses its critical basis, and openly adopts
and re-enforces the myth. He uses it to construct a jeremiad.
Apparently, he refuses genocide but his story ends up by justifying
and endorsing it (cfr. Bercovitch 1978). This intention is confirmed by
the last scene’s similarity to the opening one. At the beginning of the
film Uncas, Hawkeye and Chingachgook kill a deer in the primordial
forest and the two Indians perform a short ritual of gratitude. The
ritual killing, the absorption of virtues, and the necessary rite of
thanksgiving to the deer, all return in the final donation of the
continent by Chingachgook.
      If this is true – and I think it is – the last scene’s recovery of the
two absent subjects, women and Indians, is a fiction. Worse: it is based
on their cannibalization. The cannibalization naturalizes conquest and
tells us that the only Indian marriage is, in line with the pathetic, that
of “Indians in the heart.”


6
                                             Between, vol. I, n. 1 (Maggio/May 2011)




                             Works cited

Baym, Nina, “The women of Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales”, American
     Quarterly 23 (1971): 698-709.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, The American Jeremiad, Madison, University of Wis-
     consin Press, 1978.
De Chateaubriand, François-René, Atala, Paris, Impr. De Migneret,
     1801.
Child, Lydia Maria, Hobomok: a tale of early times (1824), New York, Gar-
     ret, 1970.
Cooper, James Fenimore, The last of the Mohicans, a narrative of 1757
     (1826), Albany NY, Suny Press 1983.
Id., The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, Philadelphia, Carey and Lea, 1829.
Eastbourn, James Wallis, Yamoyden, a tale of the wars of King Philip. In six
     cantos, New York, James Eastbourn, Clayton & Kingsland, printers,
     1820.
Fanon, Franz, I dannati della terra (1961), Torino, Einaudi, 1962.
Moscovici, Claudia, “Hibridity and Ethics in Chateaubriand’s Atala”,
     Nineteenth Century French Studies, 29.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2001):
     197-216.
Rans, Geoffrey, Cooper’s Leather-stocking novels: a secular reading, Chapel
     Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, Hope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachu-
     setts (1827), New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Seymour House, Kay, Cooper’s Americans, Columbus, Ohio State Uni-
     versity Press, 1966.
Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration through violence; the mythology of the
     American frontier, 1600-1860, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan Uni-
     versity Press, 1973.
Tompkins, Jane, Sensational designs: the cultural work of American fiction,
     New York, Oxford University Press, 1985.
Wegener, Signe, James Fenimore Cooper versus the cult of domesticity: pro-
     gressive themes of femininity and family in the novels, Jefferson NC,
     McFarland, 2005.




                                                                                  7
Anna Scannavini, Inter-marriage and The Last of the Mohicans, 1824-1992




                                      The author

Anna Scannavini

       Anna Scannavini is Associate Professor of Angloamerican
literature at L’Aquila University. Her major research interests are
language contact and linguistic varieties in literature; narrative and the
novel; the writing of the American frontier. She has studied American
non mainstream literatures of the twentieth century and the literature
of the “Early American Republic”. Among her publications: Per una
poetica del bilinguismo; Giochi di giochi: parole e lingua nella letteratura
americana; with Anna Scacchi and Sara Antonelli: La babele americana;
she has published essays on Fenimore Cooper.

        Email: annascanna@fastwebnet.it



                                       The paper

Date submitted: 30/10/2010
Date accepted: 30/01/2011
Date published: 30/05/2011



                           How to quote this paper

Scannavini, Anna, "Inter-marriage and The Last of the Mohicans", 1824-
1992" Between, I.1 (2011), http://www.between- journal.it/




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