![]() ![]() It is also interesting to recall that Cooper explains in The Deerslayer that Natty Bumppo has been raised and educated by Moravian missionaries.Ĭooper, however, never probes historically nor deeply into the history, customs, and background of the Indians in The Deerslayer or in the other "Leatherstocking Tales." In his readings, he was attracted to the theories of Heckewelder about the noble qualities of the Indians, and these ideas from the Moravian missionary coincided with the romantic ideal of the "noble savage" exploited by civilization. Heckewelder, about the characteristics of the North American natives. Although he did not reply to Lowell's charge, Cooper did acknowledge his reliance on the reports of the Moravian missionary, J. ![]() ![]() James Russell Lowell, the American poet and critic (and a contemporary of Cooper), even went beyond such criticism when he wrote humorously (and seriously) in A Fable for Critics that: "His Indians, with proper respect be it said,/ Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed with red." Cooper, then, creates an image of the Indians just as he has formed an epic and mythic hero in Natty Bumppo. ![]() Cooper was very sensitive to the criticism about his portrayal of the Indians of North America, and he used a paragraph in the "Preface" to The Deerslayer to confirm and defend the charge that his Indians were not of the school of nature. ![]()
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