98 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865own comments on civil law are, in fact, conflicting. He is deeply critical sometimes
of what he calls “the wicked troublesome meddling” of society. “Why, do you know,”
he declares, “that there are regions where the law is so busy as to say, ‘In this fashion
shall you live, in that fashion you shall die... !’ ” At other times, though, he offers a
contrary view. “The law – ’tis bad to have it,” he observes early on in The Prairie, “but
I sometimes think it is worse to be entirely without it.” “Yes – yes,” he adds here, “the
law is needed when such as have not the gifts of strength and wisdom are to be taken
care of.” Of all the questions that emerged in the United States in the nineteenth
century, the question of what finally was the national heritage, democratic
community or individual freedom and advancement, was the most pressing and the
most difficult. And on that question even Natty Bumppo stands on neutral ground,
despite his status as an icon of freedom. So, even more, does The Prairie, since Natty’s
chief antagonist in the novel, Ishmael Bush, is, as his forename suggests, an outcast
from society – and in the worst sense. “Ishmael Bush,” we are told, “had passed the
whole of a life of more than fifty years on the skirts of society.” There, he has learned
to be a predator, following “the instincts of the beast,” and pursuing his own
individual advantage without regard to law of any kind, natural or civil. He neatly
sums up his own position when he declares of another character, “he is an
enemy ... hear him! Hear him! He talks of the law.” Violating property rights, ignor-
ing the claims of everyone but himself, he offers a decidedly sardonic reading of
human nature and the implications of individualism – and, by extension, a positive
case not only for civil laws but for social control and strong government.
At his best, as in The Prairie, Cooper explores the basic tensions at work in
American culture and history in a way that allows free play to the opposing forces.
At the same time, he creates mythic figures, of whom Natty Bumppo is easily the
most notable, who offer a focus for debates about the character of American
democracy – and also possess the simplicity and stature required of any great epic
hero. The first time we see Bumppo in The Prairie is typical. He appears to a group
of travelers, and the reader, standing in the distance on the great plains with the sun
going down behind him. “The figure was colossal, the attitude musing and
melancholy,” the narrator observes, and “embedded as it was in its setting of garish
light, it was impossible to distinguish its just proportions or true character.” Larger
than life, romantic and mysterious, Natty Bumppo here anticipates a whole series of
Western and American heroes: Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, for instance, the central
characters in the Western films of John Ford, or Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby. And a similarly heroic closure is given to the story of our hero. At
the end of The Prairie, Natty dies with his gaze “fastened on the clouds which hung
around the western horizon, reflecting the bright colors and giving form to the
glorious tints of an American sunset.” With that grand, ultimate entry into nature,
Cooper may be suggesting the passing of the democratic possibilities Natty Bumppo
represents. The Prairie certainly has an autumnal mood: it is set firmly in the past,
and there are constant references to the way immigration and cultivation, the
destruction of the wilderness and the scattering of the Indians have changed
the West – and, quite possibly, America – between then and the time of writing.GGray_c02.indd 98ray_c 02 .indd 98 8 8/1/2011 7:54:37 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 37 AM