104 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865been condemned as a witch, after she cured a snakebite with the help of herbal
medicine; and she repays the debt by arranging for Magawisca to meet Hope with
news of Faith. The two women, Hope and Magawisca, meet secretly in a cemetery
where both their mothers are buried, and plot a way for Hope to meet her sister even
though this would violate colonial law. The scene where they meet underscores their
shared dignity and courage. Even when Hope momentarily balks at the news that
her sister is married to an Indian, the sense of mutual respect is quickly restored by
Magawisca’s response. “Yes, an Indian, in whose veins runs the blood of the strong-
est, the fleetest of the children of the forest,” Magawisca proudly insists, “who never
turned their backs on friends or enemies, and whose souls have returned to the
Great Spirit as they came from him. Think ye that your blood will be corrupted by
mingling with this stream?” The entire scene subtly interweaves intimations of debt
and intimacy. The graves of the mothers of the two women lie side by side, the
women recall how Magawisca rescued Everell Fletcher and Hope saved Nelena as
they talk about the marriage between the brother of one and the sister of the other.
It is a celebration of a sisterhood of the spirit and the blood. And its mythic status is
confirmed at its conclusion by Hope. “Mysteriously, mysteriously have our destinies
been interwoven,” Hope observes to “the noble figure” of Magawisca as she departs
into “the surrounding darkness.” “Our mothers brought from a far distance to rest
together here – their children connected in indissoluble bonds!”
A word of caution is perhaps necessary here. Sedgwick did not question the
prevailing contemporary belief in the Manifest Destiny of the white race. For that
matter, she did not seek to challenge the conventional notion that marriage was a
woman’s proper aim and reward. As for the latter, even Married or Single?, written
with the stated aim of driving away “the smile at the name of ‘old maid,’ ” ends with
the heroine being married off in traditional fashion. And, as for the former, even
Magawisca admits, at her trial, that, as she puts it, “the white man cometh – the
Indian vanisheth.” Within these constraints, however, Sedgwick did find a place for
female integrity and for intimacy between the races. The Linwoods offers a neat
illustration of this, when the heroine is assisted in rescuing her brother from jail by
a free black woman – who tells the jailer, as she ties him up, “remember, that you
were strung up there by a ‘d-n nigger’ – a nigger woman!” In effect, she negotiates a
position between those women of the time who assigned a special sphere to the
exercise of female virtue and those who said a woman could and should be anything
she wanted to be, provided she had the talent and dedication. She also negotiates,
along the way, a different set of meanings for Western myth: one need only compare
Hope Leslie with the Leatherstocking Tales to measure the difference. It is partly a
matter of reversal: male transgression and bonding are replaced by, yet reflected in,
their female equivalents. It is partly a matter of rewriting, radical revision: here, the
connections between the races are what matter rather then the conflicts – and,
whatever else may be present, there is an intensely felt sense of community and
continuity. Cooper was a powerful creator of frontier myths but he was not, but any
means, the only one. The legends figured in Hope Leslie also had a significant impact
on how later Americans imagined the movement of their nation west.GGray_c02.indd 104ray_c 02 .indd 104 8 8/1/2011 7:54:38 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 38 AM