Glens Falls and James Fenimore Cooper

Glens Falls and James Fenimore Cooper. . , ”It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet…. Perhaps (illegible) can furnish a better picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes.” James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Chapter 1, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) He was America’s first great novelist, and remains today a symbol of the United States of America and its early history throughout the world. , Cooper was the first to chronicle the American wilderness, to describe Native Americans with sympathy and understanding, and to understand the human cost of building a new nation>br> Raised in Cooperstown, New York – the village founded by his father – Cooper attended Yale College, served as a Midshipman in the infant United States Navy, and in 1820 began a life-long career as America’s first successful; novelist., Describing America to the World In The Spy (1821), Cooper wrote of George Washington and the American Revolution. In The Pioneers (1823) he described the community on the New York frontier in which he had been raised – and which would become his permanent home. In The Pilot (1824) he created the first novel pf the sea, based on the imagined adventures of John Paul Jones, America’s first naval hero, and in Lionel Lincoln (1825) he provided what Revolutionary War veterans remembered as the best account in literature of the Battle of Bunker Hill. , American’s enthusiastically welcomed them – their first opportunity to read America’s story in fiction. They were reprinted abroad, often in translation, so Europeans too could visit America through Cooper’s vivid descriptions., Exploring America’s Roots America, and the “American character" had roots in our pre-Revolutionary past. Among them, Cooper believed, were: , 1) The earlier colonial struggles between France and England; , 2) The Dispossession of Native Americans from the often harsh and unforgiving American wilderness; , 3) The always haunting presence of the Americans of African birth and descent of the white colonials had so ruthlessly enslaved. , Cooper brought together these three strands in The Last of the Mohicans, a tale of adventure that is also the story of America., Glens Falls In the summer of 1824, Cooper visited Glens Falls. He was escorting a t(ravelling) group of four young English aristocrats through the scenic country of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson River. , Here at Glens Falls the group visited the island in the middle of the river, with waterfalls on either side – the island you are about to visit. They walked through the caves that erosion has carved into its interior. When one of the Englishmen suggested that the cave would make a great scene for a novel about “Indians,” Cooper’s imagination went to work. In 1826 The Last of the Mohicans was published., A New Beginning Cooper’s novel is not the “last” of anything. The Mohican Indians are still very much alive (as the panel across the path relates). The American character has grown and changed. And the novel itself is still read around the world, as well as being transformed into films and other media. On the Island you can read its ongoing story.