, Vol. 12, No. 2. (Spring,
1965). 113-128.
Erik Bruun and Jay Crosby Eds.; Our Nation’s Archive: A History of the United States in Documents (Black Dog
22
belies the tenuousness of his Christianity: “John will come,”
said the Indian, betraying no
surprise; though he did not understand all the terms used by the other.
99
At times, John seems to accept Christianity as an adjunct to his existing beliefs or, at least
(in the vein of Red Jacket), an acceptable form of worship that does not oppose their belief
system. For example, he tells Pastor Grant:
Father, I thank you. The words that have been said, since the rising moon, have
gone upward, and the Great Spirit is glad. What you have told your children, they
will remember, and be good…If Chingachgook lives to travel toward the setting
sun, after his tribe, and the Great Spirit carries him over the lakes and mountains
with the breath of his body, he will tell his people the good talk he has heard; and
they will believe him; for who can say that Mohegan has ever lied?
100
This appears to be in keeping with the custom of
many northeastern Indians, who saw the
introduction of a new God as a transaction of sorts. Once the word of God was given to Indians,
they could interpret it according to their existing belief systems and incorporate it therein. In
return, they believed they offered valuable insights to the Christians. However, to missionaries
“the gift of God was a one-way not reciprocal process…Such isolationism, of course, went
against the Indian practice at all levels and there is evidence that allegations of witchcraft against
missionaries were largely the result of their violation of norms of cooperation and reciprocity.”
101
At other times, John just seems disgusted with the hypocrisy of Christianity. When
Elizabeth praises him for accepting God and learning to live in peace, he replies:
Daughter, since John was young, he has seen the white man from Frontinac come
down on his white brothers at Albany and fight. Did they fear God? He has seen his
English and his American fathers burying their tomahawks in each other’s brains, for
this very land. Did they fear God, and live in peace? He has seen the land pass away
from the Fire-eater, and his children, and the child of his child, and a new chief set
over the country. Did they live in peace who did this? Did they fear God?
102
John also seems to equate his Christianization with his own moral and physical self-
abasement. After telling Oliver that the white man has won out over his people because of
99
Cooper 90
100
Cooper 127
101
Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes, Eds.; Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and
Native Religions in Colonial America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 58
102
Cooper 382
23
alcohol (“rum is his tomahawk,’’ he says), Oliver asks him why he
drinks and allows the white
man to make him a “beast.”
“Beast! is John a beast?” replied the Indian slowly; “yes; you say no lie, child of the
Fire-eater! John is a beast…My fathers came from the shores of the salt lake. They
fled before rum... But warriors and traders with light eyes followed them. One
brought the long knife and one brought rum…The evil spirit was in their jugs, and
they let him loose. Yes yes—you say no lie, Young Eagle; John is a
Christian
beast
.”
103
[emphasis added]
Ultimately, however, John’s choice is clear. When his life is almost at an end,
he rejects
Christian beliefs in favor of his heritage. As John is dying, Grant asks Natty, “does he recall the
promises of the mediation? And trust his salvation to the Rock of Ages?” But in his death throes,
John finally has returned completely to his own beliefs.: “No—no—he trusts only to the Great
Spirit of the savages, and to his own good deeds. He thinks, like all his people, that he is to be
young agin, and to hunt, and be happy to the end of etarnity. It’s pretty much the same with all
colors, parson…”
104
Natty, for his part, views Christianity as a negative influence on his Indian friends.
Commenting on the Christianization of local tribes, he says, “It’s my opinion that, had they been
left to themselves, there would he no such doings now about the head-waters of the two rivers,
and that these hills mought have been kept as good hunting-ground by their right owner…”
105
Still, despite feeling that conversion was a negative thing for John and his people in this world,
Natty himself is a Christian who believes in a single benevolent God that will bring them
together in the next:
[Natty]”Ye laid the Major’s head to the west, and Mohegan’s to the east, did ye, lad?”
[Oliver:]”At your request it was done,”
“It’s so best,” said the hunter; “they thought they had to journey different ways,
children: though there is One greater than all, who’ll bring the just together, at His
own time”
106
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