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| Our version of Glimmerglass |
I have a ton of time to read right now as my left arm is not working at all and typing is by speech recognition so blogging is, at best, difficult.
A friend sent me the picture down by the water (above). It struck me that the water, when it is all still and flat, with the bottom easily seen as in clear glass transparent and the light bouncing a bit that this must be part of my "mind's eye" of what my boyhood hero "Natty Bumppo" (Hawkeye) called Lake Otsego when he dubbed it the "Glimmerglass".
I have always liked these stories, drawn like a moth to flame when I read 19th century prose. I'm told I write with weird usage and syntax so that must be what makes Cooper's novels so appealing.
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| Leather Stocking Tales |
Natty Bumppo, Aka: "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and "Hawkeye", is one of the three main characters that run through the stories. I copy and pasted their bios from wiki:
- Natty Bumppo is the protagonist of the series. Although he is the child of white parents, he grew up with Native Americans, becoming a near-fearless warrior skilled in many weapons, one of which is the long rifle. He respects his forest home and all its inhabitants, hunting only what he needs to survive. When it comes time to fire his trusty flintlock, he lives by the rule, "One shot, one kill." He and his Mohican "brother" Chingachgook champion goodness by trying to stop the incessant conflict between the Mohicans and the Hurons. He is known as "Deerslayer" in The Deerslayer, "Hawkeye" and "La Longue Carabine" in The Last of the Mohicans, "Pathfinder" in The Pathfinder, "Leatherstocking" in The Pioneers, and "the trapper" in The Prairie. The novels recount significant events in Natty Bumppo's life from 1740-1806. Critic Georg Lukacs identified Bumppo as similar to the middling characters of Sir Walter Scott, who, because they don't represent the extremes of society, can act as tools for social and cultural examination of historical events, without portraying the history itself.
- Chingachgook is a Mohican chief and companion of Bumppo. Chingachgook married Wah-ta-Wah, who bore him a son Uncas, but she died young. Uncas, "Last of the Mohicans", grew to manhood but was killed in a battle with renegade Magua.
| Publication Date | Story Dates | Title | Subtitle |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Deerslayer | The First War Path | ||
| The Last of the Mohicans | A Narrative of 1757 | ||
| The Pathfinder | The Inland Sea | ||
| The Pioneers | The Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale | ||
| The Prairie | A Tale |