Fenimore Coopers Literary Offences | Page 4

have noticed these
things, but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they
are marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a
minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would
take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it
up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief,
a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily
watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he
had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he
judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually
what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow.
It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there
unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would
have made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the
construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
There still remained in the roost five Indians.
The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain
what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2
jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it. Then
No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No, 4.
jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5
made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In the matter of
intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that
stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow episode is
really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the

inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of fictitiousness and
general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as an
observer.
The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for
inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in The
Pathfinder.
"A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head
having been first touched with paint."
The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper
deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an
important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter
what its color might be.
How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards?
It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is
a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance,
for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a
fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet. Can the
reader do it?
The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the
Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an
edge off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way
into the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far
enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme
is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer
Hawkeye--Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking- Pathfinder-Bumppo before
the ladies.
"'Be all ready to clench it, boys I' cried out Pathfinder, stepping into his
friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. 'Never mind a new nail; I
can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I can hit at a
hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to
clench!'

"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was
buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead."
There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and
command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him
back with us.
The recorded feat is