James Fenimore Cooper: SATANSTOE

James Fenimore Cooper

SATANSTOE:
or the Littlepage Manuscripts
- A Tale of the Colony

       Publisher: Biblio Bazaar
    *Pub. Date: August 2008
    ISBN-13: 9780554228884
    508pp

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

(WORK IN EARLY PROGRESS 12/8/8)

I. alibris.com

Yesterday I finished a first reading of SATANSTOE, James Fenimore Cooper's 1845 novel of New York in 1757-58. I then re-read for the first time in a year related commentary in Professor George Dekker's JAMES FENIMORE COOPER: THE AMERICAN SCOTT (1967). Having already decided to rate SATANSTOE one of my rare * * * * * (Five Stars), despite its being so little read these days, to my pleasant surprise I then read in Dekker:

"... SATANSTOE may well be Cooper's best, as it is certainly his most mature and finished, novel." (p. 227).

The novel begins not long after the events of Cooper's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and French General Montcalm's August 1757 capture of Fort William Henry. By July 1758 the British will have assembled a fighting force of 16,000 soldiers, the largest yet mounted in North America, to assault Montcalm with one third their number at Fort Ticonderoga. Once again the French are victorious.

Onto this stage in the world-historical French and Indian War (1754–1763) step the novel's most notable young characters:

-- Cornelius ("Corny") Littlepage (20), smitten by

--Anne ("Anneke") Mordaunt (17)

-- along with his Albany Dutch friend Duerck Ten Eyck (24) who proposes over and over to

-- Anneke's best friend Mary Wallace (19).

SATANSTOE is the name of the thriving Littlepage estate in southern New York. The novel is a family generational narrative genre: first in a trilogy that will carry into the 1840s. That dynasty takes shape with the October 1758 wedding of Corny and Anneke at novel's end. Corny himself narrates this tale. And from his point of view this happy ending was anything but a sure thing before General Abercrombie's defeat at Ticonderoga in July 1758. A subsequent Indian attack on the wilderness property of Anneke's father, only 40 miles away, allows young Cornelius Littlepage to perform the clinching "protection" of his sweetheart.

SATANSTOE is a courtship novel. And the coming together of the future Littlemores moves through four stages:

-- (1) It is 1751. Corny Littlepage is 14 and en route through York City to enroll in the the future Princeton college in New Jersey. During the annual Pentecost (Pinkster) celebrations by the town's blacks, he and two slaves walk late one morning out a mile or so along the Bowery Road to witness the entry by carriage of the rich Patroon of Albany. There are some high class girls nearby. Littlepage heard one girl name her friend, a pretty eleven year old, " Anneke" and he offered her an apple. A passing butcher boy deliberately knocked that fruit from her hand and made her cry. Corny then poked the offender in the ribs. They fought with their fists despite Anneke's protests. Corny won. Anneke disappeared. Corny did not learn her family name.

-- (2) Six years pass. It is 1757. Corny has graduated from college and is back in York City for another Pinkster. A friend introduces him to Anneke Mordaunt, who remembers the six year old "protection." A party of young people visits a showman's caged lion. The beast's paw catches in Anneke's red shawl and draws her to the bars. Young Littlepage wrests her free.

-- (3) In the following winter (in fact, late March) during a long day's sleigh-ride on the Hudson, Cornelius Littlepage once again rescues Anne Mordaunt when the ice begins breaking up after a heavy rain. By all accounts, this ice adventure is one of Cooper's grandest episodes.

-- (4) Finally, in July 1758 Corny and some friends are surveying property newly acquired by their elders in northern New York. As volunteers, Corny, Duerck Ten Eyck, friends and slaves, join the British army sailing against Fort TIconderoga and after defeat retreat to their own wilderness property near that of the Mordaunts. Forty or more Huron Indians then attack the rising forest village and Corny once again protects Anneke.

Anne Mordaunt attracts suitors, most notably a distantly related multi-talented Major Bulstrode, a baronet's oldest son. At home in England Bulstrode had assumed that only Duchesses could be as beautiful as Anneke. He must have this American girl! Other characters include a no better than he has to be English clergyman, a bumptious Puritan school teacher from nearby Connecticut and a perceptive, cross-culturally adept Onandago Indian named Susquesus or Crooked Turns. Susquesus takes Corny in tow and teaches him wilderness lore.

Bottom line: SATANSTOE is a simple love story that bears up gracefully under more weight than you might expect: Dutch-English relationships in colonial New York, colonials beginning to gain mental independence from English manners and prejudices, French versus British, Indians taking sides in Europe's quarrels and black slaves managing while taking affectionate care of indulgent white masters. Something is here for every reader. -OOO-"

Black Mountain, NC
12/08/2008

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II. for biblio.com

North America's colonial writers in English were notable for four literary genres:
sermons,
histories,
Indian wars
and Indian captivity tales.

Fenimore Cooper's 1845 SATANSTOE has elements of all four. The tale is about New York colony in the early 18th century, mainly a few months in 1757-1758. Most events take place just after the British defeat at Fort William Henry, the subject of Cooper's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS.

Sermons are a speciality of Reverend Mister Thomas Worden, a High Church Anglican priest born in England and deriving a decent inheritance from the Mother Country. Like almost all the striking characters of this novel, Dutch, English, mixed Dutch-English, Indian and French, Reverend Worden is a mixture of good and not so good. He is worldly, not very brave (he refuses to ride in a sleigh on the frozen Hudson river near Albany -- a hugely comic episode), a card player, a bit of a carouser. On the other hand his liturgies are punctiliously correct. He is willing to try to convert Indians off to the northeast of Albany. But he gives up when he decides that Christianity is too civilized for the savages at their then level of development.

The only Indian captivity in SATANSTOE is oblique mention of the aftermath of the surrender of Fort William Henry. The French and Indian War passes on from THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS to SATANSTOE with yet another English-French dustoff, this time at Fort Ticonderoga.

Young heroes and heroines abound in this non-stop adventure tale. There is a caged lion, a terrifying breakup of the ice on the Hudson and subtle discussion of colonial New York property practices and law. The latter increasingly grow as the leit motifs of Cooper's two follow-on novels, THE CHAINBEARER and THE REDSKINS. Including SATANSTOE, these three novels make up Cooper's "anti-rent" novels or the Littlepage Trilogy. Young Cornelius Littlepage is the hero of SATANSTOE (name of his family's small West Chester Anglo-Dutch estate). The trilogy spans six generations and chronicles Cornelius's family's efforts to create and keep a large wilderness estate in the face of growing popular American democratic resentment of any and all vast private holdings.

SATANSTOE is an important sketch of early American society, mores and economic preoccupations.   -OOO-

http://www.biblio.com/books/162949530.html

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III for bn.com

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Are Indians too uncivilized to become Christians?

Reader Rating: * * * * *   FIVE STARS

Posted 12/09/08:

In 1751 Cornelius ("Corny") Littlepage was 14. He passed through York City (Manhattan) en route to beginning college in New Jersey at the future Princeton. During a street festival he first met gorgeous 11 year old Anne Mordaunt, called "Anneke." He gave her some fruit. A lower class boy knocked an apple from Anneke's hand and made her cry. Corny then trounced the other lad.

In 1757 Corny and Anneke meet again and are properly introduced. In another street festival he rescues her when a caged lion wraps his paw around her shawl. In the next spring, during a sleigh outing on the Hudson river from Albany to Kinderhook and back, Corny coolly saves himself and his love Anneke when the ice breaks up. Finally, in July 1758 he protects her yet again. He has made his way back to her after the disastrous assault 40 miles away by 16,000 British troops on French-held Ticonderoga. Corny and others, including the novel's young Achilles, 24 year old Duerck Ten Eyck, beat the Hurons off from two land grants made to colonists and save Anneke and her best girl friend Mary Wallace, age 19. During the Huron attack, Anneke has finally admitted her love to her protector. They marry in October 1758 and found the dynasty described in two sequels by Cooper.

In 1967 George Dekker, in JAMES FENIMORE COOPER: THE AMERICAN SCOTT, rated SATANSTOE Cooper's "most mature and finished, novel" And perhaps even his best! Cooper uses a courtship story to frame a broader study of the American colonial mind's freeing itself from English overlordship. He also shows interactions between the old Dutch of New York, the conquering English and the threatening French and Indians. He also shows the challenges of carving frontier settlements out of the virgin wilderness. SATANSTOE, by the way, is the name of the southern New York farming estate of the Littlepages, a respected English-Dutch family.

Cooper produces other memorable characters. In addition to the four young lovers mentioned above, there is a priggish but acquisitive schoolteacher from Puritan Connecticut, various Indians and black slaves, cameo appearances of Lord Howe and the Patroon of Albany, also an English Major, oldest son of a baronet who falls in love with Anneke Mordaunt, despite social differences.

Another character is England-born Reverend Mister Thomas Worden, rector of the Littlepages' parish church. We first see him as young Corny's tutor in Latin and Greek. A good scholar, Worden

"was very popular among the gentry of the country; attending all the dinners, clubs, races, balls, and other diversions that were given by them, within ten miles of his residence. His sermons were pithy and short" (Ch. Two)

He also coached Corny in boxing. This came in handy in 1751 when 14 year old Corny first protected 11 year old Anneke.

Reverend Mister Worden is often present in these pages. He becomes a figure of fun when he moves up to Albany preparatory to a surveying expedition to a recent family grant north east of that old Dutch city. He is so afraid of riding on the frozen Hudson river that he runs away from a friendly young Duerck Ten Eyck when offered a sleigh ride. Rev. Worden briefly enters the wilderness to convert the Indians. After experiencing their murderous savagery, he abandons his mission arguing that Christianity is essentially a civilized religion of no use to uncivilized Indians.

For literary mastery and early American history, read SATANSTOE!

12/09/2008

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Satanstoe/James-Fenimore-Cooper
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IV. for amazon.com

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V. for epinions.com

Title of this review: Anglo-Dutch Marriages in Colonial New York
by aohcapablanca 12/21/2008

English-speaking North Americans today live in dread that our major cities are targeted by foreign terrorists. We suspect that people who hate us may have the power to detonate suitcase-sized nuclear devices or poison our water supply, blow up satellites in space, destroy the internet or otherwise strew death and destruction from sea to shining sea.

Three and four centuries ago other English-speaking North Americans (with fewer distractions from i-pods, movies, television and other media) also had their fears. Those colonials dreaded Indians and Frenchmen. The English were on alert against terror raids, burnings, abductions, torture, forced conversion from Puritanism to Catholicism and -- gasp --racial mixing or "crossing." Responding to these fears 17th Century English-speaking colonials wrote and wrote and wrote. Both men and women produced master works in at least four distinct genres: chronicles of this or that colony, sermons, war and battle reports and Indian captivity narratives, usually by survivors.

Some extraordinarily good 19th century works of fiction later reached back and mixed the four elements just listed. James Fenimore Cooper produced the five LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, including the towering LAST OF THE MOHICANS. And early feminist Catharine Maria Sedgwick wrote HOPE LESLIE. Like Cooper's THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH, HOPE LESLIE is a tale of abduction of a young white girl by Indians, her being first raised as one of them and then being happily married to a great chief. Such contented inter-racial "crossings" are well documented historically. But they were rated thorough abominations, especially by main-stream New England Puritans.

There were also white/white crossings. Not being color-based or racial, they were less controversial, unless a Protestant chose to turn Catholic. Examples of white/white crossings include marriages between English, Scots, Irish, Dutch, French and Germans. James Fenimore Cooper, writing from the tolerant, albeit anti-Puritan perspective of New York, explored that colony's Dutch-English marriages and cultural minglings in his 1845 novel, SATANSTOE.

SATANSTOE is the name of the small 463.5 acre fictional 17th Century ocean-facing West Chester county farming estate of the Littlepage family. The ancestral name is English, but there is already plenty of high-ranking Dutch lineage in this family. Cooper dedicates a trilogy of novels to treat six generations of them. The main story line of SATANSTOE is the four-stage wooing and wedding of beautiful young Anglo-Dutch heiress Anne (Anneke) Mordaunt by young Princeton graduate Cornelius (Corny) Littlepage.

There is, by contrast, tragedy when Corny's wholly Dutch friend Duerck Ten Eyck courts pure English Mary Wallace, Anneke's best chum in Albany. Shy, correct Mary postpones acknowledging her love until Dirck is mortally wounded beating off an Indian attack. We readers are invited, I think, to imagine how hard it must have been socially for the very first Anglo-Dutch romances to have occurred at all. What becomes routine after a couple of generations of "crossing," is something difficult to set in motion.

SATANSTOE begins in 1767, just after the defeat of the English by the French and Indians at Fort William Henry -- detailed in Fenimore Cooper's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. England assembles an army of 16,000 to throw at French General Montcalm who holds Fort Ticonderoga with greatly inferior numbers. The English are outgeneraled and routed. In the confusion, a raiding party of Hurons besieges a nearby wilderness settlement northeast of Albany. Corny, Dirck and others fight the savages off. But Dirck dies.

The novel also showcases a complex England-born clergyman, Rev. Mr. Thomas Worden, the high-living but liturgically punctilious rector of St. Jude's, the Littlepages' parish church. Worden briefly mounts a half-hearted effort to convert Indians. He calls it off, however, when he comes to believe (unlike the French Jesuits in Canada) that Christianity is too civilized a religion for Jesus to have intended it for savages. Young Duerck Ten Eyck is a wild oats-sowing but kind young Achilles within the tolerant Dutch community. Old ladies love him. Old gentlemen tolerate his high spirits and pranks. A smitten Duerck begins reforming his rough spots to merit the love of Mary Wallace.

Author Fenimore Cooper was pro-Indian when most whites were not. Memorable is his creation, the Onandago Indian Susquesus. Susquesus is a powerful cross-cultural bridge: translator, guide, runner and mentor to Corny and other whites in ways of the forest. Cooper was also prejudiced against New Englanders in general and Puritans in particular. He distills these dislikes into the character of schoolteacher Jason Newcome. Jason rather rudely deals himself into the friendship circle of Corny, Duerck and Rev. Worden. He talks funny, constantly extols behavior ways of Connecticut over New York's but means well. His besetting, initially disguised sin is avarice, greed for land.

British Major and future Baronet Bulstrode contends with Corny for the hand of Anneke. But Corny has made a career of being useful to Anneke. It began when he was 14 and she 10 and he punished with his fists (a skill taught him by his tutor Rev. Worden) a young bully in Manhattan. Later when he was 20 Corny saved Anneke from being mauled by a caged lion during a black slaves' street festival, also in Manhattan. A third time he rescued her during an early springtime sleigh ride on the Hudson River, when the ice broke up -- one of Cooper's grandest scenes of adventure. Corny's fourth rescue of Anneke and her father from the Indian raid after Ticonderoga was all that it took. Marjor Bulstrode never stood a chance.

Despite his generally correct and sometimes profound insights, James Fenimore Cooper can be a clumsy stylist. And yet from time to time he flashes with insight into mores and practices. Thus, the carefree young people, over a lavish Dutch dinner after a two-hour sleigh ride on the frozen Hudson from Albany to Kinderhook, learn something new:

"We chatted on, laughed, listened to stories and colony anecdotes that carried us back to the last war, and heard a great many eulogiums on beaux and belles, that we young people had, all our lives, considered as respectable, elderly, commonplace sort of persons" (Ch. 14).

What child among us ever imagines herself old and sedate? What young adult ever stops to think that the elderly once had their lives before them, were curious, daring, rebellious? A wee insight but the sort that Fenimore Cooper strews through his pages. -OOO-

Pros:
Colonial Anglo-Dutch New York. Intermarriage as peace technique. At times non-stop adventuring.

Cons:
At times lumbering, approaching leaden prose. Maps and time-charts are lacking.

The Bottom Line:
This is a splended introduction to New York in the 18th Century. Characters are three-dimensional, credible, mixtures of good and bad. Action abounds. Romance and tragedy too.

Overall Product Rating:
* * * * * Excellent

Yes

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