How, exclaimed Fuller, did the dwellers in the forest suffer by such practices?
Men are every where the same, let the color, or the tribe, or the country be what it may. It was a law of our people, one which tradition tells us came direct from the Great Spirit, that the fish should be taken only in certain seasons, and for so many moons. Some thought this law was for the health of the people; others, that it was to enable the fish to multiply for the future. All believed it wise, because it came from the Manitou, and had descended to the tribe through so many generations: all but See-wise. He said that an Indian ought to fish when and where he pleased; that a warrior was not a woman; that the spear and the hook had been given to him to be used, like the bow and arrow, and that none but cowardly Indians would scruple to take the fish when they wished. Such opinions pleased the common Indians, who love to believe themselves greater than they are. See-wise grew bolder by success, until he dared to say in council, that the red men made the world themselves, and for themselves, and that they could do with it what they pleased. He saw no use in any night; it was inconvenient; an Indian could sleep in the light as well as in the darkness; there was to be eternal day; then the hunt could go on until the deer was killed, or the bear treed. The young Indians liked such talk. They loved to be told they were the equals of the Great Spirit. They declared that See-wise should be their principal chief. See-wise opened his ears wide to this talk, and the young men listened to his words as they listened to the song of the mocking-bird. They liked each other, because they praised each other. It is sweet to be told that we are better and wiser than all around us. It is sweet to the red man; the pale-faces may have more sober minds
The Seneca paused an instant, and Fuller fancied that a smile of irony again struggled about his compressed lip. As the traveler made no remark, however, the youthful warrior resumed his tale.
I hear a great deal of what demagogues are doing among your people, and of the evil they produce. They begin by flattering, and end by ruling. He carries a strong hand, who makes all near him help to uphold it. In the crowd few perceive its weight until it crushes them.
Thus was it with See-wise. Half the young men listened to him, and followed in his trail. The aged chiefs took counsel together. They saw that all the ancient traditions were despised, and that new conduct was likely to come in with new opinions. They were too old to change. What was done has never been said, but See-wise disappeared. It was whispered that he had gone down among the fish he loved to take out of season. There is one tradition, that he speared an enormous salmon, and the fish, in its struggles, drew him out of his canoe, and that his hands could not let go of the handle of his spear. Let this be as it may, no one ever saw See-wise any more, in the form in which he had been known to his people. At length the trunk of a tree was seen floating about the Seneca, and one of the oldest of the chiefs, pointing to it, pronounced the name of See-wise. He would fish out of season, and his spirit is condemned, they say, to float among the salmon, and trout, and eels, for a thousand winters. It was not long after this that the lake began to speak, in a voice loud as the thunder from the clouds. The Seneca traditions say this is the Manitou calling to See-wise, when he goes down after the fish, out of season.
And do you, an educated man, believe in this tale? asked Fuller.
I can not say. The things learned in childhood remain the longest on the memory. They make the deepest marks. I have seen the evil that a demagogue can do among the pale-faces; why should I not believe the same among my own people?
This is well enough, as respects the curse on the demagogue; but lakes do not usually
Fuller had got thus far, when the Seneca, as if in mockery, emitted the sound that has obtained the name of the Lake Gun among those who have lived on its banks in these later times. Perhaps it was, in part, the influence of the Senecas legend, united to the opinions and statements of the inhabitants of that region, which conspired to make our traveler start, in awe and surprise; for, certainly, the deep-mouthed cannon never gave forth a more impressive and sudden concussion on the ear.
It does, indeed, sound very like a gun! said Fuller, after a long pause had enabled him to speak.
It is the voice of the Great Spirit, forbidding See-wise to fish, answered the Seneca. For a time the demagogue has all the talking to himself, but, sooner or later, the voice of truth is heard, which is the voice of the Manitou. But I must go nearer to the tree ha! what has become of it?
Fuller looked, and, sure enough, the speck on the water had vanished. This might have been by an unobserved movement in a current; or it might have been owing to a sudden variation in the light; certain it was, no tree could now be seen. Fuller then proposed to use his boat, in endeavoring to get nearer to the Jew. The Seneca gave a very cheerful assent, and, throwing his light summer blanket, with an air of manly grace, over a shoulder, he followed to the water-side.
Most red men, resumed the young warrior, as he took his place in the boat, would see something marvelous in this appearance and disappearance of the swimming Seneca, and would hesitate about going any nearer to him; but this is not my feeling error is strengthened by neglecting to look into truth. I hope yet to go near See-wise.
Fuller hardly knew what to think of his companions credulity. At times he appeared to defer to the marvelous and the traditions of his tribe; then, again, the lights of education would seem to gleam upon the darkness of his superstition, and leave him a man of inductive reason. As for himself, he was probably not altogether as much of the last as his pride of race would have led him to hope.
Peter had seen nothing, but he had heard the Gun.
T was a mere flash in the pan to what I have heard, when the lake is in arnest, said the old fellow, with the love of exaggeration so common with the vulgar. Still, it was a gun.
A signal that the Wandering Jew is near by; so, haul aft the sheets, and let us depart.
In a quarter of an hour the boat was lying with her foresheet hauled over, and her helm down, within a hundred yards of the object of the long search of the whole party. It was deep water, and a slight ripple under what might be termed the cutwater of the tree indicated a movement. Perhaps a lower current forced forward the roots, which, in their turn, urged the trunk ahead. As often happens in such cases, the accidental formation of the original fracture, aided by the action of the weather, had given to the end of the trunk a certain resemblance to a human countenance. Peter was the first to point out the peculiarity, which he looked upon uneasily. Fuller soon observed it, and said the aspect was, in sooth, that of a demagogue. The forehead retreated, the face was hatchet-shaped, while the entire expression was selfish, yet undecided. As for the Seneca, he gazed on these signs with wonder, mingled with awe.
We see here the wicked See-wise. The Great Spirit call him Manitou, or call him God does not forget what is wrong, or what is right. The wicked may flourish for a while, but there is a law that is certain to bring him within the power of punishment. Evil spirits go up and down among us, but there is a limit they can not pass. But Indians like this Swimming Seneca do much harm. They mislead the ignorant, arouse evil passions, and raise themselves into authority by their dupes. The man who tells the people their faults is a truer friend than he who harps only on their good qualities. Be that only a tree, or be it a man bound in this form, for a thousand winters, by the hand of the Great Spirit, it tells the same story. See-wise did once live. His career comes to us in traditions, and we believe all that our fathers told us. Accursed be the man who deceives, and who opens his mouth only to lie! Accursed, too, is the land that neglects the counsels of the fathers to follow those of the sons!
There is a remarkable resemblance between this little incident in the history of the Senecas and events that are passing among our pale-faced race of the present age. Men who, in their hearts, really care no more for mankind than See-wise cared for the fish, lift their voices in shouts of a spurious humanity, in order to raise themselves to power, on the shoulders of an excited populace. Bloodshed, domestic violence, impracticable efforts to attain an impossible perfection, and all the evils of a civil conflict are forgotten or blindly attempted, in order to raise themselves in the arms of those they call the people.
I know your present condition, answered the young Seneca, openly smiling. The Manitou may have ordered it for your good. Trust to HIM. There are days in which the sun is not seen when a lurid darkness brings a second night over the earth. It matters not. The great luminary is always there. There may be clouds before his face, but the winds will blow them away. The man or the people that trust in God will find a lake for every See-wise.
Tales for Fifteen: Or, Imagination and Heart
Introduction
On 1 February 1823 Charles Wiley published in New York The Pioneers, a new book by the author of The Spy; by noon he had sold 3,500 copies a record-making sale by the bookselling standards of the time. On 26 June, almost five months later, Wiley quietly offered, as we know from a notice in The Patriot, a New York newspaper, Tales for Fifteen, or Imagination and Heart, an original work in one volume, by Jane Morgan, price 75c. The actual author was the author of The Spy; and the two stories, Imagination and Heart, were obviously imitations of Mrs. Amelia Opies popular moral tales, published, as the paper cover noted, when The Spy was in its fourth edition, The Pioneers in its third, and The Pilot in press. The sale was so small that only four copies are known to be extant. Why, one may ask, did James Cooper, who was in 1823 a writer of national and international reputation, publish this volume of imitative stories for adolescent girls, even though his identity was carefully concealed?
According to Coopers own account, Tales for Fifteen was written and given to Charles Wiley as a gesture of friendship to help the publisher out of financial difficulties. This explanation was echoed by the novelists daughter Susan in a letter reprinted from the Cooperstown Freemans Journal in The Critic on 12 October 1889. It is true that Wiley was having financial troubles in 1823, and Cooper undoubtedly gave him the proceeds from Tales for Fifteen; but to suppose, as full acceptance of this explanation requires, that Cooper reverted, even momentarily, to the repudiated literary models of his first book Precaution after the phenomenal success of The Spy would be to infer in him an almost total want of critical judgment and common sense. The real explanation, which Cooper might have been embarrassed to furnish and which the chronology of publication has obscured, lies in a hitherto unsuspected phase of the curious story of Coopers entrance to authorship.
Cooper wrote Andrew Thompson Goodrich, his first publisher, on 31 May 1820, that Precaution had been preceded by an experimental effort to write a short moral tale. Mrs. Opies Simple Tales (1807) and Tales of Real Life (1813) would have been among the obvious models. Finding the tale swell to a rather unwieldy size, Cooper explained, I destroyd the manuscript and changed it to a novel. Precaution, which was completed on 12 June 1820, was probably written within a month; and before the novel had begun its tortuous way through the press, Cooper commenced the writing of The Spy. By 28 June he had completed about sixty pages, presumably manuscript pages; and as the writing proceeded and his enthusiasm for the new work mounted, his expectations for the success of Precaution diminished. He wrote Goodrich on 12 July: The Spy goes on slowly and will not be finishd until late in the fall I take more pains with it as it is to be an American novel professedly. In fact, The Spy was completed only a short time before its publication in New York on 22 December 1821.
During the eighteen months between the inception and publication of The Spy Cooper saw Precaution through the press, joined the New York literary circle which frequented Charles Wileys bookshop, transferred his publishing business to Wiley, wrote three or four long book reviews for his friend Charles K. Gardners Literary and Scientific Repository, finished The Spy, and commenced The Pioneers. While the period was, thus, not devoid of literary activity, it was, as the 1831 Preface to The Spy confessed, a period of acute uncertainty. Having discovered his literary talent, Cooper had yet to discover how to use it profitably, had indeed to be reassured of its true direction. He could not afford to write at all unless he could make his new profession pay handsomely. Precaution had been a deliberate attempt to produce a bestseller, and it succeeded only moderately. As the Preface to the first edition of The Spy indicates, Cooper experienced severe self-doubts and self-questionings about this experiment. For an extended period, most probably during the first six months of 1821, he abandoned work on The Spy, which had been noticed as in press in the January issue of the Repository, fearing that the book could not succeed. It was almost certainly during this time that he conceived and partly executed another literary project of which Tales for Fifteen is the abortive remains.
As Coopers hopes for The Spy faded, his confidence in the viability of the type of imitative writing he had attempted in Precautionappears to have revived. Precaution was reviewed in a most laudatory manner in the Repository for January 1821, and the comment accompanying the notice of publication in the Repository was: We only regret that the scene of this novel was not laid in America. Whether Cooper persuaded himself or allowed himself to be persuaded by Wiley, Gardner, and other friends, he seems to have decided that his mistake in Precaution was not so much the choice of models as the choice of setting. Why not employ an American setting and continue his imitation of the British women? During 1820 Wiley, Goodrich, and William B. Gilley had jointly published a collection of Mrs. Opies stories called Tales of the Heart; apparently they found it profitable. Accordingly, Cooper planned a series of stories which Wiley noticed as in press in the Repository for May 1822 and which he described as American Tales, by a Lady, viz. Imagination Heart Matter Manner Matter and Manner. 2 vols. 18 mo. Wiley and Halsted, New York. A briefer announcement had appeared earlier, in the October 1821 issue of the Repository, although The Spy, which was certainly in press, was not noticed. In his letter of 7 January 1822 congratulating Cooper on the great success of The Spy, Wiley observed: You speak of being engaged about the Pioneer. Have you forgotten the American Tales, which were commenced by a certain lady a long time ago?