youth, have been mixed up with these higher qualities and
longings, in a way, it is hoped, to represent a reasonable picture of human
nature, without offering to the spectator a monster of goodness.
    It has been objected to these books that they give a more favorable picture
of the red man than he deserves. The writer apprehends that much of this
objection arises from the habits of those who have made it. One of his critics,
on the appearance of the first work in which Indian character was portrayed,
objected that its »characters were Indians of the school of Heckewelder, rather
than of the school of nature.« These words quite probably contain the substance
of the true answer to the objection. Heckewelder was an ardent, benevolent
missionary, bent on the good of the red man, and seeing in him one who had the
soul, reason, and characteristics of a fellow-being. The critic is understood to
have been a very distinguished agent of the government, one very familiar with
Indians, as they are seen at the councils to treat for the sale of their lands,
where little or none of their domestic qualities come in play, and where,
indeed, their evil passions are known to have the fullest scope. As just would
it be to draw conclusions of the general state of American society from the
scenes of the capital, as to suppose that the negotiating of one of these
treaties is a fair picture of Indian life.
    It is the privilege of all writers of fiction, more particularly when their
works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the beau-idéal of their
characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose
that the red man is to be represented only in the squalid misery or in the
degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is,
we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such
criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer.
 

                           Preface to The Deerslayer

As has been stated in the preface to the series of the Leather-Stocking Tales,
»The Deerslayer« is properly the first in the order of reading, though the last
in that of publication. In this book the hero is represented as just arriving at
manhood, with the freshness of feeling that belongs to that interesting period
of life, and with the power to please that properly characterizes youth. As a
consequence, he is loved; and, what denotes the real waywardness of humanity,
more than it corresponds with theories and moral propositions, perhaps, he is
loved by one full of