Fort William Henry: The Savages Explored The massacre of Fort William Henry
occurred in the year 1757, when France’s Native American allies captured,
tortured, or killed 308 surrendered English. The incident was brutal, it has
been told and retold throughout history by an array of authors, historians, and
media agencies.
Although every re-telling of the massacre has inevitable variations, the
writings of James Fenimore Cooper and Francis Parkman, and the Hollywood film
“The Last of the Mohicans” with the portrayal of Native Americans as inferior,
vengeful savages in an attempt to explain the tragedy of the historical event.
James Fenimore Cooper used negative descriptions of Native Americans in his
novel The Last of the Mohicans to dramatize the massacre at Fort William Henry.
This helps the reader make sense of the tragedy. Cooper depicted the Huron
Indians as “raving savages” that were both “wild and untutored” in their nature
(Cooper 207). It is easier to understand the massacre when Cooper blatantly
indicates to the reader that “revenge is an Indian feeling” (217). The presuming
way that Cooper characterizes Native Americans as animalistic and unintelligent
inadvertently dehumanizes the Indians, and creates a plausible reason for the
slaughtering.
By stating that the Indians became “heated and maddened by the sight” of
blood, and even “drank freely…of the crimson tide” that covered the ground, the
motive for the massacre becomes obvious: primitive vengeance (208). A passage
which clearly evokes the strongest understanding of Indian savagery is stated
below: … [the Indian’s] bantering but sullen smile changing to a gleam of
ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its
quivering remains to [its mother’s] very feet (207).
Cooper undoubtedly used the worst possible trait of a savage: the ability to
murder infants shamelessly to emphasize his opinion of the Indians. Furthermore,
the inferiority of the Indians is reinforced by their broken dialect. Magua, the
Huron chief speaks in incomplete sentences and uses improper grammar: “Magua is
a great chief” which demonstrates his lack of intelligence (208).
James Fenimore Cooper was a very effective novelist, and it is apparent that
his treatment of the Indians in The Last of the Mohicans was an attempt to
explain the tragic deaths of so many. Like Cooper, Francis Parkman’s book
Montcalm and Wolfe has a primitive and uncivilized depiction of Native
Americans. This is an indirect explanation of the tragedy at Fort William Henry.
Parkman blatantly displayed the Indian ally’s inferiority by stating that “their
religion is brute paganism” and that “their paradise is to be drunk” (Parkman
493).
An animalistic image emerged with the description that “[the Indians]
grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves”, which reinforced the
created picture of the savage (493). Similar to Cooper, Parkman uses Indian
dialect to dehumanize and set Native Americans apart from the “civilized”
conduct of England and France. Parkman characterized the disorderly “whoops and
shrieks” of the Indians as a “signal of butchery”, which persuades the reader to
assume that the Native Americans were primitive in every possible respect (524).
It can be assumed that violence is inevitably linked to simple forms of
communication and demeanor.
