{"id":13767,"date":"2011-05-12T02:24:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T02:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13767"},"modified":"2011-06-25T21:44:12","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T21:44:12","slug":"man-with-a-cross-hawkeye-was-a-half-breed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13767","title":{"rendered":"Man with a Cross: Hawkeye Was a “Half-Breed”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man with a Cross: Hawkeye Was a “Half-Breed”<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cooper Panel<\/a>
\nAmerican Literature Association Conference
\nSan Diego, California
\nMay 1998<\/p>\n

James Fenimore Cooper Society<\/p>\n

Barbara Mann<\/a><\/strong>, Lecturer of English
\nUniversity of Toledo<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published in James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers<\/em> No. 10, August 1998<\/p>\n

Natty Bumppo<\/a>\u2014Hawkeye of James Fenimore Cooper’s<\/a> five Leather-Stocking Tales<\/a><\/em>\u2014is indelibly inscribed in the critical mind as the “man without a cross,” that prototypical “white Indian” of American literature. So accustomed are they to Natty’s “man-without-a-cross” mantra that critics take it at face value, never asking the obvious question: Was Natty really a man without a racial cross? I say, “Not a chance.” Seen against the backdrop of Native history, of which Cooper was intimately aware, Natty could only have been a mixed blood.<\/p>\n

Now for a little primer: Modem critics tend to assume that the one-drop rule<\/a> of racial identity was always in force in America, legally disallowing any wiggle room to people of racially mixed ancestry. Not so. There were in actuality three rules of racial identity, each competing with the others between 1750 and 1850: generational passing<\/a>; the rule of recognition; and the rule of descent. Generational passing, the British rule under colonialism, allowed third generation cross-bloods to pass as “white,” regardless of how Native or African they might look. By 1825, racist theory was gaining ground in America, positing two new, conflicting “rules” of race, those of recognition and descent. The rule of recognition was the eye-test of identity: whoever could pass, might; while the rule of descent\u2014the infamous “one-drop” rule<\/a>\u2014forbade passing at all times, regardless of generation or appearance. After 1825, only the rules of recognition and descent remained to vie for social control and, from 1850 on, the one-drop rule alone applied. Note that, in Natty’s lifetime, the generational rule and the rule of recognition were in force. Under either, Natty was legally “white,” even though in modem, more racist America, he would not be so categorized…<\/p>\n

Read the entire paper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man with a Cross: Hawkeye Was a “Half-Breed” Cooper Panel American Literature Association Conference San Diego, California May 1998 James Fenimore Cooper Society Barbara Mann, Lecturer of English University of Toledo Originally published in James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers No. 10, August 1998 Natty Bumppo\u2014Hawkeye of James Fenimore Cooper’s five Leather-Stocking Tales\u2014is indelibly inscribed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,14,6462,20],"tags":[6314,6312,6311,6310,78,6315,6313],"class_list":["post-13767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-papers","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-american-literature-association-conference","tag-barbara-a-mann","tag-barbara-alice-mann","tag-barbara-mann","tag-james-fenimore-cooper","tag-james-fenimore-cooper-society-miscellaneous-papers","tag-natty-bumppo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}