M A R T I N K U E S T E R Universitat Augsburg American Indians and German Indians: Perspectives of Doomin Cooper and May Among the many nineteenth-century European writers influenced by James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, one of the most successful is the German Karl May, whose Apache chief Winnetou has become an integral part of the German myth of the Wild West perpetuated by the publishing and film industries.1 Richard Cracroft has shown that Cooper was the greatest influence on May,2and May’s protagonist himself admits that of course he has read Cooper.3Comparing Cooper’s and May’s depic tion of the doom of the native Indians in The Last of the Mohicans and Winnetou, I intend to analyze to what extent these dramatizations are affected philosophically by different narrative strategies. In both novels we have comparable frontier settings (although separ ated by over a century) and similar constellations of characters. There are two father-and-son pairs of Indian chiefs: Chingachgook and Uncas, the last of the Mohicans, and the Intschutschuna and Winnetou, the last great Apaches. The Indians are accompanied by white backwoodsmen mediating between the vanishing red and the dominating white cultures: Natty Bumppo and Old Shatterhand. The narratives follow two different struc tural models, however. Ostensibly, the difference is that between third- and first-person narratives, but May’s decision to deviate from Cooper’s nar rative strategy and adapt the story to his own style of writing tales of travel and adventure has a far-reaching impact: while Cooper’s third-person narrative can accommodate several points of view and let them enter into a dialogue, May is unable to overcome the tensions that exist between patern alistic patriotism (sometimes bordering on social Darwinism) and Christian tendencies. 218 Western American Literature In The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper creates an omniscient narrative voice distinct from those of all’his characters and relies on spokesmen who spread the message of the Indians’ doom. The most important of these is Natty Bumppo who, however, is by no means perfect: his idiosyncrasies irritate readers and prevent immediate identification with his point of view. He shares the Mohicans’ prejudices against other Indian tribes and has his own against his fellow-Europeans.4Still, Natty accepts the Indians’ cultural identity and their own system of values: “what might be right and proper in a red skin, may be sinful in a man who has not even a cross in blood to plead for his ignorance” (78). Although his acceptance of Indian customs does not mean that he regards native traditions as equal in value to Euro pean forms of behaviour, his feeling of superiority still cannot justify the crimes that result in the doom of the Indian race: You see before you, a chief of the great Mohican Sagamores! Once his family could chase their deer over tracts of country wider than that which belongs to the Albany Patteroon, without crossing brook or hill, that was not their own: but what is left to their descendant! He may find his six feet of earth, when God chooses; and keep it in peace, perhaps, if he has a friend who will take the pains to sink his head so low, that the ploughshares cannot reach it! (127) A similar version of the ubi sunt motif (“Where are the blossoms of those summers!” ) was voiced earlier in the novel (33) by Chingachgook: the wise chief of the Mohicans is the first eloquent spokesman of his race. Ironically he is also the last, because his son, tempted to give up his identity in order to pursue Cora Munro, dies. The last, prophetic proclamation of doom is that delivered by Tamenund , and it provides the final, gloomy note of the novel: Go, children of the Lenape; the anger of the Manitto is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale-faces arc masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived...