Cooper's aim in writing the Leatherstocking Tales, as he says in the preface to The Deerslayer, was to examine Natty Bumppo's character in order "to illustrate the effect of seeds cast into the wilderness."1 Elsewhere in his prefaces, references to such qualities as "distinctness" and "peculiarities" in his characters are common. From such claims we might expect to see in his novels the organic growth of strikingly formulated characters, but the responses of Cooper's critics, both his contemporaries and their successors, have indicated that frequently these were not the effects that he achieved. Perhaps this should not be surprising in itself; authors' aims are rarely fully realized and critics disagree, for novels fortunately do not produce the narrow band of responses typical of B.F. Skinner's notorious boxes. The confused chorus of responses to Cooper's fictional figures, nevertheless, raises the question of how best to read their actions and inner lives—an important issue given the power of the character "effect" on the reader and its role in narrative generally. In pursuit of an answer to this question, I want to consider, first, the role of character as a reading code or strategy in the novel, second, the value of faculty and trait psychology as a means of understanding the generation of literary character and, third, how Cooper's poetics and practice and the responses of his critics can be better understood in light of the particular versions of trait psychology that inform them.