Wyandotte , Or, the Hutted Knoll: A Tale. Volume 2

Wyandotte, or The Hutted Knoll is one of James Fenimore Cooper’s later frontier novels, published in 1843 and set in upstate New York during the American Revolutionary War. The book is sometimes called one of Cooper’s most direct engagements with the moral complications of the Revolution itself, with the Tory loyalist position and the Iroquois Confederacy’s own difficult choices given more sympathetic treatment than was common in nineteenth century American historical fiction.

The novel takes its name from Wyandotte, a Tuscarora warrior who serves as one of the central figures and whose loyalty across the various factions in the conflict drives much of the moral weight of the book. Captain Hugh Willoughby, a half pay British officer turned American colonist, has built a settlement called the Hutted Knoll in the wilderness of upstate New York, and the novel follows his family and their neighbors as the Revolutionary War reaches their isolated valley. The first volume sets up the situation. Volume two carries the story through to its difficult and violent conclusion, with the betrayals, loyalties, and strange friendships of the frontier setting all reaching their final accounting.

Cooper’s prose is in the formal style of his time, which can take some getting used to. The dialogue is long and the historical context that drives the plot would have been more familiar to nineteenth century American readers than it is today. Modern readers may find Cooper’s portrayal of Wyandotte interestingly complicated by the standards of his era, even if it remains shaped by the racial assumptions of nineteenth century white American literature.

For Cooper completists, for students of early American historical fiction, or for readers interested in how American writers in the early nineteenth century thought about the moral legacies of the Revolution, Wyandotte is worth knowing. The novel is less famous than the Leatherstocking Tales but represents some of Cooper’s more thoughtful work in the historical mode.