This book combines history, biography, and close reading to produce radically new interpretations of two of the most important novels in American history. After an introductory chapter on the early nineteenth-century image of the Maori, the book demonstrates, in a series of interlinked chapters, that Magua in The Last of the Mohicans and Queequeg in Moby-Dick were modeled on Maori chiefs. In a sharp reversal of the conventional understanding of Magua, the book argues that Cooper means us to see him not as a villainous “bad Indian” but as a fiercely majestic and intelligent “gen ... More

This book combines history, biography, and close reading to produce radically new interpretations of two of the most important novels in American history. After an introductory chapter on the early nineteenth-century image of the Maori, the book demonstrates, in a series of interlinked chapters, that Magua in The Last of the Mohicans and Queequeg in Moby-Dick were modeled on Maori chiefs. In a sharp reversal of the conventional understanding of Magua, the book argues that Cooper means us to see him not as a villainous “bad Indian” but as a fiercely majestic and intelligent “gentleman.” Like the massacre led by Te Ara, the Maori chief on whom Magua was based, the massacre led by Magua is represented as an example of why aristocrats, white or non-white, should be exempted from humiliatingly vulgar punishments. In the chapter on Moby-Dick, the book argues that the story of Te Pehi Kupe, a Maori chief who boarded a ship and became intimate with its captain, inspired Melville to turn Queequeg, originally a prop in a comic, democratic, humanist anecdote, into an icon of epic republican idealism. Breaking with the usual conception of Queequeg as an embodiment of loving companionship, the book shows that what he stands for above all else is “mortal greatness”—a loftiness that is at least latent in every one of us—and the buoyancy of spirit that sustains it.