The Chainbearer by James Fenimore Cooper

First published: 1845

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical romance

Time of work: About 1785

Locale: Upstate New York

Principal Characters:

• Mordaunt Littlepage, the narrator, who is a young landowner
• Andries Coejemans, an old woodsman and surveyor, called Chainbearer
• Ursula Malbone, his half sister’s orphan daughter, called Dus
• Frank Malbone, her half brother
• Cornelius (Corny) Littlepage, and
• Anneke Littlepage, Mordaunt’s parents
• Kate, Mordaunt’s sister
• TomBayard, Kate’s fiance
• Priscilla Bayard, his sister
• Jaap, Mordaunt’s black servant
• Susquesus (Trackless), an Indian friend of the Littlepages
• Jason Newcome, the squire at Ravensnest
• Aaron Timberman, a squatter and timberman, called Thousandacres
• Lowiny, his daughter
• Tobit, and
• Zephanaiah, two of his sons
• Dirck Follock, Cornelius Littlepage’s friend

The Story

Mordaunt Littlepage, son of Cornelius Littlepage, of Satanstoe, was at Princeton for six years studying for his bachelor of arts degree during most of the Revolutionary War. Upon graduation, he served in his father’s battalion at the siege of Yorktown and there met sixty-seven-year-old Captain Andries Coejemans, a skilled woodsman and known as Chainbearer because he carried the forward chain in the surveying work he did as a civilian. Mordaunt attained the rank of captain by the time of Cornwallis’ surrender.

Mordaunt formed a strong attachment to the hale old man, and at the close of the war, Chainbearer suggested that Mordaunt meet Dus Malbone, his orphaned niece. The captain thought that she would make a fine wife for his young friend, but Mordaunt, determined to remain unattached, returned home. Chainbearer went back to his civilian occupation, which was considered an ordinary laboring job.

Traveling back to Lilacsbush, Mordaunt and his aged servant, Jaap, were low in funds because by that time the continental currency was practically worthless. On one occasion, they stopped at an inn where Jaap performed and collected plenty of money for their lodging. After stopping at Lilacsbush, Mordaunt and Kate, his youngest sister, rode on to Satanstoe to visit their grandmother. During the ride, Kate told Mordaunt that she hoped to marry Tom Bayard, whom they would meet at Satanstoe, where he was visiting with his sister Priscilla, Kate’s good friend. Kate had hoped that Mordaunt would fall in love with Priscilla. Mordaunt’s grandmother was also conniving to have him fall in love with Priscilla Bayard.

Mordaunt found that Priscilla, as beautiful and intelligent as his sister had promised, was outspoken in her independence and also free in her opinions, which always found Mordaunt in perfect agreement. Tom, her brother, was rather conservative in his beliefs, but Tom and Mordaunt respected each other. Mordaunt readily gave his consent to his sister’s marriage.

After a short time, Mordaunt announced that he was going to travel to Ravensnest, land that his grandfather, Herman Mordaunt, had left him, and that he was to be gone for the entire winter. Before they parted, however, Mordaunt learned that Priscilla was a schoolfriend of Dus, Chainbearer’s niece, and had the highest opinion of her. The two discussed the qualities of Dus and Chainbearer, who had been hired to contract for all the surveying work at Ravensnest.

Mordaunt went with Jaap to Ravensnest. It was to be Mordaunt’s first visit to the wilderness tract. Jaap had been there several times previously with Mordaunt’s father. Chainbearer was already on the ground and surveying the land into small plots for rental. At the Bridge Inn, it was learned that he was working with Dus and her half brother, Frank Malbone. Before reaching Ravensnest, Mordaunt heard a beautiful Indian song sung as he learned later, by Dus, and he met Susquesus, a faithful Indian hunter who had served Mordaunt’s father years before. Susquesus was a good friend of old Chainbearer.

Putting on clothes less fitting a gentleman, Mordaunt and the Indian went to Ravensnest village to learn something of the people there. He learned that a town meeting had been called, with Squire Jason Newcome presiding. Newcome, a powerful and highly respected man, prodded the crowd to vote for the erection of a Congregational rather than a Presbyterian church. Mordaunt watched the proceedings with contempt. The men of the town raised the pikepoles of the church with the help of a girl who, Mordaunt later learned, was Dus.

Chainbearer welcomed Mordaunt to Ravensnest and took him to the hut where he lived when he was not surveying. There Mordaunt met Dus formally. She seemed ashamed to meet him and said that she had been working with her uncle; she considered herself below Mordaunt because of her work. Mordaunt convinced her that she was his equal.

Mordaunt made Frank Malbone his agent, replacing Squire Newcome, who had proved himself untrustworthy. This work assured Frank of a good living. Newcome was given a new rental lease to which, it was explained, he had no right other than the liberality of his landlord.

When Chainbearer took Mordaunt to see the land he had surveyed, Dus accompanied them. By that time, Mordaunt had fallen in love with her, as he told her one evening. Dus answered that her affections were tied to another. Mordaunt left the hut and that night slept on the open ground.

The next morning, Mordaunt found Susquesus camped nearby. The Indian brought word that a hidden sawmill was being illegally operated on Littlepage land. Following his guide, Mordaunt came upon Aaron Timberman’s sawmill, called Thousandacres. Not knowing that his white visitor was Mordaunt Littlepage, Thousandacres welcomed him. Later, Mordaunt made himself known and was thrown, a prisoner, into the storehouse. Susquesus made his escape, however, and informed Jaap of Mordaunt’s capture before returning to aid the prisoner. Captured by several of Thousandacre’s sons, the Indian was also imprisoned in the storehouse. Meanwhile, Mordaunt learned that Thousandacres and his sons, Tobit and Zephanaiah, like most squatters, would have nothing to do with the law. Lowiny, the daughter, proved friendly to Mordaunt and did not think that he should be kept a prisoner. From his place of confinement, Mordaunt watched Squire Newcome visit the mill and offer to buy the timber at a lower price than Thousandacres demanded, for, as Newcome insisted, the Littlepages were sure to discover the mill before long. Thousandacres sent Newcome away as soon as possible.

That night, Lowiny came to the storehouse bringing food. The next morning, Chainbearer appeared and, while trying to open the door of the storehouse, was seized and confined with Mordaunt and Susquesus. Dus, hiding nearby, sent Zephanaiah a letter saying that she would not now have him as a husband.

At a family council, Thousandacres tried to bargain with Chainbearer, but the old man refused to be disloyal to the Littlepage family. Thousandacres then threw Chainbearer back into the storehouse, leaving Mordaunt in the house with Lowiny. While her father and brothers were occupied, the girl helped him to escape. Thousandacres, looking for Mordaunt, found him with Dus, who had just confessed her love to him. Returning to the clearing, Dus was held in the house, and Mordaunt was returned to the storehouse.

At another family gathering, to which Mordaunt and Chainbearer were summoned, Thousandacres attempted to coerce Dus into marrying Zephanaiah. Dus refused, however, and Chainbearer became extremely angry at the suggestion. As the angry old man, his arm around Dus, tried to leave the room, someone fired a shot and Chainbearer fell, mortally wounded. Chainbearer, dying on the bed to which he had been carried, said that death was not a bad thing. He told Dus and Mordaunt, who sat by his bedside, that they must follow whatever course their hearts directed, even though he felt that Dus should not marry above her station.

Suddenly, rifle shots sounded outside. Frank Malbone, informed by Jaap of his master’s capture, had arrived at the head of a rescuing posse. During the attack, Thousandacres was mortally wounded. His son and the other squatters fled into the forest. Thousandacres was given a respectable burial, and his widow was allowed to remove her personal possessions from the cabin. Lowiny, who had been friendly with Dus, decided to stay with her.

The business of the squatters settled, Chainbearer’s body was taken back to Ravensnest for burial. There they found Kate, Tom, and Priscilla Bayard, and Mordaunt’s parents, who had come to pay tribute to Chainbearer after receiving news of his death. Chainbearer was buried with simple but sincere dignity and honor.

Dus, introduced to the Littlepages and now convinced that she was their equal, agreed to marry Mordaunt. Lowiny decided to live with them and serve as their maid. Priscilla Bayard found herself attracted to Frank Malbone, and later they decided to get married. Susquesus, amply supplied by the Littlepages, continued to live at Ravensnest. Jaap, who had become the Indian’s good friend, decided to stay with him. The two lived happily together for many years.

Squire Newcome continued his knavery. In the end, however, he died poor and in debt. Mordaunt and Dus had a happy marriage, and they had a child within a year. Feeling deeply indebted to Chainbearer for their happiness, the Littlepages erected a monument at his grave. From then on, he was known as Uncle Chainbearer, and his friends always remembered him with affection.

Critical Evaluation:

For his trilogy, The Littlepage Manuscripts, James Fenimore Cooper took his cue from a contemporary controversy which had its roots in the eighteenth century. Centered in north-central New York state, the Anti-Rent movement, as the controversy was called, stemmed from a conflict between the feudal-agrarian practices established by eighteenth century landowners and perpetuated by their heirs, on the one hand, and the democratic-industrial demands of tenants on the other. The issue was joined in the early 1840’s when landowners refused tenants’ requests to abolish feudal rents required in perpetuity. A tenants’ rebellion, the Anti-Rent War, was put down by troops; but in 1846, the new state constitution prohibited landlords from imposing perpetual dues or services when selling or leasing land.

Cooper’s trilogy, published in 1845 and 1846 at the culmination of the controversy, traces three generations of a landowning family, the Littlepages, from the eighteenth century Cornelius Littlepage in SATANSTOE, through Mordaunt Littlepage of THE CHAINBEARER, to the nineteenth century Hugh Littlepage of THE REDSKINS. The first of these novels focuses on the Littlepage estate at Satanstoe in Westchester County, New York, and the last, on the Littlepage confrontation with Anti-Rent agitators disguised as Indians. The second novel suggests by its title that attention will center on the Dutchman Andries Coejemans, called Chainbearer. The tale, however, is cast in first-person narrative, the story being told by Mordaunt Littlepage.

The limitations of this narrative form are thus the limitations of THE CHAINBEARER as a novel. In order to avoid straining the reader’s credulity, Littlepage can report only what he has seen, what has been said to him, or what he has read, overheard, or found accidentally; he cannot tell about things he could or should not know, and he cannot read the minds of other characters. Consequently, the very form of the novel mandates that more be revealed about the narrator Mordaunt Littlepage than about the putative protagonist, Chainbearer. The narrator must be fully developed as a character at the expense of other characters’ development. Yet, the epic scope of the trilogy is made coherent by its concentration on the Littlepage family, so THE CHAINBEARER can hardly be faulted for spotlighting Mordaunt Littlepage.

The advantages of first person narrative offset many of its limitations: the eyewitness account enhances credibility, and the directness of communication creates a high degree of sympathy between narrator and reader. The result, in THE CHAINBEARER, is that the reader tends to sympathize with Mordaunt Littlepage and by extension with the position of the landowners against the Anti-Renters. Still, such sympathy is a function of form rather than ideology; ideology, however, affects characterization. For the unreconstructibly romantic Cooper, characters were either noble in mind and beneficent in spirit (Mordaunt Littlepage and Chainbearer, for example) or petty in mind and mean in spirit (particularly Thousandacres), in a stark juxtaposition of good and evil. Despite so simplistic a moral viewpoint—and despite the liabilities inherent in the narrative form—Cooper has nevertheless produced an exciting adventure story worthy of more attention than it has received.

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