Oak Openings

THE OAK OPENINGS by Fenimore Cooper is an astonishingly convincing tale of a fictional religious conversion to evangelical Christianity. A mysterious 50 year old Indian Chief named Scalping Peter, a man of no tribe, crusades for 20 years, with Tecumseh and other Indian nationalists, to indulge in ethnic cleansing before the word was coined. ***

It is 1812 in the oak openings (also known as oak savannas) of western Michigan. Peter has called a meeting of tribes to throw all the whites in Canada and the USA back into the great salt sea (Atlantic Ocean). His hatred of whites is pathological. Whenever he can, he murders them, even infants, and takes their scalps.

But a teenage white woman slowly softens his heart. He begins to think of her as a daughter. Yet she and five other whites are in his power and the assembled chiefs want to kill them all. Two they do kill: a soldier and a Methodist minister who speaks their languages and whose message to them is that they are the ten lost tribes of Israel. Indians do not want to be Jews. They reject his message but before they kill him have him explain the Christian doctrine of loving your enemies. This he does till the very moment of his tomahawking. Reverend "Amen" forgives his murderers and prays for them to God. ***

Beholding the missionary's courage, Scalping Peter has a conversion to at least a starting point of Christianity. He then uses his wits against great odds to save four whites, and is wiling to love his worst enemies white or red -- even Cherokees! ***

Nearly 40 years after novel's beginning an American author interviews Scalping Peter and those Americans he rescued and sees how one Indian's hatred of the whites for stealing Indian hunting grounds has been transformed. The tragedy to the Indians is seen to have been the permissive will of God -- the Manitou, the Great Spirit. These European robbers brought to the Indians the gospel of the Manitou's only Son. A fair trade. ***

In addition to religious conversion, THE OAK OPENINGS tells of a hair-raising 700 mile canoe escape by four whites and two Indians from the pro-British red men seeking their lives. We learn of the art of finding the hives of wild bees and various tricks white and red men play on one another. Something for every reader. But you must from time to time suspend your disbelief. -OOO-