J Fenimore Cooper

The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish J Fenimore Cooper Later edition

"The summer of 1828 was passed in Switzerland. Those were very happy months. The sublime grandeur of the ancient mountains, and the loveliness of the pastoral valleys at their feet, far surpassed in the reality all previous conceptions of the same nature. ... At the foot of the Alps, a new book was planned. Mind and memory, however, turned affectionately westward; and scenes of home-life, incidents connected with the annals of his native soil, formed once more the materials selected for the work. As usual, it was no sooner planned than the first pages were written. The period and ground chosen were the early colonial time in Connecticut. The American Puritan and the Indian were to be thrown together, while the chief point of interest is a child, a lovely little girl, torn from her mother's arms, and borne away into the wilderness by the savage band: according to a custom prevailing throughout the tribes of northern America, the captive girl is formally adopted, and engrafted into a family of the red race. Years pass over; the bereaved mother -- a very beautiful character, colored with great truth, purity, and tenderness -- lives drooping and mourning on the spot where the blow had fallen upon her head. The father -- a fine and highly favorable picture of the colonist of that day and that ground -- carries about with him, under a calm exterior, and beneath his stiff Puritan garb, a sad heart. Brother, and sister, and companions, grow to maturity, and all throw many a yearning look backward, in memory of the lost sister, the Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. A fresh outbreak of the savages occurs: the lost girl returns to her father's roof one of the marauding band, the wife of a Narragansett warrior, the mother of an Indian boy."