The Division Among the Delawares

The Division Among the Delawares is the political fracture within a people whose members serve opposing sides in the French and Indian War. The split is not a simple choice between France and England: ancestral ties, old obligations to the Six Nations, attachment to homeland, and the danger of French retaliation pull the Delawares in different directions. Their division exposes how imperial alliances depend on Indigenous decisions that colonial commanders can influence but cannot fully command.

A people divided across the war

Hawkeye describes Delawares fighting alongside the Mingos, while other Delawares remain apart from that alignment. The narrator explains that the Sagamore of the Mohicans, Chingachgook, stays with a small following at Edward under the English king’s banners, partly because of his attachment to ancestral soil; by contrast, most of his people are in the field as allies of Montcalm. The narrator identifies the Delaware, or Lenape, as a people who claimed descent from those who had once controlled much of the eastern and northern regions of America, with the Mohicans an ancient and honored community within that larger people.

Hawkeye presents the fractured alliances as a consequence of white political influence disrupting older affiliations. He points to Delawares and Mingos fighting in the same ranks, even as Mingos seek Huron scalps, and to Delawares divided among themselves. His account distinguishes a shifting military alignment from enduring relationships: tribal enmities and attachments do not simply change whenever European policy changes, even when the war forces former associates onto opposite sides.

French alliance and withheld support

The Delawares who accompany Montcalm have entered English territory and are making serious incursions on Mohawk hunting grounds. Yet they withhold their assistance at the moment their French allies most need it. The narrator attributes this reluctance to reverence for an ancient treaty that once made the Delawares dependent on the Six Nations for military protection and now makes them reluctant to fight their former masters.

Their brief explanation to Montcalm—that their hatchets are dull and need time to be sharpened—allows them to delay without openly repudiating the alliance. Montcalm judges it wiser to tolerate a passive ally than to use severity and turn that ally into an open enemy. The episode shows the limits of imperial command: French officers need Delaware cooperation, but the Delawares retain room to withhold it in response to obligations that predate the current campaign.

Magua exploits the fracture

When Magua arrives among the Delawares, he uses their strained position to make hospitality appear politically dangerous. He tells them that English scouts have been in his wigwams and have fled to the Delaware camp, claiming that the Delawares are their friends and have turned from their Canadian father. The narrator stresses that this accusation strikes home: the Delawares already know their failure to join the French campaign has brought reproach from their allies, and their villages, hunting grounds, women, children, and part of their military strength lie within French territory.

The Delaware chief Hard Heart answers that his face has not changed: although his young men did not go on the warpath, he says they still love and honor the French commander. Magua counters that the French will hear that the Delawares are sheltering a bloody Englishman who has killed many of their friends. His pressure turns the division from a background condition into an immediate danger, threatening the Delawares with suspicion from France while testing whether their camp will protect those who seek refuge there.

From division to mobilization

The fracture does not prevent the Delawares from acting together when Uncas assumes command in the later campaign. He assigns Hawkeye twenty men, offers Duncan Heyward a position of equal authority, and organizes more than two hundred Delaware warriors for a march against the Hurons. Heyward declines command and volunteers to serve beside Hawkeye. The force proceeds under Uncas’s leadership, though he has to accept the cautious deliberation favored by his assembled chiefs despite his urgency over Cora’s danger and Magua’s insolence.

The contrast is consequential: earlier, old obligations and fear of French reprisals hold the Delawares back from fighting beside their allies; later, their warriors can be assembled under a leader who directs their campaign. Their divided allegiances are therefore not an absence of political agency. They are a contested field in which inherited ties, imperial pressure, hospitality, and immediate military aims shape what the Delawares will do.