“A man without a cross”

“A man without a cross” is Hawkeye’s recurring self-description, referring to his identity as a white man without Indigenous ancestry. The expression does more than classify him by descent: it frames his arguments about moral responsibility, religious knowledge, and the distance between white and Indigenous customs, while exposing the racial assumptions through which he understands those differences.

Identity and Usage

Hawkeye introduces the phrase while discussing inherited skill and the contrasting ways white and Indigenous communities preserve their histories. He rejects the idea that he boasts of natural privileges, but takes satisfaction in being recognized as genuinely white. He contrasts written records with oral testimony and describes himself as a man who has not spent his life learning to read books. His account of the Bumppo family’s inherited marksmanship turns ancestry into a source of personal identity, even as he presents himself as critical of some of his own people’s customs.

The phrase recurs in moments when Hawkeye speaks of himself beside the Mohicans. It is thus not simply a claim of racial purity: it identifies a boundary between his lineage and theirs, while the companionship and shared danger in which he invokes it repeatedly complicate that boundary.

Moral Responsibility and Loyalty

When Hawkeye and the Mohicans face what seems likely to be their deaths, he urges them to remember that they are men without a cross and declares that white blood can run as freely as red. The phrase here accompanies a claim of shared courage and resolve across racial difference. In the same crisis, however, Hawkeye initially treats the question of who should remain with the endangered women through a distinction between what might be permissible for a red man and what would be sinful for a man without a cross. Cora’s appeal to carry a warning to her father persuades him to leave with the Mohicans, showing that the phrase also marks a moral burden he believes his own religious inheritance imposes.

Elsewhere, Hawkeye resists David Gamut’s demand that religious claims be proved from books. He calls himself a warrior of the wilderness and describes nature as the book through which he has learned of God. His self-description therefore sets his form of religious knowledge apart from formal Christian learning, though it does not mean he considers himself outside religious obligation.

History, Ancestry, and Contradiction

Hawkeye’s account of the old blockhouse gives the phrase a historical dimension. He recalls building it with the Delawares in a conflict with the Mohawks, and describes himself as a white man without a cross who fought alongside a people he considered wronged. He also recalls burying the dead himself. In another conversation, he rejects the account that the Delawares simply surrendered their warrior role under an old treaty, blaming Dutch settlers for a bargain designed to disarm people with a prior claim to the land. He contrasts that history with the Mohicans’ continued resistance and laments the loss of their extensive territory.

The phrase’s confidence in a clear distinction between white and Indigenous identity sits uneasily beside Hawkeye’s sustained alliance with the Mohicans, his admiration for their conduct, and his criticism of white actions toward Indigenous people. Yet the distinction remains central to his own account of character: he repeatedly treats ancestry as relevant to customs, religious understanding, and responsibility. The expression consequently carries both solidarity and separation, revealing the limits as well as the force of his loyalty.