Before any characters appear, the time and geography are made clear. Though it is the last war that England and France waged for a country that neither would retain, the wilderness between the forces still has to be overcome first. Thus it is in 1757, in the New York area between the head waters of the Hudson River and Lake George (the "Horican") to the north. Because only two years earlier General Braddock was disgracefully routed by a handful of French and Indians, the frontier is now exposed to real and imaginary savage disasters as well as to the horrors of warfare. Fear has replaced reason.
Near dusk of a day in July, an Indian runner named Magua arrives at Fort Edward on the upper Hudson. He has come from Fort William Henry at the southern tip of Lake George with the news that the French General Montcalm is moving south with a very large army and that Munro, commander of Fort William Henry, is in urgent need of plentiful reinforcements from General Webb. Early the next morning, a limited detachment of fifteen hundred regulars and colonists departs as if swallowed by the forest.
Shortly afterwards, Major Duncan Heyward and Alice and Cora Munro, guided by Magua on foot, take by horseback a secret route toward William Henry for the girls to join their father. Blonde Alice is doubtful about Magua, covered with war paint and showing a sullen fierceness; but dark-haired Cora is stoically common sense about him, even though Heyward mentions that their father had once had to deal rigidly with the Indian. As the small party pushes on, they are overtaken by David Gamut, a tall, ungainly psalmodist (singing-master) ridiculously dressed and carrying a pitch pipe while riding a mare followed by its young colt. He desires to join them, and after some banter between him and Alice, he pulls out the twenty-sixth edition of The Bay Psalm Book, sounds his pipe, and renders a song "in full, sweet, and melodious tones." At a muttered comment from Magua, Heyward insists upon silence for safety. Then he glances about them and, satisfied that he has seen only shining berries, smiles to himself as they move on. But he is wrong. The branches move and a man peers exultingly after them as they disappear among the dark lines of trees.
