The Last of the Mohicans is a classic portrait of a man of moral courage who severs all connections with a society whose values he can no longer accept. Despite his chosen exile, the frontier scout Natty Bumppo, known as “Hawkeye,” risks his life to escort two sisters through hostile Indian country. On this dangerous journey, he enlists the aid of the Mohican Chingachgook. And in the challenging ordeal that follows, in their encounters with deception, brutality, and the deaths of loved ones, the friendship between the two men deepens-the scout and the Indian, each with a singular philosophy of independence that has been nurtured and shaped by the silent, virgin forest.
The second of Cooper’s five Leatherstocking Tales, this is the one which has consistently captured the imagination of generations since it was first published in 1826. It’s success lies partly in the historical role Cooper gives to his Indian characters, against the grain of accumulated racial hostility, and partly in his evocation of the wild beautiful landscapes of North America which the French and the British fought to control throughout the eighteenth century. At the center of the novel is the celebrated `Massacre’ of British troops and their families by Indian allies of the French at Fort William Henry in 1757. Around this historical event, Cooper built a romantic fiction of captivity, sexuality, and heroism, in which the destiny of the Mohicans Chingachgook and his son Uncas is inseparable from the lives of Alice and Cora Munro and of Hawkeye the frontier scout. The controlled, elaborate writing gives natural pace to the violence of the novel’s like the nature whose plundering Copper laments, the books placid surfaces conceal inexplicable and deathly forces.
