The Last of the Mohicans (Leatherstocking Tale)
by James Fenimore Cooper

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Book Reviews of The Last of the Mohicans (Leatherstocking Tale)

Book Review: Terrific -- And Terrifying
Summary: 5 Stars

For this reader, that "magnetism" is the sheer awe-inspiring beauty and terror of the North American primal forest. Slatkin's essay is rather bloodless, but I can assure you that this novel is not. And the idea of constantly running and hiding from an archetypical villain, like Magua, and his band of warrior Hurons, who feel quite comfortable with the act of cleaving one's skull with a hatchet, is quite unsettling.

Of course, "The Last of the Mohicans" is not a depiction of Native Americans through the lens of 21st Century sensibilities. Unquestionably, the modern day reader should be at least a little horrified at the near extinction of the Native American population. But no matter how sensitive one is about their tragic, inexorable decline, it is still an unalterable fact that -- under the alliance they entered into with the French -- several Eastern tribes struck abject terror into the hearts of 18th Century British Colonials. (May I suggest a casual inquiry into the colonial history of Deerfield, Massachusetts? The hatchet marks can still be seen on the wooden doors.)

The setting for "The Last of the Mohicans" is the great waterway formed by Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. The last glacial retreat laid down a perfect invasion route for the French moving south from Quebec, or the British moving north from Albany. That is why the area is studded with old colonial forts at strategic choke points. It is on the way to Ft. William Henry that the heroines, Cora and Alice Munro, are betrayed by Magua, who was charged with guiding the defenseless daughters to their beloved father -- an old Scottish warhorse, who serves as commander of the fort. How the daughters are captured, escape, nearly massacred and recaptured occupy the first half of the book. Their eventual rescue forms the second half.

Cooper's action-packed narrative is an artful blend of history and fiction. There was, indeed, a siege of Ft. William Henry by the French General, the Marquis de Montcalm. And there was some sort of trouble with Montcalm's Indian allies, but there is now serious doubt about a full-scale massacre of the fort's inhabitants. Indeed, Cooper has been criticized for botching numerous historical facts, but the "massacre myth" cannot be laid solely at his door. No less than the preeminent American historian, Francis Parkman, devoted several pages to the supposed incident.

What is outright fiction is Cooper's heroic protagonist, Hawk-eye. He is the central character throughout Cooper's 5-book Leatherstocking Series of which "The Last of the Mohicans" is the second installment. Hawk-eye (better known as "Natty Bumppo" in the other 4 volumes) is one of the most enduring figures in all of American Literature. The honest-speaking, self-reliant, nature-loving, chaste woodsman/warrior is indelibly etched in our national psyche. It's no exaggeration to say he has influenced generations of Americans. Surely our military has taken to the man -- the Hawkeye missile is just one explicit manifestation.

Juxtaposed to Hawk-eye is the Huron Chieftain, Magua, who wreaks havoc on everyone, including himself. Trust me -- he's not the sort of fellow you'd want over for a weekend barbecue. His descent into darkness began with a fondness for the bottle, which led to the expulsion from his own tribe. And his kidnapping of Colonel Munro's daughters stems from a humiliating whipping ordered by their father. Magua lives in the obscure half-world betwixt the tribe that abandoned him and the British Army that he betrayed.

Cooper has seemingly placed Hawk-eye and Magua at opposite ends on the continuum of good and evil. But perhaps they are not quite that far apart. There's something a bit unsettling about the heroic Hawk-eye. Like Magua, he occupies a strange middle ground, shunning white civilization (into which he was born), but hardly embracing Native American culture (with the exception of his friendship with Chingachgook and his son, Uncas.) And while I would not lable Hawk-eye an outright racist, he does ridicule and dehumanize his Indian foes. And as for exterminating them, he has no scruple about that. He'd shoot every one of them given the chance.

Say this for Magua -- he is no racist. He offers his wigwam (albeit in forced circumstances) to Colonel Munro's eldest daughter, Cora, whose dark hair and dusky complexion are traceable to her Caribbean slave ancestry. As Slatkin points out in his essay, the commingling of their blood would unite the three great races of our nation's history. Such an amalgamation is unthinkable to Hawk-eye. In the final scene of the book, Colonel Monroe asks Hawk-eye to translate for the Delaware maidens the hope that one day all of God's children, regardless of color, will assemble around his throne. What is Hawk-eye's response? "To tell them this, would be to tell them that the snows come not in winter..."

Perhaps Hawk-eye's response is his cold calculus that our country could never become part white/part red, and that the latter must inevitably fade away. Magua understands this all too well. Native Americans are playing a losing hand, especially when they end up fighting one another. Afterall, notwithstanding the honor of saving Cora and Alice, what's really in it for Hawk-eye's Mohican allies in their battle with the Hurons? In a word, extinction. In some ways, Magua is spiritually akin to the real-life Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Nation, who asked his tribesmen if they knew what happened to the Great Narragansett? I'll tell the reader. More than one hundred years before Cooper's haunting tale, the Puritans exterminated the Rhode Island tribe, and the Iroquois hunted down the few ragged survivors.

Summary of The Last of the Mohicans (Leatherstocking Tale)

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