![]() Illustration from the novel's 1896 edition depicting Hawk-eye disguised as a bear fighting Magua in the cave where Alice is held captive | |
Author | James Fenimore Cooper |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | Leatherstocking Tales |
Genre | Historical novel |
Publisher | H.C. Carey & I. Lea |
Publication date | February 1826 |
Publication place | United States |
813.2 | |
Preceded by | The Pioneers (1823) |
Followed by | The Prairie (1827) |
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical romance novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. [1] The Pathfinder , published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel; its prequel, The Deerslayer , was published a year after The Pathfinder. [2] The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the British. Specifically, the events of the novel are set immediately before, during, and after the Siege of Fort William Henry.
The novel is set primarily in the area of Lake George, New York, detailing the transport of Colonel Munro's two daughters, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, Major Duncan Heyward, singing teacher David Gamut, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the latter two being the novel's title characters. These characters are sometimes seen as a microcosm of the budding American society, particularly with regard to their racial composition. [3]
The novel has been one of the most popular English-language novels since its publication and is frequently assigned reading in American literature courses. [4] It has been adapted numerous times and in many languages for theatrical and television films, and cartoons.
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At the time of Cooper's writing, many U.S. settlers believed and perpetuated the myth that Native Americans were disappearing, believing they would ultimately be assimilated or killed off entirely due to the genocidal structure of settler colonialism. [5] Especially in the East, as Native Peoples' land was stolen and settled on in the name of U.S. expansion and Jeffersonian agrarianism, the narrative that many Native Peoples were "vanishing" was prevalent in both novels like Cooper's and local newspapers. [6] [7] This allowed settlers to view themselves as the original people of the land and reinforced their belief in European ethnic and racial superiority through, among other rationalisations, the tenets of scientific racism. [8] In this way, Cooper was interested in the American progress narrative when more colonists were increasing pressure on Native Americans, which they, and Cooper, would then view as "natural". [8] [9]
Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, which his father had established on what was then a western frontier settlement that had developed after the Revolutionary War.[ citation needed ]
Cooper set this novel during the Seven Years' War, an international conflict between Great Britain and France, which had a front in North America known by the Anglo-American colonists as the French and Indian War. The conflict arrayed American settlers and minimal regular forces against royal French forces, with both sides also relying on Native American allies. The war was fought primarily along the frontiers of the British colonies from Virginia to Nova Scotia.[ citation needed ]
In the spring of 1757, Lieutenant Colonel George Monro became garrison commander of Fort William Henry, located on Lake George in the Province of New York. In early August, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and 7,000 troops besieged the fort. On 2 August General Webb, who commanded the area from his base at Fort Edward south of the lake, sent 200 regulars and 800 Massachusetts militia to reinforce the garrison at William Henry. In the novel, this is the relief column with which Monro's daughters travel.[ citation needed ]
Monro sent messengers south to Fort Edward on 3 August requesting reinforcements, but Webb refused to send any of his estimated 1,600 men north because they were all that stood between the French and Albany. He wrote to Munro on 4 August that he should negotiate the best terms possible; this communication was intercepted and delivered to Montcalm. In Cooper's version, the missive was being carried by Bumppo when he, and it, fell into French hands.[ citation needed ]
On 7 August Montcalm sent men to the fort under a truce flag to deliver Webb's dispatch. By then the fort's walls had been breached, many of its guns were useless, and the garrison had taken significant casualties. After another day of bombardment by the French, Monro raised the white flag and agreed to withdraw under parole.[ citation needed ]
When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indian allies, angered at the lost opportunity for loot, attacked the British column. Cooper's account of the attack and aftermath is lurid and somewhat inaccurate. A detailed reconstruction of the action and its aftermath indicates that the final tally of British missing and dead ranges from 70 to 184; [10] more than 500 British were taken captive.[ citation needed ]
Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Munro, are traveling with Major Duncan Heyward from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry, where Munro is in command, and acquire another companion in David Gamut, a singing teacher. They are guided through the forest by a native named Magua, who leads them through a shortcut unaccompanied by the British militia. Heyward is dissatisfied with Magua's shortcut, and the party roams unguided and finally join Natty Bumppo, known as Hawk-eye, a scout for the British, and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. Heyward becomes suspicious of Magua, and Hawk-eye and the Mohicans agree with his suspicion that Magua is a Huron scout secretly allied with the French. Upon discovery as such, Magua escapes, and in the (correct) belief that Magua will return with Huron reinforcements, Hawk-eye and the Mohicans lead their new companions to a hidden cave on an island in a river. They are attacked there by the Hurons, and their ammunition is soon exhausted. Knowing they will be killed instantly but that the English party will make valuable captives, Hawk-eye and the Mohicans escape, with a promise to return for their companions.
Magua and the Hurons capture Heyward, Gamut, and the Munro sisters. Magua admits that he is seeking revenge against Cora's father, Colonel Munro, for turning him into an alcoholic with whiskey (causing him to be temporarily cast out of the Hurons) and then whipping him at a post for drunken behavior. He offers to spare the party if Cora becomes his wife, but she refuses. Upon a second refusal, he sentences the prisoners to death. Hawk-eye and the Mohicans rescue all four and lead them to a dilapidated building that was involved in a battle between the Huron and the British some years ago. They are nearly attacked again, but the Hurons leave the area, rather than disturb the graves of their tribesmen.
The next day, Hawk-eye leads the party to Fort Henry, past a siege by the French army. Munro sends Hawk-eye to Fort Edward for reinforcements, but he is captured by the French, who deliver him to Fort Henry without the letter. Heyward returns to Colonel Munro and announces his love for Alice, and Munro gives his permission for Heyward's courtship. The French general, Montcalm, invites Munro to a parley and shows him General Webb's letter, in which the British general has refused reinforcements. At this, Munro agrees to Montcalm's terms: that the British soldiers, together with their women and children, must leave the fort and withdraw from the war for eighteen months. Outside the fort, the column of British evacuees is betrayed and ambushed by 2,000 Huron warriors; in the ensuing massacre, Magua kidnaps Cora and Alice, and he leads them toward the Huron village, with David Gamut in pursuit.
Hawk-eye, the Mohicans, Heyward, and Colonel Munro survive the massacre and set out to follow Magua, and cross a lake to intercept his trail. They encounter a band of Hurons by the lakeshore, who spot the travelers. A canoe chase ensues, in which the rescuers reach land before the Hurons can kill them, and eventually follow Magua to the Huron village. Here, they find Gamut (earlier spared by the Hurons as a harmless madman), who says that Alice is held in this village and Cora in one belonging to the Lenape (Delaware).
Disguised as a French medicine man, Heyward enters the Huron village with Gamut to rescue Alice; Hawk-eye and Uncas set out to rescue Cora, and Munro and Chingachgook remain in safety. Uncas is taken prisoner by the Hurons and left to starve when he withstands torture, and Heyward fails to find Alice. A Huron warrior asks Heyward to heal his lunatic wife, and both are stalked by Hawk-eye in the guise of a bear. They enter a cave where the madwoman is kept, and the warrior leaves. Soon after the revelation of his identity to Heyward, Hawk-eye accompanies him, and they find Alice. They are discovered by Magua, but Hawk-eye overpowers him, and they leave him tied to a wall. Thereafter Heyward escapes with Alice, while Hawk-eye remains to save Uncas. Gamut convinces a Huron to allow him and his magical bear (Hawk-eye in disguise) to approach Uncas, and they untie him. Uncas dons the bear disguise, Hawk-eye wears Gamut's clothes, and Gamut stays in a corner mimicking Uncas. Uncas and Hawk-eye escape by traveling to the Delaware village where Cora is being held, just as the Hurons suspect something is amiss and find Magua tied up in the cave. Magua tells his tribe the full story behind Heyward and Hawk-eye's deceit before assuming leadership of the Hurons, who vow revenge.
Uncas and Hawk-eye are being held prisoner with Alice, Cora, and Heyward by the Delawares. Magua enters the Delaware village and demands the return of his prisoners. During the ensuing council meeting, Uncas is revealed to be a Mohican, a once-dominant tribe closely related to the Delawares. Tamenund, the sage of the Delawares, sides with Uncas and frees the prisoners, except Cora, whom he awards to Magua according to tribal custom. This makes a showdown between the Hurons and Delawares inevitable, but to satisfy laws of hospitality, Tamenund gives Magua a three-hour head start before pursuit. While the Delawares are preparing for battle, David Gamut escapes the Huron village and tells his companions that Magua has positioned his men in the woods between the Huron and Delaware villages. Undeterred, Uncas, Hawk-eye, Heyward, Gamut, and the Delawares march into the woods to fight the Hurons.
In the ensuing battle, the Delawares are joined by Chingachgook and Munro, and ultimately vanquish the Hurons and capture their village, but Magua escapes with Cora and two other Hurons; Uncas, Hawk-eye, Heyward, and Gamut pursue them up to a high mountain. In a fight at the edge of a cliff, one of the Hurons kills Cora, Gamut kills one of the Hurons, Magua kills Uncas, and Hawk-eye kills Magua. The novel concludes with a lengthy account of the funerals of Uncas and Cora at the Delaware village, and Hawk-eye reaffirms his friendship with Chingachgook. Tamenund prophesies: "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again..."
According to Susan Fenimore Cooper, the author's eldest daughter, Cooper first conceived the idea for the book while visiting the Adirondack Mountains in 1825 with a party of English gentlemen. [18] The party passed through the Catskills, an area with which Cooper was already familiar, and about which he had written in his first novel featuring Natty Bumppo: The Pioneers. They passed on to Lake George and Glens falls.
Impressed with the caves behind the falls, one member of the party suggested that "here was the very scene for a romance." Susan Cooper says that Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, made this remark. Cooper promised Stanley "that a book should be written, in which these caves should have a place; the idea of a romance essentially Indian in character then first suggesting itself to his mind." [19]
Cooper began work on the novel immediately. He and his family stayed for the summer in a cottage belonging to a friend, situated on the Long Island shore of the Sound, opposite Blackwell's Island, not far from Hallett's Cove (the area is now part of Astoria). He wrote quickly and completed the novel in the space of three or four months. He suffered a serious illness thought to have been brought on by sunstroke [19] and, at one point, he dictated the outline of the fight between Magua and Chingachgook (12th chapter), to his wife, who thought that he was delirious. [18]
In the novel, Hawkeye refers to Lake George as the Horican. Cooper felt that Lake George was too plain, while the French name, Le Lac du St. Sacrement, was "too complicated". Horican he found on an old map of the area; it was a French transliteration of a native group who had once lived in the area. [20]
Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, the frontier town founded by his father. His daughter said that as a young man he had few opportunities to meet and talk with Native Americans: "occasionally some small party of the Oneidas, or other representatives of the Five Nations, had crossed his path in the valley of the Susquehanna River, or on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he served when a midshipman in the navy." [18] He read what sources were available at the time—Heckewelder, Charlevoix, William Penn, Smith, Elliot, Colden, Lang, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie.
By using the name Uncas for one of his characters, he seemed to confuse the two regional tribes: the Mohegan of Connecticut, of which Uncas had been a well-known sachem, and the Mohican of upstate New York. The popularity of Cooper's book helped spread the confusion. [21] [22]
In the period when Cooper was writing, deputations from the Western tribes frequently traveled through the region along the Mohawk River, on their way to New York or Washington, D.C. He made a point of visiting these parties as they passed through Albany and New York. On several occasions, he followed them to Washington to observe them for longer. He also talked to the military officers and interpreters who accompanied them. [18]
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The novel was first published in 1826 by Carey & Lea, of Philadelphia. According to Susan Cooper, its success was "greater than that of any previous book from the same pen" and "in Europe, the book produced quite a startling effect." [18]
Over time the book grew to be regarded by some as the first Great American Novel. [23] It was not always the case. Cooper's novels were popular in their day, but contemporary and subsequent 19th-century reviewers were often critical, or dismissive. For example, the reviewer of the London Magazine (May 1826) described the novel as "clearly by much the worst of Mr. Cooper's performances." [24] Mark Twain notably derided the author in his essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", published in North American Review (July 1895). Twain complained that Cooper lacked a variety of styles and was overly wordy. In the early 1940s, Twain scholar Bernard DeVoto found that there was more to the essay, and pieced together a second one from the extra writing, titled "Fenimore Cooper's Further Literary Offenses," in which Twain re-writes a small section of The Last of the Mohicans, claiming that Cooper, "the generous spendthrift", used 100 "extra and unnecessary words" in the original version. [25]
Re-reading the book in his later years, Cooper noted some inconsistencies of plot and characterization, particularly the character of Munro. But, he wrote that in general, "the book must needs have some interest for the reader since it could amuse even the writer, who had in a great measure forgotten the details of his work." [18]
The Last of the Mohicans has been James Fenimore Cooper's most popular work. It has influenced popular opinion about American Indians and the frontier period of eastern American history. The romanticized images of the strong, fearless, and ever-resourceful frontiersman (i.e., Natty Bumppo), as well as the stoic, wise, and noble "red man" (i.e., Chingachgook), were notions derived from Cooper's characterizations more than from anywhere else. [26] The phrase, "the last of the Mohicans", has come to represent the sole survivor of a noble race or type. [27]
In the M*A*S*H book, film and television franchise, the character Hawkeye Pierce is given his nickname by his father, after Hawk-eye from The Last of the Mohicans. [28] A main character in the original novel and subsequent film adaptation, Hawkeye, as portrayed by Alan Alda, is the central character in the long-running TV series.
A number of films have been based on the lengthy book, making various cuts, compressions, and changes. The American adaptations include:
The 1920 film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. According to the director Michael Mann, his 1992 version was based more on the 1936 film version. Mann believes Cooper's novel is "not a very good book", taking issue with Cooper's sympathy for the Euro-Americans and their seizure of the American Indians' domain. [29]
In Germany, Der Letzte der Mohikaner , with Béla Lugosi as Chingachgook, was the second part of the two-part Lederstrumpf film released in 1920. The Last Tomahawk directed by Harald Reinl was a 1965 West German/Italian/Spanish co-production setting elements of the story in the era after the American Civil War. Based on the same series of the novels, Chingachgook, die große Schlange (Chingachgook the Great Serpent), starring Gojko Mitić as Chingachgook, appeared in East Germany in 1967, and became popular throughout the Eastern Bloc.
Alva Henderson's operatic version premiered in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1976. [30]
In 1977, Lake George Opera presented the same work. [31]
Classic Comics #4, The Last of the Mohicans, first published 1942.
Marvel Comics has published two versions of the story: in 1976 a one-issue version as part of their Marvel Classics Comics series (issue #13). In 2007, they published a six-issue mini-series to start the new Marvel Illustrated series.
Famed manga artist Shigeru Sugiura wrote and illustrated a very loose manga adaptation of the story in 1952-3 (remade in 1973–4). This adaptation is heavily influenced by American movies and western comics and is filled with absurd humor and anachronistic jokes. An English translation of Sugiura's 1973-4 version including a lengthy essay on Sugiura's artistic influences was published in the United States in 2013. [32]
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1920 American silent adventure drama film written by Robert A. Dillon, adapted from James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel of the same name. Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur co-directed the film. It is a story of two English sisters meeting danger on the frontier of the American colonies, in and around the fort commanded by their father. The adventure film stars Wallace Beery, Barbara Bedford, Lillian Hall, Alan Roscoe and Boris Karloff in one of his earliest silent film roles. Barbara Bedford later married her co-star in the film, Alan Roscoe in real life. The production was shot near Big Bear Lake and in Yosemite Valley.
Magua is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. This historical novel is set at the time of the French and Indian War. A Huron Indian chief, he is also known by the French alias "Le Renard Subtil".
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman known to European-American settlers as "Leatherstocking", "The Pathfinder", and "the trapper". Native Americans call him "Deerslayer", "La Longue Carabine", and "Hawkeye".
Chingachgook is a fictional character in four of James Fenimore Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, including his 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans. Chingachgook was a lone Mohican chief and companion of the series' hero, Natty Bumppo. In The Deerslayer, Chingachgook married Wah-ta-Wah, who had a son with him named Uncas, but died while she was still young. Uncas, who was at his birth "last of the Mohicans", grew to manhood but was killed in a battle with the Huron warrior Magua. Chingachgook died as an old man in the novel The Pioneers, which makes him the actual "last of the Mohicans," having outlived his son.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1992 American historical action film directed by Michael Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher Crowe, based on the 1826 novel of the same name by James Fenimore Cooper. The film is set in 1757 during the French and Indian War. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, and Jodhi May.
The capture and rescue of Jemima Boone and the Callaway girls is a famous incident in the colonial history of Kentucky. Three girls were captured by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party on July 14, 1776, and rescued three days later by Daniel Boone and his party, celebrated for their success. The incident was portrayed in 19th-century literature and paintings: James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Charles Ferdinand Wimar painted The Abduction of Boone's Daughter by the Indians.
The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path (1841) was James Fenimore Cooper's last novel in his Leatherstocking Tales. Its 1740–1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. The novel's setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking Tales to be published (1823). The Deerslayer is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the series. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in New York State, which is the setting of four of his five Leatherstocking Tales.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1932 American pre-Code Mascot movie serial based on the 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.
The Prairie: A Tale (1827) is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man". Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales, though it was published before The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). It depicts Natty in the final year of his life, still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier. The book frequently references characters and events from the two books previously published in the Leatherstocking Tales as well as the two which Cooper would not write for more than ten years. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan and Alice Heyward, as well as the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English for the French nickname for the Delaware, le Coeur-dur.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1936 American historical western adventure film directed by George B. Seitz and starring Randolph Scott, Binnie Barnes and Henry Wilcoxon. The screenplay by Philip Dunne was based on the 1826 novel of the same name by James Fenimore Cooper. It was produced by Edward Small and distributed by United Artists.
Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo is a fictional character and the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales. He appears throughout the series as an archetypal American ranger, and has been portrayed many times in a variety of media in popular culture.
The Last of the Mohicans is the feature-length second part of the 1920 German silent Western film Lederstrumpf (Leatherstocking) directed by Arthur Wellin and featuring Bela Lugosi and Emil Mamalock. Bela Lugosi played the Indian Chingachgook, one of his most unusual roles, and Emil Mamalock played Hawkeye, the Deerslayer. It is based on James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel of the same name. The first part is The Deerslayer and Chingachgook.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1971 BBC serial, based on the 1826 novel of the same name by James Fenimore Cooper, directed by David Maloney.
Hawkeye is a television series, airing in syndication for one season during 1994–1995, and produced by Stephen J. Cannell. The series was filmed in North Vancouver and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Fall of the Mohicans is a 1965 Spanish-Italian historical western adventure film directed by Mateo Cano and starring Jack Taylor, Paul Muller and Sara Lezana. The film is based on James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans, but made in the style of a Spaghetti Western. It was shot on location in the Tabernas Desert of Almería Another adaptation of the story The Last Tomahawk was released the same year by Germany's Constantin Film.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1968 internationally co-produced Western film, co-directed by Jean Dréville, Pierre Gaspard-Huit and Sergiu Nicolaescu. It was the second episode of the European TV miniseries Leatherstocking Tales.
Last of the Redskins is a 1947 American Western film directed by George Sherman and starring Joh Hall and Michael O'Shea. The film was shot in Vitacolor but released in Cinecolor.
The Iroquois Trail is a 1950 American Western film directed by Phil Karlson starring George Montgomery and Brenda Marshall. It is set during the French-Indian War. It is an adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work The Last of the Mohicans, with significant alterations. As with the book, one of the major plot lines is based on the siege of Fort William Henry and the subsequent massacre.
Last of the Mohicans is a 1977 American adventure drama television film based on the novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. The film was directed by James L. Conway, written by Stephen Lord, and stars Steve Forrest, Ned Romero, Andrew Prine, Don Shanks, Michele Marsh, Jane Actman, and Robert Tessier. It was produced by Schick Sunn Classic Pictures as part of their Classics Illustrated series, and aired on NBC on November 23, 1977.
The Last of the Mohicans: The Death of Cora, also known as Indian Sacrifice, is a c. 1827 painting by British-American painter Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School. The painting depicts the death of Cora from the 1826 American novel The Last of the Mohicans. It is one of four such paintings by Cole which depict scenes from the novel. The painting is currently owned by the University of Pennsylvania.