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The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper was part of a series of novels known collectively as "The Leatherstocking Tales," of which there are five, all produced between 1823 and 1841. The Last of the Mohicans was the second in the series in the order written, though the chronological order of the novels would be different, with the first story chronologically being the last of the five novels produced. Cooper was the first major American novelist, and his books are infused with an understanding of the colonial period, though Cooper himself was born not only after that era but after the founding of the country in 1776. In this and other novels in the series, Cooper presents images of the American Indian and relates them to the wilderness in which they live and to the civilization being forced upon them by the white settlers. Several different Indian tribes are included in the story of The Last of the Mohicans, with the main characters of Chingachgook and Uncas, his son, standing as the ideal of a noble tribe now reduced to just these two.

Cooper's treatment of the Indian in general reflects the view of the Indian as the noble savage, the non-Christian savage who gains nobility from an association with nature. The Indian was present in the New World before the coming of the white man, and Cooper is ambivalent about the role of white society in this new land. On the one hand, the settlers are working to carve a life for themselves out of the wilderness and are showing great courage in doing so. On the other hand, they are destroying much of the existing world of the Indian and are often at odds with one another while doing so. Natty Bumppo is a character who straddles these worlds, though he is seemingly more Indian in many respects.

Indeed, in the novel, the idea of the noble savage is important, with Chingachgook as an authentic example while Hawkeye is the colonial example. That is, the idea of the noble sav...

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The Last of the Mohicans. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:13, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702691.html