controversial period of relocation of the American Indian West of the Mississippi. In the film we see that Native Americans are portrayed as two kinds of individuals. There are the demonized and savage portrayals of Indians like Magua who betrays the white man at all costs and the savage scalping practices of the Huron. In contrast, the film also attempts to portray Native Americans in a balanced light by providing the characters of Chingachgook and Uncas, the last of the Mohican tribe who befriend the white man and seek unity and peaceful coexistence.
In the film we also see good and bad Americans, French and British characters. Surely some of the actions of Munro and others are as reprehensible as any of those carried out by Native Americans. In presenting both sides of character for all races and cultures, the film attempts to portray that in any era there are good and bad people of all races and cultures. Nevertheless, it is pretty much an idealized version of the Native American as noble savage that is presented in the film. Indians like Chingachgook and Uncas as presented as noble and selfless, with a purity matched only by their communion with nature. As Hawkeye remarks, ôThere is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red skin, but white people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I canÆt approveö (Seitz, 1936).
Despite the idealized nature of some Native Americans, Indians like Magua and the Huron are not idealized. In contrast to the refined and ôcivilizedö manner of the Alice MunroÆs and British officials, the Huron are presented as savages who eat raw meat and practice violence for its own sake. They kill at will, women and children included, and they often kill merely to win the possessions of others, even blankets from babies. Yet, the dualistic presentation of the Native Americans is not so far off from the filmÆs dualistic presentation of the Europeans and Americans. Whil...