The Last of the Mohicans — A Brief Review

The Last of the Mohicans — A Brief Review
Lon Clay Hill, Jr.
[25 June 2019]

The Book:
James Fenimore Cooper (1826) The Last of the Mohicans; A Narrative of 1757 (2 vols). Philadelphia: HC Carey & I. Lea.
James Fenimore Cooper (1983) The Last of the Mohicans; Introduction by Wayne Franklin. Belknap Press of Harvard University: Cambridge, MA, USA & London, England. xxxii+478 pages, paper.


James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans is a book I read in high school (1954-1957) following a suggestion by my English teacher. I recently saw a Turner Classic Movie inspired by the book and was prompted to reread the book ~53 years later for a second time. Let me make it clear, I make no claims for my overall knowledge on the subject of those people who came to the “New World” before the first Europeans came upon the two continents, their peoples, and the outlying islands of what are now commonly referred to as North and South America. However, I can report a couple of experiences which have informed my thinking and which lead me to some comments about what I think about some issues which are confronted — however adequately or inadequately — in Cooper’s book.

I grew up in Eastern Kentucky and many of my views of the Amerindian or native peoples were influenced by the general notions of the area — reinforced by many movies about what has been described by many US citizens of primary European ancestry (restricting ourselves  to the past 2-4 centuries) as the “Winning of the West.” However, my own thoughts were especially influenced and irrevocably altered by a 1973? trip from Phoenix, AZ to Gallup, NM after a young native American activists was apparently murdered by the police. We (5 native Americans and myself) rode for several hours o join a protest on his behalf. I still remember several incidents during the trip and the protest — but I mention only 3. I myself am usually a somewhat sociable and even a little garrulous at times, but this group (except for a couple whispering to each other on the other side of the back seat) was a very quiet and taciturn group. So I restricted myself to an occasional comment every 10-20 minutes. I was, however, quite pleased that they responded with interest when I pointed out a double rainbow well off to the left or right of our path. However, the most memorable event for me occurred as we approached the large group preparing for our protest march which would occur over the next couple of hours. I heard the rhythms of the tom-toms accompanied by the distinctive “hi-ya hi-ya…” chants that I knew all-too-well. But these beats and chants were right here in the lived moments — and not in the nearly forgotten movies of my pubescent youth in which John Wayne and others gloried in their struggles with no less than “God” on their side (No less than  "THE ALMIGHTY GOD" many would have said).

The story of the native peoples in the Pre-Columbian 10-20 millennia before 1492 is quite complex and varied — and, it is, for me, mostly an undigested background where only a few strong images emerge. However, there are — it seems to me — several ways in which Cooper touched upon the genuine problematics which accompanied the realization by Europeans, perhaps a century after Columbus’s accidental encounter with the islands of the Caribbeans, that besides plunder and gold, there were vast tracts of land where people might settle to live. Of course, that is the rub — were there indeed any of these vast tracts of land places where equitable relationships between newcomers and the earlier inhabitants might cohabitate in relative peace and harmony? Now, it is quite obvious to me that the actual history has been that harmonious and fair relationships between the newcomers and the earlier peoples have been much the exception than the rule. Furthermore, even if we were to grant that some traders, missionaries, homesteaders, and farmers lived in peaceable harmony with the earlier inhabitants [And many would not grant that stipulation] — even if we granted that a few newcomers acted honorably many would argue that the “good deeds” of such persons were largely superseded by the great majority of European-derived settlers who either believed (1) that “the only good Injun is a dead Injun” or (2) stood by in cowardly silence as treaties were broken, the land was stolen, and other misdeeds occurred. While massacres of native people such as those occurring in King Phillip’s War (1675-1678) and at Wounded Knee (1890) did not occur every day — they were not rare and they were — understating the case — all too common!

With these (unresolved) issues in mind, however, I would like to say that when Cooper published his novel in 1826 he portrayed in his characters some cultural-social-political realities which even now may help us to get beyond the mere tallying of “good and evil” from any perspective. So, after a few words about the novel’s structure, we detail some marked qualities about the main characters.

First, as one can surmise in the movies — and is even clearer in the novel (serially presented as 33 chapters — Cooper delivers a crisp heroic and romantic tale which is tailored for a relatively large public readership. The extraordinary tightrope in managing the main characters in the book — only in Chapter 32 is the story’s main villain killed shortly after two of the novels heroes are themselves tragically dispatched (Uncas, the last Mohican Warrior; Cora, a noble frontier maiden). The serial nature of the novel with its unlikely turns reminds me of the improbable escapes of Box Office Action Film heroes which enthrall so many of the younger audiences, especially. Cooper established himself financially with this book. However, while there are indeed clearly delimited heroes and villains in the book — there is much more to these heroes and villains than their virtuousness and villainy. To begin with — none of the main characters is a pure villain or a pure hero. Indeed, some of the characters [Bumppo & Chingachgook, especially] are portrayed slitely differently in other Cooper novels which suggests that Cooper’s understanding of relationships between the native people and the onsurging Americans was both tentative and evolving. Secondly, the prominence of the forested land [both the earlier, sparsely populated virgin forest and it present more populated and partially cleared status] is much more than a backdrop for the story. At some level the land in this novel is more prominent in this novel than the chorus of a Greek tragedy. At times it seems that Cooper tends to believe that “geography is destiny” and at other times he intimates that some of the characters are haunted by the ‘ghosts’ of uprooted tribes — indeed, this pervasive whisper suggests to me that he himself was haunted by such ghosts. The novel is set during the Seven Year’s War (1756-63), known in the USA and by English Canadians as the “French and Indian War.” If one reads Cooper’s other novels set in different time periods, it is clear that Cooper is preoccupied with the influence of both the land and the native people upon, especially, the character of those people who came here as British settlers but who had become “Americans” (USA variety).

In this context, I briefly describe and characterize, in my own words, the 7 most prominent characters in the book:

(1) Natty Bumppo (“Hawk-eye”; “La Longue Carabine”), the ostensible narrator, is a young frontier man. (2) Uncas (“The Bounding Elk”; “le Cerf Agile”) is the son of Chingachgook and a superb and noble Mohican warrior. (3) Cora Munro is a dark-haired young, virtuous, and courageous frontier woman. (4) Major Duncan Heyward, a brave — but sometimes unwise — British officer who is in love with Alice. (5) Magua (“Sly Fox”; “le renard subtil”), an unusually intelligent demagogic and vindictive Huron nursing wounds from former indignities — including an introduction to the British “fire water” — which would drive him to inflict other cruelties upon others. (6) Alice Munro is a young, protected and emotionally fragile frontier blonde woman. She is Cora’s sister by a younger mother. (7) Chingachgook is an old man and, at the end of the book, the last surviving Mohican. Leaping forward in time to Fenimore’s day — we would say that Bumppo and the two Munro daughters are “Americans” [USA variety], Heyward is an Englishman, and that Uncas, Magua, and Chingachgook are native Americans. We have mentioned that none of the main characters is a pure villain or a pure hero. Bumppo, Uncas, and Cora are clearly on the very virtuous end of the scale while, standing almost alone, Magua represents a very dark side of humanity. However, even Hawkeye indulges in some gratuitous scalping which characterizes the supposedly inferior behavior of the native people rather than the military necessity of a “civilized” man. Similarly the noble Uncas is killed by Magua at the end of the novel partially because his headstrong love for the captured Cora allows Magua to take lethal advantage of his foolishly headstrong rush to save her. Even Cora — it is suggested — is tainted somewhat by her modest African “blood” (apparently a “quadroon” or even an “octaroon” in the more precise lexicon of Louisiana and Caribbean slavery”. [Who is actually tainted we will discuss below.]

Cooper uses proper names and nicknames in both English and French to convey that the various parties in the story themselves have different perspectives on good and evil. And, while I believe that a fair reading can sometimes indicate the general perspective of Fenimore’s tale — it is true that Cooper usually writes in an indirect style that leaves many options still on the table. I myself have only two serious explicit objections to his tale (speaking, of course, with the “benefit” of historical hindsight). First, while Cooper is quite willing to honor friendships between persons of different tribes and skin “tints” [still crudely lumped into the term “color” in US English even today] — he has some deep reservations about interethnic and, especially, “interracial” unions and marriages between men and women. Cooper usually tries to be fair and dispassionate about such matters — but by suggesting that the tragic deaths of Cora and Uncas were “inevitable” suggests to me that he should have studied the history of single Frenchmen alone on the North American continent and their interactions with native women. Of course, the study of French colonialism — like the study of British colonialism — will reveal many public wrongs and private abuse. However, the Catholic French — with all their “sins” if you will — never adopted the lie (later developed into a full blown ideology) that separated the “races” of children of African slaves and/or native American women (& men) from the “races” of their parents. When Cora and Uncas are murdered, they are not fully exonerated as Romeo, Juliet, and Desdemona were exonerated in Shakespeare’s tales. In actual fact, I believe, no murder is inevitable — not surprising sometimes, or sometimes even “predictable”  — but not really “inevitable”. The ubiquitous pejorative use of the term “squaw man” used for fair-skinned men of predominantly European ancestry who lived with native women bespeaks a profoundly personal-disorder which gives the lie to any claim of genuine or true “civilization” on the part of countless settlers of predominantly European ancestry

Secondly, while is usually stays in the background and only comes into the story “as needed” Cooper makes quite a point of the seemingly “uncivilized” savagery of the Indians during their scalping, murder of women, and unusually vicious murders of infants at the Fort Henry scalpings [which comes front-and-center in Chapter XVII, and is well-documented in historical records]. Cooper argues (often thru Hawkeye’s internal monologues) that this is a step beyond the excesses of British and Western Civilized society. I am also quite prepared to accept that some of the ugly and revenge-driven practices utilized by native peoples against each other and against European settlers are sui generis — just as today some of the Isis beheadings, orgies of destruction, and rapes in the name of an “Islamic” caliphate are sui generis. These are wanton acts of violence which are utterly unjustified — chosen acts of evil by human actors. On the other hand, the fact that these deeds are evil — does not mean that other acts of evil chosen by persons of predominantly European ancestry are somehow less ignoble. The slave trade was still active while Cooper was writing. And, by the middle of the 19th Century many a soldier and outlaw of predominantly European ancestry had learned to scalp native women as well as native warriors. The culture-social-political implications of “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” are more profound, I believe, than the fact that as individuals most of us are, at least modestly, non-judgmental with our friends and family. Nietzsche stated that “Insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” I myself would say that claims of moral superiority by groups, nations, and “races” are usually reliable indicators that deep-seated and morally questionable blinders are in play.

While I have alluded to the role of women in Cooper’s female characters above, the pervasive reality of generic “feminine” traits and generic “male” traits — and conspicuous exceptions to these trends — remains with us today in a multiplicity of controversial formats. These pervasive complexities prevents me here from doing much more than making a suggestion. The two major females are quite present and Cora is in many ways quite a strong character. However, neither they or any other of the minor women characters are as public as historical characters such as Heloise, Joan of Arc, and Abigail Adams, writers such as the English feminist Wollstonecraft, or as characters in books by the contemporaneous Jane Austin. Of course, I would not expect that Cooper would have made the necessary effort to become aware of the near contemporaneous Wollstonecraft or to know the writings of his contemporary Jane Austin. What I am suggesting is that there is an implicit aura in this book which suggests that women, like children, may be seen, but they should not be heard in public in anything other than a subservient role. As this problem is hardly an exclusively USA “American” problem, I refer to this problem more as as perhaps a necessary consideration in addressing our contemporary cultural-political landscape rather than a particularly “stand-alone” problem in considering Cooper’s work.

During this past week of June 2019, there have been protests and problems at a US detention facility in Fort Sill, Oklahoma where the Trump nativism machine wishes to house “undocumented” migrant children in a manner apparently inconsistent both with existing law and standing court orders. Fort Sill is also a place where native people were once separated from their parents to be educated into the supposedly superior culture of the “pale faces” and, later, where native US citizens including wives and children of Japanese ancestry were separated from their families during War World II. So, the problems present in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans are still present with us today. However, in spite of these persistent problems involving the relationships between US Americans of predominantly European ancestry and those people whose  ancestry is predominantly non-European, Cooper’s work points to some solutions to the problems involved in the confrontations between the people of the [European] “Old World” and the inhabitants of what most of us call the Americas. [We are again restricting ourselves to the last 400 years.] In some ways this novel is more pertinently complex than many more seemingly up-to-date contemporary perspectives. I elaborate:

(1) When human beings from Europe came to the Americas, they began to change — their language, their customs, and their political loyalties. They did not plan to change. The simplest example is the development of American (USA-variety) English. These Americans did not plan to use “non-standard” English when they said “corn” instead of maize — they simply used in a new way the fact that the amerindian-developed plant was now in so many instances their primary grain. Thus, it was, that new primary dialects arose in the USA as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Other changes such as spelling color, favor, and humor for the French-derived standard British “colour”, “favour”, and “humour” are — I believe — not neutral, but positive changes. [Whether, the British or the Americans wish to believe it or not — the archaic spellings of almost all varieties of English are a treasure trove for those who are interested in the fascinating etymological changes of the English language. They are, however, a practical disaster for the millions of children and foreigners who wish to learn our language.] Nevertheless, while the changes in American English are usually only mildly controversial, other changes in the American landscapes, and the populations were much more complex — and, in their very nature, of continuing disputed consequence.

(2) As the United States of America is gradually, but inexorably, beginning to pay an increasingly expensive price for its reckless pursuit of “slash and burn” and “Drill, baby, drill” exploitation to fill the coffers of the rich — it is becoming clear to those who will not blind themselves that we do need to learn from the pre-Columbian guardians of the Land. Today, insects, fish, and birds recognize that global warming is a reality — many of them have changed their migration patterns by several hundreds of kilometers and by 2-4 weeks as they adjust to the new weather patterns. However, human beings have the capacity to deceive themselves and/or each other — especially with respect to the costs of their short-sighted immediate gains. Part of the recognition of our actual present straits involves relearning from contemporary native Americans the rich insights they had earned over hundreds and thousands of years from the rich earth.

A friend of mine once said after a visit to a small Hopi village that she recognized that the lore still held by this small, out of the way village, was just as essential to our survival on this planet as the science and technology of the rest of the country. The smell of fresh water, the call of a bird, the rustling of leaves, the stealth of a squirrel, and the quiet opening of a flower are still every bit as essential to the health of our land and peoples as they were believed to be by the first inhabitants of this continent.


A scientific note: The long view

Almost all humans on the planet have mitochondrial RNA derived from an African “Eve” who lived 100,000-300,000 years ago; a relatively few humans (contemporary Africans with apparent partial “Pygmy” ancestry) have a moderately distinct female gene pool — another very early “mother” than the great majority of humans. After early Africans made their way into Europe they interacted with Neanderthals to provide a relatively small assortment of non-African genes to the subsequent “European” populations. Of course, over time a number of genetic mutations arose in the relatively isolated populations that have inhabited various continents of the earth. The most distinctive “colors” of humans are critically dependent upon two essential and sometimes conflicting needs of any human population — (1) the need for protection against too much exposure to the sun’s UV radiation and (2) an absolute need for adequate amounts of vitamin D. Consequently, most human groups that have lived in the tropics for many generations tend to be very dark and most  most human groups that have lived far from the tropics zones for many generations tend to be much fairer or lighter than other humans. Two very interesting intermediate groups are the Maori of New Zealand, usually moderately dark in skin color [but distinctly lighter than most Polynesians] and the brownish Bushman of the Kalahari [again, distinctly lighter than those Africans who have lived nearer to the equator]. There are some exceptions: Eskimos who consume large amounts of fish oil in their diet are much darker than Swedes or Norwegians who live at similar latitudes. With Vitamin D already in their diet there is no need to risk the debilitation of occasional sunburns. For individuals and groups who have moved from their ancestral homes within the past few centuries, of course, their “color” may reflect their ancestry more than their present environment. Other words — the ‘red man’ for native Americans and the “yellow race” for Chinese and Japanese  are derived from a more complex stock of physical features. One hears for example of the ‘rainbow’ of colors found in human beings. As a metaphor I find this an attractive descriptor. However, the actual tints that are seen in human beings are not well described by the physics of laboratory measurements. People use eyes to see and the receptors in our eyes are differentially sensitive to 3 different ranges of light — the Red, Green, and Blue of some color wheels. These tints were well described by Goethe and, in actual fact, represent a much richer range of hints and hues than does a scale based on wavelength measurements alone [i.e., blue ~ 400 nm; red ~650nm]. And, of course, in human beings variations in skin tones and hues are often accompanied by variation in physical features. Thus an albino with soft wooly hair and large lips might self-describe hemself (herself, hisself) as “black” or “Afroamerican” to emphasize connections to known familial and ancestral roots. It would simply be impossible for almost all humans to avoid “color” in short and long descriptions of other human beings.

Personal caveat:

Cooper actually gives considerable attention to the physical features of his characters — with perhaps special attention to the color of the “Red” man. These comments and speculations are, admittedly, usually expressed in tentative or suppositional terms.  First, I simply assert my own belief that there is and has never been a pure “White” “Black” “Red” or “Yellow” or “Aryan” race. There have been and still are relatively homogeneous populations which can be innocently described by various terms which include color terms. However, and this is the more important point. It seems clear to me that when such terms are used with the supposed moral superiority of the speaker’s group in mind that these terms have become reference points for Western Civilizations greatest crimes — (1) the Holocaust; (2) Slavery (esp. chattel slavery in the USA; (3) numerous genocidal episodes in the subjugation of native peoples of the Americas.