Last year, reading The Pathfinder, I was quite conscious of not having read The Last of the Mohicans, the most famous of Cooper's five-book Leatherstocking series. So now I've rectified that. Mohicans is the second in the series, so maybe I should go back and read the first in the series, The Pioneeers, but since that is set at a later time (1793), maybe I'd want to read The Deerslayer, which was published later but set earlier, in 1740. I suspect I may eventually find an excuse to read them all.
Mohicans is very different from Pathfinder, despite the presence of Natty Bumppo (aka Hawk-eye, la Longue Carabine, and other names) and Chingachgook, his Mohican brother. There is less humor, and in its place we have extensive violence. In addition, two main characters die, which I wasn't expecting -- though maybe the title should have been a clue.
The novel is set during the French & Indian War, and is loosely based on a true series of events, specifically the Siege of Fort William Henry. The British, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro, commanded this fort near Lake George in New York state, and were attacked by the French, led by General Montcalm, and the Native Americans allied with them. General Webb, who commanded nearby Fort Edward, sent troops to help but eventually would send no more, and Fort William Henry conceded defeat to the French. While they were leaving the fort, some of the Indians allied with the French attacked the British, killing (according to Wikipedia) between 70 and 184 of them. They also took 500 as prisoners.
In The Last of the Mohicans, the two beautiful (fictional) daughters of Munro (as he is called in the book) are at Fort Edward and proceed to Fort William Henry to be with their father. Cora and Alice are accompanied by an American soldier called Duncan Heyward, who is in love with Alice, a teacher and practitioner of religious music called David Gamut, and an Indian guide, called Magua. Magua turns out to be evil and abandons them in the forest, but luckily they are found by Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and the latter's son, Uncas, who rescue them and defend them from Magua and other Indians. Cora, Alice, Heyward, and David eventually make it to the fort, but when Colonel Munro accepts defeat and they have to leave the fort, Magua captures Cora (who he desires for a wife), Alice, and David, and runs away with them. This is for the best, since most all of the other whites in the fort are killed by the Indians in a terrible massacre (much worse than what really happened).
In the second part of the book, Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, Uncas, Heyward, and Colonel Munro head north to find Munro's daughters, helped by Uncas's almost magical tracking skills. In the end, SPOILER ALERT, Magua kills Uncas and one of his associates kills Cora, but Hawk-eye shoots Magua, and the local Delaware Indians (who are related to the Mohicans) massacre the local Huron Indians (Magua's tribe), and there is a big joint funeral for Cora and Uncas, who the Delawares seem to think will have some sort of a marriage in heaven, though Hawk-eye strongly disapproves of this idea. We are told that Colonel Munro dies soon after, Heyward and Alice marry, and Hawk-eye and Chingachgook continue to lead their wild lives together.
But James Fenimore Cooper's attitude toward the Indians he writes about is worth looking at closely. While the book is full of praise for the talents of Uncas and Chingachgook, it also clearly portrays them (and the other Native Americans in the book) as members of a dying race. As Tamenund (ancient leader of the Delawares, based on a real person) says at the end: "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again." Basically, Cooper wrote romantically about the END of Indians, not their continuing existence in the world. His books helped spread this view, the idea that soon there wouldn't be any more Indigenous people, not that they would continue to live and be part of America.
When I read The Pathfinder last year, I thought the racial sentiments expressed in the book were almost progressive. I'd have to go back and check that book again, but based on the racial sentiments expressed in The Last of the Mohicans, I think I was probably wrong. The difference between the two books is that in Pathfinder, there are few concerns about intermarriage. In Mohicans, it's an issue. First of all, Colonel Munro's daughter Cora is mixed-race -- a distant ancestor on her mother's side was Black. Although Cora is beautiful and spirited, the American soldier Heyward has no interest in her, only in Alice, who is described as "alabaster." Instead, Magua the Huron is attracted to her, and later, apparently, so is Uncas (I didn't actually notice Uncas' interest, but Richard Slotkin, who wrote the introduction to the edition I read, assures me it's there). Cora finds Magua's attentions disgusting, but I'm not sure how she feels about Uncas. Hawk-eye, whose opinions are generally supposed to be the wisest, believes the races should not mix. He describes himself as "a man without a cross," which I thought meant he wasn't religious, but which Richard Slotkin tells me means that Hawk-eye is pure white, no crossbreeding in him.
So, The Last of the Mohicans presents us with a number of Cooper's opinions: Indians are a dying race, they have "gifts" as Hawk-eye puts it, and should be admired for what they are, but basically they are inferior to white people, who were in the process of inheriting the earth at the time the book was set (1757) and written (1826), and should not intermarry with them. And this was, for the time, a liberal view -- other authors were much worse.
I should add that I didn't enjoy the book very much. It's more exciting than Pathfinder was last year, fewer long boring discursive passages, but I also kept getting confused about what was happening. In the next-to-last chapter, when Hawk-eye shoots someone, I completely missed it. Later I read a review that mentioned Hawk-eye had shot this person, so I went back to the book. I had to read the passage over and over before I saw it.
...It was now, when the body of his enemy was most collected together, that the agitated weapon of the scout was drawn to his shoulder. The surrounding rocks, themselves, were not steadier than the piece became for the single instant that it poured out its contents. The arms of [ ] relaxed, and his body fell back a little, while his knees still kept their position. Turning a relentless look on his enemy, he shook his hand in grim defiance. But his hold loosened, and his dark person was seen cutting the air with its head downwards, for a fleeting instant, until it glided past the fringe of shrubbery which clung to the mountain, in its rapid flight to destruction.
I thought he just fell off the mountain. Missed the shooting entirely. It's possible that I was sleepy, for I mainly read the book right before bed.
Well, I'll be interested to watch the movie, because I gather from reading about it that it attempts to eliminate some of the racism, especially regarding the two beautiful sisters. Also, I love Daniel Day-Lewis, but he's not at all who I would have imagined as Hawk-eye. So we'll see, probably tonight.
Postscript: I did watch the movie and wanted to add a few comments. It's a great, fun movie, very exciting and well-acted. There are big changes from the book, but they all seemed to make emotional sense. Each time there was a diversion from the book -- oh, they killed off this character, not that one -- I would think, OK, that works, I'm OK with that. I think that says something about the book, that its story is deeper than the complicated surface plot.
Much of the racial ick from the book is gone. Magua doesn't want to marry Cora, he wants to kill her, so we don't have to worry about interracial marriage issues (Uncas and Alice are interested in each other, but it's not gone into much). The biggest change from the book is that Hawk-eye is a young man, around the age of Uncas, and Chingachgook is his adopted father who refers to Hawk-eye as "my white son." That gives Daniel Day-Lewis the opportunity to be the romantic lead and fall for Cora, who in this story is not part Black, but still beautiful and spirited. The Hawk-eye from the book could not be imagined in this role. Making Hawk-eye the leading man requires that the book's focus on Uncas be changed -- the whole second half of the book is reduced to a couple of big scenes. But a two-hour movie can't include everything from a 350-page novel, so...
It just occurred to me how surprised James Fenimore Cooper would have been if he could have seen Wes Studi play Magua.
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