The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics) | James Fenimore Cooper

The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics) | James Fenimore Cooper | "THE TIME OF THE RED-MEN HAS NOT YET COME AGAIN"

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The Last of the Mo...

	The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics) James Fenimore Cooper Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences?biographical, historical, and literary?to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. During the fierce French and Indian wars, an adroit scout named Hawkeye and his companion Chingachgook weave through the spectacular and dangerous wilderness of upstate New York, fighting to save the beautiful Munro sisters from the Huron renegade Magua.

The Last of the Mohicans is the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper?s five Leatherstocking Tales. With its death-defying chases and teeth-clenching suspense, this American classic established many archetypes of American frontier fiction.

An engrossing ?Western? by America?s first great novelist, The Last of the Mohicans is a story of survival and treachery, love and deliverance.

Stephen Railton, Professor of English at the University of Virginia, has written books on Cooper, Mark Twain, and the American Renaissance, and has created major websites on Twain, Uncle Tom?s Cabin, and American culture.

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A True American Classic

The Last of the Mohicans taken as part of the series which includes the Pathfinder and The Pioneers is a brilliant adventure novel.

The author, James Fenimore Cooper, never meant the novels to be taken as historical texts. Still, he paints a world as vividly as Tolkien ever did. Only Cooper's American frontier can be understood by any American middle school student.

Like the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Cooper's Last of the Mohicans and other works deserve to be a part of every American child's passage into adulthood.

"THE TIME OF THE RED-MEN HAS NOT YET COME AGAIN"

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is a tale of Indians caught up in North American wars started in Europe. One focus is on hundreds of Hurons, part of a force of 10,000, who invade the colony of New York down Lake George as allies of the French Marquis de Montcalm. In August 1757 2,300 besieged British soldiers under Scottish Commander Colonel Munro surrender to Montcalm on generous terms. The men are permitted to march with colors and arms a day south to a larger British army fortress under General Webb who declines to come to their rescue with his 6,000 men. Munro's own advanced fort, William Henry, is then burned by the French. The British march out into the forest with their weapons but must keep them unloaded.

The Huron allies of Montcalm take advantage of their unprotected state to fall upon the British and massacre a goodly number of them, including women and chldren. So much is history.

The fiction, the art, involves the Colonel's two unmarried daughters Cora and Alice, a white Army scout Natty Bumppo and his two close Indian friends Chingachgook and his son Uncas. These two are Mohicans, indeed the last Mohicans, a once powerful component of the Delawares or Lenape of the eastern seaboard. There is also the disgraced (for drunkenness) Huron Indian Magua. He had been banished by his tribe to live among Iroquois allies of the British. There is also a very young British colonial Major Duncan Heyward. Not to be forgotten: a comic religious musician, David Gamut. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS tells how they interact during and after the siege of Fort William Henry.

Magua, a figure reminding of Milton's Satan, loves dark Cora, who has a black West Indian ancestress. Major Heyward loves blonde Alice. Back in Canada, but close to the New York border, two large Indian encampments lie close to one another, one Huron, one Delaware. Magua divides his prisoners: two with the Hurons, one with the Delawares. The last few chapters of the novel relate efforts by Natty and his associates to free these prisoners.

Through superior oratorical skills supremely evil Magua and naturally good and great Uncas for a few brief hours achieve paramount power in their two respective tribes. They use their new powers to attempt one another's destruction. A French emissary arrives too late to keep the peace.

The Delawares rout and massacre the Hurons. Indians killing Indians, in Fenimore Cooper's vision, seems to be a major element eplaining inevitable white victory in North America. Had the French won, Cooper implies, there might conceivably have been racial integration and respect among two races something like equals. But the British won and they regarded Indians as eternally inferior, savage and unclean. To them miscegenation was therefore unthinkable.

Natty Bumppo, the Deerslayer, also known as Hawkeye, also the Pathfinder or la longue carabine sides with the British in this cultural respect. He personally prefers at least some Indians to most whites and is readily accepted by Delawares and others. All races and all individuals, Natty argues, have their distinct gifts from God. God wills peace but peace must be based on each person or group minding his or its own business, doing its special thing and generally living up to and within the limits of his and its gifts. Thus the races must not intermingle. For there to be peace in North America, the strong must conquer the weak, sad though such an outcome admittedly is.

The last words of this novel are solemnly spoken by ancient Delaware chief Tamenund, well over a century old, whose name is also preserved as Tammany and in Tammany Hall. He concludes the funeral rites for Cora and Uncas:

"It is enough," he said. "Go, children, of the Lenape, the anger of Manitou is not done. ... The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again. The day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis [turtles, i.e. Delwares of the eastern seaboard] happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans." (Ch XXXIII)

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