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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

The Last of the Mohicans

by James Fenimore Cooper

1826

Novel

Historical, Adventure

A scout and his Indian friends try to rescue an English officer's daughters from Indian captors during the French and Indian War.

In this novel of forest adventure, Natty Bumppo joins with his Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, to escort the daughters of the commander to the besieged Fort William Henry. When the daughters are captured in the subsequent retreat from the fort, the three friends join with others to rescue them.

Magua, a renegade Huron, captures Cora and Alice in order to avenge an insult from their father, Munro. Because the spirited Cora proves attractive to him, Magua eventually decides to keep her as his squaw.

Magua takes his captives into Canada. Major Heyward joins the pursuers to regain his beloved Alice. Uncas has fallen in love with Cora. Natty and Chingachgook are loyal to Munro and to the ideals of filial piety. These motives suggest different thematic levels in the plot.

Of special interest is the problem of racial mixture. Natty often speaks of his pure white blood, implying that mixing races is evil. Cora, who has mixed white and black blood and who attracts Indian suitors, is an early example in literature of the tragic mulatto who has no place in a racist culture.

Cooper uses the American wilderness as a moral landscape. When the civilized English enter the wilderness, they must learn to read it like a book. Though the Indians are divided into good and evil forces, the British cannot tell them apart. They first choose an evil guide in the pagan Magua, but eventually find good guides in the Christian Natty and his “noble savage” Mohican friends. Without good guides, they would be lost in a moral as well as a physical wilderness.

These allegorical elements underline Cooper's belief that although evil cannot finally triumph, good men will often fall victim to evil if they are not courageous and skillful. Because so few men have the knowledge, skill, and integrity of Natty and Chingachgook, it is crucial to seek the protection of law and authority in civilization. The wilderness frees evil men to do their worst, requires good men to display heroic qualities, and teaches ordinary men the necessity of civilization.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Cooper, James Fenimore. "The Last Of The Mohicans." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0282.
APA 7th
Cooper, J. F. (2015). The Last of the Mohicans. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Cooper, James Fenimore. "The Last Of The Mohicans." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.