Differences In James Fenimore Cooper's The Last Of The Mohicans

In James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans, it is easy to see the destruction of the Native American race by the white man. The novel takes place in 1957, during the French and Indian War. It is known that the French often allied with Native tribes to gain an advantage over the Englishmen. This resulted in tragic massacres of English soldiers, and the loss of various tribes. Main characters Hawkeye, a white hunter, and Major Duncan Heyward, a young colonist, meet up by mischance after a tactic used by the main antagonist, Magua, to get Duncan’s group lost. The novel highlights the destruction of a race and a culture, by not only showing how they are incompatible with each other and have become mixed hybrids, but also the fall …show more content…
Hawkeye, a hunter, is a hybrid of the two, traveling with the last two members of the Mohican tribe, who he has come to befriend and care for deeply. Cooper begins their introduction by describing Hawkeye and Chingachgook, highlighting their differences. In reference to Chingachgook, a Native, Cooper writes, “His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colors of black and white. His closely shaved head, … was without ornament of any kind, with the exception of a solitary eagle's plume …. A tomahawk and scalping-knife, … were in his girdle” (27). Chingachgook is described as what one might consider a typical Native American warrior. However, in contrast to his naked appearance, Hawkeye is described entirely different, Cooper saying, “The frame of the white man, … was like that of one who had known hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full …. He wore a hunting-shirt of forest-green, fringed with faded yellow, and a summer cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur” (27). Hawkeye is less scantily clad, wearing a hunting shirt, and in comparison to Chingachgook, is painfully English. As the two talk, their differences are brought forth once more, both of the men’s ideas and beliefs conflicting, each arguing …show more content…
The novel explains how the two parties meet because of Magua. It can be assumed he used war tactics to disconcert the second group, containing Duncan, Cora, Alice, Gamut, and Munro. Magua eventually takes them captive, primarily Cora and Alice. When they encounter the Delaware, this new tribe is planning to attack and kill Uncas, until they remove his shirt and see a bright turquoise turtle, a symbol of his Delaware heritage. He starts talking to them, like a prophet, and eventually he says to them, “‘The blood of the turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son’” (Cooper 388). He articulates how his tribe, the men with the blood of the turtle, have all died from one cause or another, and he and his father are the only two left. That is, until Magua attacks Uncas. Directly after Magua stabs him in the back in the midst of a battle, Cooper writes, “But Uncas rose from the blow, …. Then with a stern and steady look, he turned to [Magua], and … the latter seized … the unresisting [Uncas], and passed his knife into his bosom three several times, before his victim … fell dead at his feet” (422). This marks the end of Uncas, son of the last Mohican. Later, during his funeral, Tamenund, sage of the Delaware, says, as the novel closes, “‘In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy, and strong; and yet, before the