83. James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Native characters form the book's hidden heart.
What side was James Fenimore Cooper on when he wrote The Last of the Mohicans exactly 200 years ago? The book is both an elegy for Native Americans and a celebration of the white frontiersman. But Cooper gives the novel’s most devastating lines to Native characters, who form the book’s hidden heart.
The first is Chingachgook, the last Mohican chief, early in the novel:
“Then, we were one people, and we were happy. The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its deer, and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us children; we worshipped the Great Spirit... Where are the blossoms of those summers!—fallen, one by one; so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hilltop and must go down into the valley; and when [my son] follows in my footsteps there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans.”
The second belongs to Tamenund, a venerable Delaware chief, in Chapter 29:
“I know that the pale faces are a proud and hungry race. I know that they claim not only to have the earth, but that the meanest of their color is better than the Sachems of the red man... They entered the land at the rising, and may yet go off at the setting sun. I have often seen the locusts strip the leaves from the trees, but the season of blossoms has always come again.”
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!
Hiram Powers' marble sculpture, The Last of the Tribes, usually on view In the American galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, always reminds me of Cooper's novel. And the photographs of Edward Sheriff Curtis, (especially The Vanishing Race – Navaho, when it is on view), are also very poignant. His biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan is a powerful read.
On a positive note, Wendy Red Star, a contemporary native America artist of the Crow Nation joins other artists, such as Marie Watt, in bringing their traditional cultures to the fore.
“Native people are represented as eradicated, like in Edward Curtis’s The Vanishing Race (1904) project. It’s worked pretty well. I think people are surprised when they find a Native person because in the consciousness of America it’s like we don’t exist.”
- Wendy Red Star
Jiminy, a wonderful entry! I loved introducing this novel to my students in the city, always, and when I arrived in this Enchanted land, I continued. Cooper speaks a truth unknown to so many. Thank you....