Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
Back in the early 1800s, there was a writer who lived in New York State and loved its natural beauty. He began writing a series of novels describing the life of a wilderness man - Hawkeye - and his two Mohican indian companions. The indians were father and son, Chingachgook and Uncas. The books, known as the Leatherstocking Tales, became a world-wide sensation. Set in the wilds of the 1757 French-Indian War, the stories were near enough in time that they seemed familiar, but wild enough in characters, locations and situations that people all around the world ate them up.Because the book was one of the first created by an American about a uniquely American topic, it's often taught in literature classes - and because it's about wild "cowboys and indians" without sex or explicit violence, it's often red by young kids. How does this story hold up in modern times?
First, if you've seen any movie version, you are only seeing one eighth of the story. The book was long and dense. To cut that down to two or less hours is to cut out a TON of plot line. Much of the intricacies of the various indian tribes and their relationships to each other is lost, and usually they cut out several key characters as well.
In many ways the book is interesting and progressive for something written in the 1800s. Remember, even in the 1900s, Irish were being ostracized and native Americans were treated far worse. So back in 1826, James set his story around a Scotsman - Munro - and his two daughters, Cora and Alice. Not only that, but Cora was a quarter black - Munro had married a mixed-blood woman during his youth, then remarried a Scotswoman later to have Alice. So there are discussions where Munro strongly defends his daughter, where Hawkeye strongly defends his native friends, and where there are discussions about what a person is worth vs the color of their skin.
On the other hand, though, there are a lot of wild generalities made about native Americans. The book throws around terms such as 'barbaric' and 'devious' and 'lying' quite freely. You could say that they are the incorrect misconceptions of the main characters - but that doesn't make sense. Cora, mixed-blood herself, is quick to defend and speak up for the natives. Hawkeye certainly appreciates them. Maybe it is more like the gross generalizations made in many action-adventure movies where, for example, Indiana Jones fights off hordes of faceless "evil Arabs". You don't ask those movies to be accurate or understanding of the enemies. Maybe it's unfair to have asked this book to give accurate, well rounded descriptions of the "bad Indians". The problem is that the book became so popular, in lands where this book was their only glimpse of American Indian life, that they created very inaccurate portrayals that took a long time to dismiss.
The book was written very formally. I am generally a fast reader and can zip through books, but this one really makes you slow down and pay attention. If you like to skim books you might find this extremely troublesome. It's not just that it's an "old book" - even people back when it was written found the style difficult. You can say that it should have been written to read more smoothly - but on the other hand, it's not necessarily a bad thing to slow down and pay attention to what you are reading. Think of it as speed bumps which force you to slow down and really admire the landscape around you. I didn't find the prose style difficult at all and quite got into the hang of it.
Really, in the end, you can appreciate this book for being a high adventure novel written in the early 1800s by an American, about Americans, that opened the world's eyes to some of America's beauty. In that sense it achieved its goal quite nicely. For that reason, it's important for modern day people to read it and to understand its place in history, just like we read the Odyssey.
But it's also important to understand this is not a treatise on the actual characters and natures of the native Americans described. While James F. Cooper was familiar with the lands of New York that he describes, he had very little familiarity with the indian tribes. Many of his descriptions are misguided at best, and downright harmful and nasty at worst.
Book Plot of the Last of the Mohicans book 1992 Movie Plot of the Last of the Mohicans 1971 Masterpiece Theater Plot of the Last of the Mohicans
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