Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper essays

Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper essays The Last of the Mohicans, a novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826, details the lives of French, English, and native Americans during the early American colonial period. Set in North America, the novel discusses the conflict among races and nationality: English battling against the French forces, and native Americans battling for their territory over the two colonizers (French and English). The novel, more than a work of literature, is also a historical account of the lives of native Americans, the positive and negative members of its race, and the complex situation they faced when they were "dispossessed" by the colonizers. History determines the events surrounding the novel to have happened during the French and Indian Wars, which lasted for seventy-five years (1698-1763). The historical period where the events in the novel take place is characterized by "[m]assacres and scalpings traditional conceptions of honor yielded to the exigencies of the forests British and French combat was no longer a source of national unity but a divisive conflict in which loyalties were compromised and cultural values repeatedly transgressed" Apart from being a period of native American displacement and colonial rule, the Mohicans also confronts the issue of "Puritan New England," where race and culture takes a secondary priority over the issue of religious differences. In the novel, Cooper also depicts conflict between native Americans and its colonizers, particularly the English, where the latter experiences conflict and disagreement with the "savage ways" of the former, due to their primitive and pagan-like form of worship. Cooper's Mohicans, in consideration with all the important events that occurred as discussed above, is an example of a series of "Leatherstocking Tales," which depicts life and society in early America, particularly the dynamic con...