The Last of the Mohicans enjoyed tremendous popularity both in America and abroad, offering its readers not only a variation on the immensely popular traditional captivity narrative of the time, but also characters that would become iconic figures in the young nation’s emerging literature. The novel’s central action follows Leatherstocking and his two faithful friends, Chingachgook and Uncas, as they come to the aid of two daughters of a British officer seeking to become reunited with their father. The novel provides insights into Cooper’s own thinking on Native American and White relations during the early national period, revealing a profound ambivalence to the reality that the rising fortunes of the young United States meant the declining fortunes of the nation’s Native American inhabitants.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Maps Introduction James Fenimore Cooper: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text The Last of the Mohicans Preface Volume I Volume II Appendix A: Illustrations Appendix B: Cooper’s Historical Sources From John Gottlieb Heckewelder, History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations (1876) From Jonathan Carver, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768(1781) From Benjamin Silliman, A Short Tour Between Hartford and Quebec (1824) Appendix C: Recollections and Appraisals of Cooper From the United States Literary Gazette (May 1826) From the Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres (April 1826) From W.H. Gardiner, North American Review (1826) From William Cullen Bryant, “Discourse on the Life, Genius, and Writings of J. Fenimore Cooper” (1852) From Susan Fenimore Cooper, Pages and Pictures, from the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper (1861) From Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper’s Further Literary Offenses,” The New England Quarterly (c. 1895) Appendix D: The Cherokee Removal The United States Congress’s Indian Removal Act (1830) From Andrew Jackson’s Second State of the Union Address (1830) Select Bibliography