THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (Book review)

The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (1826), Transatlantic Press, Amersham, Bucks, 2012, 464 pages.

James Fenimore Cooper dipped his pen in the inkwell of beautiful prose and painted this series of beautiful water colours and intricate oils for display in his gallery of adventure!

The setting for the highly descriptive tale is the environs around and on “Lake Horican”, or as the French called it, Lac du Saint Sacrement, (which is present day Lake George in upstate New York), during the late 1700s.

The French and the British are going for the other’s jugular as they duel over land ownership. Some Indian tribes aligned themselves with the former, others the latter.

Young British officer Duncan Heyward, Cora and Alice Munro (daughters of the British Commandant of the bombarded Fort William Henry), Chingachgook and Uncas (the Mohican father and son aligned with the British), protagonist “Hawkeye” (woodsman and scout) and antagonist Magua (of the Hurons who side with the French) are the main characters. These, Cooper uses to exemplify human virtue and depict its depravity in vibrant colour with liberal splashes of crimson. The main characters’ actions and interactions are his brushes and the verdant and sylvan countryside, his palette.

As one steps back to view this novel as a whole and then moves in close enough to see the brush strokes, one can see clearly that this is a literary masterpiece. Among the exhilarating canoe chases, the shelling, the smoke and debris, the hand-to-hand combat, the murder and mayhem, yes, the after battle scalping, there runs an unusual calming influence.

David Gamut, the unarmed “psalm-singer”, may easily be overlooked. He may not be as flash and dash or even half as eloquent as “Hawkeye”, but he is dominant, nevertheless. Cooper deftly uses his character to reveal the hearts of men and the Providence of God. At first, he seems to be a burden, slowing down Hawkeye’s male and female party as it tries to escape from Magua and his savage Hurons. However, he helps them find strength and fortitude for the battle turning their loath of him into love. (Think of someone like an army chaplain).

Even the British-hating Huron left David well alone, thinking him soft in the head because he carried only a Bible and would sing psalms to them as he walked among them. “‘And why are you permitted to go at large, unwatched?’ David… meekly replied. ‘Little be the praise to such a worm as I. But, though the power of psalmody was suspended, in the terrible business of that field of blood through which we have passed, it has recovered its influence even over the souls of the heathen, and I am suffered to go and come at will.’ The scout laughed, and tapping his own forehead significantly, he perhaps explained the singular indulgence more satisfactorily when he said: ‘The Indians never harm a non-composser…’” p. 293.  

Yes, this Calvinist brought order to the chaos of 1757 North America – civilization.