The Last Of The Mohicans

[detective]

In the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, who actually was the Last of the Mohicans in that he was the final member of that tribe to survive?

[spudqueen]

According to this site it is Uncas http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mohicans/charact ers.html

[Xanthippe]

I thought Uncas was killed, leaving his father, Chingagchook, the last of the Mohicans. I admit I've only watched the Daniel Day Lewis film because the book is an absolute nightmare to read.

[Clanad]

In the novel, Uncas, son of Chingachgook dies in a doomed attempt to save Cora (rather than the blond Alice) as represented in the movie.
Actually, I thought the James Fenimore Cooper novel was an excellent classic, considering it was written in 1826 and one has to suffer through the period dialogue. But the story is well constructed and the characters are developed with depth. One of the major characters in the book that only receives passing notice in the movie is that of the aged Sagamore Tamenund ... a legendary chief of the Delawares. But even more interesting and important to the controversial nature of the book, for it's time, is the character Cora, eldest daughter of British Colonel Munro. Cora Munro is the first African-American heroine in American literature. To see how Cooper presents this situation our first encounter with Cora is in the first chapter, when Cooper describes her:
"The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the colour of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bounds. And yet there was neither coarseness, nor want of shadowing, in a countenance that was exquisitely regular and dignified, and surpassingly beautiful"... We find that she is the product of Munro and his first wife, a mulatto when he was stationed in the West Indies. His first wife dies and he returns to Scotland to marry his first love who becomes the mother of Alice, half sister to Cora.
At any rate, Uncas, Cora and Magua all die in a final battle scene of Chapter 32... Hawkeye (Natty Bumpo, La Longue Caribine, Deersalyer, all names of the main character) and Chingachgook's friendship is even more cemented, and at the end they wander off together. A very good read...

[Xanthippe]

You've tempted me to try it again, clanad. Thanks.

[cucuhullan]

I seem to have read many years ago that there was actually no tribe called the Mohican.Confusingly there was(is?) a tribe called the Mohawks.

[Clanad]

From the Mohican Facts and Directory:

The general term "Mohican" has been used to refer not only to the Mahicans and their kin the Wappingers, but also to six or seven other Indian tribes lumped together as Mohegans by early colonists. The confusion between these eastern tribes was worsened by James Fenimore Cooper's book "Last of the Mohicans," which incorrectly merged the Mahicans and Mohegans into a single, extinct Mohican tribe. In reality the Mahicans and Mohegans have never been the same tribe, and neither group is extinct. (Cooper may have been thinking of the Wappingers, who really had been destroyed as a distinct people by the time he wrote his book--the survivors were mostly absorbed into the Mahican tribe, where their descendents remain today.) The similarity between their names is due to coincidence and European mispronunciation--"Mahican" comes from the word Muheconneok, "from the waters that are never still" (the Hudson River), and "Mohegan" comes from the word Mahiingan, "wolf." Today there are about 3000 Mahican Indians in Wisconsin, where they were forced to emigrate, and many Mahican descendents scattered throughout New England.

History: The Mahicans, or Mohicans, were original natives of what is now New York state, along the banks of the Hudson River. Like most Indian tribes of New England, the Mohicans were devastated by warfare and European diseases during the early colonial period, then forced to leave their homelands by Dutch and British expansion. Some Mohicans sought refuge with neighboring tribes, including the Lenape and the Iroquois, but most resettled in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where they came to be known as the Stockbridge Indians. Soon the Stockbridge Mohicans were deported once again to Wisconsin, where they joined the Munsee Indians on a jointly held reservation. The Munsee and Mohican tribes remain together there to this day.

[cucuhullan]

White man cucuhullan is grateful to clanad for expanding his knowledge of native american culture and for not speaking with forked tongue.!!!!!!!!!