‘The Last of the Mohicans’ or the First of America’s Branded Heroes? Exploring How the Archetype Has Endured in American Literature and Cinema

“The Indian’s Vespers” by Asher Brown Durand, 1847. In this piece, Durand painted references of American landscapes to evoke the ancient roots and yearnings of mankind. (Public Domain)

“The Last of the Mohicans” is often dismissed as a boring old novel full of dense descriptions, epitomizing Mark Twain’s definition of a “classic” as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Twain himself did not think much of its author, James Fenimore Cooper, whose “literary offenses” he lampooned in a famous essay. But Twain’s view is hardly impartial: As a great novelist himself, he needed a literary forebear to overthrow—and what better target than America’s first great novelist? Although it is not taught much in schools these days, “The Last of the Mohicans” is a magnificent adventure story, and its hero, Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo, is arguably the most influential character in all of American literature.

Rural Inspiration

Cooper was born in 1789, growing up in a New York frontier town where he passed his boyhood listening to elderly pioneers tell stories from a bygone era. As a student at Yale, his individualism often brought him into conflict with others. After being expelled for pranks, he retained a lifelong aversion to educated New Englanders. At age 17, he took up sailing, witnessing British oppression firsthand when crew members of the Royal Navy boarded his merchant ship and coerced a fellow sailor into service. After this, he joined the U.S. Navy. Stationed at Lake Ontario, he built ships and explored the wilderness in his spare time.

A portrait of James Fenimore Cooper by Charles Loring Elliott, 1860. (Public Domain)

These early experiences taught Cooper to admire the aging settlers he knew as a boy while resenting the civilized people who continually pushed back the boundaries of the unspoiled frontier and made the pioneer’s way of life obsolete. Cooper’s belief that society is a necessary evil bringing law and order, but also greed and cowardice, led him to espouse the morally uplifting benefits of nature. He developed this attitude in over 30 novels, in addition to writing plays, short stories, travelogues, and historical works.

He is best known for his series of five novels known as the “Leatherstocking Tales.” The second of these, “The Last of the Mohicans,” was published in 1826 and is regarded as his masterpiece. Set in 1757, it recounts one of the worst atrocities of the French and Indian War, in which Indian allies of the French massacre a retreating British column following the siege of Fort William Henry. Cooper dramatizes these historical events through the eyes of two fictional daughters of a British colonel and their guides, Mohicans whose tribe is on the brink of extinction (at least in the novel). It is these three protectors—Chingachgook, Uncas, and the adopted frontiersman Natty Bumppo—who represent Cooper’s ideal of virtuous men uncorrupted by urban vices.

The Heroic Frontiersman

The idea of the “noble savage” is an old one going back to the Roman historian Tacitus, who in his book “Germania” idealized the rustic northern tribes at the expense of their Italian conquerors. Later, when America was discovered, many Europeans associated its native inhabitants with a lost golden age where man lived in harmony with nature.

“Scene From ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund” by Thomas Cole, 1827. (Public Domain)

In reality of course, tribal peoples were capable of terrible atrocities and were not particularly noble much of the time. Cooper recognized this. He portrayed frontier life with a brutal realism while capitalizing on the romantic ideal of natural virtue in his heroes. Cooper applied the noble savage stereotype to Chingachgook and Uncas, but he also updated it to create a character with no prior parallel in fiction. The protagonist of the “Leatherstocking” novels, Natty Bumppo, is always noble but not quite savage—nor quite civilized. A white child educated by Christians but raised by Delaware Indians, his identity is both European and Indian. He embodies the best of both populations without belonging to either.

In “The Cowboy Hero and Its Audience,” Alf H. Walle describes the way Cooper created “an archetypal symbol of America” by pitting a heroic frontiersman “against an amoral and effete civilized world.” Cooper drew on real-life settlers as models for Bumppo, whose nicknames include Hawkeye, Deerslayer, Leatherstocking, and Long Rifle. While he is skilled in fighting and wilderness survival, what makes him a compelling character is his personal moral code. He distinguishes good from bad by judging people on their own terms rather than according to abstract social norms. He does not coerce others to follow his private beliefs and always keeps his word despite the danger this causes. In Bumppo, Cooper invented a blueprint of the virtuous outsider that has been frequently copied by later storytellers.

Popular Influence

Cooper’s novel has been adapted into more media than any other single work of classic American literature, including “Huckleberry Finn” (a close second), “Moby Dick,” “The Scarlet Letter,” or “The Great Gatsby.” In addition to radio, opera, and comic book treatments, there have been 14 film versions (11 in the United States, 3 in Germany) and five television series, with HBO purportedly working on a sixth. Hollywood remakes occurred, on average, once every seven-and-a-half years between 1909 and 1992, and three decades have now passed without a new one.

The best adaptation, at least according to film historians, is the 1920 version directed by Maurice Tourneur. It ignored the complicated politics between the various Indian tribes and their European contenders to focus on the tragic love story between Cora, the eldest daughter of Colonel Munro, and the Mohican warrior Uncas. Actress Barbara Bedford’s dreamy gazes and heaving bustline made her portrayal of Cora sensual and sensational by 1920 standards. With its beautiful imagery and fast-paced fight scenes, it is considered one of the best films of the silent era.

“Landscape With Figures: A Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans’” by Thomas Cole, 1826. Cora, clad in white, lies dying on a cliff beside Uncas, a Mohican who was killed while attempting to save her from Magua, a member of the enemy Huron tribe. (Public Domain)

People today, however, tend to be familiar with the 1992 version directed by Michael Mann. Although it is based more on the 1936 movie than the original novel, its intense action, soaring music, lush cinematography, and charismatic performance by Daniel Day-Lewis make it the definitive adaptation for many viewers.

This film has an invented scene that does not occur in the original novel but parallels chapters throughout the “Leatherstocking Tales” that dramatize clashes between the law and Bumppo’s conscience (renamed Nathaniel Poe in the movie, but known as Hawkeye). In Mann’s version, Hawkeye warns allied frontiersmen at Fort William Henry that Indians are attacking their homesteads. Colonel Munro refuses to honor a prior verbal agreement that they may leave to defend their families. Hawkeye helps the frontiersmen to escape, is imprisoned for sedition, and is sentenced to hang. The scene efficiently conveys how the hero’s moral compassion conflicts with a rigid and arbitrary legal system that places no value on a man’s word. Cooper’s message in his novels is that society persecutes individuals who possess true virtue and destroys them when they refuse to submit.

Nathaniel Bumppo’s descendants can be seen everywhere. Countless novelists and filmmakers are indebted to him as the prototype for their gunslingers, private eyes, and detectives. His tough, principled individualism has been imitated by such actors as John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood. Nearly every Western ever made employs the formula of the outlaw seeking refuge in the wilderness. Though the original hero may have been superseded, Cooper’s character type is an enduring part of America’s fictional landscape.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.