The Last of the Mohicans

“ A gleam of resentment flashed across the dark lineaments of the Mohican chief: he loosened his knife in its sheath; and then turning calmly from the sight, his countenance settled into a repose as deep as if he never knew the instigation of passion.
"Montcalm! Montcalm!" continued the deeply resentful and less self-restrained scout; "they say a time must come, when all the deeds done in the flesh will be seen at a single look; and that by eyes cleared from mortal infirmities. Woe betide the wretch who is born to behold this plain, with the judgment hanging about his soul! ”

“ If they have gone alone, they are quite as likely to move in a circle as straight, and they may be within a dozen miles of us; but if the Hurons, or any of the French Indians, have laid hands on them, 'tis probable they are now near the borders of the Canadas. But what matters that?" continued the deliberate scout, observing the powerful anxiety and disappointment the listeners exhibited; "here are the Mohicans and I on one end of the trail, and, rely on it, we find the other, though they should be a hundred leagues asunder! ”

“ No perceptible emotion could be discovered in the Mohicans during this critical moment, their rigid features expressing neither hope nor alarm; but the scout again turned his head, and laughing in his own silent manner, he said to Heyward,—
"The knaves love to hear the sounds of their pieces; but the eye is not to be found among the Mingos that can calculate a true range in a dancing canoe! You see the dumb devils have taken off a man to charge, and by the smallest measurement that can be allowed, we move three feet to their two!" ”

“ When they see the spirit of this Mohican toiling after them with his burden, they will know we are of that mind. Then will they go on happy; and our children will say, 'So did our fathers to their friends, so must we do to them.' What is a Yengee? we have slain many, but the earth is still pale. A stain on the name of a Huron can only be hid by blood that comes from the veins of an Indian. ”

“ You see before you a chief of the great Mohican Sagamores! Once his family could chase their deer over tracts of country wider than that which belongs to the Albany Patteroon, without crossing brook or hill that was not their own; but what is left to their descendant! He may find his six feet of earth when God chooses, and keep it in peace, perhaps, if he has a friend who will take the pains to sink his head so low that the ploughshares cannot reach it! ”

“ Winters and summers, nights and days, have we roved the wilderness in company, eating of the same dish, one sleeping while the other watched; and afore it shall be said that Uncas was taken to the torment, and I at hand—There is but a single Ruler of us all, whatever may be the color of the skin; and Him I call to witness, that before the Mohican boy shall perish for the want of a friend, good faith shall depart the 'arth, and 'Killdeer' become as harmless as the tooting we'pon of the singer! ”

“ You forget that I have told you our guide is now a Mohawk, and that be serves with our forces as a friend."
"And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo," returned the other, positively. "A Mohawk! No, give me a Delaware or a Mohican for honesty; and when they will fight, which they won't all do, having suffered their cunning enemies, the Maquas, to make them women—but when they will fight at all, look to a Delaware or a Mohican for a warrior!" ”

“ Approaching Uncas, she held the blazing brand in such a manner as to cast its red glare on his person, and to expose the slightest emotion of his countenance. The Mohican maintained his firm and haughty attitude; and his eyes, so far from deigning to meet her inquisitive look, dwelt steadily on the distance, as though it penetrated the obstacles which impeded the view and looked into futurity. ”

“ They are captives."
"Better so than left to starve in the wilderness," returned the scout; "and they will leave a wider trail. I would wager fifty beaver skins against as many flints, that the Mohicans and I enter their wigwams within the month! Stoop to it, Uncas, and try what you can make of the moccasin; for moccasin it plainly is, and no shoe."
The young Mohican bent over the track, and removing the scattered leaves from around the place, he examined it with much of that sort of scrutiny that a money dealer, in these days of pecuniary doubts, would bestow on a suspected due-bill. ”

“ Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans. ”

“ The Mohicans had suspended their operations about the glimmering fire to listen; and, when Duncan had done, they looked at each other significantly, the father uttering the never-failing exclamation of surprise. The scout ruminated, like a man digesting his newly-acquired knowledge, and once more stole a glance at the horses.
“I dare to say there are even stranger sights to be seen in the settlements!” he said, at length. “Natur’ is sadly abused by man, when he once gets the mastery. But, go sidling or go straight, Uncas had seen the movement, and their trail led us on to the broken bush. ”

“ Not so, however, with the scout arid the Mohicans. Those acute and long practised senses, whose powers so often exceed the limits of all ordinary credulity, after having detected the danger, had enabled them to ascertain its magnitude and duration. Not one of the three appeared in the least to doubt, now, of their perfect security, as was indicated by the preparations that were soon made, to sit in council over their future proceedings.
The confusion of nations, and even of tribes, to which Hawk-eye alluded, existed at that period in the fullest force. ”

“ To what, as a white man has no taint of Indian blood, I should be ashamed to own; to the judgment of the young Mohican, in matters which I should know better than he, but which I can now hardly believe to be true, though my own eyes tell me it is so. ”

“ Uncas, you are right; the dark hair has been here, and she has fled, like a frighted fawn, to the wood; none who could fly would remain to be murdered! Let us have a search for the marks she left; for to Indian eyes I sometimes think even a humming-bird leaves his trail in the air!"
The young Mohican darted away at the suggestion, and the scout had hardly done speaking before the former raised a cry of success from the margin of the forest. ”

“ His Last of the Mohicans and Prairie are noble productions, to be matched with any in the world for the delineation of lofty and elevated character—the more interesting that they belong to a race, like the heroic age, now wellnigh extinct. He paints the adventures, the life, the ideas, the passions, the combined pride and indolence, valour and craft, heroism and meanness of the red men, with the hand of a master. ”

“ These Mohicans and I will do what man's thoughts can invent, to keep such flowers, which, though so sweet, were never made for the wilderness, from harm, and that without hope of any other recompense but such as God always gives to upright dealings. ”

“ David began to utter sounds that would have shocked his delicate organs in more wakeful moments; in short, all but Hawk-eye and the Mohicans lost every idea of consciousness, in uncontrollable drowsiness. But the watchfulness of these vigilant protectors neither tired nor slumbered. Immovable as that rock, of which each appeared to form a part, they lay, with their eyes roving, without intermission, along the dark margin of trees that bounded the adjacent shores of the narrow stream. Not a sound escaped them ”

“ One would be, to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range the plain; by sending the Mohicans in front, we might then cut a lane through their sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies. ”

“ It is therefore with some show of reason that The Last of the Mohicans, which as a chain of brilliantly narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this matter of sustained excellence of execution, should be held to be the best of his works. ”

“ Are their souls to enter the land of the just like hungry Iroquois or unmanly Delawares, or shall they meet their friends with arms in their hands and robes on their backs? What will our fathers think the tribes of the Wyandots have become? They will look on their children with a dark eye, and say, ‘Go! a Chippewa has come hither with the name of a Huron.’ Brothers, we must not forget the dead; a red-skin never ceases to remember. We will load the back of this Mohican until he staggers under our bounty, and dispatch him after my young men. ”

“ Cooper's readers never yawn over these tales of the forest or the sea. He is the swan on the lake, the eagle in the air, the deer in the wood, and the wind on the sea." So writes Prof. Brander Matthews. That life-student of the American Indian, Francis Parkman, wrote: "It is easy to find fault with 'The Last of the Mohicans,' but it is far from easy to rival or even approach its excellence." It is said that "Magua," of this book, "is the best-drawn Indian in fiction; from scalp-lock to moccasin tingling with life" and the tension of the canoe-chase on the Horican. ”

“ Left now in a measure to themselves, the Mohicans, whose time had been so much devoted to the interests of others, seized the moment to devote some attention to themselves. Casting off at once the grave and austere demeanour of an Indian chief, Chingachgook commenced speaking to his son in the soft and playful tones of affection, Uncas gladly met the familiar air of his father, and before the hard breathing of the scout announced that he slept, a complete change was effected in the manner of his two associates. ”

“ There is nothing intricate or skillful about his plots as pieces of composition. In fact they seldom if ever come up to any striking finish. They do not so much conclude as die, and as a rule they “die hard.” They are made up of strings of exciting adventures, in which characters whom the reader likes are put into danger and then rescued from it. “The Last of the Mohicans” has its best material for a conclusion in the middle of the book, with the thrilling restoration of Alice and Cora to their father’s arms at Fort William Henry ”

“ Whatever case the critics may have made against his Indians, and of late they have rather deferred to him, his conception of the red man has been effective and is not likely now to be replaced. When people wish to know what it was to live in the days when the aborigines were in power, it is to this story of disastrous chances, of hair-breadth ’scapes, and moving accidents by flood and field, that the imagination naturally turns.
So well was The Last of the Mohicans received at home and abroad that Cooper was moved to write at once another tale of the Indians. ”

“ It was silent and gloomy, being tenanted solely by the captive, and lighted by the dying embers of a fire, which had been used for the purposed of cookery.
Uncas occupied a distant corner, in a reclining attitude, being rigidly bound, both hands and feet, by strong and painful withes. When the frightful object first presented itself to the young Mohican, he did not deign to bestow a single glance on the animal. The scout, who had left David at the door, to ascertain they were not observed, thought it prudent to preserve his disguise until assured of their privacy. ”

“ By this time the song of Gamut had ceased, and the sisters had learned to still the exhibition of their emotions. Aided by Duncan and the younger Mohican, the two latter descended the precipitous sides of that hill which they had so lately ascended under so very different auspices, and whose summit had so nearly proved the scene of their massacre. At the foot, they found the Narragansetts browsing the herbage of the bushes; and having mounted, they followed the movements of a guide, who, in the most deadly straits, had so often proved himself their friend. ”

“ I see them sit."—Gray.
" 'Twould be neglecting a warning that is given for our good, to lie hid any longer," said Hawk-eye, "when such sounds are raised in the forest! These gentle ones may keep close, but the Mohicans and I will watch upon the rock, where I suppose a major of the 60th would wish to keep us company."
"Is then our danger so pressing?" asked Cora.
"He who makes strange sounds, and gives them out for man's information, alone knows our danger. ”

“ As bright examples of great qualities are but too uncommon among Christians, so are they singular and solitary with the Indians; though, for the honor of our common nature, neither are incapable of producing them. Let us then hope that this Mohican may not disappoint our wishes, but prove what his looks assert him to be, a brave and constant friend.” ”

“ What Cooper did in The Last of the Mohicans that he had not done so well in his previous historical novels, was to make the central theme, the conquest of the Indian by the white, turn upon and be explained by the chief historical event of the book, the savagery of the red men at Fort William Henry. He achieved a skillful blend of research and fabrication that has resulted in its being regarded the best treatment of the ominous theme of race conflict. ”