The Last of the Mohicans: Book Lovers' & Students' English Classics Series

Author: Cooper (USA)
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-07-01
Features: "The Last of the Mohicans" is the finest work in the "Leatherstocking Tales." The story takes place in the late 1750s, during the third year of the "Seven Years' War" between Britain and France for control of North American colonies, in the area around the source of the Hudson River and Lake George. At that time, it was a battlefield of fierce bloodshed. The novel follows the experiences of Colonel Munro's two daughters, Cora and Alice, as they travel to the fort to visit their father and are kidnapped along the way, unfolding a series of thrilling scenes of tracking, ambush, and battle in the wilderness. The protagonist, Natty Bumppo, has now become a scout for the British army and has earned the nickname "Hawkeye." Together with his old friend, the Mohican chief "Blacksnake" Chingachgook, and Chingachgook's son "Lightning" Uncas, they bravely step forward to rescue the sisters and engage in a hair-raising struggle with the kidnappers, which ultimately ends in a fierce battle. On the surface, it seems like a "robinsonade" romance story, but in reality, the work first tells us: the British and French colonizers are the source of all evil. They launched the war to plunder this land of the Native Americans and jointly implemented fraudulent, brutal, and even horrifying policies of ethnic extermination against them. They paid high prices for Native American scalps, used "firewater" and the Bible to numb the Native Americans' will to resist, forced them to serve as cannon fodder through deception and coercion, and maliciously incited the Native American tribes to fight among themselves, leading to mutual destruction. Chingachgook was once the great chief of the Mohican tribe, and his own tribe was tragically destroyed by the white colonizers' guns and treacherous schemes. He once sadly told his close friend Bumppo: "Before the British came, our tribe was united, and we lived happily. The salt lake gave us fresh fish, the forest gave us deer, the sky gave us birds, we married wives, and our wives gave us children. But after the Dutch landed, they gave firewater to my people until they couldn't tell the sky from the earth. Later, they were forced to leave their land and gradually driven away from the beloved shores, until they reached this point: as a leader and great chief, I can only see sunlight through the cracks of the trees and never get to visit my ancestral graves!" Unfortunately, even his only heir, Uncas, died at the hands of Magua, another Native American. Just like the Mohican tribe, the Wyanodane tribe, which was used by the French colonial authorities, was "completely destroyed" by the shores of Lake Huron in the final battle. This vividly shows us that the history of the development of North American colonies is, in essence, a history of blood and tears for the Native Americans.