Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) – the first to try writing a series of novels.

The son of a Quaker family, he grew up on his father's remote estate at Otsego Lake (now Cooperstown) in central New York State. Although this area was relatively peaceful during Cooper's boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre. Young Fenimore Cooper grew up in an almost feudal environment. His father, Judge Cooper, was a landowner and leader. Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake as a boy; in later life, bold white settlers intruded on his land.

Natty Bumppo, Cooper's renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Mark Twain's Huck Finn.

In Cooper, the natural world and the Indian are fundamentally good. Intermediate characters are often suspect, especially greedy, poor white settlers who are too uneducated or unrefined to appreciate nature or culture. Cooper accepted the American condition while Irving did not. Irving addressed the American setting as a European might have -- by importing and adapting European legends, culture, and history. Cooper took the process a step farther. He created American settings and new, distinctively American characters and themes. He was the first to sound the recurring tragic note in American fiction.

His first novel was not successful.

The line about Natty Bumppo went much better.

The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by European settlers as "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," " La Longue Carabine " and "Hawkeye" (Соколиный глаз).

The "Story Dates" are derived from dates given in the tales, but do not necessarily correspond with the actual dates of the historical events described in the series. The Natty Bumppo character is generally believed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the real-life Daniel Boone.

The Last of the Mohicans summary: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mohicans/summary.html

The story takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of the North American colonies. During this war, the French called on allied Native American tribes to fight against the more numerous British colonists.

Culture Clash:

In the wilderness of upper New York, two cultures clash—white Eurocentric culture and native Indian culture. Ample evidence is given in the novel of the destruction caused to the Indians by the coming of the whites—Hawkeye himself acknowledges that this is so. The reason that Magua was driven from the Hurons, for example, was because the whites introduced the Indians to alcohol, and he fell victim to it.

Characters:

Hawkeye, Heyward, and David Gamut, each in his different way, represent the values of white civilization. Hawkeye still sees a wide gulf between the ways of the “Mingo” and those of the white man. He believes that whites have a more enlightened set of values, inspired by Christianity, although he is not an especially religious man. He claims that it is because he is white that he does not kill Magua when in Chapter XXV he has the Huron chief at his mercy. Revenge, Hawkeye claims, is an Indian practice.

Interracial relationships:

The theme of interracial relationships between Indians and whites is an undercurrent throughout the novel. Such relationships are frowned upon and regarded as unnatural. Magua’s desire for Cora, for example, is considered by all as repugnant.

The matter is complicated by the fact that Cora herself has dark blood in her, since her mother was descended from slaves.