The Last of the Mohicans

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1826

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 15-22

Chapters 23-33

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Music

Music is a motif that winds throughout The Last of the Mohicans, particularly in connection to David Gamut. In a direct sense, music is Gamut’s profession; he identifies himself early in the novel as a music teacher from Connecticut who specializes in singing psalms, hymns, and other religious songs: “the glorious art of petitioning and thanksgiving, as practiced in psalmody” (23). It is not entirely clear why he is traveling through the wilderness alone when he runs into Heyward’s group, and then joins them.

Gamut’s occupation with music connects him to art and culture, providing a contrast to the wilderness-focused characters like Natty Bumppo. When Bumppo meets Gamut, he asks the singer if he is capable of shooting a weapon, navigating, or another skill of obvious use in the wilderness. Gamut declares he has no interest in weapons, and instead affirms, “I follow no other than my own high vocation, which is instruction in sacred music!” (65). Bumppo declares this strange, but he begrudgingly acknowledges, “Well, friend, I suppose it is your gift, and mustn’t be denied any more than if ’twas shooting, or some other better inclination” (65). Thus, while bemused by Gamut’s profession, Bumppo acknowledges it as a potential “gift.”

Bumppo’s acceptance of Gamut’s music foreshadows the role music will play later in the novel. Initially, Gamut seems unused to the wilderness; Bumppo even has to tell Gamut to stop singing at one point so that they can move quietly and safely without being ambushed. Later, however, Gamut is able to calm the scared group, hiding out in the cave at Glenn’s Falls, by playing the tune “Isle of Wight.” Likewise, when Gamut is confronted by what he thinks is a savage bear (not realizing it is Bumppo in disguise), he pulls out his pipe to play music, as though it were a kind of defense. Such moments point to music as a source of power, an idea that is emphasized most poignantly when the British departing from William Henry are attacked by Huron warriors. Amidst the massacre, Gamut begins to play a song, recalling the Biblical figure of Gamut playing to soothe the angry king Saul: “If the Jewish boy might tame the great spirit of Saul by the sound of his harp, and the words of sacred song, it may not be amiss […] to try the potency of music here” (215). Indeed, Gamut’s music stirs the crowd; even the warriors stop their carnage to note the music. In the dangerous and violent moments of The Last of the Mohicans, music is shown to be a source of strength just as powerful as a rifle or tomahawk, and perhaps more so.

The Carabine

Characters in The Last of the Mohicans use a variety of weapons in their various conflicts, but none is so notable as Natty Bumppo’s rifle, known as “killdeer.” Though it is called by many a carabine (a type of short, smooth-bored rifle), Bumppo later clarifies that his gun is “a grooved barrel and no carabyne” (362). Whatever the particularities of the gun itself, the weapon has become strongly associated with Bumppo and his shooting skills, even earning him the nickname “La Longue Carabine” (French for “the long carabine” or “the long rifle”). In this way, the carabine becomes a symbol of Bumppo’s skill and prowess.

Bumppo’s fame is such, even among his enemies, that they excitedly call him by his nickname when he is mentioned or seen. Magua, his rival, has also earned a nickname, “Le Renard Subtil” (French for “the sly fox”), on account of his own skills. Magua is a formidable match for Bumppo, yet even he refers to Bumppo as “La Longue Carabine,” implicitly acknowledging the skill that the name represents. He boasts that Bumppo’s “rifle is good, and his eye never shut; but […] it is nothing against the life of Le Subtil” (106). Yet Bumppo shows his nickname to be deserved at several points in the novel, as when he shoots a Huron sniper out of a tree, or in the climactic scene when he shoots Magua.

Bumppo’s rifle is also one of many connections between The Last of the Mohicans and other novels in Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales series. He brushes off the “long rifle” nickname, and instead prefers to call his rifle “killdeer,” an acknowledgement of his skill in hunting as well as armed conflict. This hints at the novel The Deerslayer (published in 1841, but actually a prequel to the events of The Last of the Mohicans), and references to Bumppo’s shooting skills are evident throughout The Leatherstocking Tales.

Physical Features

Physiognomy was a topic of interest in the 18th and 19th centuries, and The Last of the Mohicans devotes attention to the physical features of its diverse characters, in part to draw attention to the way that their external features aligned with their inner characteristics, both those seen as positive and those seen as negative. In Chapter 1, for instance, the narrator focuses on the figure of the “Indian runner,” a guide accompanying the British traveling to William Henry (who later turns out to be Magua) (15). The narrator describes his figure as “still, upright,” and “in a state of perfect repose” while also displaying “a sullen fierceness” (15). In addition, the narrator notes that while Magua carried a tomahawk and knife, “his appearance was not altogether that of a warrior. On the contrary, there was an air of neglect about his person” (16) including smeared war-paint. These contrary physical features—suggesting someone both calm and fierce, ready warrior yet also self-negligent—match Magua's character. He is not always what he appears to be, first acting as a guide for the British then later proving to deceive them. Likewise, he appears a fierce warrior on one hand, but on the other hand he struggles to keep his stature and battles alcoholism.

By contrast, the narrator (through Alice’s eyes) later examines the physique of Uncas, showing him to be a more noble character. He features have a “bold outline,” including “the dignified elevation of his receding forehead” and “the finest proportions of a noble head” (59). Alice goes so far as to compare him to a Grecian statue, an idealized form of beauty and perfection. Over the course of the novel, Uncas’s features are shown to be a match for his strong character; he is willing to endure torture and even death in support of his friends.

The Last of the Mohicans also uses descriptions of physical characteristics to make clear that Cora is not white. The narrator states that the “tresses of this lady were shining and black,” and describes her complexion “not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the color of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bounds” followed by declaring that she had “a countenance that was exquisitely regular, and dignified and surpassingly beautiful” (18). When Munro later clarifies the Clara was his daughter from his first marriage to a Black woman from the West Indies, readers can have no doubt that Cora is multiracial. At the time Cooper wrote The Last of the Mohicans, it likely shocked many readers to see a non-white character be given such a prominent role in a novel written by a white man, and that the character was written in a way that was full and complex and not based on stereotypes. Throughout the novel, Cora proves to have a strong and steadfast character, as when she boldly stands up to Magua on several occasions and refuses his demands that she and Alice become his. By depicting Cora in this way, Cooper’s novel uses her physical features and personal character to express an implicit argument that the diversity evident in the American frontier and in the formation of the United States was a positive trait.