The Last of The Mohicans (serial)

The Last Of The Mohicans (serial)

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known. The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel.

The story is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, the French depended on its Native American allies to help fight the more numerous British colonists in the Northeast frontier areas.

Cooper named a principal character Uncas, after a well-known Mohegan sachem (a head chief) who had been an ally of the English in 17th-century Connecticut. By using this name, Cooper seemed to confuse the Mohegan with the Mahican, a tribe historically based in New York along the Hudson River, closer to the central Mohawk Valley territory he also wrote about.

The novel was one of the most popular in English in its time, although critics identified narrative flaws. Its length and formal prose style have limited its appeal to later readers, yet The Last of the Mohicans remains widely read in American literature courses. It has been adapted numerous times for films, TV movies and cartoons.