The Last of the Mohicans: Motifs 4 key examples

Alice, Uncas, and the rest of the party are in a cavern in the wilderness, but Alice looks at Uncas as though she is in an art museum or amidst the ruins of an ancient Greek civilization. The idea that Uncas looks to Alice like an ancient Greek statue come to life has two main effects in the book. First, it suggests that Alice appreciates Uncas's beauty. Alice is a young white woman who has grown up in a society that reveres classical art. She is not quite as cultured as her sister (for instance, she does not seem to know French), but she is nonetheless a representative of white society's artistic taste. Cooper uses Alice's appreciation of Uncas's beauty to suggest to white readers that they, too, should appreciate the beauty of American Indian people and culture.

At the same time, the simile also dehumanizes Uncas and turns him into a relic of an ancient civilization. Alice looks at him like she would look at a statue come to life, as though it is strange to see this "last of the Mohicans" living and breathing. Alice's default view of Uncas's people seems to be that they are all long gone and that Uncas is defying nature by coming back to life.

Cooper often repeats the comparison between American Indians and stone or statues. For example, later in Chapter 6, he writes that Uncas and Chingachgook "seemed to turn [...] into stone" while listening to David Gamut's song:

The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone.

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The American Indians' tendency to seem like rocks or statues is connected to Cooper's notion that Uncas is "the last of the Mohicans." In this novel and many other works published by 19th-century white writers, American Indians are figured as an all-but-extinct race. This inaccurate narrative about American Indians helped white writers and readers grapple with the discomfort of colonial politics. In fact, the United States government was actively perpetrating violent campaigns against American Indians throughout the 19th century and beyond in order to claim more land. By figuring Chingachgook, Uncas, and other American Indian characters as ancient statues or petrified pieces of the landscape, Cooper associates them with ancient civilizations that have long since died out. He thus suggests that their genocide is a depressing but foregone conclusion that modern readers should mourn rather than mobilize against.

By comparing Hawkeye to a deer, Cooper suggests that he is highly adapted to the wilderness. He knows his way around and is as adept at evading "predators" as he is at stalking prey with his rifle, "Kildeer." But whereas Cooper leans on this simile to help the reader imagine Hawkeye's graceful movement, he describes Duncan as simply "active." Duncan, who did not grow up in the wilderness, does not have the animal-like adaptations of Hawkeye.

Throughout the novel, although animal comparisons are frequent, they mostly describe American Indian people. For instance, Chingachgook's name refers to a serpent because he is, once again, very good at navigating the forest with stealth. Magua is "Le Renard Subtil," or the sly fox. Hawkeye is the only white character Cooper regularly describes in terms of his animal traits, and that is because he has lived his life alongside American Indians. White people in the 19th century (and also today in some cases) often discussed American Indian people as though they were part of the natural world rather than part of "civilization." Many American Indians did have more generational knowledge about the natural world than white colonists did, and the natural world occupies a place of particular significance in many American Indian worldviews. But the association between American Indian people and animals has often been used to dehumanize them and to suggest that they are part of a wilderness that must be cleared to make way for modern civilization. Cooper's novel about the "extinction" of the Mohicans plays into this idea, however mournfully.

By comparing white people to "prattling women" in this context, Magua means that they talk too much, to the point of obscuring what they really mean. They should not have so many words to describe the same thing. Part of what Magua is noticing is that the white colonists have multiple languages, English and French, and sometimes direct translation is difficult. There was also linguistic diversity among American Indian groups in this region, but Cooper tends to gloss over it. Sexist as it may be, the association between women and wordy, manipulative speech would have been familiar to Cooper's readers. This association was in fact a much bigger part of European cultures than American Indian cultures: many white readers would have been somewhat compelled by Magua's critique of white people's wordiness because they associated this quality with femininity, and femininity with dishonor.

By contrast, Magua claims that an American Indian "will make the sound of his voice speak for him." Throughout the novel, American Indians are associated with sound. The sounds they make may not always have linguistic meaning, but they are nonetheless clear and direct. For instance, Chingachgook regularly exclaims "Hugh!" rather than describing his feelings in a more roundabout way. The band of travelers also regularly listens for shrieking, which denotes the near presence of an enemy. At the end of the novel, the Lenape people use music to plainly convey their profound grief at Uncas and Cora's funeral. White people regularly use language and doublespeak to mislead one another. For instance, Duncan uses his knowledge of French to convince a French soldier that he has captured Cora and Alice and is taking them back to Montcalm. Even if American Indians are screaming as they attack the heroes of the novel, they are usually clear about their intentions.

Magua is being somewhat hypocritical. He has been just as treacherous as any of the white characters, passing himself off as an ally when really he was working against them. But in general, he is right that there is a pattern in the novel by which white characters use far more words to express themselves than American Indian people. Cooper is tapping into a cultural association between American Indian people and sound, an association that stems from white colonists' tendency to exoticize cultural practices they did not understand.

Cooper added a great number of explanatory footnotes such as this one in later editions of his novel, once it became clear that there was a big market for The Leatherstocking Tales in London. He needed to make sure London readers were not put off by the assumption that they had been to the region where the novels were set. But the footnotes accomplish more than making the book accessible to English readers unfamiliar with the geography of upstate New York. In this footnote, Cooper makes clear that he has been to both Lake George and also "the finest of the Swiss and Italian lakes." This casual assertion that he is a world traveler gives him the authority to speak more confidently about geography than a mere "provincial" author who has never left upstate New York. Furthermore, the very inclusion of explanatory footnotes gives the reader the sense that Cooper's novels are steeped in historical and geographical research. He never lets anyone forget his authority over the narrative and over the historical moment he claims to be depicting through that narrative.