The Natural World Theme Analysis

The Last of the Mohicans is set against a backdrop of immense beauty, wildness, and strangeness, especially for Europeans who are not accustomed to vast expanses of “unsettled” land. The natural features of upstate New York, described by Fenimore Cooper, serve several purposes in the novel. First, the caves, ledges, mountains, streams, and paths of the New York woods are essential elements of the battle-plans of the natives and Europeans. War cannot be fought, there, as it was in Europe—in long lines, from which soldiers marched in unison. Instead, battle in the rugged forests is mostly a guerilla affair, with both natives and Europeans hiding behind objects and using the “element of surprise” to overwhelm their foes. Those who can make better use of the natural environment tend to have the upper hand in battle.

Second, there is an argument made throughout the text that natives like Uncas and Chingachgook have a better sense of the natural world than do the Europeans—that they are somehow “closer” to nature. To a certain extent, this is true, as both the Mohicans demonstrate a mastery of the woods that enables a good deal of scouting, and certain military victories. But Hawkeye has also acquired this knowledge after living among the natives for a great many years—indicating that it is a cultural heritage of the native population, rather than a “biological” one, that allows them to live close to the environment around them.

Third, Fenimore Cooper writes from the position of a newly-formed American society, one that has passed through the French and Indian Wars, its own Revolutionary War with Britain, and a War of 1812 that again challenged American supremacy over its own soil. Fenimore Cooper understands, even in 1826, that the world of Uncas and Chingachgook is rapidly disappearing—that the towns near Lake George and Lake Champlain will only grow in size, adding more settlers, and causing the deforestation of a region that was once so densely wooded, one could barely see through it. The author is not an environmentalist—he does not argue for the preservation of the woods as such—but his description of the natural beauty, the lakes and rivers and forests, of the region are inflected by a longing for those “wilder” times, when America was not even a country, and when its settlement required heroic efforts on the part of both Americans and natives.