James Fenimore Cooper’s ‘The Last of the Mohicans’: book vs. movie

Apart from Jules Verne’s books, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper was the book that deeply marked my early teenage years. I first read it in Romanian, in an abridge form, and many years later, in 1992, when I saw Michael Mann’s 1992 The Last of the Mohicans film adaptation (starring Daniel Day-Lewis in Hawk-eye’s role) I promised to myself that I would get my hands on the original text in English.

In the meantime, I read The Deerslayer, the book that chronologically precedes the action of The Last of the Mohicans. Funnily enough, The Deerslayer was the last book Cooper wrote in “Leatherstocking Tales” pentalogy which includes: The Deerslayer – The First War Path (1841), The Last of the Mohicans – A Narrative of 1757 (1826), The Pathfinder – The Inland Sea (1840), The Pioneers – The Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale (1823), and The Prairie – A Tale (1827).

Although Cooper was a popular American writer whose books are still dissected in schools and university courses, his prose is very difficult to read due to elaborate descriptions and slow action. Mark Twain tackles these issues (and many more) in his famous essay, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, in which he claims that “Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115.” Regardless of all the faults one can find in Cooper’s fiction, his masterpiece, The Last of the Mohicans, remains one of the most praised books of fiction about Native Americans.

To be honest, I completely forgot what I had read in my abridged edition of The Last of the Mohicans and remembered the book mostly by what I had seen in the 1992 movie. I knew there were major differences between the book and the movie, but I couldn’t remember any of them. So, I set out to read Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans with a clear memory of what the characters and the setting looked like as I remembered them from Mann’s movie.

Due to the text’s complexity and the author’s peculiar writing style, it took me quite a while to get into the story, thus reducing my reading speed considerably. But, once I was one third into the book, I started to really enjoy it and, as the narrative became more and more complex, I became aware of how much the book and the movie differ.

As the subtitle of the novel suggests, the story takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War, and sees Hawk-eye and his Red Indian friends come to the rescue of Cora and Alice, the daughters of a British colonel fighting the French and their Native American allies for control over the North American colonies.

I think that the most shocking difference between the book and the movie is the relationship between Hawk-eye, the scout, and Duncan, the major. If in Mann’s movie there’s hatred between La Longue Carabine (aka Hawk-eye) and Duncan Heyward, in Cooper’s book their relationship is based on respect and both are willing to give their lives in order to save the other’s.

Another difference is the relationship between Hawk-eye and Chingachgook and, respectively, Uncas. The movie makes it clear that Hawk-eye is Chingachgook adopted “white son,” and thus Uncas’s step brother, but actually Cooper portrays Hawk-eye as a man much older and more experienced than the movie suggests. As the youngest of the three, Uncas is the one who looks up to both Hawk-eye and Chingachgook for advice and guidance, while Hawk-eye considers Chingachgook his friend.

Mann’s movie was both a critical and financial success, but the Hollywood version of the book has more in common with the George B. Seitz’s 1936 film adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans than Cooper’s book. In the book, there’s no amorous rivalry between Hawk-eye and Duncan and nobody engages in sexual intercourse. The movie has Hawk-eye and Cora making love in Fort William Henry, right after Cora refuses Duncan’s marriage proposal. Actually, in the book, Duncan fancies Cora’s younger sister, Alice, and there is not even the slightest suggestion that Hawk-eye is after Cora. On the contrary, their relationship is more like that between a father and a daughter, as Hawk-eye was old enough to be her father.

The movie also takes liberties in deciding who deserves to live and die, with total disregard to Cooper’s book. In the movie, both Colonel Munro and Major Hayward die at the hands of Magua and his Indians, but in the book they survive. Also, it is not Alice who dies at the end of the novel, as the movie lets us know, but Cora, who is stabbed by one of Magua’s warriors while Uncas was trying to rescue her and kill Magua. While both the book and the movie have Uncas stabbed to death by Magua, it is Hawk-eye who revenges his death, by shooting him with his long rifle, and not Chingachgook.

One of the major differences regarding characters is David Gamut, who was not just altered from the original character (like Hawkeye was) but removed entirely. Whether this difference from the novel is all that problematic is debatable. He was a weak character, one who was poorly suited to that lifestyle. This is a good example of thinning a book out to improve the film version. Did the film miss David Gamut? No. He added very little to the novel so removing him was probably for the best.

During the film, we frequently see white homesteaders throughout the countryside. This is rather strange considering there was no mention of white homesteaders at any time during the novel. This unnecessary sub-plot storyline is disingenuous to not just the source material but to historical accuracy. There are many instances of the movie creating big historical inaccuracies, but one could argue that makes it a better movie. Facts are not as entertaining (sometimes).

The storyline of white settlers rejecting the idea of being conscripted into the British Army was unnecessary. You can see where they were coming from, and why they thought that might drive the story forward and build an emotional connection to the characters for the audience, but it just comes across as pandering politically. Did the American audience truly need a, “Yeah, go America!”, moment in the movie for it to be enjoyable. Probably not. This movie, as the novel itself, did not need to be this politically motivated. It begs the question of who settled on that change. The director, or the people funding the film?

The false representation of settlers in the movie goes further than just how those settlers looked, ie their skin tone, but how they would behave. The movie portrays the settlers as people of virtue, they lived alongside the native populace in harmony. The time spent pursuing this storyline took too much focus away from the main trio. It arguably contributed to the weakness of the two Native Americans of the group. More time spent focusing on them, rather than the “saintly” settlers would have driven the story better.

The book is somehow more politically correct than the movie, despite being so much older. In the book, we see balanced contributions from our three protagonists. But, in the movie, it is only Hawkeye who takes center stage. Uncas is arguably the most heroic of the group, yet he is put on the back burner. This difference between the book and the movie not only weakens the story but is marginally racist.

Why has the story changed from three heroes to one white hero and his two sidekicks? This did not need to happen to drive the story, so was the change made to pander to the audience? Perhaps. Uncas and Chingachgook barely contribute to the group’s progress as a whole. They don’t speak as much, make decisions, or play a major role at any point. In the book, Hawkeye is an older man who is not likely to risk his life freely, he is quite conservative in many regards. In the book, he is the group’s headstrong leader.

There are many more minor differences between the movie and the book, especially regarding to the focus of the story and the minor characters that help build up the narrative. Nevertheless, without the movie, I could have never visualized the scenery, the costumes, and the warfare the way I did while reading the book after watching the movie. In this respect, the movie also brings great value to understanding the geography surrounding the Hudson River and, why not, adds visual images to Cooper’s lengthy, and sometimes tiring, description. Having said all these, there are quite a few lines in the movie taken straight from the book, which I feel gives the movie the authority it needs.

Although the title of the book refers to Chingachgook, who remains the last of the Mohicans after the death of his son, Uncas, I feel that the story is more about how he became the last of his kind, rather than about Chingachgook. (Apparently, Cooper was wrong, and the line of the Mohicans has survived until today!)

The title is referred to on two different occasions:

• once by Chingachgook who, while Uncas was still alive, says “[W]hen Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the sagamores, my boy is the last of the Mohicans.”; and

• by Tamenund, the eldest member of the Lenape (a Native American tribe also referred to as the Delaware, from which the Mohicans branched off), who, at Uncas’s funeral, says, “I have lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans.”

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper remains a classic of American and world literature and, although it is not an easy read, I believe it is one of the books that everyone should read in their lifetime.