There is reason in an Indian, though
nature has made him with a red skin!
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary: Chapter III
The narrator shifts the focus of attention from Magua
and his party to another group of people in another part of the
forest, a few miles west by the river. We meet the remaining primary
characters: Hawkeye, a white hunter, and Chingachgook, his Mohican
ally. Though both men are hunters, they dress differently. Hawkeye
wears a hunting shirt, a skin cap, and buckskin leggings; he carries
a knife, a pouch, and a horn. Chingachgook is almost naked and covered
in war-paint. Both men carry weapons. Hawkeye carries a long rifle, and
Chingachgook carries a short rifle and a tomahawk. They discuss
the historical developments that have caused them to both inhabit
the same forest. Hawkeye proclaims his inheritance of a genuine
and enduring whiteness, and Chingachgook laments the demise of his
tribe of Mohicans. Of the Mohican tribe, only Chingachgook and his
son remain. At this mention of the diminishing tribe, Chingachgook’s
son Uncas appears and reports that he has been trailing the Maquas,
the Iroquois enemies of the Mohicans. When the antlers of a deer
appear in the distance, Hawkeye wants to shoot the animal, but then
realizes that the noise of the rifle will draw the attention of
the enemy. In the place of the long rifle, Uncas uses an arrow to
kill the deer. Shortly thereafter, Chingachgook detects the sound
of horses approaching.
Summary: Chapter IV
[T]he worst enemy I have on earth, and
he is an Iroquois, daren’t deny that I am genuine white.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Heyward and his party encounter Hawkeye. When Hawkeye
questions the group, Heyward and Gamut explain that their guide, Magua,
has led them away from their desired destination. Hawkeye finds
this explanation suspicious, because he does not believe that an
Indian could be lost in the forest that is his home. He thinks his suspicions
are justified when he learns that Magua is a Huron. Hawkeye describes
the Huron tribe as untrustworthy, unlike the Mohican or Delaware
tribes. After learning that Heyward is the major of the 60th
regiment of the king at Fort William Henry, Hawkeye considers punishing
Magua for treachery. Though Hawkeye considers shooting Magua on
the spot, so that the traitor will not accompany the party to Fort
William Henry, Heyward opposes that violence. Instead of shooting
Magua, Heyward approaches him while Chingachgook and Uncas surround
him. So that Magua will not suspect the plot to capture him, Heyward
engages Magua in conversation. As they talk, Magua discloses the
name he prefers: Le Renard Subtil (The Subtle Fox). Magua feels
suspicious of Heyward, but eventually he warms to him and agrees
to sit and eat. Sounds in the forest make Magua agitated, and Heyward
dismounts and makes a move to capture the guide. Magua cries out
and darts away from Heyward just as Chingachgook and Uncas emerge
from the thickets and give chase. Hawkeye, meanwhile, fires his
rife toward the escaping Huron.
A Mingo is a Mingo, and God having made
him so, neither the Mohawks nor any other tribe can alter him.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Analysis: Chapters III–IV
Whereas Cooper uses epigraphs from Shakespearean plays
to frame his first two chapters, he uses an American epigraph to
begin Chapter III, quoting from William Cullen Bryant’s poem “An
Indian at the Burial-Place of His Fathers.” Cooper uses Shakespearean
quotations to justify The Last of the Mohicans as
a literary project of high culture, and he uses the Bryant poem
to ground his novel in the contemporary concerns of the young American
republic. Cooper’s nineteenth-century readers would have interpreted
Bryant’s poem as a reflection on the tensions between an expanding
national culture and a diminishing Native American population. Writing
in the 1820s, Cooper captures the nation’s
divided sentiments about President Andrew Jackson’s “removal policies,”
which sought to move Indian groups westward and resulted in widespread
genocide. The Last of the Mohicans speaks of the
growing strength of the American spirit. However, the novel does
not just cheer America; its title sparks associations with Jackson’s
genocidal policies. Cooper also uses the French and Indian War as
a metaphor for the contemporary warfare that some feel the United
States wages against Native American cultures.
Chapter III introduces the interracial friendship of Hawkeye
and Chingachgook and shows how their racial histories differ. Hawkeye insists
on the thorough whiteness he has inherited, and Chingachgook and
his son represent the end of the Mohican line. Despite their difference
in race, however, Hawkeye and Chingachgook are friends. In fact,
theirs is the novel’s first and strongest friendship, and with it
Cooper suggests that whites and Indians are not necessarily natural
enemies. According to literary critic Leslie Fiedler, the interracial
friendship of Hawkeye and Chingachgook establishes a pattern of
interracial male bonding that recurs throughout nineteenth-century
American literature. Other interracial friendships include that
of Huck Finn and Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and
that of Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby-Dick. Hawkeye
and Chingachgook challenge the separation of white and Indian cultures
that was politically and socially enforced at the time Cooper’s
novel was published.
The conflict between Magua, the Huron, and his Mohican
enemies in Chapter IV shows that The Last of the Mohicans does
not characterize all Indians as identical in personality, as did
many contemporary stereotypes. The Indians’ personas vary greatly,
and the history of tension between Hurons and Mohicans suggests
the complexity and variety of Native American cultures. At the same
time, though, Cooper’s portrayal of Magua accords with popular,
phobic beliefs of his time. The Last of the Mohicans thus
both satisfies popular beliefs and seeks to challenge them. If Cooper
falls back on broad stereotypes in depicting some Indian characters,
it is perhaps not racism that is at stake here, but style, for Cooper
creates similarly stereotypical white characters as well.
