Set in 1757 during the French and Indian War, The Last of the Mohicans follows the frontier scout Natty Bumppo — known as Hawkeye — and his Mohican companions Chingachgook and his son Uncas as they guide Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of a British colonel, through the contested wilderness of colonial New York toward their father's besieged Fort William Henry.
Their Huron guide Magua, secretly nursing a grudge against Colonel Munro, leads the party into danger and works to turn the journey into a means of revenge. Ambushes, captures, and rescues follow as Hawkeye and the Mohicans repeatedly intervene to protect the sisters, while the massacre at Fort William Henry and its aftermath push the story toward a violent reckoning in the forest.
James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel, the second and most famous of his Leatherstocking Tales, helped define the American frontier romance and its recurring figure of the woodsman caught between two worlds. Its treatment of Native American characters and colonial conflict reflects the attitudes of its era and has long been debated by readers and critics.