Sarah Lumnah

James Fenimore Cooper: Justifying History Through Manipulating the Environment

Throughout The Last of the Mohicans , James Fenimore Cooper justifies white expropriation and settlement of America . In order to explain the whites' genocide of the Native Americans and the colonization of the land, Cooper must demonstrate the need for these things to occur; he demonstrates this need through demonizing the forest and the majority of the Native Americans that inhabit it, thereby suggesting that genocide and colonization have to happen in order to save America . Yet, by no means is Cooper simply a racist. Throughout the novel, Cooper sympathizes with certain Native Americans, in particular, the Mohicans, suggesting that their mistreatment by whites is wrong. The Last of the Mohicans , then, may be viewed as Cooper's attempt to justify the immoral acts of the settlers, while also helping himself come to terms with his country's, as well as his own family's, history.