The Last of the Mohicans

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.

Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes.

“Seek you any here?” demanded Heyward, when the other had arrived sufficiently nigh to abate his speed; “I trust you are no messenger of evil tidings?”

“Even so,” replied the stranger, making diligent use of his triangular castor, to produce a circulation in the close air of the woods, and leaving his hearers in doubt to which of the young man’s questions he responded; when, however, he had cooled his face, and recovered his breath, he continued, “I hear you are riding to William Henry; as I am journeying thitherward myself, I concluded good company would seem consistent to the wishes of both parties.”

“You appear to possess the privilege of a casting vote,” returned Heyward; “we are three, while you have consulted no one but yourself.”

“Even so. The first point to be obtained is to know one’s own mind. Once sure of that, and where women are concerned it is not easy, the next is, to act up to the decision. I have endeavored to do both, and here I am.”

“My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an unmixed man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay forever. The Dutch landed, and gave my people the firewater; they drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet, and they foolishly thought they had found the Great Spirit. Then they parted with their land. Foot by foot, they were driven back from the shores, until I, that am a chief and a Sagamore, have never seen the sun shine but through the trees, and have never visited the graves of my fathers.”

“Graves bring solemn feelings over the mind,” returned the scout, a good deal touched at the calm suffering of his companion; “and they often aid a man in his good intentions; though, for myself, I expect to leave my own bones unburied, to bleach in the woods, or to be torn asunder by the wolves. But where are to be found those of your race who came to their kin in the Delaware country, so many summers since?”

“Where are the blossoms of those summers!⁠—fallen, one by one; so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hilltop and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans.”

“You may see, Magua,” he said, endeavoring to assume an air of freedom and confidence, “that the night is closing around us, and yet we are no nearer to William Henry than when we left the encampment of Webb with the rising sun.

“You have missed the way, nor have I been more fortunate. But, happily, we have fallen in with a hunter, he whom you hear talking to the singer, that is acquainted with the deerpaths and byways of the woods, and who promises to lead us to a place where we may rest securely till the morning.”

The Indian riveted his glowing eyes on Heyward as he asked, in his imperfect English, “Is he alone?”

“Alone!” hesitatingly answered Heyward, to whom deception was too new to be assumed without embarrassment. “Oh! not alone, surely, Magua, for you know that we are with him.”

“Then Le Renard Subtil will go,” returned the runner, coolly raising his little wallet from the place where it had lain at his feet; “and the pale faces will see none but their own color.”

“Go! Whom call you Le Renard?”

“ ’Tis the name his Canada fathers have given to Magua,” returned the runner, with an air that manifested his pride at the distinction. “Night is the same as day to Le Subtil, when Munro waits for him.”

“And what account will Le Renard give the chief of William Henry concerning his daughters? Will he dare to tell the hot-blooded Scotsman that his children are left without a guide, though Magua promised to be one?”

She waited until he had departed, and then turning to the native, with the dignity of her sex in her voice and manner, she added: “What would Le Renard say to the daughter of Munro?”

“Listen,” said the Indian, laying his hand firmly upon her arm, as if willing to draw her utmost attention to his words; a movement that Cora as firmly but quietly repulsed, by extricating the limb from his grasp: “Magua was born a chief and a warrior among the red Hurons of the lakes; he saw the suns of twenty summers make the snows of twenty winters run off in the streams before he saw a pale face; and he was happy! Then his Canada fathers came into the woods, and taught him to drink the firewater, and he became a rascal. The Hurons drove him from the graves of his fathers, as they would chase the hunted buffalo. He ran down the shores of the lakes, and followed their outlet to the ‘city of cannon.’ There he hunted and fished, till the people chased him again through the woods into the arms of his enemies. The chief, who was born a Huron, was at last a warrior among the Mohawks!”

“Something like this I had heard before,” said Cora, observing that he paused to suppress those passions which began to burn with too bright a flame, as he recalled the recollection of his supposed injuries.

“Was it the fault of Le Renard that his head was not made of rock? Who gave him the firewater? who made him a villain? ’Twas the pale faces, the people of your own color.”