For most, The Last of the Mohicans first conjures an image of Daniel Day-Lewis in the iconic "mountain man” role of Hawkeye from Michael Mann’s 1992 film. For others, it may simply summon a general notion of an early American frontier story or an archaic title from an academic required reading list. Only slightly more discernible, my own earliest impression was of a story set somewhere within the eastern woodland tribes of North America. It was not until I moved to the northeast that I discovered that the events depicted in the novel had a specific geography and history.

Set in the landscape of upstate New York against the backdrop of the French and Indian War (the principle combatants being the Kingdom of France and colonial Britain), the first half of the novel concerns a 12-mile traverse between Fort Edward and Fort William Henry, in what is today Glens Falls and the village of Lake George, respectively. While the second half concerns an epic chase within the wilderness of today's Adirondacks and coastal plains of Lake Ontario, which at the time of the narrative was indigenous Iroquois/Huron territory, but also at the center of contested lands between New France and New England.

Unlike the other novels in the Literary Landscape series, Last of the Mohicans played little if any direct influence in my own life and thinking, however, I know it was widely influential for 19th and early 20th century artists and naturalist upon whose shoulders many of us stand. By today’s standards, most will find the novel to be overly histrionic and verbose. In fact, even by 1895, Charles Dickens’s often-cited and humorous essay Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses took aim at the author's writing style and the academics of the time who lauded it into the canon of American literature. Far worse, however, are Cooper's both negative and romantic stereotypes regarding indigenous people, of which one can scarcely find a single page absent of them. Stereotypes that would go on to inform Americans’ perceptions of indigenous peoples for centuries to come.

Nonetheless, the novel holds historical relevance for me as a document of the zeitgeist of Anglo-Americans throughout the 19th century, for whom it held considerable sway and influence, particularly with regard to their perceptions of nature and wilderness. Discussions today about the American frontier in historical terms seem largely synonymous with images of the American West, however, there was a period for which the frontier lay within the backyard of colonial settlers in the East. As such, this collection could just as easily be interpreted as a visual exploration of themes from Roderick Nash’s non-fiction work, Wilderness and the American Mind. My work to date, seen here, largely represents musings on this present theme. Future additions will include broader views of the landscapes as they exist today and material inclusive of the indigenous Lenni Lenape, Mohawk, and Mohican people depicted in the novel.

Regional map showing sites depicted in The Last of the Mohicans during the French and Indian War.

Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans," Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund, by Hudson River School painter, Thomas Cole, 1827, one year after the release of the novel. Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT.