The Cask of Amontillado Poe may have borrowed Montresor's family motto "Nemo me impune lacessit" from James Fenimore Cooper, who used the line in "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826). Poe wrote his tale, however, as a response to his personal rival Thomas Dunn English. Poe and English had several confrontations, usually revolving around literary caricatures of one another. Poe thought that one of English's writings went a bit too far, and successfully sued the other man's editors at "The New York Mirror" for libel in 1846. That year English published a revenge-based novel called "1844, or, The Power of the S.F." Its plot
The Last of the Mohicans follow Magua to the Huron village. Here, they find Gamut (earlier spared by the Hurons as a harmless madman), who says that Alice is held in this village, and Cora in one belonging to the Lenape (Delaware). Disguised as a French medicine man, Heyward enters the Huron village with Gamut, to rescue Alice; Hawk-eye and Uncas set out to rescue Cora, and Munro and Chingachgook remain in safety. Uncas is taken prisoner by the Hurons, and left to starve when he withstands torture, and Heyward fails to find Alice. A Huron warrior asks Heyward to heal his lunatic wife, and