The Last of the Mohicans Mohicans" has been James Fenimore Cooper's most popular work. It has continued as one of the most widely read novels throughout the world, and it has influenced popular opinion about American Indians and the frontier period of eastern American history. The romanticized images of the strong, fearless, and ever resourceful frontiersman (i.e., Natty Bumppo), as well as the stoic, wise, and noble "red man" (i.e., Chingachgook) were notions derived from Cooper's characterizations more than from anywhere else. The phrase, "the last of the Mohicans", has come to represent the sole survivor of a noble race or type. In the "M*A*S*H"
The Last of the Mohicans visiting the Adirondack Mountains in 1825 with a party of English gentlemen. The party passed through the Catskills, an area with which Cooper was already familiar, and about which he had written in his first novel featuring Natty: "The Pioneers." They passed on to Lake George and Glens Falls. Impressed with the caves behind the falls, one member of the party suggested that "here was the very scene for a romance." Susan Cooper says that Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, made this remark. Cooper promised Stanley "that a book should actually be written, in which these caves should have