The Last of the Mohicans and ultimately capture the Huron village, but Magua escapes with Cora and two other Hurons; Uncas, Hawk-eye, and Heyward pursue them up to a high mountain. In a fight at the edge of a cliff, Cora, Uncas, and Magua are killed. The novel concludes with a lengthy account of the funerals of Uncas and Cora, and Hawk-eye reaffirms his friendship with Chingachgook. Tamenund prophesies: "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again...". According to Susan Fenimore Cooper, the author's eldest daughter, Cooper first conceived the idea for the book while
The Last of the Mohicans of the fight between Magua and Chingachgook (12th chapter), to his wife, who thought that he was delirious. In the novel, Hawkeye refers to Lake George as the "Horican". Cooper felt that Lake George was too plain, while the French name, "Le Lac du St. Sacrement", was "too complicated". Horican he found on an old map of the area; it was a French transliteration of a native group who had once lived in the area. Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, the frontier town founded by his father. His daughter said that as a young man he had few