The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second book of the "Leatherstocking Tales" pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. "The Pathfinder", published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel. "The Last of the Mohicans" is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent,
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