The Last of the Mohicans
A scout, a Mohican chief, his son, and two sisters caught between two armies in the forests of 1757
Page 1
In the summer of 1757, deep in the forests of New York, there stood a wooden fort called Fort Edward. From here, Major Duncan Heyward was to lead Cora and Alice Munro through the wilderness to Fort William Henry, where their father, Colonel Munro, commanded the garrison. The regular road was long and the army needed every soldier it could spare, so when a Huron runner named Magua offered to guide them by a hidden shortcut through the woods, Heyward thanked him and agreed. Cora watched the forest wall with a steady, searching look, as if she did not quite trust its silence. Alice, younger and more fearful, kept close to her sister's side. None of them yet knew that Magua carried an old grudge against their father, hidden behind his quiet, helpful face. The little party rode out from the fort gate and turned toward the trees.
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Magua led the little party deeper into the forest, away from any road, until even Heyward grew uneasy at how far they had come. Then, in a sunlit clearing beside a stream, they met three strangers: a frontier scout named Hawkeye, dressed all in deerskin, and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. Hawkeye took one long look at their guide and his easy manner vanished. He told Heyward plainly that this was no ordinary Huron runner, but a man called Le Renard Subtil — the Subtle Fox — known for treachery against the English. Magua's face changed the moment he was named. Without a word, he turned and vanished into the undergrowth before anyone could stop him, leaving the travelers alone with three strangers who, luckily, meant to help them.
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Hawkeye and the two Mohicans led the travelers to a hiding place few people knew: a cave tucked behind a roaring waterfall on the river, so well hidden that its curtain of water hid the opening from the shore. They spent the night there, safe behind the falls, while Hawkeye kept watch. But at first light, a war party of Hurons found their trail and surrounded the falls. Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas fought back from the cave mouth as long as their gunpowder lasted, but when the last of it ran out, there was nothing more they could do. The three of them slipped into the river and let the current carry them away to fight another day, calling back that they would return. Heyward, Cora, and Alice, with no way left to defend themselves, stood quietly together as the Hurons closed in around them and led them away as captives.
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Magua marched his captives north along a narrow trail beside the river, Heyward, Cora, and Alice walking under guard among his Huron warriors. At last Magua stopped and turned to Cora alone. He told her, plainly and bitterly, why he had done all this: years before, her father, Colonel Munro, had once punished him harshly before his own people, and Magua had never forgiven the shame of it. Now, he said, she would come and live in his wigwam, and through her, Munro would learn what it felt to lose everything he loved. Cora, white-faced but steady, told him she would never go with him, whatever he threatened. Before Magua could answer, there was a sudden rush from the trees — Hawkeye and Uncas, with Chingachgook close behind, burst from hiding and fell upon the startled guards. In the confusion, the captives were pulled free, and Magua, cheated again, fled alone into the forest.
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Guided safely through the enemy lines by Hawkeye, the little party reached Fort William Henry, on the shore of a great lake, where Colonel Munro commanded the garrison. Cora and Alice ran to their father, and for a moment there was nothing but relief. But the relief did not last. The French army, under General Montcalm, had surrounded the fort, and day after day their cannons battered its walls. No help came from the other English forts, and the garrison's supplies dwindled. At last, with no hope of holding out any longer, Colonel Munro agreed to surrender the fort to Montcalm on honorable terms: the English would be allowed to march out under guard and go free, keeping their weapons but giving up the fort itself. It seemed, for a moment, as if the worst of the danger was over.
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The next morning, the English marched out of Fort William Henry exactly as the surrender had promised, a long column of soldiers, wives, and children moving along the forest road under a French guard. But the Hurons allied with the French had not agreed to the terms, and as the column stretched out along the road, they broke from the trees and fell upon it without warning. The orderly march dissolved into panic — people running, scattering into the forest, calling for one another in the confusion. Amid the chaos, Magua appeared again, seizing his chance. He caught hold of Cora and Alice, with David Gamut still clinging close beside them, and dragged all three away from the broken column and into the trees before anyone could stop him. By the time the shouting died down, the sisters were gone.
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When the attack was over, Hawkeye, Chingachgook, Uncas, and Heyward searched the chaos until they were certain: Cora, Alice, and David Gamut had been carried off by Magua, not killed. They set out after them at once, following a trail far too faint for ordinary eyes. Uncas found the first sign — a torn scrap of cloth caught on a branch. Further on, Hawkeye noticed a trail of small, deliberate marks left low on tree trunks and stones, placed where only a tracker would look. They were David Gamut's doing: knowing his captors could not read, he had been quietly leaving signs the whole way, trusting that friends would follow. Reading each mark in turn, the four companions pressed north through the deep forest, never losing the trail, moving as fast as the wilderness would let them.
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Following the trail at last brought the four companions to a Huron village on the shore of a lake. There, disguised so cleverly that even the Hurons were fooled, Hawkeye and Heyward slipped into the village to find Alice. Keeping up their disguise through several tense and nerve-racking minutes, they managed to reach her and lead her quietly away from the lodges before anyone noticed she was gone, Chingachgook and Uncas waiting nearby to help them escape. But the rescue was not won without cost. In the confusion of slipping away, Uncas was spotted and surrounded before he could get clear, and the Hurons seized him and dragged him back into the village as their prisoner. Hawkeye, Heyward, and Alice escaped together into the forest, relieved but troubled, knowing that Uncas had been captured in trading his own safety for theirs, and that Cora was still Magua's captive, nowhere to be found in this village at all.
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Cora, it turned out, had been carried not to the Hurons but to a nearby Delaware village, where Magua now brought his case before Tamenund, the tribe's ancient and deeply respected sage. By the old law of his people, Magua argued, Cora belonged to him, since he had taken her captive first. The Delawares, though no friends of Magua's cruelty, honored their own law and could not simply give her back. Then Uncas, brought before the council as a captive from the Hurons, was recognized by an old mark upon his chest: he was revealed to be a true descendant of the great Lenape chiefs, of the ancient Turtle line that the Delawares themselves came from. Tamenund and his people honored him greatly for it. And yet the old law still stood, and Tamenund could not simply overturn it. All he could grant was this: Uncas would be allowed to go after Magua and fight for Cora's freedom himself.
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Magua fled with Cora high into the mountains, with Uncas racing ahead of the others to catch him before the trail ran out. At the very top, on a high rocky ridge above the valley, the chase came to its end. When Cora would go no further and would not give in to him, one of Magua's warriors struck out at her in anger, and she fell near the cliff's edge. Uncas, seeing her fall, flung himself at the man with no thought for his own safety — but Magua came up swiftly behind him, and in the struggle at the ridge's edge, Uncas, too, went down. Only moments later, Hawkeye reached the top of the ridge, and at the sight before him, he raised his rifle and fired. Magua staggered backward at the cliff's very edge and fell from the height, down into the forest far below. Chingachgook knelt over his son in silence. Uncas, the last of the Mohicans, was gone, and so, in the valley below, was Cora.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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