The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans is an historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known. The story is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, the French depended on its Native American allies to help fight the more numerous British colonists in the Northeast frontier areas. Cooper named a principal character Uncas, after a well-known Mohegan sachem who had been an ally of the English in 17th-century Connecticut. By using this name, Cooper seemed to confuse the Mohegan with the Mahican, a tribe historically based in New York along the Hudson River, closer to the central Mohawk Valley territory he also wrote about.