Word: chingachgook
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what Adam might have been . . . before the fall," as Cooper puts it. In five fat books Natty swerves from his nature once, by falling in love, but a younger and lesser man gets the girl. Down those mean forest paths Natty must walk alone, except for his Indian comrade, Chingachgook...
...point, he is a relativist. Good white men go to heaven when they die, while good Indians head for the happy hunting ground. Natty refuses to send either on their way minus scalps, because it goes against the grain of his "gifts," though he thinks it proper for Chingachgook to do so. But he recognizes a moral bottom line below which there is only one standard and one eternal judge. It is never proper to kill a man who is not trying to kill you, whatever you do with his hair afterward. Beyond human laws is natural...
...story, in brief, is this: Natty Bumppo and his two Mohican companions, Chingachgook and Uncas, help an English officer, Duncan, escort two young maidens through the wilderness during the French and Indian War. In the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, romance blossoms between the officer and the younger woman, and between Uncas and the elder. To avoid shocking his readers with miscegenation, Cooper gave the elder just the tiniest trace of Black blood. This racist attitude so shocked our modern screenwriters that they decided to make make Natty the romantic lead instead of Uncas. So the central romance...