It is believed that the scene of this tale, and most of the information necessary to

understand its allusions, are rendered sufficiently obvious to the reader in the

text itself, or in the accompanying notes.

Still there is so much obscurity in the Indian traditions, and so much confusion in

the Indian names, as to render some explanation useful.

Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of

character, than the native warrior of North America.

In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted;

in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and

commonly chaste.

These are qualities, it is true, which do not distinguish all alike; but they are so

far the predominating traits of these remarkable people as to be characteristic.

It is generally believed that the Aborigines of the American continent have

an Asiatic origin.

There are many physical as well as moral facts which corroborate this opinion, and

some few that would seem to weigh against it.

The color of the Indian, the writer believes, is peculiar to himself, and while

his cheek-bones have a very striking indication of a Tartar origin, his eyes

have not.

Climate may have had great influence on the former, but it is difficult to see how it

can have produced the substantial difference which exists in the latter.

The imagery of the Indian, both in his poetry and in his oratory, is oriental;

chastened, and perhaps improved, by the limited range of his practical knowledge.

He draws his metaphors from the clouds, the seasons, the birds, the beasts, and the

vegetable world.

In this, perhaps, he does no more than any other energetic and imaginative race would

do, being compelled to set bounds to fancy by experience; but the North American

Indian clothes his ideas in a dress which

is different from that of the African, and is oriental in itself.

His language has the richness and sententious fullness of the Chinese.

He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire

sentence by a syllable; he will even convey different significations by the simplest

inflections of the voice.

Philologists have said that there are but two or three languages, properly speaking,

among all the numerous tribes which formerly occupied the country that now

composes the United States.

They ascribe the known difficulty one people have to understand another to

corruptions and dialects.

The writer remembers to have been present at an interview between two chiefs of the

Great Prairies west of the Mississippi, and when an interpreter was in attendance who

spoke both their languages.

The warriors appeared to be on the most friendly terms, and seemingly conversed

much together; yet, according to the account of the interpreter, each was

absolutely ignorant of what the other said.

They were of hostile tribes, brought together by the influence of the American

government; and it is worthy of remark, that a common policy led them both to adopt

the same subject.

They mutually exhorted each other to be of use in the event of the chances of war

throwing either of the parties into the hands of his enemies.

Whatever may be the truth, as respects the root and the genius of the Indian tongues,

it is quite certain they are now so distinct in their words as to possess most

of the disadvantages of strange languages;

hence much of the embarrassment that has arisen in learning their histories, and

most of the uncertainty which exists in their traditions.

Like nations of higher pretensions, the American Indian gives a very different

account of his own tribe or race from that which is given by other people.

He is much addicted to overestimating his own perfections, and to undervaluing those

of his rival or his enemy; a trait which may possibly be thought corroborative of

the Mosaic account of the creation.

The whites have assisted greatly in rendering the traditions of the Aborigines

more obscure by their own manner of corrupting names.

Thus, the term used in the title of this book has undergone the changes of

Mahicanni, Mohicans, and Mohegans; the latter being the word commonly used by the

whites.

When it is remembered that the Dutch (who first settled New York), the English, and

the French, all gave appellations to the tribes that dwelt within the country which

is the scene of this story, and that the

Indians not only gave different names to their enemies, but frequently to

themselves, the cause of the confusion will be understood.

In these pages, Lenni-Lenape, Lenope, Delawares, Wapanachki, and Mohicans, all

mean the same people, or tribes of the same stock.

The Mengwe, the Maquas, the Mingoes, and the Iroquois, though not all strictly the

same, are identified frequently by the speakers, being politically confederated

and opposed to those just named.

Mingo was a term of peculiar reproach, as were Mengwe and Maqua in a less degree.

The Mohicans were the possessors of the country first occupied by the Europeans in

this portion of the continent.

They were, consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable

fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed

the inroads, of civilization, as the

verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented

as having already befallen them.

There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that has been

made of it.

In point of fact, the country which is the scene of the following tale has undergone

as little change, since the historical events alluded to had place, as almost any

other district of equal extent within the whole limits of the United States.

There are fashionable and well-attended watering-places at and near the spring

where Hawkeye halted to drink, and roads traverse the forests where he and his

friends were compelled to journey without even a path.

Glen's has a large village; and while William Henry, and even a fortress of later

date, are only to be traced as ruins, there is another village on the shores of the

Horican.

But, beyond this, the enterprise and energy of a people who have done so much in other

places have done little here.

The whole of that wilderness, in which the latter incidents of the legend occurred, is

nearly a wilderness still, though the red man has entirely deserted this part of the

state.

Of all the tribes named in these pages, there exist only a few half-civilized

beings of the Oneidas, on the reservations of their people in New York.

The rest have disappeared, either from the regions in which their fathers dwelt, or

altogether from the earth. There is one point on which we would wish

to say a word before closing this preface.

Hawkeye calls the Lac du Saint Sacrement, the "Horican."

As we believe this to be an appropriation of the name that has its origin with

ourselves, the time has arrived, perhaps, when the fact should be frankly admitted.

While writing this book, fully a quarter of a century since, it occurred to us that the

French name of this lake was too complicated, the American too commonplace,

and the Indian too unpronounceable, for

either to be used familiarly in a work of fiction.

Looking over an ancient map, it was ascertained that a tribe of Indians, called

"Les Horicans" by the French, existed in the neighborhood of this beautiful sheet of

water.

As every word uttered by Natty Bumppo was not to be received as rigid truth, we took

the liberty of putting the "Horican" into his mouth, as the substitute for "Lake

George."

The name has appeared to find favor, and all things considered, it may possibly be

quite as well to let it stand, instead of going back to the House of Hanover for the

appellation of our finest sheet of water.

We relieve our conscience by the confession, at all events leaving it to

exercise its authority as it may see fit.

>

CHAPTER 1

"Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared: The worst is wordly loss thou canst

unfold:-- Say, is my kingdom lost?"-- Shakespeare

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and

dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could

meet.

A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions

of the hostile provinces of France and England.

The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently

expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the

rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of

an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they

learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no

recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret

place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had

pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and

selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.

Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can

furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of

those periods than the country which lies

between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes.

The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the combatants were

too obvious to be neglected.

The lengthened sheet of the Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada,

deep within the borders of the neighboring province of New York, forming a natural

passage across half the distance that the

French were compelled to master in order to strike their enemies.

Near its southern termination, it received the contributions of another lake, whose

waters were so limpid as to have been exclusively selected by the Jesuit

missionaries to perform the typical

purification of baptism, and to obtain for it the title of lake "du Saint Sacrement."

The less zealous English thought they conferred a sufficient honor on its

unsullied fountains, when they bestowed the name of their reigning prince, the second

of the house of Hanover.

The two united to rob the untutored possessors of its wooded scenery of their

native right to perpetuate its original appellation of "Horican."

(FOOTNOTE: As each nation of the Indians had its language or its dialect, they

usually gave different names to the same places, though nearly all of their

appellations were descriptive of the object.

Thus a literal translation of the name of this beautiful sheet of water, used by the

tribe that dwelt on its banks, would be "The Tail of the Lake."

Lake George, as it is vulgarly, and now, indeed, legally, called, forms a sort of

tail to Lake Champlain, when viewed on the map.

Hence, the name.)

Winding its way among countless islands, and imbedded in mountains, the "holy lake"

extended a dozen leagues still further to the south.

With the high plain that there interposed itself to the further passage of the water,

commenced a portage of as many miles, which conducted the adventurer to the banks of

the Hudson, at a point where, with the

usual obstructions of the rapids, or rifts, as they were then termed in the language of

the country, the river became navigable to the tide.

While, in the pursuit of their daring plans of annoyance, the restless enterprise of

the French even attempted the distant and difficult gorges of the Alleghany, it may

easily be imagined that their proverbial

acuteness would not overlook the natural advantages of the district we have just

described.

It became, emphatically, the bloody arena, in which most of the battles for the

mastery of the colonies were contested.

Forts were erected at the different points that commanded the facilities of the route,

and were taken and retaken, razed and rebuilt, as victory alighted on the hostile

banners.

While the husbandman shrank back from the dangerous passes, within the safer

boundaries of the more ancient settlements, armies larger than those that had often

disposed of the scepters of the mother

countries, were seen to bury themselves in these forests, whence they rarely returned

but in skeleton bands, that were haggard with care or dejected by defeat.

Though the arts of peace were unknown to this fatal region, its forests were alive

with men; its shades and glens rang with the sounds of martial music, and the echoes

of its mountains threw back the laugh, or

repeated the wanton cry, of many a gallant and reckless youth, as he hurried by them,

in the noontide of his spirits, to slumber in a long night of forgetfulness.

It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall

attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which England and

France last waged for the possession of a

country that neither was destined to retain.

The imbecility of her military leaders abroad, and the fatal want of energy in her

councils at home, had lowered the character of Great Britain from the proud elevation

on which it had been placed by the talents

and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen.