Last of Mohicans (1826). The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826. 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, 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, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by British colonists. The novel is set primarily in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the latter two being the novel's title characters. These characters are sometimes seen as a microcosm of the budding American society, particularly with regard to their racial composition. The novel has been one of the most popular English-language novels since its publication and is frequently assigned reading in American literature courses. It has been adapted numerous times and in many languages for films, TV movies and cartoons. At the time of Cooper's writing, U.S. settlers believed in, and perpetrated the myth, that Native Americans were disappearing, believing they would ultimately be assimilated or killed off entirely due to the genocidal structure of settler colonialismEspecially in the East, as Native Peoples' land was stolen and settled on in the name of U.S. expansion and Jeffersonian agrarianism, the narrative that many Native Peoples were vanishing was prevalent in both novels like Cooper's and local newspapers. This allowed settlers to view themselves as the original people of the land and reinforced their belief in scientific racism and European ethnic/racial superiority. In this way, Cooper was interested in the theme of the American frontier of transition, or the American progress narrative, when more colonists were increasing pressure on the Native Americans in the name of ethnocentric progress. Thus, settlers would excuse the attempted genocide of Native Peoples through the guise of their own superior intellect and skill set. Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, which his father had established on what was then a western frontier of settlement; it developed after the Revolutionary War. Cooper set this novel during the Seven Years' War, an international conflict between Great Britain and France, which had a front in North America known by the Anglo-American colonists as the French and Indian War. The conflict arrayed British colonial settlers and minimal regular forces against royal French forces, with both sides also relying on Native American allies. The war was fought primarily along the frontiers of the British colonies from Virginia to Nova Scotia. In the spring of 1757, Lieutenant Colonel George Monro became garrison commander of Fort William Henry, located on Lake George in the Province of New York. In early August, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and 7,000 troops besieged the fort. On 2 August General Webb, who commanded the area from his base at Fort Edward, sent 200 regulars and 800 Massachusetts militia to reinforce the garrison at William Henry. In the novel, this is the relief column with which Monro's daughters travel. Monro sent messengers south to Fort Edward on 3 August requesting reinforcements, but Webb refused to send any of his estimated 1,600 men north because they were all that stood between the French and Albany. He wrote to Munro on 4 August that he should negotiate the best terms possible; this communication was intercepted and delivered to Montcalm. In Cooper's version, the missive was being carried by Bumppo when he, and it, fell into French hands. On 7 August Montcalm sent men to the fort under a truce flag to deliver Webb's dispatch. By then the fort's walls had been breached, many of its guns were useless, and the garrison had taken significant casualties. After another day of bombardment by the French, Monro raised the white flag and agreed to withdraw under parole. When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indian allies, angered at the lost opportunity for loot, attacked the British column. Cooper's account of the attack and aftermath is lurid and somewhat inaccurate. A detailed reconstruction of the action and its aftermath indicates that the final tally of British missing and dead ranges from 70 to 184; more than 500 British were taken captive.