At the centre of the novel is the celebrated 'Massacre' of British troops and their families by
Indian allies of the French at Fort William Henry in 1757. Around this historical event Cooper
built a romantic fiction of captivity sexuality and heroism in which the destiny of the
Mohican Chingachgook and his son Uncas is inseparable from the lives of Alice and Cora Munro
and of Hawkeye the frontier scout.
