The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans

French and Indian War

French America

Beautifully photographed, this 1992 remake of the 1936 film places colonial America firmly in the midst of the forests and mountains of the Eastern states, peopled by deer, bears, and Indians.

In this film, the vastness of North America is beautiful and even terrible in its not quite emptiness.

The night sky is gorgeous in the pitch black of the wilderness.

The two scenes of Indian massacre are merciless.

In the film as in the novel and as in life, the Brits were here to defend their empire but the colonials were defending their homes and settlements.

That put them at cross-purposes that form a central conflict of the story.

And how much would it have mattered to these English and Scotch-Irish settlers had the French won?

Most likely not a lot.

On the other hand, the Brits won and drove a good many French out of Acadia, many of whom re-settled in the Gulf around New Orleans to become the people we know as Cajuns.

Evangeline tells the story, a tale of ethnic cleansing regarded even then as a surprising cruelty, if nothing so grand as a "crime against humanity."

Evangeline

In the film as in the book as in the actual events, racism did not determine allegiances and the Indians did not conceive themselves as being or needing to be united in a race war pitting all Indians against all whites for control of the continent.