Issue of Father Child Relation in The Last of the Mohicans

In the history of Native American tribe the father child relationship is of primary importance. Even for the continuation of and protection of the tribal genealogy, the father-child relationship is biologically a must.


James Fenimore Cooper

But in Native American tribal genealogical system this relationship assumes social and cultural significance as well. When a son goes against his father and follows other culture, he is permanently discarded by the community. No matter how, successful, he (the discarded one) might be, he has to live a tribe less life. To exemplify this fact, we can go into the text and catch Magua. Magua was also ostracized by his community for going into the French camp. Though Magua was chief, he was tribe less. Hence The Last of the Mohicans shows the father-soil relationship hovering on the verge of disintegration.

Delaware tribe believed that any weakness in the son descends from the defect in his predecessor and forefather. So it is a shame for a father to see in his son a terrible blot of vice. A father is ready to ostracize and even kill his son if he sees his son gone astray. Thus, even for the continual progress of ancestry and genealogy, a tribal father is hound to become expectant. The strict father-child relation serves as a strong bond to tie the community together.

Even the father-son relationship between Uncas and Chingachgook bears the same dignified dimension. For Uncas to live in a frontier environment, he is in less need of his father Chingachgook than Chingachgook is in need of Uncas to continue the decreasing tribal line of Mohican. Even the mythic hero, an upholder of pagan religion, can't find himself being complete and whole without feeling fatherly towards Uncas and Munro sisters. Mournfully Chingachgook paid the following tribute after burying his son.

"As for me, the son and the father of Uncas, I am a blazed pine, in a clearing of the pale faces. My race has gone from the shores of the salt lake, and the hills of the Delaware. But who can say that the serpent of his tribe has forgotten his wisdom? I am alone."

 See, the son can fill the vacuum of aloneness a father carries within him. In the tribal tradition of the Native Americans a son becomes the symbol of pride. If a son ruins himself, the father also feels ruined. If a family feels ruined, the whole community feels ruined. Hence the father-child relationship in the tribal system moves into the paradigm of cultural and communal pride and significance. With the soaring violence on the frontier the father-child relation was subjected into the chaotic end.