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chasis_22
Colonial Settler
USA
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
April 19 2003
Status: offline
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 Posted - April 28 2004 : 9:48:48 PM
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I have watched The Last of the Mohicans so many times and I always get hung up on the very end of the movie. Leaving aside the dvd version. When Chingachgook speaks of joining Uncas and his people at the end.....I always look at Hawkeye's expression and find myself confussed. Hawkeye was raised my Chingachgook and even took on the Mohican beliefs and ways of life, but he would not be joining Uncas and Chingacgook when he dies? I personally would feel left out and possibly insulted. I guess what I am saying is, does this mean that Hawkeye wouldn't join them in death because his skin is white?
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Ithiliana
Colonial Settler
USA
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
November 07 2002
Status: offline
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Posted - April 29 2004 : 3:32:24 PM
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| its not his skin they were worried about... like many early societies, i believe that their chief concern was blood. and i dont think hawkeye would be offended... after all, he was raised with these beliefs, and knew very early on that he was not, in fact, a mohican. and another thing... i dont think people you know and understand can truly "discriminate" against you. i think if you understand their reasons for behaving the way they do, you will not consider them treating you differently discrimination. |
Le Poisson Rouge Seudois du Chaos
Conspiracy of One |
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Bookworm
Colonial Militia
USA
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
February 10 2004
Status: offline
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Posted - May 02 2004 : 12:02:41 PM
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With regard to the Indian understanding of adoption, I'm afraid Michael Mann got it wrong. Indians understood adoption, whether of whites or members of other tribes, as TOTAL -- once the adoption ceremonies, which often involved immersion in water, were completed, the adoptee was as much a member of the adopting tribe as those who were tribal members by birth. As an example, here are the words spoken to James Smith, an 18-year-old captive, following his adoption:
"My son, you are now flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. By the ceremony that was performed this day, every drop of white blood was washed out of your veins. You are taken into the Caughnawaga [French Mohawk] nation and initiated into a war-like tribe. You are adopted into a great family and now received with great seriousness and solemnity in the room and place of a great man. After what has passed this day you are now one of us by an old strong law and custom. My son, you have now nothing to fear. We are now under the same obligations to love, support and defend you that we are to love and to defend one another. Therefore you are to consider yourself as one of our people."
Smith was initially skeptical, but was later convinced -- "from that day I never knew them to make any distinction between me and themselves in any respect whatever until I left them...we all shared one fate." The author of the book from which I'm taking these quotes (James Axtell, The European and the Indian) goes on to say that this "is a chord that sounds through nearly every captivity narrative: 'They treated me...in every way as one of themselves.'"
So, in real life, Hawkeye would have been just as much a Mohican as Uncas. But we're dealing with "reel" life, and that would have ruined the story that Michael Mann wanted to tell. |
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