Typically, approaches to Cooper's novel draw on sources such as Rousseau and Columbus, (1) whose contemplations of a "new" American landscape and its inhabitants serve as much of the basis for the Noble Savage convention in literature. In a popular sense, the novel has come to be viewed as an adventure story of our country's beginnings, an American counterpart to Sir Walter Scott's Waverley escapades set against the backdrop of a pristine yet unpredictable wilderness, the inhabitants of which eventually disappear. Scholars of James Fenimore Cooper have generally interpreted The Last of the Mohicans and its American Indian characters as emblematic of the Vanishing American convention in American literature, whereby Natives must be subsumed in order for a young America to fulfill its destiny.
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