Even those conquerors, however, in order to survive, much less accomplish their greedy goals, had to adopt a more humble attitude toward the rugged environment: "Emulating the patience and self-denial of the practised native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty" (Cooper 1). There is no doubt that the author is critical of the more "cold and selfish" objectives of many of the white men who came to conquer the land and the native peoples of America. To the contrary, for Hawkeye the key to survival physically, psychologically and spiritually is finding his place in relationship to his environment-not overpowering that environment with power and arrogance.
The message of the book with respect to survival is not that an individual must be willing and able to overpower the natural or human forces which line up against him and threaten his existence. Only Hawkeye, of all the whites, is competent to survive, mainly because his experience in the woods has instilled in him the humility he needs to understand the Indian and to interpret the white and red man to each other (Ringe 26). The argument of the study will be that the element of character which allows Hawkeye to be a figure of survival is his ability to put himself in a position of humility with respect to nature and to other human beings:
James Fenimore Cooper, in his novel The Last of the Mohicans, explores issues of survival, including survival of the body, the mind, and the spirit.
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