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2.2 Anti-discrimination Attitude towards Indians
James Fenimore Cooper himself never saw Indians and he had no chance to feel the miserable lives of Indians either. However, just like some other famous people who had deep sympathy for Indians at that time, Cooper always extended his compassion and pity to the red. All his sympathies and his dissatisfactions are easily found and felt in his works, especially in The Last of The Mohicans. Cooper (1982:230) once wrote in his work that the land of Mohicans was the first part of North American continent which was plundered by the white. Therefore, the Mohicans became the first group of Indians who had to leave their own homeland under the persecution of the white. Then faced with the advancement of civilization that we can explain it into the invasion of white culture, all Indian tribes were becoming vanishing and disappearing just as the leaves in their homeland were falling down till the end. It is almost can be said that such kind of result was seemed to be destined. And there were enough evidence that can prove the above narration of Indians was all the truth.
As far as Cooper was concerned, Indians’ pains and sufferings mainly resulted in the colonial domination of the British and French who launched the wars in American land. Both of them carried out a series of fraud and tyrannical behaviors to Indians, and they even had been taking the measures such as racial genocide, segregation and national assimilation to make Indians loss their civil rights until they became the people in the lowest social rung. Researching Cooper’s description and other history documents, we can see the colonists’ cruel behaviors to Indians. They purchased Indians’ scalp with high price, using alcohol and Bible to weaken Indians’ morale and fighting spirit, sacrificed thousands of Indians’ lives by cheating and threatening them and took the advantage of the bifurcation among Indian tribes to drive a wedge between them to induce them to persecute each other.