The "Noble" or "Not-So Noble" Savage?

This isn't my first experience with Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans; the last time I flipped through the pages of this dense 400-pager, I was a junior in high school trying to make my way through Cooper's heavy, flowery language over Christmas Break. At the time, I was much more concerned with finishing the book than appreciating its themes and peculiarities, so when I first realized that we would be covering this text, I was excited to be able to actually give this novel a more thorough and fair second try.

One aspect of the novel that has intrigued me, even upon my first encounter of it, is the portrayal of the natives in the novel and how Cooper's descriptions and characterization of them interplays with the notion of the "noble savage". Actually, at the present time, I can't tell if Cooper's representation of Indians like Uncas, Chingachgook, and Magua, for example, honors this perception or combats it. Maybe the novel does a little bit of both. That seems to be my understanding at the present time.

The "noble savage" idea paints the picture of peoples (natives) who have retained a simplicity and goodness of nature because they haven't yet been exposed to the supposed evils that come along with civilization and westernization. This is a more positive perception of aboriginal peoples, celebrating their purity and critiquing the materialism, avarice, and other moral ramifications of civilization. I vaguely remember writing a paper on this topic with regard to the novel in my high school literature class, but I can't really recall whether I believed that this perception is one that applies in The Last of the Mohicans or not.

I personally think that Cooper at once supports and refutes this notion. If there are in fact any "noble savages" present in the novel, the last two Mohicans, Uncas and Chingachgook are the ones to most likely fit the bill. They possess a knowledge of the woodlands and terrain of the northeastern frontier unrivaled by those of the "pale faces"; their use of knife and tomahawk more than once prevails over the means used by those with more advanced technology; they maintain a respect and admiration of nature and the wilderness not conspicuous in the ways of the Englishmen and Frenchmen.

Yet, is the characterization of these Mohicans enough to portray humans as "essentially good" when, meanwhile, Cooper illustrates myriad scenes in which natives perform deed, without a second thought or reservation, that seem grotesque or almost inhuman in nature? It's hard to say that this idea of a "noble savage" applies absolutely in the novel when we view natives brutally smashing a wee babe against a rock right in front of its mother and then driving a tomahawk into the mother's brain, or removing the scalps of their victims with nothing more than a simple knife. Intense violent acts as these contribute more to an understanding of indigenous peoples as "wild", "uncivilized", and "subhuman", instead of as "pure" and "untainted" human beings. Do you understand my confusion a little bit now? Not that the novel has to have chosen one portrayal over the other- it seems to me that both perspectives towards natives are observed in Cooper's novel. These perspectives also largely play into discussions of race and racism that come up frequently with regard to this text. After all, just look at how many times skin color is referred to in the novel!

I'm curious to see what you all have to say on this topic. It's always interesting to investigate this idea of "the other" and how this us/them division calls into question race, history, and different schools of thought.