chunk: The action of the story takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War) in the Adirondack Mountains in what was then the British colony of New York. Three frontiersmen are traveling west to find a new home. The oldest is Chingachgook, the last chief of the Mohican tribe. With him are his son, Uncas, and an adopted son, a white man named Nathaniel Poe, who also goes by the name “Nathaniel Hawkeye”.
  Meanwhile, British Army Major Duncan Heyward has arrived in Albany. He has been sent to serve under Colonel Edmund Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry, along Lake George, an important point in the defense of New York against the French in Canada. Heyward has also been given the assignment of escorting the colonel’s two daughters, Cora and Alice, to the fort to join their father. He is a family friend, and in love with Cora, and proposes to her before they leave. She does not give him an answer.