It is 1751. Across north0eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older struggles between nations of native Americans for possession of the same lands and between the native people and white colonisers. Through these layers of conflict Cooper threads a thrilling narrative, in which Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of a British commander on the front line of the colonial war, attempt to join their father. Thwarted by Magua, the sinister `Indian runner`, they find help in the persons of of Hawk-eye, the white woodsman, and his companions, the Mohican Chigachgook and Uncas, his son, the last of his tribe.