The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again

The expression “The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again” is Tamenund’s final pronouncement on the novel’s history of dispossession: it names white mastery as the present reality and Indigenous return as a hope postponed beyond his lifetime. Spoken after Uncas’s death, it binds the mourning of a community to the loss of its land and political future.

Speaker and Immediate Context

Tamenund speaks after Chingachgook and Hawkeye have grieved over Uncas’s grave. The patriarch calls the gathering to disperse, then reflects on the sharp reversal contained in the day’s events: he had seen the sons of Unamis strong and happy, but now believes he has witnessed the last warrior of the Mohicans. The expression is therefore not an isolated maxim; it closes a scene of personal bereavement and collective loss.

Meaning and Historical Setting

The first half of the expression states who presently controls the land; the second denies that this arrangement marks the permanent end of Indigenous history, while admitting that a renewed era has not arrived. The novel’s preface gives that statement a wider historical frame: the Mohicans first possessed the country occupied by Europeans in this region and were consequently among the first dispossessed. It describes their disappearance before the advance of civilization as an apparent fate, while also acknowledging that the depicted history has sufficient truth to matter.

The story repeatedly connects that loss to particular places and acts of displacement. Chingachgook recalls his people being driven back from the shores, while Uncas explains that his ancestors left the salt lake country as pale faces spread along its streams and followed their nation’s river instead. Tamenund likewise remembers that white settlers took the Delawares’ rivers for themselves. These accounts make mastery more than a battlefield outcome: it is a continuing seizure of land and the interruption of peoples’ access to places bound to their histories.

Political and Narrative Significance

The line gives Tamenund’s authority a tragic, historical dimension. Earlier in the council, Uncas explains his people’s migration and their belief that they will follow the river when the Manitou calls them; here, Tamenund’s final words recast that history through the immediate evidence of defeat. His declaration does not promise imminent restoration. Instead, the phrase “has not yet come again” holds the possibility of return open while marking the present as an age of dispossession.

The expression also provides the novel’s closing contrast between Indigenous memory and settler possession. The preface says that the region remains largely wilderness even though Indigenous peoples have deserted it, and that most of the tribes named in the book have disappeared from their former homes or from the earth. Against that account, Tamenund’s words preserve the distinction between a people’s historical claim and the power that has taken their country. The conclusion is at once elegiac and political: it mourns the Mohicans’ extinction as represented in the story, while refusing to equate white dominion with the end of Indigenous time.