Chingachgook

Chingachgook
/The Last of the Mohicans character
Gojko Mitić playing Chingachgook the Great Serpent, in an eponymous East German western film.
First appearance	The Pioneers
Last appearance	The Deerslayer
Created by	James Fenimore Cooper
Information
Aliases	Le Gros Serpent
Gender	Male
Occupation	Chief
Spouse(s)	Wah-ta-Wah (wife)
Children	Uncas (son)
Nationality	Mahican

Chingachgook is a fictional character in four of James Fenimore Cooper's five , including The Last of the Mohicans. Chingachgook was a lone Mohican chief and companion of the series' hero, Natty Bumppo. In The Deerslayer, Chingachgook married Wah-ta-Wah, who bore him a son named Uncas, but died while she was still young. Uncas, who was at his birth "last of the Mohicans", grew to manhood but was killed in a battle with the Huron warrior Magua. Chingachgook died as an old man in the novel The Pioneers, which makes him the actual "last of the Mohicans," having outlived his son.

Chingachgook is said to have been modeled after a real-life wandering Mohican basket maker and hunter named Captain John. The fictional character, occasionally called John Mohegan in the series, was an idealized embodiment of the traditional noble savage. The French often refer to Chingachgook as "Le Gros Serpent," the Great Snake, because he understands the winding ways of men's nature and he can strike a sudden, deadly blow.

The name is derived from the Lenape language, which is closely related to the Mahican language. In Lenape, xinkw- means 'big' and xkuk means 'snake'.Chingachgook is derived from Lenape xinkwi xkuk, 'big snake', pronounced [xiŋɡwixkuk]. The digraph ⟨ch⟩ in the spelling used by John Heckewelder, the source for the name, and the letter ⟨x⟩ in modern Lenape spelling both represent the voiceless velar fricative sound [x] (as in "Bach"), not the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate [t͡ʃ] (as in "church").