This photograph could have been taken by anyone. Close enough and with a camera in hand, it was only a matter of waiting for the moment. Does that mean, then, that with a decent camera we can walk out into the street, start shooting, and challenge the legacy of a Cartier‑Bresson, to name an example? Possible, yes—yet improbable. Cartier‑Bresson defined what we now understand as the capture of the decisive moment. His immortality rests on hundreds of photographs—almost all of them flawless—where the magic of that instant manifested before his eyes, camera poised. Far too many times for it to be mere chance.

Don’t bother. There was neither a penultimate nor a last. That story was a lyrical invention by James Fenimore Cooper to captivate the eager readers of the early nineteenth century. The tribe, much diminished—now part of the Stockbridge‑Munsee—lives today in Wisconsin, to the west of the Great Lakes, enduring the heavy snowfalls the region bestows for much of the year. And what do they do? They run casinos, persistently demand the restitution of their lands, and in their spare time, pass on their culture to the new generations.