Leatherstocking Tales

James Fenimore Cooper's five-novel cycle follows Natty Bumppo from his youth as a hunter in the 1740s through his death on the Great Plains in 1804. The series includes The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. Cooper did not write them in chronological order; he began with an aging Natty in The Pioneers (1823), then backtracked to earlier periods as readers demanded more of the character.

Natty Bumppo is a white frontiersman raised by Delaware Indians, fluent in native languages and skilled in woodcraft. He carries a long rifle named Killdeer and lives by a strict moral code that values honesty, loyalty, and respect for nature. His closest companion is the Mohican chief Chingachgook, whose son Uncas appears in The Last of the Mohicans. The novels follow their adventures during the French and Indian War and the early expansion of the United States.

Cooper drew on his own upbringing in Cooperstown, New York, a frontier settlement founded by his father. He served as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy before becoming a writer. The Leatherstocking Tales made him America's first internationally successful novelist, translated into dozens of languages and praised by European authors like Sir Walter Scott and Honoré de Balzac.[edit]