The Pioneers is perhaps the most realistic and beautiful of the Leatherstocking series. Drawing on his own experiences, Cooper brilliantly describes frontier life, providing a fascinating backdrop to the real heart of the novel, the competing claims to land ownership of Native Americans and settlers.

Natty Bumppo, a young white hunter brought up in the Delaware Indian tribe, has to defend settlers before returning to the Iroquois who have allowed him parole.

"The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the more numerous British colonists. The novel is primarily set in the upper New York wilderness, detailing...

The Prairie marks the final chapter in James Fenimore Cooper’s great saga of American frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Though nearly ninety in 1804, Bumppo, now on the Great Plains, is still a competent frontiersman and trapper. Once more he is drawn into conflict with society in the form of an emigrant party led by the surly Ishmael Bush and his miscreant brother-in-law, Abiram White. And once again, this great man of nature is called upon to exhibit...

Natty Bumppo finds his way of life challenged as the once open frontier becomes pirvate property. His struggle to defend his fiercely cherished freedom reflects a uniquely American drama of conflicting values and an unsparing, often caustic portrayal of a society in transition.

The Deerslayer is the last-written of Cooper's Leatherstocking tales, but the first in the development of the hero, Natty Bumppo. Here Cooper returns Leatherstocking to his youth and to a pristine wilderness. Natty was brought up among the Delaware Indians, engaged in warfare against the Hurons. He helps defend the family of Tom Hutter, a settler, from attack. Judith, a girl of noble birth loves Natty and begs him not to return to the Iroquois, but...

In The Pioneers, Natty Bumppo, forced by a local landowner to obey new hunting laws, rebels and finds allies in the landowner's daughter and a mysterious stranger. In The Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye, a scout, leads a small band of Americans fleeing from the British and their Indian allies in the French and Indian War.