Vigorous, self-reliant, amazingly resourceful, and moral, Natty Bumppo is the prototype of the Western hero. A faultless arbiter of wilderness justice, he hates middle-class hypocrisy. But he finds his love divided between the woman he has pledged to protect on a treacherous journey and the untouched forest that sustains him in his beliefs. A fast-paced narrative full of adventure and majestic descriptions of early frontier life, Indian raiders, and...

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...