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Leatherstocking Tales
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by European settlers as "Leatherstocking," "La Longue Carabine," and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Pathfinder," "Deerslayer," and "Hawkeye".
Listed chronologically by story action, the books are:
| Story Dates | Title | Subtitle | Publication Date |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
The Deerslayer | The First War Path |
|
|
|
The Last of the Mohicans | A Narrative of 1757 |
|
|
|
The Pathfinder | The Inland Sea |
|
|
|
The Pioneers | The Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale |
|
|
|
The Prairie | A Tale |
|
Note that these are the dates given by Cooper in the tales themselves. They don't all correspond with the actual dates of historical events described in the series. This may have been done for convenience's sake, for instance to avoid making Leatherstocking 100 years old when he traveled the Kansas plains in The Prairie.
The Natty Bumppo character is generally believed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the real-life squatter David Shipman and the pioneer man Thomas Leffingwell.
Many depictions of Natty Bumppo and his adventures appear on film. Most used one of his nicknames, most often Hawkeye. In the 1992 film version of Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye's name was changed from Bumppo to Poe.
- James H. Pickering, Cooper's Otsego Heritage: The Sources of The Pioneers, 1979
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Leatherstocking Saga, edited by Allan Nevins, Pantheon Books, 1954.
- J.R. Moehringer, 'The Tender Bar: A memoir'. Referred to by one of the characters, Bud in this quote - "Don't think of fear as the villan. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder - your Natty Bumppo."
- Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker, 1979
- What's in a Name: Leatherstocking Region; an essay on how Natty Bumppo gave his name to a region of Upstate New York
- Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences; Mark Twain's satiric essay on Cooper's prose and Natty Bumppo