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The Deerslayer (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Dust cover of 1953 Scribner's edition |
|
| Author | James Fenimore Cooper |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Leatherstocking Tales |
| Genre(s) | Adventure novel |
| Publisher | Lea & Blanchard: Philadelphia |
| Publication date | 1841 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 560 pp in two volumes |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1840) |
The Deerslayer, or The First Warpath (1841) was the last of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking tales to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. The novel's setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking tales to be published (1823). The Deerslayer is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the Leatherstocking tales. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in New York State, which is the setting of four of his five Leatherstocking tales.
This novel introduces Natty Bumppo as "Deerslayer", a young frontiersman in early 18th-century New York. He is contrasted to other frontiersmen and settlers in the novel who have no compunctions in taking scalps in that his natural philosophy is that every living thing should follow "the gifts" of its nature--which would keep European Americans from taking scalps. Two such characters in the work who actually seek to take scalps are Henry March ("Hurry Harry") and floating Tom Hutter.
In the dead of night Hutter and March sneak into the camp of the besieging Native Americans in order to kill and scalp as many as they can. Their plan fails, and Tom Hutter himself is mortally wounded and scalped. Henry March is later ransomed by Bumppo, his lifelong friend Chingachgook, and Hutter's daughters. After the death of Hutter his supposed daughters find out that they were not his natural daughters and he had been a notorious pirate.
Bumppo and Chingachgook come up with a plan to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed, Wah-ta!-Wah; but, in rescuing her, Bumppo is captured. His free companions then plan his rescue.
The brunt of Samuel L. Clemens's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses (1895) fell on The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder. Clemens wrote at the beginning of the essay: "In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."[1] He then lists 18 out of 19 rules "governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction" that Cooper violates in The Deerslayer.