A reflection of indian life in the works of fenimore cooper

General description of the works and literary style
The first of the renowned Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers , followed and adhered to the successful formula of The Spy, reproducing its basic thematic conflicts and utilizing family traditions once again.⁵ In The Pioneers, however, the traditions were those of William Cooper of Cooperstown, who appears as Judge Temple of Templeton, along with many other lightly disguised inhabitants of James’s boyhood village. No known prototype exists, however, for the novel’s principal character—the former wilderness scout Natty Bumppo, alias
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⁵ Long, Robert Emmet (1990). James Fenimore Cooper.
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­­­Leatherstocking. The Leatherstocking of The Pioneers is an aged man, of rough but sterling character, who ineffectually opposes “the march of progress,” namely,
the agricultural frontier and its chief spokesman, Judge Temple. Fundamentally, the conflict is between rival versions of the American Eden: the “God’s Wilderness” of Leatherstocking and the cultivated garden of Judge Temple. Since Cooper himself was deeply attracted to both ideals, he was able to create a powerful and moving story of frontier life. Indeed, The Pioneers is both the first and finest detailed portrait of frontier life in American literature; it is also the first truly original American novel.
Both Cooper and his public were fascinated by the Leatherstocking character. He was encouraged to write a series of sequels in which the entire life of the frontier scout was gradually unfolded. The Last of the Mohicans takes the reader back to the French and Indian wars of Natty’s middle age, when he is at the height of his powers. That work was succeeded by The Prairie in which, now very old and philosophical, Leatherstocking dies, facing the westering sun he has so long followed. (The five novels of the series were not written in their narrative order.) Identified from the start with the vanishing wilderness and its natives, Leatherstocking was an unalterably elegiac figure, wifeless and childless, hauntingly loyal to a lost cause. This conception of the character was not fully realized in The Pioneers, however, because Cooper’s main concern with depicting frontier life led him to endow Leatherstocking with some comic traits and make his laments, at times, little more than whines or grumbles. But in these sequels Cooper retreated stylistically from a realistic picture of the frontier in order to portray a more idyllic and romantic wilderness; by doing so he could exploit the parallels between the American Indians and the forlorn Celtic heroes of James Macpherson’s pseudo-epic Ossian, leaving Leatherstocking intact but slightly idealized and making extensive use of Macpherson’s imagery and rhetoric.
Cooper intended to bury Leatherstocking in The Prairie, but many years later
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he resuscitated the character and portrayed his early maturity in The Pathfinder and his youth in The Deerslayer . These novels, in which Natty becomes the centre of romantic interest for the first time, carry the idealization process further. In The Pathfinder he is explicitly described as an American Adam, while in The Deerslayer he demonstrates his fitness as a warrior-saint by passing a series of moral trials and revealing a keen, though untutored, aesthetic sensibility.
The “Leatherstocking” tales are Cooper’s great imperfect masterpiece, but he continued to write many other volumes of fiction and nonfiction. His fourth novel, The Pilot , inaugurated a series of sea novels, which were at once as popular and influential as the “Leatherstocking” tales. And they were more authentic: such Westerners as General Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, and Mark Twain might ridicule Cooper’s woodcraft, but old salts like Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad rightly admired and learned from his sea stories, in particular The Red Rover and The Sea Lions . Never before in prose fiction had the sea become not merely a theatre for, but the principal actor in, moral drama that celebrated man’s courage and skill at the same time that it revealed him humbled by the forces of God’s nature. As developed by Cooper, and later by Melville, the sea novel became a powerful vehicle for spiritual as well as moral exploration. Not satisfied with mere fictional treatment of life at sea, Cooper also wrote a meticulously researched, highly readable History of the Navy of the United States of America.
The Deerslayer, Cooper has succeeded admirably in achieving a unity of plot and setting; and this achievement, indicated previously as one of the superiorities of the romance, has contributed greatly to the lasting importance of this last tale about Natty Bumppo's exploits. Stylistically, Cooper is at his strongest as a writer in two ways: the descriptions and the physical background, especially of Glimmerglass; and the scenes of action. The many, extensive passages about nature and the geography of the story are poetic and beautiful examples of
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Cooper's artistic strength. His descriptions, however, are not inserted only for artistic beauty; they are also the means by which he expresses his romantic love of nature, his philosophy about the natural settings, and his belief that man's fate is entwined intimately with all facets of the environment. While the story is admittedly slowed and at times halted by the lyrical renditions of Cooper about nature, The Deerslayer , without these parts, would be only a tale of excitement and adventure.
Cooper's main appeal to young people in his romances about Natty Bumppo, as well as such sea fiction as The Pilot, has been his skill in holding reader interest. He, in short, knows how to spin a story; he is a born storyteller, if such is possible. He uses suspense, close brushes with disaster, accidents, good and bad luck for his characters, mistakes, surprise, and coincidence to promote his cause. All the romantic ideas are here in addition to literary devices long in use. When Cooper is embarked on a scene of action, the reader is so engaged in tracking the course of the characters that the literary scaffolding employed is not usually noticed, and is forgiven if it is sometimes excessively visible. These two positive features of Cooper's art were also the qualities first recognized, accepted, and appreciated by his readers. He won popular fame and critical applause by his skillful artistry in writing the first American novels worthy of the name.
However, Cooper is at his weakest in dialogue because he yields to the then current romantic exaggerations of emotional, sentimental, unrealistic speech; he also utilizes the conversations between characters for a confrontation of his ideas on social, religious, moral, and even political issues. The two lengthiest examples of this weakness in The Deerslayer are the several discussions between Natty and Judith on the ark and the farewells of Natty to his friends when he must return to Mingo captivity. Although characterization is involved in these long and complicated arguments, the action suffers a great deal; at times the plot is almost forgotten, ignored, and lost in the opposing viewpoints. It is doubtful that Cooper,
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though he shows his profound concern about the American experience and broader

problems, has lifted the level of his art by dialogue. It is equally doubtful if he has made his characters more acceptable to the readers by their speeches in time of crisis and danger; more likely he has weakened acceptance of the characters.
Without the extended conversation, however, Cooper would not have survived and would not have been increasingly recognized as a major American thinker. It is therefore impossible to omit, summarize, or ignore the dialogues (as is done in some anthologies and condensations) without sacrificing the total portrait of the man and writer. Another value in Cooper's use of language is his effort to reproduce dialect and peculiar forms of American speech, particularly in the character of Natty Bumppo, emphasizing thereby the indigenous hero of the New World.
Other literary techniques used by Cooper are the chase, escape, and pursuit, disguises; contrasts of characters; the night to heighten the effect of fear and terror; the sunset to stress the beauties of nature; mystery in the guise of a stranger or a character with a mysterious past; and clues to coming events and the outcome of critical situations.

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