James Fenimore Cooper's Frontier: The Pioneers as History

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James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers provides an excellent opportunity to put the ideas 

of Richter and Jennings into practice using the novel as a primary source tool for viewing 

America in transition. Specifically, the novel offers a snapshot of American culture in a specific 

place at a critical time. The frontier of upstate New York was at the same time both typical and 

anomalous in the American experience and The Pioneers is a window into this segment of the 

American world. Some historians and scholars already have used the novel to explore various 

general themes about American history, mostly questions about authority. This paper will build 

and add to that body of work by both exploring parts of the novel that have been left untapped 

and by reexamining themes that have been previously examined. 

A large body of Cooper scholarship also has been in the arena of literary criticism. True, 

in terms of plot The Pioneers lacks much of the intrigue or action of the other “Leatherstocking 

Tales” and the writing often lends weight to criticism of Cooper’s literary skills, most famously 

Mark Twain’s acerbic “The Literary Offences of James Fenimore Cooper.” However, Twain’s 

problem with Cooper’s writing was that he didn’t think it qualified as “art;”

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 he did not address 

whether it stands as history, which it does. As one contemporary reviewer wrote, “It might, 

indeed, be called historical; for the historian can scarcely find a more just and vivid delineation 

of the first settlements of our wilderness.”

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 The Pioneers also places the American experience of 

settling and developing a new nation into a larger context. This was a new nation for many 

immigrants, but there also was an existing history. The struggles of settlers and developers are 

located within this continuum of history, rather than at the beginning of one, adding to our 

understanding of the complex issues of the time.  

The overarching theme of this paper is that Americans did not bring established 

principles to bear on a blank sheet of paper. Their own institutions were changing and evolving 

even as they sought to establish them in new settlements. They displaced existing cultures, 

institutions and codes of behavior as they were still growing into their own. Returning to Wood’s 

                                                 

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 Daniel K. Richter, “Whose Indian History?” 

The William and Mary Quarterly

, 3rd Ser., Vol. 50, No. 2, 

Early American History: Its Past and Future. (Apr., 1993): 379 

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 Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences” in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (New York: Harper 

& Brothers, 1897) 

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 Excerpt from a review of The Pioneers, in 

The Port Folio

, Vol. 15, No. 251, March, 1823, pp. 230-48. Reprinted in 

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism

, Vol. 27, Gale Group.  

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assertion that this period was marked by the climax and fall of the Enlightenment, it is important 

to understand what the Enlightenment entailed in America.  

According to Wood, the enlightenment was “pushing back the boundaries of darkness 

and barbarism and spreading light and knowledge.” This took place on several fronts, Wood 

wrote. “Some saw the central struggle taking place in natural science and in the increasing 

understanding of nature…others saw it taking place mostly in religion…Still others saw it taking 

place in politics- in driving back the forces of tyranny and in the creating of new free 

governments…” However, Wood wrote, these were all parts of a larger theme: “the spread of 

what came to be called civilization” and that was “not simply a matter of material prosperity…it 

was above all a matter of personal and social morality.”

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Cooper’s Templeton is a prime example of how “civilization” was being realized in the 

new world and this paper considers how that applied to those aforementioned Enlightenment 

elements: natural science, nature itself, religion, politics, material prosperity and personal and 

social morality. Religion was not the guiding force of morality in Cooper’s Templeton as it was 

in the cities, nevertheless, Americans sought to impose Christianity on the indigenous peoples of 

America. While long established tenets of Christianity were languishing, Jeffersonian ideals of 

“Republican motherhood” and innate morality were taking their place as guiding principles. 

However, morality itself was opposed at some turns by new laws that were geared to society 

rather than individuals. Scientific progress and rational pragmatism were the order of the day, yet 

they were clearly deficient in some respects, sometimes even inferior to “uncivilized” native 

practices. These issues are the focus of the first three chapters. 

At the core of the novel is the question of land-ownership and land use, both of which are 

necessarily interrelated with political theories and practices. The great landed estates were being 

dismantled by radicalized post-Revolutionary lawmakers, yet the trappings of privilege of the 

American aristocracy were still very evident, especially in upstate New York. Americans, used to 

tenant relationships with large landowners, were suddenly set free with a political and religious 

imperative to acquire and develop land- land that was already occupied by others. Also 

intertwined with issues of land ownership were questions of land use. With ownership came 

development or, depending on one’s viewpoint, destruction. Cooper’s none-too-subtle plea for an 

                                                 

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 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York; Knopf, 1992) 191-192 

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environmentally conscious approach to the land’s resources is remarkably prescient and worthy 

of discussion as well. These issues are discussed in Chapter 4.  

Although William Cooper is referenced periodically throughout this paper, “Cooper” will 

generally refer to James Fenimore Cooper. Also, there is much in the writing of Cooper and his 

contemporaries that I have quoted in which spelling and grammar leave much to be desired. All 

quotations are verbatim from the texts. 

For readers unfamiliar with the novel or who wish their memories to be refreshed, I have 

included two appendices. Appendix A is a list and brief description of the key characters 

referenced in this paper. Appendix B is a chapter-by-chapter summary of the novel. Both 

appendices are courtesy of James Fenimore Cooper Society President Hugh MacDougall’s work 

in “Reading