James Fenimore Cooper's Frontier: The Pioneers as History

The 

Pioneers

 introduced two of the three fundamental ideas of the environmental movement: the 

conservation of natural resources for man, and the beauty of nature and the wilderness.”

33

 In 

“James Fenimore Cooper and the Conservation Schism,” Nelson Van Valen contends that “that 

the first major struggle between utilitarian and preservationist was not that between Pinchot and 

Muir over California's Yosemite National Park but the almost equally famous, albeit fictional, 

contest between two equally redoubtable antagonists, Marmaduke Temple and Nathaniel 

Bumppo, over New York's Lake Otsego wilderness.”

34

 In 

“

Cooper's ‘Course of Empire’: 

Mountains and the Rise and Fall of American Civilization in 

The Last of the Mohicans

, 

The Spy

, 

and 

The Pioneers,”

 Ian Marshall places The Pioneers in a continuum of the “Leatherstocking 

Tales” that he says mirrors Thomas Cole’s “Course of Empire” paintings, which shows the cycle 

of man’s conquest of nature followed by nature’s return.

35

 The Pioneers, according to Marshall, 

                                                 

30

 Paul K. Johnston, “Puritan in the Wilderness: Natty Bumppo's Language & America's Nature Today,” Presented 

at the 11th Cooper Seminar, 

James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art

 at the State University of New York 

College at Oneonta, July, 1997  

31

 

William Cronon, “The Trouble With Wilderness, Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” 

Environmental History, 

Vol. 1, No. 1. (January, 1996) 7-28 

32

 Johnston  

 

33

 Hugh MacDougall, “James Fenimore Cooper: Pioneer of the Environmental Movement,” 1990;  

 

34

 Nelson Van Valen, “James Fenimore Cooper and the Conservation Schism,” 

New York History

, Vol. LXII, No. 3 

(July 1981), pp. 289-306.  

35

 Ian Marshall, “Cooper's ‘Course of Empire’: Mountains and the Rise and Fall of American Civilization in 

The 

Last of the Mohicans

, 

The Spy

, and 

The Pioneers” 

1989

marshall.html> 

---

 

10 

is in the stage of consummation, as pastoral gives way to civilization, which ultimately is 

followed by ruin. 

Class distinctions are another focus of scholarship for some. In his work, James Fenimore 

Cooper, Novelist of Manners, Donald Darnell describes The Pioneers as Cooper’s version of de 

Crevecouer’s “Letters of an American Farmer”, albeit without a villainous land baron.

36

 Instead, 

he wrote, The Pioneers treats class distinctions gently and Temple is “respected by one and all 

and governs by reason and example.” Interestingly, Darnell argues that Cooper, rather than use 

religion to show any kind of democratic bent, instead uses it to “index a character’s social 

status.” Episcopalianism is the religion of the upper class, other Protestant sects make up the 

majority of the common people, and those that find fault with pastor Grant’s compromise service 

are the “lower-class characters and villains” of the novel, he argues.

37

 

In “Landownership and Representation of Social Conflict in