OR, THE FIRST WARPATH
The final volume to appear in Cooper’s ‘Leatherstocking’ series of novels was published in 1841. It is, however, the first story in that series, in terms of chronological placement. The novel shares the setting of the earlier The Pioneers and Home as Found – Ostego Lake, New York. The Deerslayer of the title is the alias by which Natty Bumppo is known and the novel tells of his early life as a frontiersman in eighteenth-century New York, as he helps his friend Chingachgook to recover his fiancée after she is kidnapped by a villainous band of Huron Indians.
Frequently reprinted and widely regarded as among the best of Cooper’s work, this is a classic tale of the wilderness, which is distinguished by its considered account of the ethical dilemmas governing the encounters between the frontiersman and the Native Americans, as well as the beautiful descriptions of the landscape of New York State.