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Updated: June 19, 2025
He died at Cooperstown, on September 14, 1851. The connection of Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at first hand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness, popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on his knowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it about Cooperstown.
They went slowly up the Hudson, paid a brief visit to West Point, thence to Catskill, where, like Leatherstocking, they saw "Creation!" as Natty said, dropping the end of his rod into the water, and sweeping one hand around him in a circle "all creation, lad."
Then, forest scenes without "Natty Bumppo" could scarce come from his pen after the drawings of old "Leatherstocking" of "The Pioneers," "Hawkeye" of "The Mohicans," and the "aged trapper" of "The Prairie." So it came about that "Natty, the lover," stepped into these pages Natty, "so simple, so tender, so noble and true what shall be said of him?
She was told he was the most renowned hunter of that portion of the State, it was after the Revolution, a being of great purity of character and of as marked peculiarities; and that he was known in that region of country by the name of the Leatherstocking. Further than this Mrs.
After supper, Henry Chatillon and I lay by the fire, discussing the properties of that admirable weapon, the rifle, in the use of which he could fairly outrival Leatherstocking himself. It was late before I wrapped myself in my blanket and lay down for the night, with my head on my saddle.
In "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Prairie," "The Pathfinder," and "The Deer-slayer" figures the character of Leatherstocking, than whom no fictitious personage has a greater claim to interest. His bravery, resolution, and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy race who pushed westward the reign of civilization.
Other writers have appeared, with more culture, with more imagination, with more spiritual insight, with more attractiveness of style; but Leatherstocking, in the virgin forest, with the crafty, painted savage retreating before him, and the far-distant hum of civilization following his trail, is a creation which no reader ever can or would forget, a creation for which the merely accomplished writer would gladly exchange all the fine sentences and word-pictures that he had ever put on paper.
This much of Cooper's life was behind him when he moved into the Beach Street house. In this home he wrote The Pioneers, first of the famous Leatherstocking Tales and, too, The Pilot. In the New York of that day there was one place where he loved to go for a quiet dinner and discussion with the literary friends whom he quickly gathered around him.
"The aged trapper a nobly pathetic figure contrasted with the squatter" looms up, colossal, against the gleaming radiance of departing day; and full well he knows his own leaving for the long-home is not far off for the remarkable life of wondrous Leatherstocking closes within these pages. Of other characters and the author Prof. Matthews says: "He was above all things a creator of character.
How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range or grasp; but what dignity, nay, even grandeur, is thrown around him from his noble moral qualities, his undeviating rectitude, his disinterestedness, his heroism, his warm affections!
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