The Prairie [with Biographical Introduction]
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As part of the series of "Leatherstocking" tales, this story chronicles the career of Natty Bumppo - hunter, scout, pathfinder and trapper, and aims to reflect the aspirations and disappointments of America's expansionist movement. Cooper (1879-1851) is also author of "The Last of the Mohicans".
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The last of the Leatherstocking Tales and, surprisingly, one of the best. I would say that it is almost as good as "Last of the Mohicans". Natty Bumpo, now a trapper, no longer a hunter, given his age, is nevertheless a powerful presence throughout, so very different from the almost non-existent role he had in "The Pioneers". This time he has left his favourite woods of the East to rove in the prairies as they are the last stronghold of wild nature free of the influence of settlers, woodcutters and people who don't know how to connect to the wilderness.
He is now an old man, in his eighthies, but still strong and fit enough to surprise the younger men he meets in this story. This novel is also one of the few of the series where characters from one book are mentioned in the present case. However, in general Cooper has stuck to making the story self contained with little influence of previous characters and most of the people are new and display aspects which are quite different from other characters.
As mentioned by other reviewers the story told has much to do with how, by the time of the early 1800's, the frontier was being pushed back by settlers from the east seeking their own land. This was also the subject of The Pioneers although not to the degree as described here. Most of this commentary is centred on Natty's view of the world and how it is being fundamentally altered for the worse in his view.
All round an excellent read.
He is now an old man, in his eighthies, but still strong and fit enough to surprise the younger men he meets in this story. This novel is also one of the few of the series where characters from one book are mentioned in the present case. However, in general Cooper has stuck to making the story self contained with little influence of previous characters and most of the people are new and display aspects which are quite different from other characters.
As mentioned by other reviewers the story told has much to do with how, by the time of the early 1800's, the frontier was being pushed back by settlers from the east seeking their own land. This was also the subject of The Pioneers although not to the degree as described here. Most of this commentary is centred on Natty's view of the world and how it is being fundamentally altered for the worse in his view.
All round an excellent read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the last of the "Leatherstocking " tales. Here the reader finds the great trapper Natty Bumppo in his waning years. The issues that are to define the west in years to come are on display even at this early date (1827). The infancy of Manifest destiny and the myth of the west that is yet to come. The writing is stilted by today's standards but this is still a must read for students of western literature. I also recommend "Across the High Lonesome" for fiction that explores a small slice of life in the modern west---or the west at the end of the myth.
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11 reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
a nice surprise
15 May 2001
Format:Paperback
I chose to read this series in chronological order and not the order in which they were written. This being the third to be written but last in order, I read this one last. I must say that I was surprised at how enjoyable a read it was seeing that the last two I read (The Pathfinder and The Pioneers) were pretty disappointing. This novel has excellent descriptions of the prairie setting and the characters involved without weighing the reader down with page upon page of needless descriptions or rhetoric. The story line was very well-conceived, plausable, and coherent; qualities which not many books can boast. Of course, this being the last book in the series, I was concerned about how the author would conclude the saga of Natty Bumpo. Not wanting to spoil anything, I must say that I was very impressed with the way Natty's character was handled. There is nothing worse than reading five or so books and having the author ruin them all by messing up the character at the end. No need to worry here. This novel pretty much has all the ingredients which make The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans exceptional: indian warfare, revenge, some romance, the differences and similarities between Natty's and the American Indian's religious views and philosophy on life, and of course just some good ol' action. I would recommend reading this series in chronological order, but if you do have to skip one of them, The Pioneers can be that one and you would not really miss a beat.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Anonymous Natty
26 Dec 2003
Format:Paperback
James Fenimore Cooper's 1827 novel "The Prairie" is an epic adventure featuring two major plots, twelve major characters, and a cast of thousands. Set in the Great Plains shortly after the Louisiana Purchase (the Lewis and Clark expedition is mentioned en passant), "The Prairie" sets two Indian tribes, the Sioux and the Pawnee, against each other as well as two disparate groups of white travelers. Even though Cooper had reservations regarding Sir Walter Scott that writer's influence on Cooper cannot be doubted. (One of the characters in "The Prairie" is named Le Balafré, as is a character in Scott's "Quentin Durward", published in 1823.) On the other hand, Cooper's style foreshadowed Charles Dickens in many passages, particularly the powerful depiction of frontier justice in Chapter Thirty-two. The central section of the novel, with its siege of Ishmael Bush's encampment and the portrait of Bush's Amazonian wife Esther, seems to have affected Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls". There are two young heroines, one swoony and the other spunky; but there are several heroes, including Duncan Uncas Middleton, a descendant of characters from "The Last of the Mohicans", and Hard Heart, a Pawnee partisan. (Partisan is an obscure synonym for chief which Cooper uses throughout the book.) Then there is Cooper's most famous character Natty Bumppo, who had already appeared in "The Pioneers" in 1823 and "The Last of the Mohicans" in 1826. He was to figure twice more in the 1840's as a young man, but "The Prairie" describes his final days as a graybeard. The odd thing is he's never named -- he's simply called the Trapper. Evidently his Deerslayer days are over, though he's referred to as "venable venator" by the novel's comic relief character Obed Batt (or Dr Battius, as he pedantically prefers). One assumes that Natty had become such a popular character readers were not confused by his anonymity. At any rate, he carries the complicated narrative, partly because he communicates with both the whites and the Indians in their native languages. The narrative's flow is smooth and rapid, and "The Prairie" is a page-turner for a lazy afternoon or a long flight.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
The best Leatherstocking tale
2 Sep 1998
Format:Paperback
This large, very elaborately written book is the first of the Leatherstocking tales Cooper wrote. It is, however, about Natty Bumppo's (aka Deerslayer, Leatherstocking, Hawkeye) final days. In this novel, he's more of a peripheral character, witnessing at least 2 other, very intriguing adventures.
The story is integrated in fantastic descriptions of the prairie; reading it you can almost feel the beauty and power of the unenslaved American wilderness.
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