The Deerslayer

The Deerslayer is a novel by the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, published in 1841 as the fifth and last of his Leatherstocking Tales.

It is the first book of the series in the order of its events. Natty Bumppo arrives at the lake as a young man with a rifle and a set of convictions, chief among them that a man should not take scalps, because every living thing ought to follow the nature it was given. Around him Cooper gathers the men and women who will test that: Harry March, who takes scalps and enjoys the taking, the pirate turned settler Floating Tom Hutter, his daughters Judith and Hetty, and the Delaware and Iroquois fighters whose war this is. The novel is a long set of encounters on and around the water, and its subject is the meeting of two ideas of honour, one European and one Native, with Natty caught between them in a country that is already being claimed in every direction. Cooper wrote it after the other novels in the series, and it is written as a prequel to all of them.

The book introduces the hero who appears in the rest of the Tales, and the frontier it describes is already passing away as the story is told.