The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper

First published: 1840

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: 1758

Locale: Environs of Lake Ontario and the Oswego River, New York

Principal characters

• Thomas Dunham, a U.S. Army garrison leader
• Mabel Dunham, his daughter
• Charles Cap, her uncle, a sailor
• Natty “Pathfinder” Bumppo, a frontier scout
• Jasper Western, his friend, a sailor
• Davy Muir, the garrison quartermaster
• Arrowhead, a Tuscarora chief
• Dew of June, his wife
• Chingachgook, Pathfinder’s friend, a Mohican chief

The Story:

Mabel Dunham and Charles Cap, her seaman uncle, are on their way to the home of her father, Sergeant Thomas Dunham. They are accompanied by Arrowhead, a Tuscarora Indian, and his wife, Dew of June. When they reach the Oswego River, they are met by Jasper Western and Natty Bumppo, the wilderness scout known as Pathfinder among the English and as Hawkeye among the Mohicans. Pathfinder leads the party down the Oswego on the first step of the journey under his guidance.

Chingachgook, Pathfinder’s Mohican friend, warns the party of the presence of hostile Indians in the neighborhood. They hide but are discovered and have a narrow escape. Arrowhead and Dew of June disappear, and Pathfinder’s group fears they had been taken captive or else have betrayed the group. On the lookout for more hostile war parties, they continue their journey to the fort, which they reach thanks especially to Jasper’s navigational skills on the river, and Mabel is joyfully welcomed by her father.

The sergeant tries to promote a romantic attachment between Mabel and Pathfinder, the sergeant’s real purpose in having brought Mabel to the frontier. Actually, Mabel has already fallen in love with Jasper. When the commander of the post, Major Duncan, proposes Lieutenant Davy Muir as a possible mate for Mabel, at the lieutenant’s request, the sergeant informs the major that Mabel is already betrothed to Pathfinder. Muir learns that he has been refused, but he apparently does not give up hope.

A contest of arms is proposed to test the shooting ability of the men at the post. Jasper scores a bull’s-eye. Muir shoots from a strange position, and it is believed by all that he has missed, but he says he has hit Jasper’s bullet, embedded in the target. Pathfinder uses Jasper’s rifle and also strikes the bullet in the bull’s-eye. The next test of marksmanship is to drive a nail into a tree with a bullet. Lieutenant Muir’s shot barely touches the nail, Jasper almost drives the nail completely into the tree, and Pathfinder’s shot completes the embedding of the nail. In the next test, shooting at a potato tossed into the air, Muir fails, but Jasper hits the potato in the center. A silken calash is one of the prizes, and Jasper desires it greatly as a present for Mabel. He mentions this to Pathfinder, who thereupon does no more than cut the skin of the potato. After he has lost the match, Pathfinder cannot resist killing two gulls with one bullet, which allows Mabel to understand how Jasper won the calash. In appreciation, she gives Pathfinder a silver brooch.

An expedition is planned to one of the Thousand Islands, to relieve the garrison there. The party is to leave in the Scud, a boat operated by Jasper. Before the party departs, however, Major Duncan receives a letter that causes him to suspect Jasper of being a French spy. Pathfinder refuses to believe the charge against his friend, but when the Scud sails under the command of Jasper, he is kept under strict surveillance by Sergeant Dunham and Cap. On the way, the Scud overtakes Arrowhead and his wife, who are taken aboard. After Pathfinder questions the Tuscarora chief, Arrowhead and his wife escape in a canoe that the Scud was towing astern. Becoming suspicious, Sergeant Dunham removes Jasper from his command and sends him below. Cap takes over the command of the boat, but Cap, being a saltwater sailor, is unfamiliar with freshwater navigation. When a storm comes up, it is necessary to call upon Jasper to save the ship from destruction in the breakers. The Scud escapes from Le Montcalm, a French ship, and Jasper brings the Scud safely to port at the isolated garrison in the Thousand Islands.

Pathfinder has fallen in love with Mabel, but when he proposes to her, she refuses him. Muir appears not to have given up his own suit, although he admits to Mabel that he has had three previous wives. Mabel detests him. Jasper also has fallen in love with Mabel, but he does not reveal it to anyone.

Sergeant Dunham decides to take some of his men to attack French supply boats, the outlying garrison’s mandate. Starting out with his detachment, he leaves six men at the post, Muir among them, with orders to look after the two women. Soon after her father’s departure, Mabel goes for a walk and meets Dew of June, who warns her of danger from Indians led by the French. Mabel, in turn, tells Muir, who seems unmoved by the information. Mabel then goes to Corporal M’Nab with her story, but he too fails to act on the warning. While they talk, a rifle cracks in the nearby forest, and M’Nab falls dead at Mabel’s feet. She runs to the blockhouse, the most secure building in the garrison, to which Dew of June has told her to go. The attacking party comprises twenty Indians, led by the Tuscarora renegade Arrowhead. Mabel, Cap, and Muir survive the ambush—Mabel’s survival with the help of Dew of June—but Cap and Muir are captured later. Mabel discovers Chingachgook, who has been spying around the garrison. She plans to acquaint him with the details of the situation, if he comes to the blockhouse, as she expects he will.

Instead, Pathfinder arrives secretly at the blockhouse. He has not been fooled by the dead bodies of the massacred people that the Indians have placed in lifelike poses around the garrison. Before Pathfinder can provide warning, the party of soldiers under Sergeant Dunham is ambushed, but the sergeant, although seriously wounded, manages to reach the blockhouse. Cap escapes from the Indians and also gains the protection of the blockhouse. The small group fights off the Indians during the night. Jasper arrives with men in the Scud in time to assist Pathfinder. Muir, however, still believing Jasper to be a spy, orders him bound. Frustrated at the failure of his ambush to destroy all of the whites, Arrowhead stabs Muir and disappears into the bushes, hotly pursued by Chingachgook, who later kills him. Muir dies, and Captain Sanglier, the French leader of the Indians, admits that the French spy had been Muir, not Jasper.

On his deathbed, Sergeant Dunham, thinking Jasper to be Pathfinder, takes Jasper’s hand, places it in that of Mabel, and gives the two his blessing. He dies before the surprised witnesses can correct his error. Finally realizing that Mabel really loves Jasper and that Jasper loves her, Pathfinder relinquishes his claim to her. Pathfinder disappears into the wilderness with Chingachgook and is seen only once more by Jasper and Mabel. On several occasions over the years of her marriage to Jasper, Mabel receives valuable gifts of furs, but no name ever accompanies these gifts, although her feelings tell her from whom they came.

Bibliography

Darnell, Donald. “Manners on a Frontier: The Pioneers, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer.” In James Fenimore Cooper: Novelist of Manners. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993. Explores the role of social class on the frontier. The main characters in these three novels, Darnell claims, are fully aware and respectful of their own lower rank.

Franklin, Wayne. James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. A biography of Cooper that covers his life and career from birth until he departed for Europe in 1826. His personal life and the writing and publishing history of his novels through and including The Last of the Mohicans are covered in this volume.

Kolodny, Annette. “Love and Sexuality in The Pathfinder.” In James Fenimore Cooper: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Wayne Fields. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979. Discusses Cooper’s need to show the possibility of love for Natty Bumppo to make him a whole human being. Natty faces a choice between love of the forest and love of a woman.

Krauthammer, Anna. The Representation of the Savage in James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Focuses on Cooper’s (and Herman Melville’s) creation of American Indian, African American, and other non-European characters, including the character of Natty Bumppo in The Pathfinder. Discusses how these characters were perceived as “savages,” both noble and ignoble, by American readers.

Motley, Warren. The American Abraham: James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Perceptive study of Cooper’s fixation on the consequences of paternal failures, including those of Sergeant Dunham in The Pathfinder.

Newman, Russell T. The Gentleman in the Garden: The Influential Landscape in the Works of James Fenimore Cooper. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Explores how Cooper’s fiction redefines the concept of the gentleman through the influence of the natural world, including the water and the forest, on the positive male characters in the stories.

Person, Leland S., ed. A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Collection of essays, including a brief biography by Cooper biographer Wayne Franklin and a survey of Cooper scholarship and criticism. The Pathfinder is discussed in “Cooper’s Leatherstocking Conversations: Identity, Friendship, and Democracy in the New Nation” by Dana D. Nelson. Features an illustrated chronology of Cooper’s life and of important nineteenth century events.

Rans, Geoffrey. Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Novels: A Secular Reading. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Good introductory overview. The chapter “A Matter of Choice” shows how The Pathfinder focuses more on the mythical character of Natty Bumppo and less on the Indians and the wilderness than do the other Leatherstocking novels.

Rust, Richard D. “On the Trail of a Craftsman: The Art of The Pathfinder.” In James Fenimore Cooper: New Historical and Literary Contexts, edited by W. M. Verhoeven. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1993. Persuasive argument that The Pathfinder is the most carefully crafted, unified, and fully realized work of art by Cooper.

Wegener, Signe O. James Fenimore Cooper Versus the Cult of Domesticity: Progressive Themes of Femininity and Family in the Novels. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Detailed study of the presentation of women in Cooper’s fiction, arguing that Cooper created strong, varied female characters in defiance of the cult of domesticity of American society between 1820 and 1860.