The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper

First published: 1823

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: 1793

Locale: New York State

Principal characters

• Judge Temple, a frontier landowner
• Elizabeth Temple, his daughter
• Natty Bumppo, an old hunter, also known as Leatherstocking
• Oliver Edwards, Natty’s young friend
• Indian John, Natty’s American Indian companion
• Hiram Doolittle, a local magistrate

The Story:

On a cold December day in 1793, Judge Temple and his daughter, Elizabeth, are traveling by sleigh through a snow-covered tract of wilderness near the settlement of Templeton. Elizabeth, who has been away from her home attending a female seminary, is now returning to preside over her father’s household in the community in which he had been a pioneer settler after the Revolutionary War. Hearing the baying of hounds, the judge decides that Leatherstocking, an old hunter, has startled game in the hills, and he orders his coachman to stop the sleigh so he can have a shot at the deer if it comes in his direction. A few minutes later, as a great buck leaps onto the road, the judge fires both barrels of his fowling piece at the animal, apparently without effect. Then a third report and a fourth are heard, and the buck drops dead in a snowbank.

At the same time, Natty Bumppo, the old hunter, and a young companion appear from the woodland. The judge insists that he shot the buck, but Leatherstocking, by accounting for all the shots fired, proves that the judge could not have killed the animal. The argument ends when the young stranger reveals that he had been wounded by one of the shots fired by the judge. Elizabeth and her father then insist that he accompany them into the village in their sleigh, so he could have his wound dressed as soon as possible.

The young man gets into the sleigh with obvious reluctance and says little during the drive. In a short time, the party arrives at the Temple mansion, where his wound is treated. In answer to the judge’s questions, he gives his name as Oliver Edwards. His manner remains distant and reserved. After he departs, a servant in the Temple home reports that Edwards had appeared three weeks before in the company of old Leatherstocking and that he lives in a nearby cabin with the hunter and an American Indian known as Indian John.

Judge Temple, wishing to make amends for having accidentally wounded Edwards, offers him a position as his secretary. When Elizabeth adds her own entreaties to those of her father, Edwards finally accepts the judge’s offer, with the understanding that he will be free to terminate his employment at any time. For a while, he attends faithfully and earnestly to his duties in Judge Temple’s mansion during the day, but his nights are spent in Leatherstocking’s cabin. So much secrecy surrounds his comings and goings, and the reserve of Leatherstocking and his Indian friend, that Richard Jones, the sheriff and a kinsman of the judge, gets suspicious. Among other things, he wonders why Natty always keeps his cabin closed and never allows anyone except the Indian and Edwards to enter it. Jones and some others decide that Natty had discovered a mine and is now working it. Jones also suspects that Edwards is part Indian, his father a Delaware chief.

Hiram Doolittle, the local magistrate, prowls around the shack and sets the dogs guarding it free. In the meantime, Elizabeth and Louisa Grant, the minister’s daughter, go for a walk in the woods. There they are attacked by a savage panther and are saved only by the timely arrival of Leatherstocking, who shoots the animal. Natty, however, had also shot a deer, in defiance of Judge Temple’s strict game laws. With the charge that the old hunter had killed a deer out of season as his pretext, Doolittle persuades Judge Temple to sign a warrant so that the magistrate can gain entrance into the cabin and search it. Jones is more convinced than ever that Leatherstocking is secretly smelting ore from a mine.

Doolittle, now at the cabin, is refused entrance by Leatherstocking, who has a rifle in hand. Then the magistrate attempts to force his way over the threshold, but the old hunter seizes him and throws him twenty feet down an embankment. As the result of his mistreatment of an officer, Leatherstocking is arrested. Found guilty, he is given a month’s jail sentence and a fine, and is placed in the stocks for a few hours. When Elizabeth attempts to see what assistance she can give the humiliated old woodsman, she learns that he is planning to escape. Edwards, who had given up his position with the judge, is planning to flee with his old friend; he provided a cart in which to carry the old hunter to safety. Elizabeth promises to meet Leatherstocking the following day on the top of a nearby mountain and to bring with her a can of gunpowder.

The next day, Elizabeth and her friend, Louisa, start out on their expedition to meet Leatherstocking. On the way, Louisa changes her mind and turns back, declaring that she dare not walk unprotected through the woods where they had lately been menaced by a panther. Elizabeth continues on alone until she comes to a clearing in which she finds old Indian John, now dressed in the war costume and feathers of a great Mohican chief. When she stops to speak to Indian John, she suddenly becomes aware of dense clouds of smoke drifting across the clearing and discovers that the whole mountainside is ablaze. At that moment, Edwards appears, followed by Leatherstocking, who leads them to a cave in the side of the mountain. There the old Indian dies of exhaustion, and Elizabeth learns that he had been in earlier days Chingachgook, a great and noble warrior of the Mohican tribe. When danger of the fire passes, Edwards conducts Elizabeth down the mountainside until she is within hearing of a party of men who are looking for her. Before they part, Edwards promises he will soon reveal his true identity.

The next day, the sheriff leads a posse up the mountain in search of Leatherstocking and those who aided him in his escape from jail. Leatherstocking is again prepared to defend the cave to which he had taken Elizabeth the day before with his rifle, but Edwards declares that the time has now come to let the truth be known. He and Natty bring from the depths of the cave an old man seated in a chair. The stranger’s face is grave and dignified, but his vacant eyes show that his mind is gone. Edwards announces that the old man is really the owner of the property on which they stand. Judge Temple interrupts with a shout of surprise and greets the old man as Major Effingham.

The young man tells his story. His name, he says, is Edward Oliver Effingham, and he is the grandson of the old man who sits before them. His own father had been, before the revolutionary war, a close friend of Judge Temple. They had gone into business together, but the outbreak of the war found them on opposite sides during the struggle. Judge Temple had some money entrusted to him by his friend, money that actually belongs to his friend’s father, but when he received no reply to letters he wrote to the Effinghams, he at last decided that all the family had been lost in a shipwreck off Nova Scotia. He invested the money in his own enterprises.

The judge had never met Major Effingham; he would not have recognized him if he had seen the helpless old man who had for years been hidden in the cabin on the outskirts of Templeton. During those years, he was nursed faithfully by Leatherstocking and his Indian friend; by Leatherstocking because he had served with the major on the frontier years before, by Indian John because the major was an adopted member of the Mohican tribe.

Judge Temple orders that the old man be carried to the Temple mansion at once, where he will receive the best of care. Old Major Effingham thinks himself back home once more, and his eyes gleam with joy. He dies, happy and well cared for, soon afterward.

Edward Effingham also explains his belief that Judge Temple had stolen his father’s property and the money left in trust years before. In his resentment, he came to Templeton to assist his grandfather and to regain in some manner the property that he believed Judge Temple had unrightfully possessed. Now the judge is happy to return that part of the property that belongs to the Effinghams, and there is a reconciliation between the two men. As it turns out, however, the property stays in the family, for Elizabeth and Edward Effingham are married within a short time.

Elizabeth and Edward want to build a new cabin for Leatherstocking, but the old hunter refuses their offer. He intends to go off into the woods to hunt and trap in the free wilderness until he dies. Settlements and towns are not for him. He does not listen to their pleas and sets out on his long journey, pausing only long enough to view the stone tablet on Indian John’s grave, a monument that Edward Effingham had erected. Then he trudges off toward the woods, his long rifle over his shoulder. Elizabeth and her husband watch him go. Tears are in their eyes as they wave a last farewell to the old hunter just before he disappears into the forest.

Bibliography

Clark, Robert, ed. James Fenimore Cooper: New Critical Essays. London: Vision, 1985. Includes three essays on The Pioneers, addressing Cooper’s representation of American Indian languages as elements of the frontier, the importance of game laws in defining American democracy, and issues of ownership and property. Somewhat dense, but illuminating.

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. Describes the variety of social classes presented in the novel and how the classes coexist without overt conflict. Against this backdrop, it is natural that the “gentleman” Oliver Edwards should emerge as leader.

Franklin, Wayne. The New World of James Fenimore Cooper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Proposes Cooper as a major and undervalued artist who used striking imaginative energy to address important issues. Examines Cooper’s comment that The Pioneers was written to contradict the idea that American society was unpolished.

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

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 and a survey of Cooper scholarship and criticism. The Pioneers is discussed in the chapter “Cooper’s Leatherstocking Conversations: Identity, Friendship, and Democracy in the New Nation.” Features an illustrated chronology of Cooper’s life and important nineteenth century historical events.

Philbrick, Thomas. “Cooper’s The Pioneers: Origins and Structure.” In James Fenimore Cooper: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Wayne Fields. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979. Demonstrates how Cooper was inspired by descriptive poetry, specifically by James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730, 1744, 1746). This influence leads to Cooper’s images of natural change and to the corresponding themes of social change.

Rans, Geoffrey. Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Novels: A Secular Reading. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. The introduction examines the lasting interest in Cooper’s works. The chapter “Interrupted Prelude” explores the ideologized landscape and the characterization important to an understanding of the Leatherstocking tales.

Tawil, Ezra F. The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Examines the frontier romance, a popular genre of nineteenth century American fiction, focusing on the way novels by Cooper and Harriet Beecher Stowe redefined the concept of race. Pages 80 to 91 provide a detailed analysis of The Pioneers.

Taylor, Alan. William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book recounts the lives and relationship of father and son. Cooper’s father, William, founded Cooperstown, New York, in 1876, and became a successful businessperson, judge, and U.S. representative. His political power and prestige eventually declined, leading James Fenimore to write The Pioneers, in part to justify his father’s career.