James Fenimore Cooper

The Deerslayer Annotated James Fenimore Cooper

The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path was James Fenimore Cooper's last novel in his Leatherstocking Tales. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. This novel introduces Natty Bumppo as "Deerslayer": a young frontiersman in early 18th-century ny, who objects to the practice of taking scalps, on the grounds that each animate thing should follow "the gifts" of its nature, which might keep European Americans from taking scalps. Two characters who actually seek to require scalps are Deerslayer's foil Henry March (alias "Hurry Harry") and therefore the former pirate 'Floating Tom' Hutter, to whom Deerslayer is introduced on the way to an appointment with the latter's lifelong friend Chingachgook (who first appeared as "Indian John" within the Pioneers). Shortly before the rendezvous, Hutter's residence is besieged by the indigenous Hurons, and Hutter and March sneak into the camp of the besiegers to kill and scalp as many as they can; but are captured within the act, and later ransomed by Bumppo, Chingachgook, and Hutter's daughters Judith and Hetty. Bumppo and Chingachgook thereafter decide to rescue Chingachgook's kidnapped betrothed Wah-ta-Wah (alias 'Hist') from the Hurons; but, in rescuing her, Bumppo is captured. Hurry struggles with the Indians, but is finally capturedIn his absence, the Hurons invade Hutter's home, and Hutter is scalped alive. On his deathbed, he confesses that Judith and Hetty weren't his daughters by birth, and Judith determines to get her natural father's identity; but her search reveals only that her late mother had been of aristocratic descent, and had married 'Floating Tom' after the collapse of a bootleg affair. Later, Judith attempts and fails to rescue Deerslayer; and that they are all saved eventually when March returns with English reinforcements, who massacre the Hurons and mortally wound Hetty. After Hetty's death, Judith proposes marriage to Deerslayer, but is refused, and is last described because the paramour of a soldier. Fifteen years later, Bumppo and Chingachgook return to the location to seek out Hutter's house in ruins.