The Deerslayer Illustrated

The Deerslayer, or The First War-Path (1841) 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. The novel's setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of The Pioneers, the first of the Leather stocking Tales to be published (1823). The Deer slayer is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the series. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilisation in New York State, which is the setting of four of his five Leather stocking Tales.