The story dates are derived from dates given in the tales and span the period roughly of 1740–1806. They do not necessarily correspond with the actual dates of the historical events described in the series, which discrepancies Cooper likely introduced for the sake of convenience. For instance, Cooper manipulated time to avoid making Leatherstocking 100 years old when he traveled to the Kansas plains in The Prairie. The Natty Bumppo character is generally believed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the historic explorer Daniel Boone or the lesser known David Shipman. Critic Georg Lukacs likened Bumppo to Sir Walter Scott's "middling characters; because they do not represent the extremes of society, these figures can serve as tools for the social and cultural exploration of historical events, without directly portraying the history itself.
Characters
Natty Bumppo is the protagonist of the series: an Anglo-American raised in part by Native Americans, and later a near-fearless warrior. He and his Mohican "brother" Chingachgook are constant companions. He is known as "Deerslayer" in The Deerslayer, "Hawkeye" and "La Longue Carabine" in The Last of the Mohicans, "Pathfinder" in The Pathfinder, "Leatherstocking" in The Pioneers, and "the trapper" in The Prairie. The novels recount significant events in Natty Bumppo's life from 1740-1806.
Chingachgook is a Mohican chief and companion of Bumppo. He is present in all the books except for The Prairie, as he dies of old age after narrowly escaping a forest fire in The Pioneers.
Uncas, son of Chingachgook, "last of the Mohicans", grew to manhood, but was killed in a battle with the hostile scout Magua. In actual history, a man named Uncas was a chief of the Mohegan in the 1600s. Though only a prominent figure in The Last of the Mohicans, he is mentioned as a boy at the very end of The Deerslayer, only once by name in The Pathfinder, and several times in The Prairie.
Onscreen adaptations of the novels
Several films have been adapted from one or more of this series of Cooper's novels. Some used one of Bumppo's nicknames, most often Hawkeye, to identify this character, e.g., in:
Lederstrumpf/ Leatherstocking co-starred Bela Lugosi as Chingachgook
The serial film Leatherstocking
The Last of the Mohicans, the 1992 film is based on the screenplay of this film.
The Last of the Mohicans, in which Hawkeye's surname was changed from Bumppo to Poe
The Pathfinder, where he is known chiefly as Pathfinder, but his birth name of Nathaniel is also mentioned
Two Canadian TV series were based on the character of Leatherstocking:
In Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo's name was changed to Nat Cutler, but he was usually referred to as Hawkeye
The series Hawkeye is mostly set around the fictional Fort Bennington during the French and Indian War
In J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir, among the men Moehringer gets to know is Bud, who refers to Bumppo in the following quote: "Don't think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder – your Natty Bumppo."
