The Prairie

by James Fenimore Cooper Book 5 in the Leatherstocking Tales series.

First published 1827

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3.6(1,991)

An elderly Natty Bumppo has moved beyond the Mississippi into the open prairie, where he encounters the migrant family of Ishmael Bush and becomes involved in the rescue of captives and fugitives moving through a landscape unfamiliar to the newcomers. Pawnee and Sioux groups, soldiers, hunters and settlers all compete for movement and security across the plains.

As the final episode in Natty’s life, the novel turns westward expansion into an elegy for a frontier that is already moving beyond him. Cooper contrasts the knowledge of people who read the land closely with the acquisitive habits of newcomers, while Natty’s age and eventual death give the Leatherstocking sequence a deliberately mournful conclusion.