The Prairie
Encyclopedia
The Prairie: A Tale is a novel
by James Fenimore Cooper
, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo
. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales
, though it was published before The Pathfinder
(1841) and The Deerslayer
(1842). It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier
. The book frequently references characters and events from the two books previously published in the Leatherstocking Tales as well as the two which Cooper wouldn’t write for more than ten years. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans
is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan and Alice Heyward and the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English
for the French
nickname
for the Delaware
, le Coeur-dur.
looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase
, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean
and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte
where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire
and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River
. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him.
, who is said to have thought "a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded," The Prairie incorporates the historical phenomenon of the migration of settlers into the territories of the Louisiana Purchase
. "The trapper" exemplifies frontiersmen like Daniel Boone in his quest for the wide open spaces of the American west. The Ishmael Bush party is an early wagon train
.
Novelist and social critic James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was the first major American writer to deal imaginatively with American life, notably in his five "Leather-Stocking Tales." He was also a critic of the political, social, and religious problems of the day.
James Cooper (his mother's family name of Fenimore was legally added in 1826) was born in Burlington, N.J., on Sept. 15, 1789, the eleventh of 12 children of William Cooper, a pioneering landowner and developer in New Jersey and New York. When James was 14 months old, his father moved the family to a vast tract of wilderness at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River in New York State where, on a system of small land grants, he had established the village of Cooperstown at the foot of Otsego Lake.
Here, in the "Manor House," later known as Otsego Hall, Cooper grew up, the privileged son of the "squire" of a primitive community.
The doctor, horrified at the possibility of being forced to marry an Indian wife, refers to them as a different species, not homo sapiens.
The Tetons are frequently referred to as looking like snakes or with other snake symbolism, such as having “forked tongues".
Although Cooper’s Indians are frequently stereotypical, so are his white characters. Despite sometimes referring prejudicially to Indians as subhuman, he still presents them in a complex light, a mixture of human and devilish characteristics. Amidst what Cooper describes as primitive or dirty, he lauds their honor, hospitality, laws, etc. The Indians are more complex characters than most or any of the white characters in the book. In The Prairie, the Tetons are the most loathsome, evil characters aside from Abiram, and yet Hard-heart of the Pawnee is the most honorable and brave character after the trapper.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo
Natty Bumppo
Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo is the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.- Fictional biography :...
. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales
Leatherstocking Tales
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by European settlers as "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and...
, though it was published before The Pathfinder
The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea
The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea is an historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1840. It is the fourth novel Cooper wrote featuring Natty Bumppo, his fictitious frontier hero, and is considered as forming the third chronological episode of the Leatherstocking Tales...
(1841) and The Deerslayer
The Deerslayer
The Deerslayer, or The First Warpath was the last of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking tales to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo...
(1842). It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
. The book frequently references characters and events from the two books previously published in the Leatherstocking Tales as well as the two which Cooper wouldn’t write for more than ten years. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in February 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known...
is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan and Alice Heyward and the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
for the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
for the Delaware
Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
, le Coeur-dur.
Characters
- The trapper - The story’s main protagonist. Never mentioned by name, we infer by references to other books that this is Natty Bumppo in his 87th (or 83rd) and final year. He is the wise, cunning mind that keeps the white settlers alive through repeated, dangerous situations. Captain Duncan Middleton’s grandparents were his close friends.
- Ishmael Bush - Rugged immigrant. Frequently described as dirty, lazy and coarse. Often referred to as a “squatter” because he lays claim to land without purchasing it from the government or the Indians. He is running from the law because he has aided in kidnaping Inez, Middleton’s young wife.
- Esther Bush - Ishmael's hard, careworn wife, mother of his 14 children (seven sons and seven daughters). Sometimes a woman of action, sometimes a woman of quiet complaints.
- Ellen Wade - The niece of Esther's deceased first husband (husband’s sister’s daughter) who lives with them as their wardWard (law)In law, a ward is someone placed under the protection of a legal guardian. A court may take responsibility for the legal protection of an individual, usually either a child or incapacitated person, in which case the ward is known as a ward of the court, or a ward of the state, in the United States,...
since she was orphaned. Ishmael intends to marry her to his eldest son Asa, but she is in love with Paul Hover. - Abiram White - Esther Bush’s brother. Kidnapped of Inez de Certavallos-Middleton before story begins. Murders his nephew Asa Bush, but isn’t discovered until nearly the end of the book. The book’s most base character.
- Inez de Certavallos-Middleton - The beautiful, petite bride of Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton, daughter of a wealthy landowner in Louisiana. A devout Catholic, determined to convert her husband to her faith.
- Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton - Grandson of Major Duncan Heyward and Alice Munro-Heyward of The Last of the MohicansThe Last of the MohicansThe Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in February 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known...
, who rescues his bride from Abiram White and sees to the proper burial of Natty Bumppo at the end of the narrative. - Paul Hover - The country-wise, impetuous bee-hunter, who is betrothed to Ellen Wade. Nearly every comment he makes references bees in some fashion.
- Dr. Obed Bat Latinized as Battius - a physician-naturalist. He had joined himself to the Bush caravan as family physician, but he took the opportunity of going into the wilderness to make forays into the surrounding country to gather specimens of floraFloraFlora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
and faunaFaunaFauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
. Like the character of David the psalmodist in The Last of the Mohicans he both provides comic relief and a foil by which Cooper may compare the relative merits of Natty Bumppo's frontier practicality with theoretical knowledge. Obed and David are also similar to Hetty Hutter in The Deerslayer as people held in awe and unmolested by the native Americans because of their mystical qualities as medicine menMedicine man"Medicine man" or "Medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples...
. When Obed learns of Inez and her circumstances, he joins her husband's party to rescue her. His speech is frequently didactic, often reciting a fictitious genus and species for each animal or plant he encounters. - Asinus - Dr. Battius's trusty donkeyDonkeyThe donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E...
, whose bray proves to be a life-saving measure for the doctor and his friends in the face of stampeding bisonBisonMembers of the genus Bison are large, even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Two extant and four extinct species are recognized...
and hostile Native AmericansNative Americans in the United StatesNative Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
. - Hector - Natty's wise old hunting dog, who dies before Natty but is preserved through primitive taxidermyTaxidermyTaxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
as a comfort to the dying frontiersman. His plaintive whine is the precursor of danger in the narrative. Middleton’s dogs are Hector’s offspring. - Mahtoree - A brave and crafty Teton SiouxSiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
chiefTribal chiefA tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...
, who wants Ellen and Inez for his fourth and fifth wives. He is killed by Hard Heart. - Hard Heart - A brave, handsome, and trustworthy Pawnee warrior, who helps Natty and Middleton escape from their enemies and manages an amazing escape from certain death at the hands of the Tetons. He leads the final battle against the Tetons, killing Mahtoree and taking his scalp for a prize. He becomes the husband of Tachechana, Mahtoree's beautiful widow, and protector and benefactor of her aged father, Le Balafré, and Natty Bumppo, who comes to love him like a son. His name links him to Natty's admired DelawaresLenapeThe Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
, whose nickname in FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
is le Coeur-dur, "hard heart." The trapper (Natty) is drawn to Hard Heart as a noble warrior in the likeness of his dear friend Uncas, The Last of the Mohicans. - Weucha - A treacherous Teton brave, whom Hard Heart dramatically kills with his own tomahawk.
- Le Balafré - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
for "the scarred one", so named by the French CanadianFrench CanadianFrench Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...
traders and soldiers, he is the very aged Teton father-in-law of Mahtoree, father of Tachechana, who as a character corresponds to Tamenund in The Last of the Mohicans. - Tachechana - Youngest wife of Mahtoree.
Plot
The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the MidwestMidwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, or ″Corps of Discovery Expedition" was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William...
. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte
Butte
A butte is a conspicuous isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; it is smaller than mesas, plateaus, and table landform tables. In some regions, such as the north central and northwestern United States, the word is used for any hill...
where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire
Escape fire
An escape fire is a term used to describe the "backfire" or "backburn" set by Fireboss Wag Dodge at Mann Gulch to escape a primary fire burning inescapably towards him and his crew. Check Wiki definitions for "backfire" and "backburn," e.g...
and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River
Missouri River
The Missouri River flows through the central United States, and is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is the longest river in North America and drains the third largest area, though only the thirteenth largest by discharge. The Missouri's watershed encompasses most of the American Great...
. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him.
Westward expansion
In the spirit of Daniel BooneDaniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
, who is said to have thought "a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded," The Prairie incorporates the historical phenomenon of the migration of settlers into the territories of the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
. "The trapper" exemplifies frontiersmen like Daniel Boone in his quest for the wide open spaces of the American west. The Ishmael Bush party is an early wagon train
Wagon train
A wagon train is a group of wagons traveling together. In the American West, individuals traveling across the plains in covered wagons banded together for mutual assistance, as is reflected in numerous films and television programs about the region, such as Audie Murphy's Tumbleweed and Ward Bond...
.
Novelist and social critic James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was the first major American writer to deal imaginatively with American life, notably in his five "Leather-Stocking Tales." He was also a critic of the political, social, and religious problems of the day.
James Cooper (his mother's family name of Fenimore was legally added in 1826) was born in Burlington, N.J., on Sept. 15, 1789, the eleventh of 12 children of William Cooper, a pioneering landowner and developer in New Jersey and New York. When James was 14 months old, his father moved the family to a vast tract of wilderness at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River in New York State where, on a system of small land grants, he had established the village of Cooperstown at the foot of Otsego Lake.
Here, in the "Manor House," later known as Otsego Hall, Cooper grew up, the privileged son of the "squire" of a primitive community.
Treatment of Indians
As with The Last of the Mohicans, one of Cooper’s major themes in The Prairie is the idea of a noble savage. The book contrasts Hard-heart and the Pawnee tribe—who were at peace with the white settlers—to the warlike Tetons. The Tetons are categorically described as cunning, crafty, deceitful, loathsome and dirty. Hard-heart is brave, fierce, and fights to protect his honor. He refuses to abandon his tribe, even if he loses his life for it. In contrast, Le Balafre once abandoned his tribe to become a Teton, thus saving his own life. In the end, Hard-heart is alive while Weucha and Mahtoree are dead.The doctor, horrified at the possibility of being forced to marry an Indian wife, refers to them as a different species, not homo sapiens.
The Tetons are frequently referred to as looking like snakes or with other snake symbolism, such as having “forked tongues".
Although Cooper’s Indians are frequently stereotypical, so are his white characters. Despite sometimes referring prejudicially to Indians as subhuman, he still presents them in a complex light, a mixture of human and devilish characteristics. Amidst what Cooper describes as primitive or dirty, he lauds their honor, hospitality, laws, etc. The Indians are more complex characters than most or any of the white characters in the book. In The Prairie, the Tetons are the most loathsome, evil characters aside from Abiram, and yet Hard-heart of the Pawnee is the most honorable and brave character after the trapper.