Extract from The Prairie, by James Fennimore Cooper

From Your Syllabus 

Frontier Fiction is a definite form of writing that existed from before the US was formed and covers the whole of the North American continent.  It is called frontier because it deals with the people and places on the edge of European settlement in North America.  Writing of this sort in Africa is called Africana and there are some adventure travelogues from the Middle East – beginning with Marco Polo’s.

The Americans and Europeans were enchanted with the grandness of the North American setting.  America was so much bigger than Europe had ever been.    Names like the Grand Canyon and Rio Grande show this, while the only thing that had been called “grand” in Europe was Louis XIV’s Chateau at Versailles.  The continent was also characterised by spectacular, unspoilt natural beauty: the dense woods of New England, Canada and the North West; the vast open Midwest plains (The Prairie); the deserts of Texas, the Appalachians, Catskills and Rockies, etc.

Characters were made to fit this remarkable setting.  First, there were the “noble savages”: noble in that they were honest, proud, and fearless, but savage in that they were not Christian – worshiping a Great Spirit - and unfortunately technologically backward, living a nomadic life in tents and hunting with bows and arrows and knives (like La Balafre and Hard-Heart).  Second, there were the fearless and upright explorers, sometimes called “woodsmen”, taking the message of Christianity or Christian values to strange people.  These explorers lived exotic lives, hunting and fishing with the natives, learning their languages, achieving recognition where it would be impossible in Europe, but still retaining their European and Christian identities (Natty Bumppo).

The plot in these frontier stories is a traditional one of rising action, climax, and denouement, but with the absence of an evil European prince to fight against, the conflict takes many forms.  In The Prairie, Natty Bumppo, the protagonist, like so many other woodsmen, has to face death in a strange land among strange people with no family - having never married.  In the absence of some narrow-minded and pestilent American Indian, like Magua in Last of the Mohicans, Cooper’s other great novel, Death becomes the antagonist .  There is some resolution in that his adopted Indian and European family surround him, he is shown almost royal respect by the natives, and his last wishes are carried out to the letter. 

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Last modified: Friday September 13, 2002.