James Fenimore Cooper was inspired by a tale related to him by neighbor and family friend John Jay. It was more successful and became a bestseller; the setting of this Revolutionary War tale is widely believed to have been John Jay's family home "The Locusts" in Rye, New York. In 1823, Cooper published "The Pioneers", the first of the "Leatherstocking" series. The series features Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and their chief Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Cooper's most famous novel "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), written in New York City where
James Fenimore Cooper Pathfinder" a masterpiece and professed great admiration for Cooper's portrayal of nature, only equalled in his view by Walter Scott. Mark Twain famously criticized "The Deerslayer" and "The Pathfinder" in his satirical but shrewdly observant essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895), which portrays Cooper's writing as clichéd and overwrought. Cooper was also criticized heavily for his depiction of women characters in his work. James Russell Lowell, Cooper's contemporary and a critic, referred to it poetically in "A Fable for Critics", writing, "... the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a