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
The Chainbearer This displacement of Native Americans by the ever expansionist Americans repeatedly becomes an issue for Cooper throughout the trilogy of novels. In so doing, Cooper presents a very strong critique of Americans and America. The German author Arno Schmidt, who translated several of Cooper's novels, has a character in his eccentrically punctuated novel "Zettels Traum" state, "if His ›Littlepage-Trilogy‹ were more familiar, We could, by analogous filological=antiquarian efforts, re=construct from Him, "the entire US=world, from 1750 to 1840", ('nd not all=that uncolorfully, either!)." The Chainbearer The Chainbearer; or The Littlepage Manuscripts is a novel by the American novelist James Fenimore