The Prairie noble death and bury him. In the spirit of Daniel Boone, 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 "Leatherstocking Tales". He
James Fenimore Cooper was virulent in its comments about him, and Cooper filed legal actions for libel, winning all his lawsuits. After concluding his last case in court, Cooper returned to writing with more energy and success than he'd had for several years. On May 10, 1839, he published his "History of the U.S. Navy", and returned to the "Leatherstocking Tales" series with "The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea" (1840) and "The Deerslayer" (1841) and other novels. He wrote again on maritime themes, including "Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast", which is of particular interest to naval historians. In the late