David Shipman (colonist) the author's youth, Shipman would often appear at the Cooper home, "Otsego Hall", to offer the family some of his latest products. Susan Fenimore Cooper wrote that "rude equipments, dogs, and rifle, had much attraction for the lads of the house". James Cooper referred to Shipman in his "Chronicles of Cooperstown" as "the 'Leather Stocking' of the region, ... could at almost any time, furnish the table with a saddle of venison". David Shipman (colonist) David Shipman (1730 – 1813) is generally considered to be the real-life inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper's character Natty Bumppo in the "Leatherstocking Tales" along
Leatherstocking Tales the series, which discrepancies Cooper likely introduced for the sake of convenience. For instance, Cooper manipulated time to avoid making Leatherstocking 100 years old when he traveled to the Kansas plains in "The Prairie". The Natty Bumppo character is generally believed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the historic explorer Daniel Boone or the lesser known David Shipman. Critic Georg Lukacs likened Bumppo to Sir Walter Scott's "middling characters; because they do not represent the extremes of society, these figures can serve as tools for the social and cultural exploration of historical events, without directly portraying the