The Pathfinder:

The Pathfinder (1840), Cooper's most picturesque novel and the fourth of the five Leatherstocking Tales, is a naval story set on the Great Lakes of the 1750s. Fashioned from Cooper's own experience as midshipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-9, the novel revives Natty Bumppo - who had died in The Prairie - and casts him, with his friend, the Mohican chief Chingachgook, among Tuscarora and Iroquois Indians, and into conflicts over land and love. Natty's courtship of Mabel Denham aligns Cooper's interest in American history with his concern for social development. A stirring account of Europeans, Indians, and colonials on the American frontier, the novel is also a critique of Jacksonian democracy and a meditation on the course of American civilization. The Pathfinder is one of the richest novels of its day. Together with The Deerslayer (1841), it summarizes Cooper's evolving view of his culture, and stands as the culminating achievement of his literary career. The text of this edition is that established by Richard Dilworth Rust, and this volume includes both a new critical Introduction and a historical essay which places the novel in the context of the French and Indian War.