Natty Bumppo


Our version of Glimmerglass
I have a ton of time to read right now as my left arm is not working at all and typing is by speech recognition so blogging is, at best, difficult. 

A friend sent me the picture down by the water (above).  It struck me that the water, when it is all still and flat, with the bottom easily seen as in clear glass transparent and the light bouncing a bit that this must be part of my "mind's eye" of what my boyhood hero "Natty Bumppo" (Hawkeye) called Lake Otsego when he dubbed it the "Glimmerglass".

I have always liked these stories, drawn like a moth to flame when I read 19th century prose. I'm told I write with weird usage and syntax so that must be what makes Cooper's novels so appealing.
Leather Stocking Tales

Natty Bumppo, Aka: "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and "Hawkeye", is one of the three main characters that run through the stories.  I copy and pasted their bios from wiki:
  • Natty Bumppo is the protagonist of the series. Although he is the child of white parents, he grew up with Native Americans, becoming a near-fearless warrior skilled in many weapons, one of which is the long rifle. He respects his forest home and all its inhabitants, hunting only what he needs to survive. When it comes time to fire his trusty flintlock, he lives by the rule, "One shot, one kill." He and his Mohican "brother" Chingachgook champion goodness by trying to stop the incessant conflict between the Mohicans and the Hurons. He is known as "Deerslayer" in The Deerslayer, "Hawkeye" and "La Longue Carabine" in The Last of the Mohicans, "Pathfinder" in The Pathfinder, "Leatherstocking" in The Pioneers, and "the trapper" in The Prairie. The novels recount significant events in Natty Bumppo's life from 1740-1806. Critic Georg Lukacs identified Bumppo as similar to the middling characters of Sir Walter Scott, who, because they don't represent the extremes of society, can act as tools for social and cultural examination of historical events, without portraying the history itself.
  • Chingachgook is a Mohican chief and companion of Bumppo. Chingachgook married Wah-ta-Wah, who bore him a son Uncas, but she died young. Uncas, "Last of the Mohicans", grew to manhood but was killed in a battle with renegade Magua.
The books in the series are as follows and I'm going to read them all again over the next weeks.  I'll report some of the incidents as time goes by.

Publication
Date
Story
Dates
TitleSubtitle
1841-1841
1740-1755
The DeerslayerThe First War Path
1826-1826
1757
The Last of the MohicansA Narrative of 1757
1840-1840
1750s
The PathfinderThe Inland Sea
1823-1823
1793
The PioneersThe Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale
1827-1827
1804
The PrairieA Tale

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