Leatherstocking Tales

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For the author Natty Bumppo, see Natty Bumppo (author).

The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, known by European settlers as "Leatherstocking," and by the Native Americans as "Pathfinder," "Deerslayer," or "Hawkeye".

Listed chronologically by story action, the books are:

Story Dates	Title	Subtitle	Publication Date
1744	The Deerslayer	The First War Path	1841
1757	The Last of the Mohicans	A Narrative of 1757	1826
175-	The Pathfinder	The Inland Sea	1840
1793	The Pioneers	The Sources of the Susquehanna	1823
1804	The Prairie	A Tale	1827

Note that these are the dates given by Cooper in the tales themselves. They don't all correspond with the actual dates of historical events described in the series. This may have been done for convenience's sake, for instance to avoid making Leatherstocking 100 years old when he travelled the Kansas plains in The Prairie. Many readers agree that the books are better appreciated if read in the order in which they were written instead of the order that they were to have taken place.

The Natty Bumppo character is generally believed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the real-life squatter David Shipman.

There have been many depictions of this character on film. Most used one of his nicknames, most often Hawkeye. In the 1992 film version of Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye's name was changed to Nathaniel Poe to avoid titters from the audience being reminded of Hawkeye Pierce from MASH.