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The first of Cooper's five "Leatherstocking Tales" and the one that incorporates most fully his own experience of childhood on the early American frontier.

The Deerslayer is the last book in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy, but acts as a prequel to the other novels. It begins with the rapid civilizing of New York, in which surrounds the following books take place. It introduces the hero of the Tales, Natty Bumppo, and his philosophy that every living thing should follow its own nature. He is contrasted to other, less conscientious, frontiersmen.

Cooper's Leather-Stocking Novels: A Secular Reading