It was never Cooper's intention to turn his Leatherstocking novels into a biographical account of Natty Bumppo; in fact, they were not written originally in a chronological sequence. The Deerslayer (1841), the story of Natty Bumppo's youth, was written after The Prairie (1827), which tells of his death as an old man. The result is that the character of the famous scout and frontiersman is different in each novel, and perhaps some of his inconsistencies are the reason he is a lively and interesting personality. In The Pathfinder, he is a middle-aged man, famous for his woodland skills. Cooper's characters do not display great complexity, and in true adventure fashion, are subordinated to the action of the tales. Hawkeye acts and reacts, but he rarely reflects. He is the superman in the woods, the unbeatable fighter, but the reader does not get to know him very much as an individual...