Books with title The Prairie Chief: A Tale

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] [Read by Noah Waterman] The Prairie marks the final chapter in James Fenimore Cooper's great saga of American frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Though nearly ninety in 1804, Bumppo, now on the Great Plains, is still a competent frontiersman and trapper. Once more he is drawn into conflict with society in the form of an emigrant party led by the surly Ishmael Bush and his miscreant brother-in-law, Abiram White. And once again, this great man of nature is called upon to exhibit his courage and resourcefulness to rescue the innocent.

Whitewing was a Red Indian of the North American prairies. Though not a chief of the highest standing, he was a very great man in the estimation of his tribe, for, besides being possessed of qualities which are highly esteemed among all savages—such as courage, strength, agility, and the like—he was a deep thinker, and held speculative views in regard to the Great Manitou (God), as well as the ordinary affairs of life, which perplexed even the oldest men of his tribe, and induced the younger men to look on him as a profound mystery. Indeed the feelings of the latter towards Whitewing amounted almost to veneration, for while, on the one hand, he was noted as one of the most fearless among the braves, and a daring assailant of that king of the northern wilderness, the grizzly bear, he was, on the other hand, modest and retiring—never boasted of his prowess, disbelieved in the principle of revenge, which to most savages is not only a pleasure but a duty, and refused to decorate his sleeves or leggings with the scalp-locks of his enemies. Indeed he had been known to allow more than one enemy to escape from his hand in time of war when he might easily have killed him. Altogether, Whitewing was a monstrous puzzle to his fellows, and much beloved by many of them

In the spring of 1826, soon after the publication of The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper immersed himself in The Prairie. In taking Natty Bumppo from his beloved forests of New York state to the Great American Plains, Cooper was in part fulfilling his own prophecy at the end of The Pioneers. Though he was certainly recalling the periodic westward removals of Daniel Boone, one of the prototypes of Natty Bumppo, he was also responding to the ever-increasing public interest in Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.No characterization more clearly exhibits the firmness of Cooper’s vision than that of Natty Bumppo. As his colossal entrance implies, Cooper has reconceived him, and through him, the world in which he moves. Though descended from the garrulous hunter of The Pioneers and reduced to the lowly occupation of a trapper, his moral stature has undergone an apotheosis. Though he is again in The Prairie the loyal guide he was in The Last of the Mohicans, his words here take on even more striking moral force. He is both the spokesman for and the representation of, the most basic rhythm of existence, the natural cycle of life which must end in death.The metaphor of the prairie as the sea, shaped by Cooper’s meditation on the relationships between Nature, God, and Man, seems to have had a fertile hold on his imagination. The sea is, as he knew by personal experience, a place of isolation and emptiness on whose surface man lives a precarious life. Imagistically Cooper’s plot sets his little bands―the groups of outcasts led by Natty, Ishmael’s family, the Sioux, and the Pawnees―to converge and tack away from each other. There is also much in the bursts of action―escapes, captures, shifting alliances, steering by moonlight―that evokes sea life. This same metaphor also points us to a central theme of The Prairie. Beyond the fast-paced action, the novel becomes a meditation on the ways of establishing justice between men.

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This collector-quality edition includes the complete text of James Fenimore Cooper's classic tale of the conflicts and complications brought by the movement of settlers out onto the Great Plains in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a large 7.44"x9.69" page size, this Summit Classic edition is printed on hefty bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Page headers and proper placement of footnotes exemplify the attention to detail given this volume. "The Prairie," published in 1827, was the third of James Fenimore Cooper's five novels comprising the "Leatherstocking Tales" saga, although the time period in which the story is set makes it the fifth and last chronologically. Set in 1804, the tale follows the adventures of Natty Bumppo, over 80 years of age and ranging the plains, having departed his home along the now-vanished New York frontier in search of open country. Called "the trapper" or "the old man" and never referred to by name, numerous references to the previous two novels, as well as the stories and characters in the two which would not be written until years later, leave no doubt that the old trapper is the "Leatherstocking." Happening upon a party of settlers heading across the plains, the resourceful old trapper leads his companions through a series of harrowing adventures involving the hostile Teton tribe, the friendly Pawnees, led by the noble warrior Hard Heart, the shiftless settlers Ishmael Bush and Abiram White, the honorable Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton and the bee-hunter, Paul Hover. As in many of Cooper's tales, a romance lies near the center of the story but, as is typical with Cooper, it is secondary to the adventure in his story telling. While criticized in later years for the use of oversimplified or stereotypical characters, as in his other works Cooper often explores complex themes and values through the juxtaposition of these characters, such as the contrast between the "book smart" Hover and the experienced but under-educated Bumppo, and the relationship of the characters to their environment and their reactions to situations. While Cooper seems inclined to the "noble savage" view of American Indians, they are among the most complex characters in his books, not simply pigeonholed as "good" or "bad". And Cooper's view of the expansion of civilization often seems ambivalent, recognizing the advantages and values of progress, but questioning whether some of the aspects of settling the wilderness really constitute "progress" at all. Less well-known than "The Last of the Mohicans" or "The Deerslayer", "The Prairie" is an admirable winding-up of the Leatherstocking Tales saga. With the publication of "The Spy" in 1821, James Fenimore Cooper became an international figure and the first authentic American novelist, free of the forms and conventions of the British fiction of the day. In a writing career spanning thirty years, over thirty novels and an extensive body of lesser works, with "The Leatherstocking Tales" he became the first great interpreter of the American experience, chronicling the adventures of the indomitable Natty Bumppo, known variously as "Hawkeye," "Deerslayer," "Pathfinder," "Leatherstocking" and other names, from the colonial Indian wars through the early expansion into the vast western plains. Published between 1823 and 1841, beginning with "The Pioneers" and ending with "The Deerslayer", the tales are set against historical events ranging from 1740 to 1804, with Cooper taking some literary license with the actual chronology of events, probably to avoid having Bumppo ranging the Great Plains at over 90 years of age. This edition of "The Prairie" is the third volume in a new series of the complete Leatherstocking Tales to be released by Summit Classic Press in the coming months.

The Prairie: A Tale (1827) is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, the third novel written by him featuring Natty Bumppo. His fictitious frontier hero Bumppo is never called by his name, but is instead referred to as "the trapper" or "the old man." Chronologically The Prairie is the fifth and final installment of the Leatherstocking Tales, though it was published before The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). It depicts Natty in the final year of his life still proving helpful to people in distress on the American frontier. The book frequently references characters and events from the two books previously published in the Leatherstocking Tales as well as the two which Cooper wouldn’t write for more than ten years. Continuity with The Last of the Mohicans is indicated by the appearance of the grandson of Duncan and Alice Heyward, as well as the noble Pawnee chief Hard Heart, whose name is English for the French nickname for the Delaware, le Coeur-dur.