Customer Reviews

The Pioneers (Signet classics)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the fourth chronologically of the Leatherstocking tales, although the first to be written. It is different from the first three (the ones I've read) of the chronology, it that it contains less (or no) adventure and really just paints a picture of everyday life on the disappearing frontier of 1790's America. Actually, it paints a romanticized picture of the life of the wealthy landowner's family. The setting was modeled after Cooper's father who founded Cooperstown, NY. The book is a blend of "sociology" with a conservation message, making it ahead of its time in that respect. It does contain the elements of Cooper's later writing: it is florid in its descriptions, verbose, and in places contains an undercurrent of racial prejudice. Its language is a mixture of formal and vernacular, some of the vernacular slightly hard for the modern reader to follow. It also contains the "pain in the butt" character (e.g. Harry March in Deerslayer) which Cooper liked to include. In the Pioneers, the character is only mildly annoying.

I found the familiarity of the culture to be amusing and interesting. There is much which hasn't changed in 200 years. Among many examples, there was nearly a "traffic" accident on Christmas Eve, a lawyer trying to drum up a law suit, and the stubborn competitiveness which is both the great strength and the great weakness of our country. This is a very interesting, and educational book, which I highly recommend.

Marmaduke Temple opens this story as he retrieves his daughter Elizabeth from a boarding school in New York City shortly after the Revolutionary War. As they descend the mid-winter mountains of upstate New York into the valley the Temples call home, they meet the other major characters of the story, Natty Bumppo, Chingachgook, and Oliver Edwards. Cooper prefaces this book by telling us that he wrote it for his pleasure, not ours. As Elizabeth's first night back home consumes 178 pages, I was beginning to take the man at his word, but, from here, an outstanding tale unfolds.

The Pioneers is a book in the romantic style of it's age which also carries contemporary messages. The loss of wilderness and wildlife were already a concern in the late 18th century. As the population shifted westward, Native Americans were supplanted and the wilds they inhabited were methodically tamed. Marmaduke Temple and Natty Bumppo, the conservationists, approach the issue in differing ways. Temple exemplifies the responsible management of natural resources while Bumppo longs for the departure of civilization so that nature may reclaim it's own.

Surrounding the ecological message is a story of a human dimension that, though expectedly formulaic, is nonetheless pleasing to behold. The characters are finely wrought as is the portrait of 18th century American life. Easily transported, the reader will find the descriptions of natural surroundings evocative of period and place.

I was sorry to see the last page, though the last page was masterfully done. While James Fenimore Cooper need not be proclaimed by me as the author of classics, I consider this book one and the same and rate The Pioneers a resounding five stars.

The title page of James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel "The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna" defines it as "a Descriptive Tale"; and indeed the narrative is more a series of descriptions rather than a straight-forward plot. There is a well-drawn set of characters living quiet country lives. There is a plot "teaser" that is fairly obvious and finally resolved in the penultimate chapter, and there is a vague love triangle that never intensifies. In fact,Cooper seems to be not so much concerned with events as with attitudes. The story opens at Christmastime of 1793, and the settlers discuss the tumult of that year in Paris and the Vendée. (One of their company is an émigré who keeps muttering "Les monstres!" and "Mon pauvre roi!") Unfortunately, Cooper seems to have lost track of his time scheme because several months later in the story it's still 1793. This is one of the Leatherstocking Tales, which means that Nathaniel Bumppo (called Leatherstocking by the newcomers, Hawkeye by the Indians) is one of the major characters. But "The Pioneers", unlike "The Last of the Mohicans", does not involve Natty in dangerous adventures. (Which is just as well -- he's suppose to be 70 years old.) Instead, the novel presents frontier life in central New York at a settlement on Lake Otsego through commonplace but colorful occurrences: a fishing expedition, a turkey shoot, a gathering at the Bold Dragoon, a trial. The remarkable aspect of "The Pioneers", and the reason today's readers will identify with it, is the many arguments for the conservation of natural resources, both flora and fauna.Natty Bumppo's concern is understandable, as he is a man of the wilderness. More surprising is the wealthy entrepreneur Judge Temple's insistence that "we are stripping the forests, as if a single year would replace what we destroy. But the hour approaches when the laws will take notice of not only the woods, but the game they contain also". Later, both he and the Leatherstocking are appalled by the indiscriminate slaughter of birds in a single outing. This ecological attitude gives an unexpectedly modern tone to "The Pioneers" and makes it sympathetic reading in the 21st Century.

In "The Pioneers," Natty Bumppo, the adventurous hero of "The Last of the Mohicans," is 70 years old and has become disenchanted with a young American republic whose rapidly advancing population and government encroaches upon the free-spirited life to which he is accustomed. Natty's run-down shack is allowed to stand at the pleasure of Judge Marmaduke Temple, a well-meaning yet stern patriarch who received a vast land grant at the end of the Revolutionary War and who builds a town whose existence depends on the rule of law and order. The plot of the novel flows from the inevitable conflict between the advance of this new civilization and the claims of the rugged individualists who can barely abide its rules.

In his Preface, Cooper warns the reader that the book contains none of "the strong excitement that is produced by battles and murders"; unlike his later books, this is no adventure story. Nevertheless, he still manages to animate his novel with daring heroics, melodramatic chase scenes, and daring rescues. Also adding suspense are the appearance of a mysterious young man (whose identity is fairly obvious, but no matter) and the secrecy of what Bumppo is hiding in his cabin.

After several briskly told opening chapters, about two nearly disastrous accidents, Cooper slows things down a bit, describing the Judge's household, the townsfolk, and their churchgoing and barhopping ways. Because the Judge's relatives and friends range from blustering pretenders to crusty old-timers, these sections are filled with unexpected humor. (But one does have to wade through an awful lot of prose about the weather.) Fortunately the last half of the book is fast-paced, including a hilarious yet oddly electrifying court trial and jail rescue.

Some readers have been tempted to interpret Natty Bumppo as a primitive Howard Roark figure--an early libertarian struggling against the capriciousness of government overreach. There's a bit of truth in this thematic approach, but such a portrait doesn't take into account the novel's earnest environmentalism (a topic on which both Bumppo and Temple form an uneasy alliance). And the characters of the Judge and his daughter are far too nuanced, likeable, and honest to cast them as enemies of limited government and rugged individualism. Instead, Cooper paints an early American landscape that is sympathetic to both sides--to both the pioneers of Temple's new town and to those who, like Bumppo, came before them and paved the way.

"...the noble bay horses that drew the sleigh were covered, in many parts, with a coat of hoar frost. The vapor from their nostrils was seen to issue like smoke, and every object in the view, as well as every arrangement of the travelers, denoted the depth of a winter in the mountains. The harness, which was of a deep dull black, differing from the glossy varnishing of the present day..."

Great movies can come from great books but I doubt that a movie could be made that captures the images and sounds, not to mention the intellectual stimuation, that Cooper evokes in The Pioneers. One can smell the leather harness and the horse sweat and stale air underneath the fur robes in the sleigh. One can see the girl's dancing eyes and feel the numbness of the sleigh driver's hands. One can hear the booming reports of the fowling piece and the long rifle.

Read the book and see the movie in your mind about the interaction between native Americans and pioneers on the eastern frontier; about their conservation concerns; about hunting rights and animal rights; about wilderness ethics.

New York State is arguably the most beautiful place in the world - winter or summer - and Cooper's book preserves what it was like before the canal system, the agriculture, the telephone lines, the thruway, the golf courses, the airports and the POSTED NO TRESPASSING signs.

A great American literary classic.

Note the dimensions of this book. Amazon is listing it as a "Paperback" but it's really a mass market paperback size. I hate books this small, because the text is too small.

I really enjoyed this book and how it portrayed the growing pains of this great country. Natty Bumppo is one of my favorite literary characters! He's not afraid to stand up for what he sees is right and when he understands that he cannot maintain his way of life where he is, he decides his own fate. He is noble yet feisty. A true romantic hero!
Yes, this novel does require patience from the reader (which most classic works of literature do), but for me, the payoff was worth it. It's not my favorite Leatherstocking Tale, but I do recommend it.

James Fennimore Cooper's five books known as "The Leatherstocking Tales" ( the Pioneers is the fourth in the series) are some of the most exciting books I've ever read. I highly recommend!

'The Pioneers' is subtitled 'a descriptive tale' so don't say you weren't warned. Cooper's first book in the Leatherstocking Tales (the fourth chronologically) lacks anything but the thinnest plot for most of its pages. Instead, there are lengthy descriptions designed to give the reader an idea of frontier life (clearly sanitized for his contemporary audience).

Frankly, most modern readers will find 'The Pioneers' aimless and flat-out dull. I give it two stars out of respect to Cooper's intent: he was not aiming to write a fully plotted book. Yet, even as 'a descriptive tale' the book falls a bit short because it's not clear what Cooper intends to describe. Rather than focusing on frontier life, there is a lot of exposition about his characters, most of whom I found paper thin and/or annoying.

On the other hand, Cooper's theme that man's love of the wilderness as the very thing that leads to its destruction is clearer in 'The Pioneers' than in any of the other books. There are a couple of powerful scenes depicting the vast waste of settlers taming the wilderness. Massive trees destroyed senselessly when a little care would do as well, and a scene filled with mindless slaughter of wildlife. While the leader of the settlement mouths platitudes about protecting the wilderness, he actually does little or nothing.

It is through this theme that the elderly characters of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook are most effective. Here called the Leatherstocking and Mohegan, the pair represent the fading American frontier. Both watch helplessly as laws and civilization subvert the wilderness they have lived in and loved all their lives. Leatherstocking finds himself in direct conflict with these laws merely by hunting. Mohegan is especially poignant if you have read the books in chronological order. The proud Indian warrior/hero is now a christianized alcoholic. The cause for his fall is pretty clearly laid at the doorstep of the growing nation which displaced and destroyed his people.

Unfortunately, these powerful characterizations make up a very small portion of the book. The bulk is given over to tepid Victorian-styled dramatics, complete with stilted plotting around long lost relatives revealed deus ex machina to resolve the corners Cooper writes himself into. Most modern readers will find these elements very cheesy. When Cooper does get around to the plot, he delivers some solid action in the last fifth of the book with some truly cinematic scenes (Leatherstocking leaping through a forest fire to rescue several key characters). However, Cooper renders his denoumont anticlimactic by following it with a silly battle and some revelations you never saw coming (not in a good way). There is a ray of brilliant writing at the end when, in the final scene, Leatherstocking leaves the remains of his home forever to escape the encroaching civilization.

Overall, I found this book only marginally interesting, and it feels like Cooper stumbled/lucked into the intriguing Leatherstocking and Chingachgook characters by accident. It's like he realizes halfway through the book that these characters are way more interesting than the ones he's been focused on. As such, 'The Pioneers' should only be read if you truly want to get the entire five books under your belt. Otherwise, start with 'The Last of the Mohicans.'

Even though this is a difficult read if you are not in the right frame of mind, I felt it was an excellent book. This book illustrates the final days of Hawkeye and the dilemmas that he encounters as an old man. I believe that the only major problem of the novel was the unbelievable and corny ending. Overall a good book.