About this book
Deep in the heart of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, five hundred miles beyond the Mississippi River, a group of travelers in the year 1805 pushes yet farther westward over the prairie. Called "squatters" and equipped with covered wagons, livestock, farming implements, and household furnishings, they give every appearance of being ordinary settlers except for the fact they have bypassed the fertile river bottoms for the less productive Great Plains. This group is comprised of the rough, semiliterate Ishmael and Esther Bush, now in their fifties; their numerous children, including seven grown sons; Esther's brother, Abiram White; Ellen Wade, a niece, whose bearing bespeaks a more refined background; and Dr. Obed Bat, an eccentric naturalist. In search of a camping place for the night, they are suddenly confronted by a colossal figure who momentarily fills them with superstitious awe. It is Natty Bumppo, whose form, greatly magnified by an optical illusion, is outlined against the setting sun on the horizon. Once a hunter and scout but now reduced in his old age to trapping, Natty is almost as startled as the newcomers by the encounter. It has been months since the octogenarIan has seen white people so far beyond the settlements. He leads the Bush party to a campsite which will provide for their basic needs: water, fuel, and fodder for the animals.
Leatherstocking Tales · 5 books
In publication order- 2 The Last of the Mohicans 1824
- 3 The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea 1840
- 4 The Pioneers 1823
- 5 The Prairie 1827 This book
Subjects
- adventure stories
- american fiction (fictional works by one author)
- bumppo, natty (fictitious character), fiction
- children's fiction
- classic literature
- fiction
- fiction, general
- fiction, historical
- fiction, historical, general
- fiction, westerns
- frontier and pioneer life
- histoire
- historical fiction
- history
- indians of north america
- indians of north america, fiction
- juvenile fiction
- natty bumppo (fictitious character)
- open library staff picks
- popular print disabled books
- prairies
- romance norte americano
- romans, nouvelles
- trappers
- united states