So, first, the heroine protagonist, Natty Bumppo, he's one of the
most complex and written about characters in the history of American literature.
He's seen as the embodiment of
the American frontier, both physically and intellectually.
He's the American Adam, in the words of the
great critic R.W.B. Lewis, unattached to family, circumstance and obligation.
He's also, though, a bundle of contradictions.
He's highly prejudiced in his world view
regularly excoriating Catholics, Iriquois Indians and many others.
And disdains the idea of racial mixture, or miscegenation, which is constantly
represented as a form of moral corruption throughout the Leatherstocking Tales.
On the other hand, his closest companion, Chingachgook, is a Native.
And Bumppo, himself, is often described in terms that can make his
own identity seem to merge with the identities of Cooper's Native characters.
His wild hair, his profound attachment to nature and landscape, his
willingness and ability to kill in cold blood when he needs to.
All of these native stereotypes that Cooper's exploiting
in representing native characters, are also applied to Natty Bumppo
in various places over the course of the five novels.
Also important here is Bumppo's age.
When we first see him in The Pioneers, the
first published Leatherstocking Tale, he's about 70 years old,
but by the time Cooper writes and publishes The
Deer Slayer, he's a young man in his 20s.
So in some ways, he ages backwards through
the course of the publication of the Leatherstocking tales.
But we never really know his exact age, and
neither does he.
So, the way that readers come to know him is through the strange and disorienting
process of encountering him at different stages
of his life, with different nicknames and identities.