"Pale-face," says the Huron chief to Deerslayer, "my people are happy in having captured you -- a man, and not a skulking fox. We now know you, and we shall treat you like a brave. If you have slain one of our warriors, and helped to kill others, you have a life of your own ready to give away in return. Some of my young men thought that the blood of a pale-face was too thin -- that it would refuse to run under the Huron knife. You will show them it is not so. It is a pleasure to make such a prisoner!"
The settled portions of the colony of New York are scant and narrow -- no more than thin stretches of land washed by the waves of the Atlantic, and belts of country to each side of the colony's main waterway, extending up to the falls near its head. Virgin wilderness still stretches away into New England -- giving leafy cover to the noiseless moccasin of the warrior treading the secret and bloody warpath.
Author Biography
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William on property that he owned. Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and, in his later years, contributed generously to it. Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also wrote numerous sea stories and his best-known works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Cooper's works on the early U.S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.
