Note 45 — THE EARLY NOVELS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1821–1831)

The analogy which the spectacle afforded in Cooper’s mind to the conquest of Canaan, has not been commented upon, but a case can be made for it from the biblical names he for the first time applied to nearly all the characters; from the bee-hunter in his land of honey, the encounters with the “Ishmaelites of the plains,” the Sioux, the stampede of the buffalo furnishing the terror of wild beasts, and the problem of the Red Sea transformed into that of prairie fire, with Leatherstocking the Moses to show how to circumvent this difficulty.