Pioneers, The; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna

Pioneers, The; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna, romance by Cooper, published in 1823. It is the fourth in plot sequence of the Leather‐Stocking Tales.

During the decade after the Revolutionary War, Judge MarmadukeTemple, a retired Quaker merchant, is the leading landowner of Otsego County on the New York frontier, having acquired the estate of the Loyalist father of his friend Edward Effingham. While hunting deer he accidentally shoots Oliver Edwards, young companion of Natty Bumppo (Leather‐Stocking), a veteran frontiersman. The judge and his daughter Elizabeth befriend the young man, who becomes their overseer, although persisting in his mysterious association with Bumppo and old chief Chingachgook (John Mohegan), who is rumored to be his father. Elizabeth and her friend Louisa Grant, the rector's daughter, disdain the company of the supposed half‐breed. After Bumppo is released from jail, following his arrest for shooting deer out of season, Elizabeth visits him and is trapped by a forest fire. She is saved by Edwards, but Chingachgook dies after his rescue by Bumppo. Elizabeth and Edwards now admit their love, and his identity is made known when a searching party discovers demented old Major Effingham, and it is revealed that Edwards is his grandson, that Bumppo had been an employee of his family, and that Chingachgook had adopted them into his tribe. The young couple is betrothed and given half of the judge's estate.