Although chronologically situated near the end of Natty Bumppo’s long and adventure life told through the series of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, The Pioneers is actually the entry that introduces him to readers. This timeline almost certainly explains why the fourth book chronologically seems so much more thematically rich, complex and even complete than not just any of the other individual novels, but the Tales as a unified element.
Judging by how The Pioneers becomes in a way the entire series in miniature, it seems very unlikely that Cooper planned from the beginning to make it merely one novel in a continuing series. What the Leatherstocking Tales as a unit attempts to portray is nothing less than the creation of a nation and for Cooper that process is essentially composed of three distinct phases which nevertheless are subject to a certain overlap. The first step is the settling of an untamed wilderness by the hardiest of individuals. Since mere survival is the predominant goal, things like classes and social strata don’t even exist or, if they do, they are subjugated in favor of the greater good. This is a difficult process that mandates cooperation over competition since if one loses, the rest may well all lose as well. The novels written later but set earlier than The Pioneers will explore this phase in greater detail, but even here it the effects are still recognizable. The Pioneers will end with the third phase just getting started just as its chronological follow-up The Prairie will be devoted entirely to the final phase.
That final phase is, of course, the development of what is typically thought of when asked to define what makes a nation: its laws, rules and system of governance. Between the taming of the savage frontier and establishment of codified morality and standards of behavior comes what may be perhaps the most interesting phase. This the phase of civilization that gave rise to heroes stories like those told in the western films Shane and Unforgiven. The land cleared, the next generation of settles arriving to farm and start businesses and make money leads to a uncertain imbalance in the existing power structure. The heroes who did the dirty but necessary work of killing off enemies and transforming jungles and deserts into places suitable for framing and building are cast to the side as the real basis of power becomes purely economic. Think of Joe Starret warning against so-called squatters in Shane or Little Bill’s autocratic control of the town in Unforgiven. Political power in this phase belongs to those with enough capital to enforce it.
At the center of the narrative of The Pioneers is this collision between the power of the old guard who earned it through hard work and the rise of the new guard who simply buy it. Natty Bumppo is the frontiersman who earned his reputation who now suddenly finds himself threatened with prison for doing something that the laws of nature allowed to go unpunished all his life. What was legal before is now suddenly illegal for little more reason than that someone with money has made it so. Something must give and history suggests that it is, without a doubt, going to be Natty Bumppo. His time is almost over and The Pioneers is nothing more than less than a story of revolution in which the laws of capitalism are slowly consuming the laws of nature as a necessary component toward establishing a political democracy. More so than in any other of the Leatherstocking Tales, it is economics that motivates the other characters. In fact, the plot hinges on an attempted land grab by a character denied his inheritance who is maneuvering to regain his birthright under an assumed identity. The Pioneers is itself a pioneering piece of American fiction in that is associated pure unregulated early capitalist economics with political anarchy. Only by working through his period of uncertainty and economic fascism can the final phase of creating a nation be attained. The novel draws to a conclusion before that phase is fully set in motion, but everything that is given greater detail in the series as a whole is right there on display in the first book entry Cooper wrote.
