James Cooper's The Pioneers (1823) is the first book of a series of five novels that are known collectively as The Leatherstocking Tales. According to D.H. Lawrence, these novels represent “the true myth of America” (1977: 60). Following Lawrence's lead, Leslie A. Fiedler pronounces Cooper “the most mythopoetically gifted of all the American writers” (1976: 121). Indeed, James Franklin Beard (1960) declares that “No other imaginative writer had so successfully identified himself, in love and in anger, with the multitudinous problems besetting the young Republic” as Cooper (I: xviii).

Although Fiedler's claim that Cooper had written America's archetypal national myth of progress may, on some level, be true, his assertion minimizes the problem of environmental destruction upon which America's “progress” was based. Some critics, such as E. Arthur Robinson, see The Pioneers as a broad treatise on conservation; others, like Hugh C. MacDougall, see James Fenimore Cooper as one of three key 19th century figures who dared broach the topic of environmental protection in their respective works long before it became fashionable. However, Willis points out that Cooper was only “restarting the debate,” echoing concerns about the state of the environment present from the colonial period (2011: 4–5). This paper explores one thread in the complex tapestry of the narrative; how Cooper utilizes his familiar didactic style to debate the issue of who is better suited to check the rapacity of environmental destruction that occurred during the expansion of the American frontier.

The Pioneers, which was Cooper's third publication, enjoyed strong initial success. It was brought forth amid the ambient glow of his hugely successful Revolutionary War tale, The Spy.