James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington and was a popular and prolific 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. Cooper’s most notable works are the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo—The Prairie, The Pioneers, The Pathfinders, The Deerslayer, and The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.