The importance of the creation of a truly American setting in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper created distinctive American novels. His idea was to acquaint all mankind with American facts and ideas. He believed that the most important thing for American literature was to have its own past-events, characters, themes and writers with their techniques of narration and style. Cooper based himself on the recent past to write against an established background. His novels were not mere adventures yarns. His sytle was not simply artistic. He was the responsible for the creation of an American standard of expression.
Cooper wrote a series of stories called "The Leather - Stocking Tales" and in the one of these stories, named "The Last of the Mohicans", it is possible to recognize an American setting. There was the battle between France and the Kingdom of Great Britain for the control of the American colonies (the story takes place in 1757 but the publication is from 1826) and this battle happened in the American continent. In another story of "The Leather - Stocking Tales", called "The Pathfinder", Natty Bumppoo (Cooper's main character) is considered an expert scout for the British armed forces because of his skill in the forest. And in another story named "The Deerslayer", the setting is on Otsego Lake in Central, upstate New York - the same setting of the first story published ("The Pioneers"). Cooper begins by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in New York state, which is the setting of four of his five 'Leather - Stocking Tales".