The prairie Author:James fennimore Cooper Westward Ho! rang the cry, once the trials of the Revolution were past, of a small but significant segment of — American society - the adventurous, the romantic, the fugitive, the malcontent, and the eccentric. Such are most of the white characters of James Fennimore Cooper's The Prairie, laid in 1805, just two years after the Louisiana — Purchas... more »e had added half a continent of wilderness to the« less