Why is Natty Bumppo associated with the vanishing American wilderness?

Natty Bumppo, the iconic protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales, is associated with the vanishing American wilderness because he represents an idealized, elegiac figure who stands in opposition to the "march of progress" and the encroachment of civilization.123

Throughout the series, Bumppo views the land as "God’s Wilderness," a sacred space that he contrasts with the cultivated gardens and agricultural expansion favored by settlers. As a frontiersman who is wifeless, childless, and deeply loyal to a way of life that is being displaced by westward expansion, he becomes a symbol of a lost cause. His character arc—culminating in his death in The Prairie while facing the westering sun—solidifies his identity as a man who cannot exist within the boundaries of the society he distrusts. By retreating from the settlers to live among native peoples, Bumppo remains an unalterably linked figure to the wilderness and its original inhabitants, embodying the romanticized, fading spirit of the American frontier.234