The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter is an 1848 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. The novel focuses on the activities of professional honey-hunter Benjamin Boden, nicknamed "Ben Buzz." The novel is set in Kalamazoo, Michigan's Oak Opening, a wooded prairie that still exists in part today, during the War of 1812.After returning from his European travels in the 1830s, Cooper was persuaded by his niece's husband, Horace H. Comstock, to invest in Michigan real estate. The Potawatomi had ceded much of their land in central Michigan by 1833 and their former territory became known as "oak-openings." By 1837, Cooper's $6,000 investment was losing value, though he watched as his fellow New Yorkers attempted to colonize the area like honeybees.[4] The experience inspired The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter, and the novel became one of the first representations of Beekeeping in American literature.[5] Though not the first author to use the term "oak openings," Frederick Marryat did so, Cooper popularized the term for the type of oak clad Savannah with the publication of the novel.The novel is Cooper's last "wilderness novel" following his Leatherstocking Tales and serves as a melancholy follow-up to that series. It is also the last of his novels to explore the relationships between Europeans and Native Americans in the early American expansion

Oak Openings

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.