James Fenimore Cooper was a 19th century writer known for his historical romances and stories of the sea. His Leatherstocking tales including the novel The Last of the Mohicans are his best-known works. He also wrote Precaution (1820), The Spy (1821), The Pioneers (1823), The Red Rover (1828), The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829), The Notions of a Traveling Bachelor (1828), The Waterwitch (1830), The Bravo (1831), The Monikins (1835), The American Democrat (1835), Homeward Bound (1839), Home as Found (1838), and A History of the Navy of the United States (1839). Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode-Island were inhabited by four great Indian nations. The Europeans brought their own ideas of government to the area and assumed the chiefs inherited their titles and therefore were kings. The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish is one of Fenimore Cooper's characteristic romances of the Native American wars. It is set in the time of the Puritan colonies of the late seventeenth century.