I've just finished reading The Deerslayer by James Fennimore Cooper. It's effectively the prequel to The Last of the Mohicans and set at the start of what the British call the French and Indian Wars.
Written in 1841, this is an early-Victorian novel so the language is going to take a bit of work to get used to but once you've got tuned into it, the story moves along at a reasonable pace. The set up is, if not claustrophobic, at least tightly confined to the environs a lake in upstate New York then (early 1740s) known as Glimmerglass but now Otsego Lake.
The featured characters centre around their relationships with the Deerslayer of the title, Nathaniel Bumppo, or Hawkeye as he will later be known. Indeed it's in this story that we get to discover how he gained the soubriquet.
There's not much fighting in the book and what there is would be difficult to turn into balanced wargames but I think The Deerslayer is worth a read if you want to get a feel for the period before trying out Muskets and Tomahawks of the like.
Oh and by the way, it's available on Project Gutenberg.
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