Note 101 — Chapter I

"Their actions are regulated by the wildness of the neighbourhood. The deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves to destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their hogs, the foxes to catch their poultry. This surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands, ... and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; ... once hunters, farewell to the plough. The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbour, he rather hates them.... The manners of the Indian natives are respectable, compared with this European medley. Their wives and children live in sloth and inactivity.... You cannot imagine what an effect on manners the great distance they live from each other has.... Eating of wild meat ... tends to alter their temper.... I have seen it." (Crèvecœur, 66-68.) Crèvecœur was himself a frontier farmer. (Writings: Sparks, ix, footnote to 259.)