Hunting in Letters from an American Farmer
Letter 3 from Letters from an American Farmer by Crevecoeur discusses the lives of the people who live in various types of climates across the Americas, from the sea to the more inland parts, and he discusses the customs of these people based on their surroundings. Farming is what the narrator, James, considers the most virtuous employment, and in contrast, hunting is what turns a farmer “bad.” For example, on page 78 James says “our bad people are those who are half cultivators and half hunters; and the worst of them are those who have degenerated altogether into the hunting state.” In opposition to the bad and worse people are the farmers and cultivators of the land. He asserts the claim that plants, like man, grow abundantly and can provide ample subsistence with little to no use of hunting, so hunting is not only a wasteful use of time that could be used for agriculture, but also a needless waste of animal life.
At one point he directly compares men to the plants they cultivate, and the land that grows the plants:
Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment (71).
By drawing this comparison the narrator not only puts man and plants on a closer plane of existence, but also implies that man, like plants, are only products of the environment that cultivate them. If a man grows up in an environment that relies on hunting, and hunting is inferior to agriculture, that man will grow somehow inferior in virtue to the man raised as a farmer. He goes on to say that:
By living near the woods, their actions are regulated by the wildness of the neighbourhood…this surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands; they watch these animals, they kill some; and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; this is the progress; once hunters, farewell to the plough (76).
Not only do they lose their virtue in becoming hunters, but, as implied by the last passage, once they begin hunting there is no going back.
There are also portions of the work that, one could argue, point to James’ objection to hunting because of the civility he sees in the animals around him, especially when compared to the uncivilized men who hunt them. For example, his description of birds gives them much credibility to the civility of their homes.
The astonishing art which all birds display in the construction of their nests…always make me ashamed of the slovenliness of our houses; their love to their dame, their incessant careful attention, and the peculiar songs they address to her while she tediously incubates their eggs, remind me of my duty could I ever forget it…in short, the whole economy of what we proudly call the brute creation is admirable in every circumstance (61-62).
In contrast, the civility of the people who live in the wildernesses is lacking in what James calls a “new set of manners:”
That new mode of life brings along with it a new set of manners, which I cannot easily describe. These new manners being grafted on the old stock produce a strange sort of lawless profligacy…The manners of the Indian natives are respectable compared with this European medley (77).
To conclude, Crevecoeur, through his narrator, James gives several reasons why hunting is inferior to farming, including comparing man to plants, and showing how the two can work cooperatively to sustain life, and that animals have an inherent civilized nature that is lost when subject to hunting my less civilized wild-men.
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