He is deeply happy only when in
harmony with his work and environments. The backwoodsman,
early settler, pioneer plainsman, mountain man were all like
some infuriated beast of Promethean capabilities tearing at
its own vitals. Driven by an irrational energy, they seemed
intent on destroying not only the growth of the soil but the
power of the soil to reproduce. Davy Crockett, the great bear
killer, was "wrathy to kill a bear," and as respects bears and
other wild life, one may search the chronicles of his kind in
vain for anything beyond the incidents of chase and slaughter.
To quote T. B. Thorpe's blusterous bear hunter, the whole
matter may be summed up in one sentence: "A bear is started
and he is killed." For the average American of the soil,
whether wearing out a farm, shotgunning with a headlight the
last doe of a woodland, shooting the last buffalo on the
range, trapping the last howling lobo, winging the last
prairie chicken, running down in an automobile the last
antelope, making a killer's target of any hooting owl or
flying heron that comes within range, poisoning the last eagle
to fly over a sheep pasture for him the circumstances of the
killing have expressed his chief intellectual interest in
nature.
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