Other writers and artists increasingly con-
veyed a growing appreciation of the wilderness,
often accompanied by a fascination with American
Indians and their way of life. Probably the earliest
expression of this admiration for both wild nature
and Native Americans is to be found in the myth
of the noble savage, who loves and understands
the wilderness and is unhappy when forced to live
apart from it. The myth, whose origins date back
to the seventeenth century, was in part a reaction
to growing industrialization—a look backward to
a disappearing way of life—and in part a rejection
of the pastoral ideal. It was the springboard for
countless poems, stories, and paintings, ranging
from Philip Freneau’s “Indian Student” [see Docu-
ment 22] to George Catlin’s realistic portraits of
Indian chiefs. Catlin, who traveled to the West to
paint Indians in their natural settings, fell in love
with the magnificent western scenery and, realiz-
ing that the land would soon be overrun by settlers
from the East, suggested that some of the grass-
lands be set aside for a national park [see Docu-
ment 31]. The novelist James Fenimore Cooper
also saw the hand of progress destroying the old
way of life. The hero of his Leatherstocking series
is an upstate New York frontiersman with a great
attachment to the wilderness and disdain for many
of the laws and trappings of modern civilization
[see Document 30].Monroe and John Quincy Adams, during which
time Congress passed three acts—in 1817, 1822, and
1827—to set aside land along the Gulf Coast to pro-
vide timber for the navy [see Document 28]. In 1828,
President John Quincy Adams took over a timbered
area of Pensacola, Florida, to establish a naval sta-
tion, and then set aside 30,000 acres of live-oak for-
est land, on Santa Rosa Island, near Pensacola, to
provide wood for the future shipbuilding needs of
the navy.^1
Not much thought was given to conservation at
the state level either. But in 1818, in Massachusetts,
the nation’s first bird- protection law [see Document
29] was passed, because farmers recognized that birds
provided not only meat and feathers but also some
measure of crop protection.
During these early years of the country, naturalists
such as William Bartram [see Document 23] and John
James Audubon [see Document 33] and explorers such
as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark [see Docu-
ment 27] traveled through the United States, drawing,
painting, and inventorying the nation’s flora, fauna,
and geological resources. Their reports and journals
extolled the beauty and diversity of the land and the
creatures that inhabited it. But they also depicted the
effects of the human presence on the natural land-
scape. By the 1830s writers were deploring the destruc-
tion of the buffalo, the killing of birds, and the wanton
slaughter of many species of wild animals.
Politicians, Naturalists, and Artists in the New Nation, 1776–1839 23
Document 20: Thomas Jefferson on Agrarianism and Industrialization (1785, 1816)
Thomas Jefferson’s early agrarianism reflected a conviction that contact with the land improves the human soul
and is good for the human spirit, but eventually Jefferson recognized the importance of industrial development
for the well-being of the United States. By the end of the century, however, as the Industrial Revolution began
to impinge on the lives of most Americans, the Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau [see Documents 36 and 44], and the Romantics, such as Thomas Cole [see Document 34] would
once again raise the banner of agrarianism.A. From Notes on the State of
Virginia, 1785
The political oeconomists of Europe have estab-
lished it as a principle that every state should endeavour
to manufacture for itself; and this principle, like many
others, we transfer to America, without calculating
the difference of circumstance which should often
produce a difference of result. In Europe the lands
are either cultivated, or locked up against the cul-
tivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to
of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus
of their people. But we have an immensity of land