HUNTING & AMERICAN IMAGINATION. This item is unavailable.HUNTING & AMERICAN IMAGINATION

The historic image of the American hunter, clad in buckskin and carrying a rifle, is a cultural icon. But as Daniel Herman finds in Hunting and the American Imagination, America's hunting tradition did not spring solely from the colonial or frontier experience. By tracing American hunters' ideas about who they were and what they represented, Herman shows how Americans claimed a continent and forged enduring ideas about manliness, race, and nation. Far from seeing themselves as a society of hunters, colonists and early Americans defined themselves as farmers and builders of civilization. Although hunting was a part of frontier life, most Americans viewed it as a matter of subsistence rather than a mark of identity. In the nineteenth century, however, largely through the efforts of writers and artists, hunter-explorers like Davy Crockett and Meriwether Lewis became heroes to the men of a growing and increasingly urban middle class. Whether they subscribed to the democratic legend of Daniel Boone or the hunting-with-hounds tradition of European aristocrats, America's sport hunters ultimately saw themselves as self-reliant "American Natives." Hunters identified with the Native Americans they had displaced and claimed to be heirs of the continent and natural stewards over its land and wildlife. The story of America's hunting heritage is more than a story of crosshairs and prey. It is a tale of imagination and identity. From John Smith to Theodore Roosevelt, the experiences of American hunters provide a rich legacy that continues to inform the conservation movement and fundamental ideas about American rights today.

Herman (history, Central Washington U.) describes the formation of an Anglo-American ethnic identity based on hunting. Drawing upon sporting periodicals, travelers narratives, diaries, letters, and artwork, he explains how sport hunting grew in popularity during the 19th century among urban middle class men. He contends that hunting allowed these m