Negotiating Nature/wilderness: Crevecouer and American Identity

This essay discusses Frenchman Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crevecoeur (1735-1813), who took the American name J. Hector St. John as an American citizen in 1765. His Letters from an American Farmer not only described the American frontier in the 18th century, but gave Europeans, and Americans themselves, an understanding of a new American identity different from European thoughts and behaviors.