Samuel is introduced as a 13-year-old frontier boy who is comfortable and skilled at hunting in the woods around his settlement in eastern Pennsylvania. He thinks about his life and imagines it as split by an invisible line that runs through the center of his family’s cabin: To the west is the wild expanse of the forest, to the east is the “civilization” he has come to understand through his parents’ books and stories. For Samuel, the forest is small sounds and smells, animals hunting and surviving. Civilization is a land of fashion and culture. He sights and aims but does not shoot the deer that wanders upon him, though he often kills deer both for food and to control the population that raids and ruins the cornfields. His attention is occupied by the previous night’s arrival of a man who brought with him news of a war.

The informational passage following this chapter, “Communication,” relates the difficulty in traveling distances in the late 18th century and provides statistics on how quickly different forms of travel could be accomplished. This meant the slow delivery of both supplies and news.