Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery

Joseph Knowles was a forty-five-year-old part-time painter, ex-Navy man, friend of the Sioux, and onetime hunting guide who stepped-nearly naked-into the woods to live off the land and his own devices. From 1913 to 1916, Knowles's dispatches to the world-alternating accounts of bear clubbing and quiet contemplation, written in charcoal on pieces of birch bark-set off major newspaper wars, exploiting readers' fears of modernization. Did Knowles really survive for months at a time in the untamed wilderness without any aid, and why is the answer still so vital to the American psyche? Part adventure story, part cultural investigation, Naked in the Woods reveals a whole new dimension of our natural history.