Letters from an American Farmer: Letter 10 Summary & Analysis

Mr. F.B. has insisted that James tell him something about snakes. The southern colonies have a more interesting variety of species; where James lives, there are only two poisonous snakes. The most dangerous snake is the copperhead, which lurks in rocks near water. There is no antidote for its poison. James knows of one man in the area who was bitten by a copperhead; the man swelled horribly, appeared crazed, and hissed at everyone. He died within two hours. In contrast, rattlesnakes are shy, their bites aren’t immediately deadly, and most families have antidotes on hand. He once saw a tame rattlesnake whose fangs had been removed; it came to its owners when called and enjoyed being scratched.

However, James also recalls a terrible accident involving a rattlesnake, told to him by the widow and mother of the victims. A Dutch farmer, along with his enslaved people, went to mow a field. He accidentally stepped on a snake, which bit him; one of the other men quickly killed the snake with a scythe before it could strike again. That night, however, the farmer woke up sick, began to swell, and died before a doctor could arrive. Nobody asked many questions about the incident. A few days later, however, the farmer’s son put on his late father’s boots and went to work in the same meadow. That night, he woke up with the same symptoms and died the next morning. Unable to figure out the cause of these two deaths, the doctor announced they’d been “bewitched.” The farmer’s widow sold the farm and moved away soon after.

Not long after, however, a neighbor, who’d bought the late farmer’s boots, put them on and soon suffered snakebite. His wife sent for a better doctor, who arrived in time to save the victim’s life. Then the doctor examined the boots and found that the initial rattlesnake’s fangs had gotten embedded in the leather. There was enough poison left in the fangs that the father, son, and neighbor were each scratched and poisoned by the fangs when they pulled the boots off.

James shares another wildlife anecdote. In the lowlands on his farm he has dug a ditch, and over the ditch he built a bridge. On each side of the bridge is a small arbor of hemp grains and vines. Hummingbirds are drawn to the vine-blossoms, and James loves to watch them. Like bees, hummingbirds “subsist by suction.” They fly so rapidly that their wings are a blur. They are beautifully colored: blue, gold, and red. The hummingbird’s long beak is like a needle, allowing it to drink nectar deep inside flowers. They appear to hover in mid-air while they drink. Strangely, hummingbirds “are the most irascible of the feathered tribe” and will fight other hummingbirds to the death.

One day, James was sitting in his arbor when he noticed a rustling noise. He climbed one of his large hemp-stalks to investigate and saw two long snakes chasing each other through the field. The aggressor was a six-foot-long black snake, and its prey was a water snake of about the same length. When they met, their bodies twisted together, and they tried to tear each other with their teeth. The fight was strangely beautiful to watch. The black snake coiled its neck around the water snake to keep it from escaping, while the water snake anchored itself with a stalk of hemp and kept fighting. Eventually, the pair crashed into the watery ditch, where the black snake forced its enemy underwater until it stopped struggling. Then it crawled ashore and disappeared.