Kentucky had been admitted to the Union of states; there were places in the state where civilization had dented the wilderness; but it was still a country of uncut timber, land unknown to the plow, a region where wolves and bear, wild animals and the Indians still claimed their rights and titles, with tooth and fang, claw and club and knife.
-- Narrator (Chapter 2)

Importance: The narrator is drawing a conclusion that the Native Americans were uncivilized and behaved like animals to cast them in an unfavorable light. Here, the narrator defines wilderness with its binary term, civilization. The fact that Kentucky is a state in the Union is juxtaposed with the fact that it was still vastly unsettled to support the notion that what happens in the wilderness is uncivilized. The narrator emphasizes this by labeling the land inhabited by pioneers as “places…where civilization had dented the wilderness,” making the rest of...