Why did Bando call Sam, "Thoreau" in in My Side of the Mountain.

The reason that Bando called Sam "Thoreau" is because
Bando was an English teacher and he knew a lot about literature from the old days.  The
name Thoreau refers to this guy called Henry David
Thoreau.

That Thoreau thought that people should life more
of simple lives.  He said that people were too obsessed with their material
possessions.  To prove the point, he went and lived in a cabin in the woods for a
while.  He wrote a book about it called
Walden.

So Bando calls Sam that
because Sam had more or less the same idea that Thoreau had.