The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nick of the Woods, by Robert M. Bird

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Title: Nick of the Woods

Author: Robert M. Bird

Release Date: November 7, 2004 [eBook #13970]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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NICK OF THE WOODS

Or, Adventures of Prairie Life

by

ROBERT M. BIRD, M.D.

Unenlightened man--
A savage, roaming through the woods and wilds
In quest of prey, and with th' unfashiomed fur
Bough clad.

THOMPSON.

PREFACE.

At the period when "Nick of the Woods" was written, the genius of
Chateaubriand and of Cooper had thrown a poetical illusion over the
Indian character; and the red men were presented--almost stereotyped in
the popular mind--as the embodiments of grand and tender sentiment--a new
style of the beau-ideal--brave, gentle, loving, refined, honourable,
romantic personages--nature's nobles, the chivalry of the forest. It
may be submitted that such are not the lineaments of the race--that
they never were the lineaments of any race existing in an uncivilised
state--indeed, could not be--and that such conceptions as _Atala_ and
_Uncas_ are beautiful unrealities and fictions merely, as imaginary and
contrary to nature as the shepherd swains of the old pastoral school of
rhyme and romance; at all events, that one does not find beings of this
class, or any thing in the slightest degree resembling them, among the
tribes now known to travellers and legislators. The Indian is doubtless a
gentleman; but he is a gentleman who wears a very dirty shirt, and lives
a very miserable life, having nothing to employ him or keep him alive
except the pleasures of the chase and of the scalp-hunt--which we
dignify with the name of war. The writer differed from his critical
friends, and from many philanthropists, in believing the Indian to be
capable--perfectly capable, where restraint assists the work of friendly
instruction--of civilisation: the Choctaws and Cherokees, and the
ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, prove it; but, in his n