9 8 FOREST TRIBES. 



tribes rarely venture to trust themselves far into the 

 recesses of extensive forests; and should they attempt 

 to do so in their wars with the forest tribes almost 

 always get the worst of it. It is the same with the 

 forest Indians the heaviest defeat the Chippeways for 

 instance perhaps ever got in modern times, came 

 about by a numerous war party numbering some two 

 hundred u braves " venturing out upon the prairie, 

 where they were surprised and destroyed almost to a 

 man by the Sioux. * 



Even among the natives of a country therefore, 

 woodcraft and forest hunting becomes a special art, in 

 which none except members of the forest tribes ever 

 become adepts. A man must live for years in the 

 woods to get an intimate acquaintance with the haunts 

 and habits of the forest game ; this is a speciality 

 therefore in which very few white men excel. Those 

 few who do so, are probably men of the American 

 backwoodsman stamp, who have taken up homesteads 

 in some of the many forest clearings, natural or artifi- 

 cial, which are to be found in all great forest countries. 

 In bygone times, a century ago, history shows that 

 such men were comparatively numerous in Canada and 

 the United States ; but with the destruction of the 

 great primeval woods, professional forest rangers must 

 now-a-days be scarce. Certain however it is, that at 

 the time of the revolutionary war, f there were still 

 many white men of the " Leatherstocking " type, so 

 graphically described by Cooper, who could find their 

 way almost intuitively through the recesses of the most 



* This event occurred in or about the year 1855. (Personal enquiries 

 and experiences by the Author in the Indian country). 

 f 1774 to 1783. 

 See The Last of the Mohicans, by Fenimore Cooper. 



