60 FOREST OUTINGS 



This modern age was well under way before the forest had been subjugated 

 enough to make it a place for sport or pleasure. The King's forest, reserved 

 and protected for the sport of monarch and nobility, was perhaps the ear- 

 liest scene of forest recreation. But hunting was a distinctive prerogative of 

 royalty, denied with force and punished by death to the commoner. Hunt- 

 ing by the nobility was strongly utilitarian, for animal husbandry did not 

 then produce meat in quantity. Hunting, too, gave a stage, a theatre on 

 which nobility might display the warrior's virtues. The rituals and forms, 

 the specialized language, the trappings of the royal hunt in the middle and 

 early modern ages were, like those of their contemporary institution of 

 chivalry, designed as a theatrical back drop against which individual prowess 

 might be paraded. The fair, the festival, the fiesta were the earliest uses of the 

 forest by the common man for pleasure. Venturing in the mass from the 

 crowded security of walled city into the spaciousness of the outdoors, the 

 individual found opportunity with relative safety for outlets denied him in his 

 accustomed life. The festival was only in part native to the forest, but it is 

 historically of some importance as the original form of mass recreation out of 

 doors. 



Here in America as the virgin forests were subjugated, as order, safety, 

 and the rule of law were established, as white men, escaping in some part 

 from the never-ending labor of the pioneer, acquired means and leisure, 

 natural outdoor recreation began to exert appeal. First came hunting and 

 fishing for sport rather than sustenance; and later, the festival, the camping 

 party, the picnic as a brief escape from the congestion of the city or the 

 endless chores of the farms. 



The Indians really had a fairly satisfying American civilization working 

 long before we came. It grew variously and slowly from this soil and 

 weather. It included (among the Iroquois) such devices as women's suffrage 

 and a league to enforce peace. These first Americans worshipped the 

 omnipotence of natural forces and were governed by natural laws. Their 

 widely various systems of government were never completely worked out 

 or final. In many ways the discipline and punishments imposed were 

 savage and unreasonable. But what of ours? 



Wild Indians, as we call them, did not have to drive themselves hard 



