Dec. 19, 1889.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



433 



PAWNEE HERO STORIES. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



. Of all books carrying us out of doors, uoue has so 

 bold a sweep and so strong a wing as Mr. Grinnell's In- 

 dian book, "Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales." It 

 sets us down among a people whose life was altogether 

 that of the open air, a people of warriors, hunters and 

 campers. I confess 1 had grown somewhat skeptical as 

 to the ability of any book to interest me again, for there 

 comes to any one who writes a contempt for writers and 

 for authors, and a horror of paper and type; but I am 

 honest when I say that it appears now there was room 

 for another book. The sensation is novel — to read a book 

 that is really interesting. I remember the first novel I 

 ever read. It was "Ivanhoe," and I never dropped the 

 book from beginning to end. I treated this book the 

 same way, and felt the same pang that the volume was 

 not longer. 



Mr. Grinnell's book is interesting and noteworthy, for 

 all or any of three reasons. First, because of its literary 

 matter; second, because of its literary style; and third, 

 because of its historical value as regards the little-known 

 and fast-fading Pawnee tribe. I place this reason last, 

 because so few know enough about the Pawnees as to be 

 really interested in their history. After one has read 

 this book, so that he really does know something about 

 the Pawnees, and about their history and habits, he will 

 be entitled to place, and doubtless will place this reason 

 first, where beyond doubt the author intended it should 

 be. For Mr. Grinnell wrote this book for love of the 

 Pawnees, because no one who really did understand them 

 was saying anything about them, and because they are 

 changing and passing away. He wanted it to be, not his 

 own book, but the book of the Pawnees. He had a field 

 for that one reason, and doubtless many will read the 

 book for that reason. Beyond all doubt, the book has on 

 this ground a great historic and scientific value. 



When you say "history'' or "science" you drive some 

 people away, and we ought to be careful how we apply 

 such terms to Mr. Grinnell's book. Certainly any one 

 who begins the book will soon forget those words and 

 fall at once upon the second merit of the book, which is 

 its beautifully simple style. This is the English of little 

 words, and that never does fail to hold and charm us, 

 though often we do not stop to ask why. This is not 

 "Indian talk," bombastic, figurative, imaginative and 

 imagined, but the actual talk of the Indians, given just 

 as the author actually took it down. This is unique lit- 

 erary handling in these days of indirect, bodyless. tech- 

 nical or would-be pyrotechnic stuff. Mr. Grinnell dis- 

 claims credit for this, but it is not probable that very 

 many men would have had sense or ability to do this 

 thing in just this way. 



In his preface the author says, "Finally, I have re- 

 frained from commenting on the stories, though there is 

 abundant opportunity for comment." Well, if he can't 

 comment on them it is time somebody else should. Each 

 of us may claim the privilege of liking a book for any 

 reason he pleases. I prefer to like the Pawnee Stories 

 for my first reason, because their literary matter is worthy 

 of the comment that the author ie afraid to give lest he 

 be charged with lack of modesty in finding it. The fact 

 is that instead of a few turgid, childish or foolish Indian 

 stories and stories of Indians, there are in these covers 

 nothing less than a bundle of strong American epics. 

 They are epics of the plains, stories fit for men, and above 

 all purely belonging to this country. If we look to 

 Homer for our heroes, we shall find that Homer's heroes 

 fought under heavier armor than the Pawnee heroes, 

 that Greek or Trojan strategy was not finer than that of 

 the Pawnees, nor any Homeric disregard of life above 

 the personal bravery of some of these plains Indians. 

 The Crusades do not show us any more general war or 

 more persistent system of attack, or more skill or courage 

 in defense. And if we come to sentiment, I don't know 

 that any of our novels go much beyond the heroism of 

 Comanche Chief, who loved a girl at first sight, stole 

 back into her house hi the midst of his enemies, lay down 

 upon the bed beside her, and calmly sakl when discovered, 

 "Kill me if you will, for I would gladly die for her." 

 Nor do many novels end better than with a marriage and 

 reconciliation of two peoples who had been at war. And 

 vif we go into super-naturalism, does even Mr. Haggard 

 do more for us than the story of the Dun Horse; or can 

 spiritualists ask much more than the story of the Ghost 

 Bride; or did iEsop give to animals quainter attributes of 

 human life than we have here in the Na-hu'-rac; or did 

 the wise men of Egypt do, or appear to do, much more 

 than make ripe corn grow in an hour, or to kill a man 

 and then bring him back to life; or does our philosophy 

 hold anything much simpler and stronger than the credo, 

 "From this we were convinced that there is a life here- 

 after" ? Any one of these lines of literary matter would 

 serve and has served for a whole book. What hook has 

 them all? They say the world is divided into men, 

 women and hired girls. Then here are thrills for the 

 hired girls, love for the ladies and thought, and war for 

 men. Room enough for comment. 



Our interest is that of men. The Pawnees were men. 

 I submit that the following advice given to Lone Chief 

 by his mother is good talk for men, and good for some of 

 us to remember, in our heartless, ungenerous, unfaithful 

 and all too unmanly social scheme: "Take pity on people 

 who are poor, because we have been poor, and people 

 have taken pity on us." "Love your friend, and never 

 desert ^ him, _ If you see him surrounded, do not run 

 away." "It is not the man who stays in the lodge who is 

 great; it is the man who works, who sweats, who is 

 always tired from going on the warpath." "It is better 

 to be killed in the open air than to be smothered in the 

 earth." "Be killed on a hill, high up!" 



There is toue, stimulus, manhood, in every word of that 

 philosophy. "Be killed on a hill, high up!" We white 

 men ha ve inglorious wars and ignoble enemies every day. 

 We have nothing better to offer to a man than that in- 

 junction. The Pawnee man who had such teaching was 

 worthy of triumph over the despondencv that overtook 

 him when he was "poor in mind," and worthv of the 

 friend who said to him, simply almost as did Naomi of 

 old, "Wherever you go, I will go, and whatever you do, 

 I will do." 



There is nothing wrong in a book like that, and nothing 

 wrong in the idea of offering such a book to the world to 

 read. The only twinge the bright and lofty pages give 

 one is the mournful one that comes when we think of 

 the fading away of the old order of things. It is like 

 the Passing of Arthur, ' E. Hough. 



unit §uq mid §ittj. 



" FOREST AND STREAM " GUN TESTS. 



THE following guns have been tested at the Forest and 

 Stream Range, and reported upon in. the issues named. 

 Copies of any date will be sent on receipt of price, ten cents: 

 ConT 12, July 25. Parker 10, hammer, June 6. 



Colt 10 and 12, Oct. 24. Parker 12, liaunneilesB, June 0. 



Folsom 10 and 13, Sept. 26. Remington 10, May 30. 

 FrAncotte 13, Dec. 12. Reminoton 12, Deo. 5. 



Greener 12, Aug. 1. Scott 10, Sept. 5. 



Greener 10, Sept. 12, Sept. 19. L. C. Smith 12, Oct. 10. 

 Holms 10, Nov. 7 Winchester 10 and 12, Oct. 3. 



TUBULAR BULLETS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



The "Weed bullet," described in the numbers of your 

 paper for July 11 and Nov. 7, is an illustration of a fact 

 which I have frequently noticed, that similar ideas are 

 liable to occur to men either living at widely separated 

 periods of time or living at the same time in widely sepa- 

 rated countries, without any apparent means of commu- 

 nication with each other. 



A tubular bullet was invented many years ago by the 

 late Captain Forsyth, Conservator of Forests in Central 

 India, and perhaps one of the greatest experimenters with 

 rifles that ever existed. In the second edition of his 

 book, "The Sporting Rifle and its Projectiles," published 

 in 1867, he says, after describing a large-bore rifle for ex- 

 plosive shells: "I have lately been trying tubular pro- 

 jectiles, and am satisfied that they meet all the require- 

 ments of a sporting projectile. Their trajectory is 

 remarably low and accuracy quite equal to that of a solid 

 ball. The resistance they receive from the air is quite 

 insignificant, which accounts for their very high mean 

 velocity. It would be easy to show that the moment of 

 rotation in this form of projectile is the highest of any; 

 it will, therefore, shoot accurately with less twist than a 

 solid ball of similar length. The weight of a tubular 

 projectile, with the hollow equal to half the diameter, 

 and two diameters long, is scarcely greater than that of 

 a spherical leaden ball of the same gauge; the extra fric- 

 tion in the grooves is amply balanced by the absence of 

 resistance in the air, and thus you have a projectile with 

 a very low trajectory, large striking surface and extreme 

 accuracy, which can be used Avith a light shell rifle." 



An engraving is given showing a projectile for fitting 

 the grooves mechanically in a muzzleloading rifle. For- 

 syth says, "It will be seen to be hollow from end to end: 



a h 



a thin sheet copper wad a, and a thick felt wad b, are 

 placed behind it to receive the force of the powder, and 

 drop behind as soon as it is out of the rifle." 



To obtain the best results, these projectiles should be 

 hardened and the hole must be exactly central from end 

 to end. No roughly made bullets can be depended upon. 

 I tried this in 1886-f rom a .450 express rifle with 110 grains 

 of powder, and again last February from a .550-bore 

 muzzleloader with 90 grains, but could not make either 

 of them shoot very closely, doubtless owing to the pro- 

 jectiles being inaccurate in form. I made them by cast- 

 ing hollow pointed express bullets and then boring the 

 holes through to the base, but could not always bring 

 them exactly in the center with the tools at my command. 

 Wooden wads about as thick as a half-dollar were placed 

 under the bullets and felt wads between those and the 

 powder. 



It may be asked why, if the tubular projectiles tried by 

 Captain Forsyth were so perfectly satisfactory, they did 

 not, like the large-bore rifles invented by him, come into 

 general use among British sportsmen. The fact is that 

 the .450 and .500 express rifles brought out within two or 

 three years afterward, soon superseded all other weapons 

 for killing thin-skinned animals, because they com- 

 bined better than any others, the various qualities of 

 lightness, accuracy, flat trajectory at sporting ranges, 

 and power of killing quickly. For use against very thick- 

 skinned game with large bones, Forsyth's spherical ball 

 rifles from 8 to 12-gauge still maintain their ground 

 among sportsmen of the greatest experience. 



In Forest and Stream of October 17, there is a short 

 paragraph about a man seeing a bullet during its flight. 

 Many doubt the possibility of this, but bullets even at 

 high rates of velocity can be seen under certain circum- 

 stances. At Wimbledon in 1888 I was standing behind a 

 noted marksman who was firing with a Ballard .38-55-255. 

 Looking closely over the shooter's shoulders I repeatedly 

 saw the bullet, like a thin streak of light, about 50yds. in 

 front of the rifle. J. J. Me s rick. 



Nohth Bevon, England. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



C CHICAGO, Dec. 10.— A good commentary on adver- 

 1 tising in general arfd advertising in Forest and 

 Stream in particular has recently fallen under my notice. 

 Something like a year ago a manufacturer of a good 

 sporting article placed an advertisement in Forest and 

 Stream. I saw him not long ago, and he told me he had 

 received over 1,000 and he thought nearly 1,200 letters 

 naming this paper as the cause of their inquiry. Very 

 many of these letters contained money and orders for the 

 article in question, and the great bulk of them meant 

 business. "I could have made sales in three-fourths of 

 these cases," said the manufacturer, "if I had had the 

 goods to ship, although unfortunately I lost some orders 

 by not being able to fill them fast enough. As it was, 

 the advertisement has proved a valuable investment for 

 me." 



This gentleman sold a $25 article. Suppose he sold 400 

 orders at a profit of $7.50 each, a profit which he ought 

 to make, at least. The net result would be $3,000, out of 

 which he could pay for his advertisement two or three 

 times and still have a decent living for himself, or could 

 add to his capital. Therefore it would require no capital 

 to advertise, but the result would be an increase of 

 capital. For other papers, I can't say whether advertis- 

 ing in them pays or not. I am only speaking for Forest 

 and Stream, and I know what I am talking about when 

 I say that it don't cost anything to advertise a good 



article in it. Once in a while I grow thoughtful in this 

 way, but this mention is offered simply because of the 

 casual statement made by the gentleman above referred 

 to. E. Hough. 



The Todd Case.— Anent the case of Mr. Frank Todd\ 

 alleged deer hounding at Simquash Lake, Maine, of which 

 we copied the Bangor, Me., News report two weeks ago. 

 a St. Stephen, New Brunswick, paper says: "Since cue 

 appearance in some of the papers of the severe and damag- 

 ing articles accusing Frank Todd, Esq., of St. Stephen, 

 of grossly violating the Maine game laws, we have in- 

 terviewed that gentleman. He says he feels sure if the 

 editors who printed the articles had only taken time to 

 inquire into the matter, or even to reflect, they would 

 never have given them a place in their columns, they 

 being unreasonable on the face. Mr, Todd's dog was 

 shot, the warden claiming that he was following the 

 track of a deer. This Mr. Todd most emphatically denies, 

 as the dog had been with him but a few moments before, 

 and was only a short distance away wheu shot. The 

 dog had never hunted or followed a deer, had run foxes 

 hundr eds of times, where there were deer tracks in plenty, 

 and paid no attention to them. Mr. Todd says that he, 

 and every member of Ms party, was innocent of intent 

 even to hunt illegally, and the warden evidently came to 

 the same conclusion, as he wrote to Mr. Todd, under date 

 of Nov. 26, that he had withdrawn the complaint, that he 

 was now convinced that Mr. Todd did not intend that his 

 dog should hunt deer, and that he regretted shooting 

 him. Mr. Todd is not and never has been a game warden, 

 but is in full sympathy with the game laws. While we 

 believe in game law rightly administered, we feel that a 

 law allowing any one to shoot a dog following a deer is; 

 liable to abuse, as any irresponsible person can shoot a 

 dog, claiming he is hunting deer, and make, if he wishes, 

 trouble and cost for his owner." 



Weight of Grouse.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 Under the above caption Mr. Von Ohl in Forest and 

 Stream for Dec. 12 describes the killing of a ruffed grouse 

 weighing 21bs. loz. There is something very odd about 

 the development of these two-pound grouse, and I would 

 suggest that hunters examine similar specimens for the 

 purpose of determining whether these large specimens 

 may not be "capon grouse." The average weight of the 

 fully developed northern ruffed grouse is about 23oz., 

 and it is rarely that a fat old drummer will weigh 25oz.; 

 but every now and then some one kills a grouse that 

 weighs 32oz. I have seen perhaps half a dozen of these 

 two-pound grouse, but none of intermediate weight (be- 

 ween 25 and 32oz.). If a young male fowl be caponized, 

 we know that the resulting capon reaches a very large 

 size, and it has occurred to me that the extraordinarily 

 large grouse may have rudimentary organs. I have not 

 had an opportunity to make any* observations on this 

 point, or since the explanatory idea came to mind. — 

 Robert T. Morris, M.D. 



Death from Wildcat's Bite.— Editor Forest and 

 Stream: I send you this clipping from a Colorado paper: 

 "Trinidad, Colo.", Nov., 2.— [Special.]— Nearly a month 

 ago a young man who worked on a ranch twenty miles 

 from Folsom, a nephew of F. D. Wight, came to Trinidad 

 nursing a sore hand. While looking after bis cattle, he 

 ran across a catamount, and was attacked by the animal. 

 After the wounds were dressed they began to heal, and it 

 was thought nothing bad would result, so he returned 

 home. News came to town to-day that tbe young man 

 was suffering from hydrophobia in a very bad form. As 

 there are no trains running south, there is no means of 

 reaching the man with medical aid except by driving 

 across the country. Dr. Palmer and F. D. Wight left 

 this afternoon in a buggy, but before they had been gone 

 long word was received that the young man was dead." 

 It would be interesting to learn of other cases of like 

 death from tbe bites of wild animals. — W. N. B. 



A Mound-Building Rat.— Mr. J. C. Van Hook, of San 

 Diego, Cal., informs us that the city park at that place 

 contains, among numerous other curiosities, a great num- 

 ber of mounds constructed of sticks and leaves, some- 

 times reaching a height of 4ft. In the center of these, 

 mounds is a small and softly-lined nest, whose occupant 

 he vainly tried to capture. Indians told him ii is a rat. 

 He had great difficulty in opening the mass of debris 

 even with a pick. The rat is said to be a species of Neo- 

 toma, probably N. mexicana; but little definite is known 

 about the relationship of the animal. The nest-building 

 habit, however, points to this identification as the cor- 

 rect one, for the best known species of Neotoma are noto- 

 rious for the enormous nests which they construct. 



Lewis County. N. Y., Non-Export Law.— Lowville, 

 N. Y., Dec. 10.— Editor Forest and Stream: During the 

 present session of the Board of Supervisors of this county 

 a bill was passed to prohibit the shipping from the county 

 ruffed grouse, woodcock, hares and speckled trout. 

 Credit for the passage of the bill is especially due Super- 

 visors Partridge, Kent and Boshart. It is believed by all 

 sportsmen that this law will stop in a great measure the 

 snaring and pot-hunting which was fast robbing us our 

 game birds and fish. Quite a number of foxes have been 

 killed in this section this season, but as the snow has left 

 us for a time the foxes and also rabbits are having a rest. 

 — Osceolio. 



Skunk Trapping.— The Gloucester Daily Times reports 

 that a young man in East Gloucester has recently secured 

 42 skunks by trapping and shooting. He has orders for 

 all he can get at one dollar each. The skins have a mar- 

 ket value and the fat is said to be utilized. The corre- 

 spondent very justly remarks: " The aroma as they are 

 passing a given point is anything but pleasant." The 

 favorite fur known to the trade as " brown rnarten" is 

 skunk pure and unadulterated. 



Mr. H. C. Miner, of this city, has recently been duck 

 shooting at Back Bay, Md. He i-eports excellent luck, 

 getting from nine to eighteen at each flight, i. e. , morn- 

 ing and evening, shooting from batteries. Mr. Miner has 

 leased the Miller ducking shore, which is opposite the 

 famous ground of the Carrol's Island Club, where the 

 shares are held at $6,000 apiece; and it is one of the best; 

 shores in that region, 



