June, 1919 
FOREST AND STREAM 
f"? 
273 
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF NESSMUK 
HINTS AND PRACTICAL ADVICE ON THE SUBJECT OF LIGHT CAMP- 
ING BY A CAREFUL STUDENT OF THE AUTHOR OF “WOODCRAFT” 
By LIEUT. WARREN H. MILLER 
B ack about the year 1889, when I 
was a kid of thirteen and spent 
most of my time in hunting and 
fishing, that classic of the outdoors, 
Nessmuk’s “Woodcraft ” came out. A 
copy of it was in my Christmas stock- 
ing of ’89, and with our tribe of six 
boys it immediately took rank second to 
no book but the Bible. The world, and 
we boys in particular, were waiting for 
that book, waiting for the man who 
could preach the lost Indian art of trav- 
elling light in the wilderness; of getting 
away from heavy army tents, cast-iron 
fry-pans, lumber-sized axes, and farm 
lanterns; all those unnecessary burdens 
which did their share to kill the love 
which is in every man for the life in 
the open. But, above all, the world was 
w'aiting for the man who could write 
the poetry of life in the woods and at 
the same time translate it into practical 
ways and means to live it, close to Na- 
ture, in Nature’s own way. That man 
was George W. Sears, “Nessmuk,” as 
the Indians called him. 
When Mr. James Lawrence Kearney, 
one of the enthusiastic readers and con- 
tributors of the old Forest and Stream, 
made the writer the present of that copy 
of “Woodcraft,” in the winter of ’89, 
he opened up for us boys a whole new- 
world of delight in forest dwelling. We 
had tried the Indian’s way, w-ith a te- 
pee and the white man’s way, with a 
heavy wall tent, and had found both 
cumbersome and unsatisfactory. We 
hopped on “Woodcraft” with a howl of 
delight. It was just what we wanted. 
We built Nessmuk’s backlog fire, his 
shanty tent, his cook range-; used his 
tackle methods; built canvas covered 
canoes that were nearly as light as his 
famous “ Sairy 
Gamp.” adopted 
him in fact, as our 
tutelary divinity. 
All our camping 
and cruising for 
the next three 
years was done on 
his system and we 
all read him with 
avidity for the lit- 
erary charm of 
Nessmuk’s work 
was as much a 
source of delight 
as were his practi- 
cal teachings. Then 
came a blank of 
ten years, when all 
my personal pref- 
erences for a life 
in the open and the 
companionship o f 
letters were sub- 
merged — all but ob- 
literated — in the 
strenuous work of 
acquiring an en- 
I N 1906, the boy of literary tastes who 
had adopted Nessmuk as a foster- 
parent, began to write for himself, 
and to publish his work. As Forest and 
Stream was the great outdoor paper, a 
sort of demi-god to us boys, my first 
outdoor work, was sent to them where 
it met the fate of many another first 
manuscript. And so it is not until 
this late date, that I am at last telling 
the readers of Forest and Stream the 
story of how, following in the footsteps 
of Nessmuk, I developed the system of 
camping out which resulted later in the 
book “Campcraft,” which I have always 
hoped would be the legitimate successor 
of “Woodcraft.” It was developed di- 
rectly from his teachings, simply bring- 
ing them up to date, to agree with mod- 
ern practice and equipment, as improve- 
ments were constantly made by manu- 
facturers of outdoor goods. My own ori- 
ginal contributions were, the “Forester” 
tent, the packsack sleeping bag, a tent 
stove weighing 2% lbs. and a new type 
of cook kit, all of which have become 
well known and widely adopted. 
Nessmuk blazed the trail. Every out- 
doorsman should read him, today, to get 
inspiration, the right point of view, the 
fundamental principles of going light, 
and in my own books, “Campcraft” and 
“Camping Out” I have attempted to 
bring these principles down to date, fol- 
lowing Nessmuk’s original lines. They 
do as he would have done if he were 
alive today. In this brief article, then, 
there will be but space to tell of how 
I developed improvements, strictly my 
own, leaving description of the balance 
of progress made by the outdoor world 
since Nessmuk’s time to the books 
above-mentioned. 
T O begin with 
the shanty 
tent. The il- 
lustration shows 
my own, made 
when a boy of thir- 
teen. The nega- 
tive from which 
the print was made 
is still in my pos- 
session, and is now 
thirty years old. 
We found it a good 
tent, but heavy and 
not sufficiently wa- 
terproof, in Amer- 
ican drilling, 
though it will do in 
eight - ounce duck. 
Making it over 
again, I would 
choose the latter 
and give it two feet 
more slope to the 
roof. However, 
from it I developed 
the Forester tent. 
The author ready for a fortnight’s trip. 
Total load thirty-two pounds 
gineering education and obtaining a liv- 
ing from it in pioneer engineering work. 
The Spanish War also intervened, in- 
volving a year’s service as Ensign in 
the Navy. But, through it all, I still 
managed to camp out at least four or 
five times a year, to keep up my studies 
in natural history and forestry, and to 
keep on reading the classics. 
At fourteen I was well versed in Latin 
and Greek and at seventeen I had read 
the best French and German authors. 
Nessmuk shanty tent built by the author v/hen a boy of thirteen 
