Wolves and dogs
destroyed great quantities of deer caught in this way; and men
who shot deer under these conditions were considered no huntsmen.
There was, indeed, a practical side to this chivalry of the
chase, for meat and pelt were both poor at this season; but the
true hunter also obeyed the finer tenet of his code, for he would
go to the rescue of deer caught in the crusts--and he killed many
a wolf sliding over the ice to an easy meal.
The community moral code of the frontier was brief and rigorous.
What it lacked of the "whereas" and "inasmuch" of legal ink it
made up in sound hickory. In fact, when we review the activities
of this solid yet elastic wood in the moral, social, and economic
phases of Back Country life, we are moved to wonder if the
pioneers would have been the same race of men had they been
nurtured beneath a less strenuous and adaptable vegetation! The
hickory gave the frontiersman wood for all implements and
furnishings where the demand was equally for lightness, strength,
and elasticity. It provided his straight logs for building, his
block mortars hollowed--by fire and stone--for corn-grinding, his
solid plain furniture, his axles, rifle butts, ax handles, and so
forth. It supplied his magic wand for the searching out of
iniquity in the junior members of his household, and his most
cogent argument, as a citizen, in convincing the slothful, the
blasphemous, or the dishonest adult whose errors disturbed
communal harmony.
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