Nick of the Woods by Robert Montgomery Bird

First published: 1837

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: 1782

Locale: Kentucky

Principal characters

• Captain Roland Forrester, a veteran of the Revolutionary War
• Edith Forrester, his cousin
• Colonel Bruce, the commander of Bruce’s Station
• Tom Bruce, his son
• Nathan Slaughter, a Quaker trapper
• Roaring Ralph Stackpole, a frontier braggart and horse thief
• Pardon Dodge, a pioneer
• Abel Doe, a renegade white man
• Telie Doe, his daughter
• Richard Braxley, a Virginia lawyer
• Wenonga, a Shawnee chief

The Story:

The sun is still high on a sultry August afternoon in 1782, when a train of emigrants emerges from the gloom of the forest and rides slowly toward Bruce’s Station, one of the principal forts in the district of Kentucky. The travelers, consisting of free and enslaved men, women, children, are accompanied by cattle and loaded packhorses, the whole group giving the appearance of a village on the march. In the position of responsibility rides a young man whose five years in the camps and battles of the American Revolution show in his military bearing and in the mature gravity of his features. The beautiful young woman at his side is sufficiently like him in appearance to suggest their kinship.

Captain Roland Forrester and his cousin, Edith, are on their way to the Falls of the Ohio. The orphaned children of twin brothers who had died early in the Revolution, they had been reared as wards of their stern, wealthy uncle, Major Roland Forrester. A staunch Tory, the Major had never forgiven his younger brothers for supporting the cause of the American patriots, and to keep them from inheriting his estate—for he was unmarried—he had executed a will in favor of an illegitimate daughter. About the time that his brothers fell in battle, the child burned to death in the home of her foster mother. The Major then adopted his nephew and niece and repeatedly declared his intention of making them his heirs. Young Roland Forrester forfeited his share of the inheritance, however, when he enlisted in a troop of Virginia horsemen. Shortly after the Battle of Yorktown, he returned to find his cousin destitute. On her uncle’s death, no will making her his heir could be found. Richard Braxley, the Major’s lawyer and agent, had produced the original will and taken possession of the estate in the name of the Major’s daughter, who was, he claimed, still alive and soon to appear and claim her heritage. Having no funds to contest the will, Roland decided to move to Kentucky, his plan being to place Edith in the care of a distant pioneer relative at the Falls while he carved from the wilderness a fortune that would allow him to marry his lovely cousin.

Colonel Bruce, the commander of the station, welcomes the emigrants, greeting the Forresters with special warmth and insisting that they share his cabin. Having served under Major Forrester in earlier Indian wars, he tells many stories of those border campaigns. Mrs. Bruce, equally voluble, bustles about giving orders to her daughters and telling them to be as circumspect as Telie Doe, who remains quietly at her loom after a startled glance up from her work when she hears the name of Roland Forrester mentioned. When the others escort Edith into the cabin, she remains on the porch, where Roland is explaining his intention of pushing on toward the Falls the next day. The Colonel, while deploring his guest’s haste, says that there is no danger from Indians on the trace. At last, the Colonel notices Telie and orders her into the house. She is, he says, the daughter of a white renegade named Abel Doe. Out of pity, the Bruces had taken her into their own home.

At that moment Tom Bruce, the Colonel’s oldest son, appears with news that the Jibbenainosay has been active again; some hunters had found an Indian with a split skull and a slashed cross on his breast. The Jibbenainosay, whom the settlers also call Nick of the Woods, was a mysterious avenger who had killed many Indians and marked them thus. The Shawnees, believing that he was either a ghost or a devil, had given him his name, which means Spirit-that-walks.

The news of the Jibbenainosay’s latest killing was brought to the station by Roaring Ralph Stackpole, a swaggering braggart. When he challenges anyone in the settlement to a trial of strength, the rough frontiersmen decides to match him with Nathan Slaughter, a Quaker trapper nicknamed Bloody Nathan because of his peaceful ways and gentle speech. Much to the surprise of the crowd, he lifts Roaring Ralph and throws him to the ground. Ralph, admitting that he had been fairly beaten, asks to borrow a horse so he can continue his journey to Logan’s Station. The Quaker trapper tells the settlers that the Miami Indians are gathering, but when the others refuse to take his news seriously, he exchanges his furs for lead and powder and leaves the station.

That night, Telie Doe begs Edith to let her go with the emigrants as a servant. When Edith refuses, the girl creeps away. Roland sleeps with Bruce’s sons on the porch of the cabin. Aroused from sleep during the night, he hears a whispering voice telling him he is to cross Salt River. He decides that he is still dreaming.

The next morning, there is great confusion at the station. Roaring Ralph had sneaked back into the settlement and stolen Roland’s horse. Knowing that the fugitive could not get far on the tired animal, Bruce’s sons ride in pursuit. While the emigrant train starts on ahead, Roland, Edith, and one of the slaves stays at the station to await the return of the horse. The animal is found, wandering along the trail, and is brought back by one of the boys. He says that the others are tracking the thief, intending to make him an object of frontier justice. As the travelers are about to set out to overtake the emigrant party, a horseman arrives with word that Indians had attacked Bryant’s Station. The need to muster every fighting man in the settlement leaves Roland and his cousin without an escort; nevertheless, they start out with only one surly frontiersman to guide them. On the way, their guide deserts them to return and join in the fighting. The travelers are relieved from their predicament when Telie Doe appears and offers to act as their guide.

When they arrive at the branch to the two fords, Roland insists on following the road to the upper ford, in spite of Telie Doe’s pleadings. On the way, they find Roaring Ralph, his arms bound and a noose around his neck, astride a horse in such fashion that one movement of the animal would hang the rider from a limb overhead. Left to perish in that manner after the pursuers from Bruce’s Station had overtaken him, he is grateful to his rescuers and offers to devote his life to Edith’s service. Roland curtly sends the braggart and thief on his way.

Not far from the upper ford, they meet a fleeing settler named Pardon Dodge, who tells them that Indians on the warpath are blocking the road ahead. In their attempt to reach the lower ford, the travelers become lost. They then find a dead Indian with a cross gashed on his breast. While they wait for the dread Jibbenainosay to appear, they see harmless Nathan Slaughter, his faithful hound at his heels, coming through the forest. Hearing that Indians are close, the Quaker becomes terrified. He promises to guide the party only if he is not called upon to fight.

The travelers take refuge in a ruined cabin near the flooded river. Indians attack the cabin during the night, but they are repulsed. During the lull, it is agreed that Nathan should try to evade the warriors and bring help to the besieged. Shortly before daylight, Roaring Ralph comes down the river in a small dugout canoe. The group desperately decides to send Edith, Telie, and Ralph across the flooded stream in the canoe, while Roland, Dodge, and the slave try to follow on horseback. When Dodge’s horse comes ashore without his rider, the others decide that Dodge has drowned.

Later that morning, the fugitives encounter another band of Indians. Edith is captured. Roaring Ralph escapes by rolling down the bank to the river; the slave is killed. Roland, knocked unconscious during the fight, awakes to find himself wounded and tightly bound. While he is wondering what had happened to Edith, a band of Kentuckians, led by young Tom Bruce, appears and engages the Indians. When Roaring Ralph climbs the bank and joins in the fight, the Kentuckians, believing that they are seeing the ghost of the man they had hanged, scatter in confusion. Roaring Ralph, throwing wounded Tom Bruce over the saddle, rides away on Roland’s horse. The victorious Indians proceed to divide the spoils of victory under the direction of an old chief, whom Roland thought was of mixed Indian and white blood. He learns the man’s identity when Telie runs up to protest the enslavement of Roland to a Piankeshaw warrior. The light-skinned warrior is Abel Doe, the renegade.

His arms bound, Roland is tethered to the Piankeshaw’s saddle and forced to make a long, wearying march. Unable to sleep that night, he is startled to hear an explosion close at hand. Horrified when a dead Piankeshaw falls across his prostrate body, Roland loses consciousness. He revives to find Nathan Slaughter bending over him. Another dead Piankeshaw is nearby.

The Quaker overhears the renegade and another white man discuss the price to be paid for the capture of Roland and Edith. Convinced by Nathan’s account that his cousin had fallen into Braxley’s hands, Roland wishes to start at once to the main Indian village after the Quaker tells him that the old chief must have been Wenonga, a Shawnee chieftain notorious for his brutality. On their way to the Shawnee camp, Roland and the Quaker find five Indians with a white prisoner bound to a tree. While they struggle with the natives, the prisoner, Roaring Ralph, breaks his bonds and aids them in killing the warriors.

When they reach the Indian village, the Quaker daubs himself like a brave and moves stealthily among the houses to find Edith. Peering through the chinks in one cabin, he sees Braxley and Abel Doe, and, from the conversation, learns that Braxley has in his possession Major Forrester’s second will. Having disposed of Roland, the lawyer is now planning to marry Edith and get her wealth. While he searches for Edith’s place of imprisonment, Nathan finds old Chief Wenonga lying drunk in the grass. He is about to plunge his knife into the old man’s breast when he hears Edith’s voice nearby. Leaving the chief, he goes to a skin tent and finds Braxley and his prisoner. Taking the other man by surprise, the Quaker seizes and binds him. With the will safe on his own person, Nathan is carrying Edith to safety when a clamor breaks out in the Indian encampment.

Roaring Ralph, ordered to steal four horses for Edith’s and her rescuers’ escape, attempts to drive off the whole herd, and the stampeding horses run through the village, arousing the warriors. Unable to escape, the party is captured. Roland and Roaring Ralph are bound and taken to separate wigwams. Nathan, dragged before the drunken old chief, defies Wenonga, which causes the Quaker to have an epileptic fit. The spasm, together with his fantastic disguise, convinces the Shawnee that his white prisoner is a great medicine man.

Doe and Braxley have yet to reach an agreement over the renegade’s pay. What Braxley does not know is that Doe had taken the will when he had searched the Quaker after his capture. The next day, the renegade goes to Roland and offers him his freedom and the estate if he consents to marry Telie. Roland refuses, but offers Doe half the estate if he saves Edith. The man leaves sullenly.

That night, old Wenonga has the Quaker brought before him. After bragging of the white women and children he had killed and the scalps he had taken, the chief offers the prisoner his freedom if he will use his powers as a medicine man to put the Jibbenainosay in the power of the Shawnee. Nathan promises to do so if his bonds are cut. Freed, he reveals himself as the Jibbenainosay, a friendly settler whose wife and children Wenonga had treacherously killed years previously.

Seizing the chief’s ax, he sinks it into Wenonga’s head. Then, after cutting away Wenonga’s scalp lock and gashing the dead man’s chest, the Quaker retrieves the scalps of his children and with a triumphant cry disappears into the night.

The next morning, finding the Jibbenainosay’s mark on their dead chief, the Shawnees are roused to wild fury. Roland and Roaring Ralph are tied to a stake, timber heaped about them. The fires are lighted, but before the flames can reach them, gunfire echoes above the yells, and a band of Kentuckians rides through the smoke to set the prisoners free. Braxley rides away with Edith. The resistance ends when Nathan, with Wenonga’s scalp at his belt, appears striking right and left with his steel ax. The Indians scatter and run, but the rejoicing of the Kentuckians is dimmed by the death of heroic Tom Bruce.

During the confusion, Pardon Dodge rides up with Edith on the saddle before him. He had survived the flooded river and joined the rescue party, saving Edith from Braxley. Doe, mortally wounded, gives Roland the missing will, and the young Virginian promises to look after Telie with a brother’s care. Roland and Edith, preparing to return to Virginia to claim her inheritance, assure Nathan that they owe life as well as fortune to his bravery and daring. Although they beg him to return with them, he refuses. The work of the Jibbenainosay is done and, after a time, the Quaker disappears into the woods.

Bibliography

Bellin, Joshua David. “Taking the Indian Cure: Thoreau, Indian Medicine, and the Performance of American Culture.” New England Quarterly 79, no. 1 (March, 2006): 3-36. Bellin examines how the popularity of Indian medicine influenced American art and culture in the nineteenth century. Although he focuses on the works of Henry Tufts and Henry David Thoreau, he also mentions the representation of Indian medicine in Nick of the Woods.

Bryant, James C. “The Fallen World in Nick of the Woods.” American Literature 38 (November, 1966): 352-364. Analyzes the novel’s plot as being a struggle between demonic barbarians and civilized Christians, emphasizing that, in an imperfect world, even the “children of light” are flawed. Discusses three major interpretations for Nathan Slaughter’s dual personality.

Cowie, Alexander. The Rise of the American Novel. New York: American Book, 1948. A good introductory appraisal of Bird’s career. Discusses the author’s fictional works in the context of other significant contemporaries and followers of James Fenimore Cooper.

Crane, Gregg. “The Historical Romance.” In The Cambridge Introduction to the Nineteenth-Century American Novel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Nick of the Woods is included in this discussion of the nineteenth century historical romance.

Dahl, Curtis. Robert Montgomery Bird. New York: Twayne, 1963. Comprehensive book-length study of Bird’s literary canon—poetry, plays, novels, and prose works. Discusses Nick of the Woods within the context of the author’s other “novels of outlaws and Indians.” Includes a selective bibliography.

Hall, Joan Joffe. “Nick of the Woods: An Interpretation of the American Wilderness.” American Literature 35 (May, 1963): 173-182. Focuses on the character of Nathan Slaughter and his internal moral conflict. Places Nick of the Woods in the context of wilderness novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville.

Hoppenstand, Gary. “Justified Bloodshed: Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick of the Woods and the Origins of the Vigilante Hero in American Literature and Culture.” Journal of American Culture 15, no. 2 (Summer, 1992): 51-61. Traces the evolution of the American vigilante hero from Bird’s Nathan Slaughter to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Argues that Bird’s negative depiction of the American Indian can be justified in literary terms since a revenge narrative requires that there be villainy to sanction retributive violence.