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TERRITORIAL ROAD RECOLLECTIONS OF THE "OLD TERRITORIAL ROAD" AND ITS TAVERNS
The jauntiest robber that ranges the wood, Nothing will name him but blue Robin Hood. "
There were no crows here to pluck the pioneer's corn, nor to "caw from the tree-top through all the live-long day. "
Among the four-footed denizens of the forests were the whole family of squirrels—black, red, gray, and flying-squirrels. Here was their smaller brother, the chipmunk, who never goes up a tree, because they have disinherited and driven him from that region, making him a serf to burrow in the ground. And here was his spotted-sided, petite, wolverine cousin, the gopher, that the settler found, at corn-planting, to be appropriately named; for did he no go for their corn? It was generally acknowledged that one gopher would steal more corn than half a dozen crows. Beginning at the outside of the field along the fence, they would rob hill after hill, and row after row, digging up every kernel as they went. And here also was that chief among them all—the prince imperial of his tribe—the fox squirrel. He was a magnificent fellow, some four times larger than the red squirrel, of a lithe and graceful form, with a long dashing tail, that he carried superbly as he scampered off. Here were also those other natives of the woods—the woodchuck, coon, opossum, badger, hedgehog, fox, lynx, wolf, old bruin, and the "ant-lered monarch of the waste, "—the deer.
And lastly, lording it over all the other inhabitants of the forest, were the Indians. They lived here, simple children of nature, in no permanent abodes, but in bark lodges or wigwams, which they left when they pleased and roamed to another part of the county where they in turn tarried as long as they. desired.
Michigan
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