Setting them aside, he has many
qualifications for the heroic character as Ajax, or even Achilles. He is
as brave, daring, and ruthless; as passionate, as revengeful, as
superstitious, as haughty. He will obey his medicine man, though with
fury in his heart and injurious words upon his lips; he will fight to
the death for a wife, whom he will afterwards treat with the most
sovereign neglect. He understands and accepts the laws of spoil, and
carries them out with the most chivalric precision; his torture of
prisoners does not exceed those which formed part of the "triumphs" of
old; his plan of scalping is far neater and more expeditious than that
of dragging a dead enemy thrice round the camp by the heels. He loves
splendor, and gets all he can of it; and there is little essential
difference, in this regard, between gold and red paint, between diamonds
and wampum. He has great ancestral pride--a feeling much in esteem for
its ennobling powers; and the _totem_ has all the meaning and use of any
other armorial bearing. In the endurance of fatigue, hunger, thirst, and
exposure, the forest hero has no superior; in military affairs he fully
adopts the orthodox maxim that all stratagems are lawful in war.
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