Beadle's New Dime Novels: Little Moccasin

About this issue

This catalog entry describes Little Moccasin; or, Along the Madawaska, a dime novel serialized in Beadle and Adams' popular hand-book series (1866). By John Neal, the story centers on lumbermen in Maine's lumber region during the severe winter of 1863-64. The narrative opens in a logging camp near the Webster stream, where rough laborers gather around a fire, drying clothes after a snowstorm and trading tales of Indian warfare, wolf-hunting, moose-hunting, and supernatural encounters. Tension emerges when Dave Perry, staring intensely at the midnight sky through the roof, grows disturbed upon learning the date is December 29th—prompting a mysterious, hostile reaction from a tall half-breed man identified as "the major," while fellow logger Charley Frost interjects with comic relief. The story emphasizes frontier hardship, camaraderie among workers, and mounting supernatural dread in an isolated logging camp.