To drive up a tree, or “into a corner.”
1818. A gun is a child’s play-thing. Let a little Western lad espy but the velvet ear of a gray-squirrel, which he has tree’d, on the top bough of a hackberry, and he downs him, as he calls it.—Henry C. Knight (‘Arthur Singleton’), ‘Letters from the South and West,’ p. 92. (Italics in the original.)
1825. Pursuing his prey so hotly as to “tree him,” fairly, in the house of Mr. Parson Harwood.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ ii. 13.
1826. He explained, that he had treed the game, and bursting into laughter, he let his rifle fall.—T. Flint, ‘Recollections,’ p. 32.
1829. How far do you call it from here to the spot where we treed you this morning?—John P. Kennedy, ‘Swallow Barn,’ p. 90 (N.Y., 1851). (Italics in the original.)
1831. Nabby, she hopped right up and down, like a mouse treed in a flour barrel.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 147 (1860).
1833. A panther, though more ferocious, will flee from a dog, and is easily treed.—‘Sketches of D. Crockett,’ p. 192 (N.Y.).
1833. His [the raccoon’s] enemies, who took care to prevent him from again “treeing.”—James Hall, ‘The Harpe’s Head,’ p. 230 (Phila.). (Italics in the original.)
1833. Occasionally the younger dogs committed the disgraceful mistake of treeing a lazy fat opossum.—Id., p. 232.
1835. They turned off my last master because my boy Jock treed him in a sum in Double Position.—D. P. Thompson, ‘Adventures of Timothy Peacock,’ p. 40 (Middlebury).
1836. I had not been out more than a quarter of an hour before I treed a fat coon, and in the pulling of a trigger he lay dead at the root of the tree.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 18 (Phila.).
1836. If I only live to tree him [Santa Anna] and take him prisoner, I shall ask for no more glory in this life.—Id., p. 181.
1839. I was in momentary expectation of dying the death of a tree’d bear—that is, of being followed, and shot down, by some of those ardent worthies, the defenders of the house.—R. M. Bird, ‘Robin Day,’ i. 191. (Italics in the original.)
1847. Does the heathen fancy I’ll wait to be tree’d like a bear?—J. K. Paulding. ‘American Comedies,’ p. 207 (Phila.).
1848. I treed him under a haystack, and shot him with a barn-shovel.—Knick. Mag., xxxii. 90 (July).
1848.
| Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,— | |
| You ’re not always sure of your game when you ’ve treed it. | |
Lowell, ‘A Fable for Critics,’ ll. 17–8. |
1852. I had to stop and tree two or three times, they pushed me so.—H. C. Watson, ‘Nights in a Block-house,’ p. 35 (Phila.). [Here the word is used intransitively. Compare quot. 1829.]
1853. When voices are raised in anger, and knife and pistol flash in the sun, the hangers on about town do not run to see, but, according to their vernacular, “tree” in the first store or “grocery” convenient.—S. A. Hammett (‘Philip Paxton’), ‘A Stray Yankee in Texas,’ p. 325. [Some remark.]
1856. Now, ye see, old feller, ye ’re treed, and may as well come down, as the coon said to Davy.—H. B. Stowe, ‘Dred,’ ch. 48.
[This saying of the coon furnished the basis for the famous Punch cartoon, Jan. 11, 1862, “Up a tree,” where Mr. Lincoln as a coon is “treed.”]
1857. Four or five hounds were circling with frantic leaps around the tree, and barking as though they had ‘treed’ a whole family of opossums.—Knick. Mag., xlix. 249 (March). (Italics in the original.)
1860. We had treed a ’coon, and I was in the top of a very tall tree, in the act of shaking him down, when we heard the report of several guns.—J. F. H. Claiborne, ‘Life of Gen. Sam. Dale,’ p. 27 (N.Y.).
1862. I came pretty nigh bustin my sides a laughin, for there Linkin stood up on a cheer, lookin for all the world like a treed porcupine.—Seba Smith, ‘Letters of Major Jack Downing,’ May 13.
1882. See SPOOK.
