Western Characters; or, Types of Border Life in the Western States
by John Ludlum McConnel · English · Gutenberg #23155 · 496,769 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Western Characters; or, Types of Border Life in the Western States
Author: John Ludlum McConnel
Illustrator: Felix Octavius Carr Darley
Release date: October 23, 2007 [eBook #23155]
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE PEDDLER.]
[Illustration: WESTERN CHARACTERS Redfield.]
WESTERN CHARACTERS
OR
TYPES OF BORDER LIFE
IN THE
WESTERN STATES
BY J. L. McCONNEL
AUTHOR OF "TALBOT AND VERNON,"--"THE GLENNS," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY DARLEY
[Illustration]
REDFIELD,
110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK.
1853.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853,
BY J. S. REDFIELD,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and
for the Southern District of New York.
STEREOTYPED BY C. C. SAVAGE,
13 Chambers Street, N. Y.
PREFATORY NOTE.
Attempts to delineate local character are always liable to
misconstruction; for, the more truthful the sketch, the greater is the
number of persons, to whom resemblance may be discovered; and thus,
while in fact only describing the characteristics of a class, authors
are frequently subjected, very unjustly, to the imputation of having
invaded the privacy of individuals. Particularly is this so, when the
class is idealized, and an imaginary type is taken, as the
representative of the species.
I deem it proper, therefore, to say in advance, that no attempt has been
made in the following pages, to portray any individual; and
that--although I hope I have not been so unsuccessful, as to paint
pictures which have no originals--if there be a portrait in any sketch,
it consists, not in the likeness of the picture to the person, but of
both to the type.
As originally projected, the book would have borne this explanation upon
its face; but the circumstances which have reduced its dimensions, and
changed its plan, have also rendered necessary a disclaimer, which
would, otherwise, have been superfluous.
* * * * *
One or two of the sketches might have been made more complete had I been
fortunate enough to meet with certain late publications, in time to use
them. Such is the elaborate work of Mr. Schoolcraft upon Indian History
and Character; and such, also, is that of Mr. Shea, upon the voyages and
labors of Marquette--a book whose careful accuracy, clear style, and
lucid statement, might have been of much service in writing the sketch
entitled "_The Voyageur_." Unfortunately, however, I saw neither of
these admirable publications, until my work had assumed its present
shape--a fact which I regret as much for my reader's sake as my own.
J. L. McC.
_July 15, 1853._
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
INTRODUCTORY 7
I.
THE INDIAN 19
II.
THE VOYAGEUR 62
III.
THE PIONEER 106
IV.
THE RANGER 157
V.
THE REGULATOR 171
VI.
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE 246
VII.
THE PEDDLER 268
VIII.
THE SCHOOLMASTER 288
IX.
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 319
X.
THE POLITICIAN 340
INTRODUCTORY.
--"Our Mississippi, rolling proudly on,
Would sweep them from its path, or swallow up,
Like Aaron's rod, those streams of fame and song."
MRS. HALE.
The valley of a river like the channel of a man's career, does not
always bear proportion to the magnitude or volume of the current, which
flows through it. Mountains, forests, deserts, physical barriers to the
former--and the obstacles of prejudice, and accidents of birth and
education, moral barriers to the latter--limit, modify, and impair the
usefulness of each. A river thus confined, an intellect thus hampered,
may be noisy, fretful, turbulent, but, in the contemplation, there is
ever a feeling of the incongruity between the purpose and the power; and
it is only when the valley is extended, the field of effort open, that
we can avoid the impression of energy wasted, and strength frittered
away. The great intellect, whose scope is not confined by ancient
landmarks, or old prejudices, is thus typified by the broad, deep river,
whose branches penetrate the Earth on every hand, and add to the current
the tributaries of all climes. In this view, how noble an object is the
Mississippi!
In extent, fertility, variety of scenery, and diversity of climate, its
valley surpasses any other in the world. It is the great aorta of the
continent, and receives a score of tributary rivers, the least of which
is larger than the vaunted streams of mighty empires. It might furnish
natural boundaries to all Europe, and yet leave, for every country, a
river greater than the Seine. It discharges, in one year, more water
than has issued from the Tiber in five centuries; it swallows up near
fifty nameless rivers longer than the Thames; the addition of the waters
of the Danube would not swell it half a fathom; and in a single bend,
the navies of the world might safely ride at anchor, five hundred miles
from sea.
It washes the shores of twelve powerful states, and between its arms
lies space enough for twenty more. The rains which fall upon the
Alleghenies, and the snows that shroud the slopes and cap the summits of
the Rocky mountains, are borne upon its bosom, to the regions of
perpetual summer, and poured into the sea, more than fifteen hundred
leagues from their sources. It has formed a larger tract of land, by the
deposits of its inundations, than is contained in Great Britain and
Ireland; and every year it roots up and bears away more trees, than
there are in the Black Forest. At a speed unknown to any other great
river, it rolls a volume, in whose depths the cathedral of St. Paul's
might be sunk out of sight; and five hundred leagues from its mouth, it
is wider than at thirty.
It annually bears away more acres than it would require to make a German
principality, engulfing more than the revenues of many a petty kingdom.
Beneath its turbid waters lie argosies of wealth, and floating palaces,
among whose gilded halls and rich saloons are sporting slimy creatures;
below your very feet, as you sail along its current, are resting in its
bed, half buried in the sand, the bodies of bold men and tender maidens;
and their imploring hands are raised toward Heaven, and the world which
floats, unheeding, on the surface. There lies, entombed, the son whose
mother knows not of his death; and there the husband, for whose
footstep, even yet, the wife is listening--here, the mother with her
infant still clasped fondly to her breast; and here, united in their
lives, not separated in their death, lie, side by side, the bride and
bridegroom of a day;--and, hiding the dread secrets from all human ken,
the mighty and remorseless river passes onward, like the stream of human
life, toward "the land of dreams and shadows!"
To the contemplative mind, there is, perhaps, no part of the creation,
in which may not be found the seed of much reflection; but of all the
grand features of the earth's surface, next to a lofty mountain, that
which impresses us most deeply is a great river. Its pauseless flow, the
stern momentum of its current--its remorseless coldness to all human
hopes and fears--the secrets which lie buried underneath its waters, and
the myriad purposes of those it bears upon its bosom--are all so clearly
typical of Time. The waters will not pause, though dreadful battles may
be fought upon their shores--as Time will steadily march forward, though
the fate of nations hang upon the conflict. The moments fly as swiftly,
while a mighty king is breathing out his life, as if he were a lowly
peasant; and the current flows as coldly on, while men are struggling in
the eddies, as if each drowning wretch were but a floating weed. Time
gives no warning of the hidden dangers on which haughty conquerors are
rushing, as the perils of the waters are revealed but in the crashing
of the wreck.
But the parallel does not stop here. The sources of the
Mississippi--were it even possible that they should ever be
otherwise--are still unknown to man. Like the stream of history, its
head-springs are in the regions of fable--in the twilight of remote
latitudes; and it is only after it has approached us, and assumed a
definite channel, that we are able to determine which is the authentic
stream. It flows from the country of the savage, toward that of
civilization; and like the gradations of improvement among men, are the
thickening fields and growing cultivation, which define the periods of
its course. Near its mouth, it has reached the culmination of
refinement--its last ripe fruit, a crowded city; and, beyond this, there
lies nothing but a brief journey, and a plunge into the gulf of
Eternity!
Thus, an emblem of the stream of history, it is still more like a march
along the highway of a single human life. As the sinless thoughts of
smiling childhood are the little rivulets, which afterward become the
mighty river; like the infant, airy, volatile, and beautiful--sparkling
as the dimpled face of innocence--a faithful reflex of the lights and
shadows of existence; and revealing, through the limpid wave, the
golden sands which lie beneath. Anon, the errant channels are united in
one current--life assumes a purpose, a direction--but the waters are yet
pure, and mirror on their face the thousand forms and flashing colors of
Creation's beauty--as happy boyhood, rapidly perceptive of all
loveliness, gives forth, in radiant smiles, the glad impressions of
unfaded youth.
Yet sorrow cometh even to the happiest. Misfortune is as stern a
leveller as Death; and early youth, with all its noble aspirations,
gorgeous visions, never to be realized, must often plunge, like the
placid river over a foaming cataract, down the precipice of
affliction--even while its current, though nearing the abyss, flow
softly as "the waters of Shiloah." It may be the death of a mother, whom
the bereaved half deemed immortal--some disappointment, like the
falsehood of one dearly loved--some rude shock, as the discovery of a
day-dream's hollowness; happy, thrice happy! if it be but one of these,
and not the descent from innocence to sin!
But life rolls on, as does the river, though its wave no longer flows in
placid beauty, nor reveals the hidden things beneath. The ripples are
now whirling eddies, and a hundred angry currents chafe along the rocks,
as thought and feeling fret against the world, and waste their strength
in vain repining or impatient irritation. Tranquillity returns no more;
and though the waters seem not turbid, there is a shadow in their
depths--their transparency is lost.
Tributaries, great and small, flow in--accessions of experience to the
man, of weight and volume to the river; and, with force augmented, each
rolls on its current toward the ocean. A character, a purpose, is
imparted to the life, as to the stream, and usefulness becomes an
element of being. The river is a chain which links remotest latitudes,
as through the social man relations are established, binding alien
hearts: the spark of thought and feeling, like the fluid of the magnet,
brings together distant moral zones.
On it rushes--through the rapids, where the life receives an
impulse--driven forward--haply downward--among rocks and dangerous
channels, by the motives of ambition, by the fierce desire of wealth, or
by the goad of want! But soon the mad career abates, for the first
effect of haste is agitation, and the master-spell of power is calmness.
Happy are they, who learn this lesson early--for, thence, the current
onward flows, a tranquil, noiseless, but resistless, tide. Manhood,
steady and mature, with its resolute but quiet thoughts, its deep,
unwavering purposes, and, more than all, its firm, profound affections,
is passing thus, between the shores of Time--not only working for itself
a channel broad and clear, but bearing on its bosom, toward Eternity,
uncounted wealth of hopes.
But in the middle of its course, its character is wholly changed; a
flood pours in, whose waters hold, suspended, all impurities. A
struggle, brief but turbulent, ensues: the limpid wave of youth is
swallowed up. Some great success has been achieved; unholy passions are
evoked, and will not be allayed; thenceforward there is no relenting;
and, though the world--nay! Heaven itself!--pour in, along its course,
broad tributaries of reclaiming purity, the cloud upon the waters can
never be dispelled. The marl and dross of Earth, impalpable, but visibly
corrupting, pervade the very nature; and only when the current ceases,
will its primitive transparency return.
Still it hurries onward, with velocity augmented, as it nears its term.
Yet its breadth is not increased; the earth suspended in its waters,
like the turbid passions of the human soul, prevents expansion;[1] for,
in man's career through time, the heart grows wider only in the pure.
Along the base of cliffs and highlands--through the deep alluvions of
countless ages--among stately forests and across extended plains, it
flows without cessation. Beyond full manhood, character may change no
more--as, below its mighty tributaries, the river is unaltered. Its full
development is reached among rich plantations, waving fields, and
swarming cities; while, but the journey of a day beyond, it rushes into
Eternity, leaving a melancholy record, as it mingles with the waters of
the great gulf, even upon the face of Oblivion.
--Within the valley of this river, time will see a population of two
hundred millions; and here will be the seat of the most colossal power
Earth has yet contained. The heterogeneous character of the people is of
no consequence: still less, the storms of dissension, which now and then
arise, to affright the timid and faithless. The waters of all latitudes
could not be blended in one element, and purified, without the tempests
and cross-currents, which lash the ocean into fury. Nor would a stagnant
calmness, blind attachment to the limited horizon of a homestead, or the
absence of all irritation or attrition, ever make one people of the
emigrants from every clime.
And, when this nation shall have become thoroughly homogeneous--when the
world shall recognise _the race_, and, above this, _the power_ of the
race--will there be no interest in tracing through the mists of many
generations, the outlines of that foundation on which is built the
mighty fabric? Even the infirmities and vices of the men who piled the
first stones of great empires, are chronicled in history as facts
deserving record. The portrait of an ancient hero is a treasure beyond
value, even though the features be but conjectural. How much more
precious would be a faithful portrait of _his character_, in which the
features should be his salient traits--the expression, outline, and
complexion of his nature!
To furnish a series of such portraits--embracing a few of the earlier
characters, whose "mark" is traceable in the growing civilization of the
West and South--is the design of the present work. The reader will
observe that its logic is not the selection of actual, but of ideal,
individuals, each representing a class; and that, although it is
arranged chronologically, the periods are not historical, but
characteristic. The design, then, is double; _first_, to select a
_class_, which indicates a certain stage of social or political
advancement; and, _second_, to present a picture of an imaginary
individual, who combines the prominent traits, belonging to the class
thus chosen.
The series halts, beyond the Rubicon of contemporaneous portraiture, for
very obvious reasons; but there are still in existence abundant means of
verifying, or correcting, every sketch. I have endeavored to give the
consciousness of this fact its full weight--to resist the temptation
(which, I must admit, was sometimes strong) to touch the borders of
satire; and, in conclusion, I can only hope that these wishes, with an
earnest effort at fidelity, have enabled me to present truthful
pictures.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Were it a clear stream, it would soon scoop itself out a channel
from bluff to bluff."--_Flint's Geography_, p. 103.
I.
THE INDIAN.
"In the same beaten channel still have run
The blessed streams of human sympathy;
And, though I know this ever hath been done,
The why and wherefore, I could never see!"
PHEBE CAREY.
In a work which professes to trace, even indistinctly, the reclamation
of a country from a state of barbarism, some notice of that from which
it was reclaimed is, of course, necessary; and an attempt to distinguish
the successive periods, each by its representative character, determines
the logic of such notice. Were we as well acquainted with the gradations
of Indian advancement--for such unquestionably, there were--as we are
with those of the civilized man, we should be able to distinguish eras
and periods, so as to represent them, each by its separate _ideal_. But
civilization and barbarism are comparative terms; and, though it is
difficult, perhaps impossible, precisely to fix the point at which one
ceases and the other begins, yet, within that limit, we must consider
barbarism as _one_ period. Of this period, in our plan, the Indian,
without reference to distinction of tribe, or variation in degree of
advancement, is the representative. As all triangles agree in certain
properties, though widely different in others, so all Indians are alike
in certain characteristics, though differing, almost radically, each
from every other: But, as the points of coincidence in triangles are
those which determine the class, and the differences only indicate
subspecies, so the similar characteristics in the Indian, are those
which distinguish the species, and the variations of character are, at
most, only tribal limits. An Indian who should combine all the
equivalent traits, without any of the inequalities, would, therefore, be
the pure ideal of his race. And his composition should include the evil
as well as the good; for a portrait of the savage, which should
represent him as only generous and brave, would be as far from a
complete ideal, as one which should display only his cruelty and
cunning.
My object in this article is, therefore, to combine as many as
possible--or as many as are necessary--of the general characteristics of
the Indian, both good and bad--so as to give a fair view of the
character, according to the principle intimated above. And I may,
perhaps without impropriety, here state, that this may be taken as the
key to all the sketches which are to follow. It is quite probable that
many examples of each class treated, might be found, who are exceptions
to the rules stated, in almost every particular; and it is possible,
that no _one_, of _any_ class treated, combined _all_ the
characteristics elaborated. Excepting when historical facts are related,
or well-authenticated legends worked in, my object is not to give
portraits of individuals, however prominent. As was hinted above--the
logic of the book points only to the ideal of each class.
And this view of the subject excludes all those discussions, which have
so long puzzled philosophers, about the origin of the race--our business
is with the question _What is he?_ rather than with the inquiry, _Whence
did he come?_ The shortest argument, however--and, if the assumption be
admitted, the most conclusive--is that, which assumes the literal truth
of the Mosaic account of the creation of man; for from this it directly
follows, that the aboriginal races are descendants of Asiatic
emigrants; and the minor questions, as to the route they
followed--whether across the Pacific, or by Behring's strait--are merely
subjects of curious speculation, or still more curious research. And
this hypothesis is quite consistent with the evidence drawn from Indian
languages, customs, and physical developments. Even the arguments
against the theory, drawn from differences in these particulars among
the tribes, lose their force, when we come to consider that the same, if
not wider differences, are found among other races, indisputably of a
single stock. These things may be satisfactorily accounted for, by the
same circumstances in the one case, as in the other--by political and
local situation, by climate, and unequal progress. Thus, the Indian
languages, says Prescott, in his "Conquest of Mexico," "present the
strange anomaly of differing as widely in etymology, as they agree in
organization;" but a key to the solution of the problem, is found in the
latter part of the same sentence: "and, on the other hand," he
continues,[2] "while they bear some slight affinity to the languages of
the Old World, in the former particular, they have no resemblance to
them whatever, in the latter." This is as much as if he had said, that
the incidents to the lives of American Indians, are totally different to
those of the nations of the Old World: and these incidents are precisely
the circumstances, which are likely to affect organization, more than
etymology. And the difficulty growing out of their differences among
themselves, in the latter, is surmounted by the fact, that there is a
sufficient general resemblance among them all, to found a comparison
with "the languages of the Old World." I believe, a parallel course of
argument would clear away all other objections to the theory.[3]
But, as has been said, the scope of our work includes none of these
discussions; and we shall, therefore, pass to the Indian character,
abstracted from all antecedents. That this has been, and is, much
misunderstood, is the first thought which occurs to one who has an
opportunity personally to observe the savage. Nor is it justly a matter
of surprise. The native of this continent has been the subject of
curious and unsatisfactory speculation, since the discovery of the
country by Columbus: by the very _want_ of those things, which
constitute the attraction of other nations, he became at once, and has
continued, the object of a mysterious interest. The absence of dates and
facts, to mark the course of his migration, remits us to conjecture, or
the scarcely more reliable resource of tradition--the want of history
has made him a character of romance. The mere name of Indian gives the
impression of a shadowy image, looming, dim but gigantic, through a
darkness which nothing else can penetrate. This mystery not only
interests, but also disarms, the mind; and we are apt to see, in the
character, around which it hovers, only those qualities which give depth
to the attraction. The creations of poetry and romance are usually
extremes; and they are, perhaps, necessarily so, when the nature of the
subject furnishes no standard, by which to temper the conception.
"The efforts of a poet's imagination are, more or less, under the
control of his opinions:" but opinions of men are founded upon their
history; and there is, properly, _no_ historical Indian character. The
consequence has been, that poets and novelists have constructed their
savage personages according to a hypothetical standard, of either the
virtues or vices, belonging, potentially, to the savage state. The same
rule, applied to portraiture of civilized men, would at once be declared
false and pernicious; and the only reason why it is not equally so, in
its application to the Indian, is, because the separation between him
and us is so broad, that our conceptions of his character can exert
little or no influence upon our intercourse with mankind.
Sympathy for what are called the Indian's misfortunes, has, also,
induced the class of writers, from whom, almost exclusively, our notions
of his character are derived, to represent him in his most genial
phases, and even to palliate his most ferocious acts, by reference to
the injustice and oppression, of which he has been the victim. If we
were to receive the authority of these writers, we should conclude that
the native was not a savage, at all, until the landing of the whites;
and, instead of ascribing his atrocities to the state of barbarism in
which he lived--thus indicating their only valid apology--we should
degrade both the white and the red men, by attributing to the former
all imaginable vices, and, to the latter, a peculiar aptitude in
acquiring them. These mistakes are natural and excusable--as the man who
kills another in self-defence is justifiable; but the Indian character
is not the less misconceived, just as the man slain is not less dead,
than if malice had existed in both cases. To praise one above his
merits, is as fatal to his consideration, as decidedly to disparage him.
In either case, however, there is a chance that a just opinion may be
formed; but, when both extremes are asserted with equal confidence, the
mind is confused, and can settle upon nothing. The latter is precisely
the condition of the Indian; and it is with a view of correcting such
impressions, that this article is written.
The American Indian, then, is the ideal of a savage--no more, no less:
and I call him the ideal, because he displays _all_ those qualities,
which the history of the human race authorizes us to infer, as the
characteristics of an unenlightened people, for many ages isolated from
the rest of mankind.[4] He differs, in many particulars, from the other
barbarians of the world; but the broadest distinction lies in this
_completeness_ of his savage character. The peculiarities of the country
in which their lives assume their direction, its climate, isolation; or
connection with the world--all these things contribute to modify the
aspects presented by native races. In such points as are liable to
modification by these causes, the American differs from every other
savage; and without entering into an elaborate comparison of
circumstances--for which we have neither the material, the inclination,
nor the space--it may be proper briefly to consider _one_ of these
causes, and endeavor to trace its effects in the Indian's moral
physiognomy.
The state of this continent, when the first Asiatic wanderers landed
upon its shores, was, of course, that of a vast, unbroken solitude; and
the contemplation of its almost boundless extent and profound
loneliness, was certainly the first, and probably the most powerful
agency, at work in modifying their original character. What the primary
effects of this cause were likely to be, we may observe in the white
emigrants, who have sought a home among the forests and upon the plains
of the west: whatever they may have been before their migration, they
soon become meditative, abstracted, and taciturn. These, and especially
the last, are the peculiar characteristics of the Indian; his
taciturnity, indeed, amounts to austerity, sometimes impressing the
observer with the idea of affectation. The dispersion, which must have
been the effect of unlimited choice in lands--the mode of life pursued
by those who depended upon the chase for subsistence--the gradual
estrangement produced among the separate tribes, by the necessity of
wide hunting-grounds--the vast expanse of territory at command--causes
operating so long, as to produce a fixed and corresponding nature--are
the sources, to which we may trace almost all the Indian's distinctive
traits.
"Isolation," Carlyle says, "is the sum total of wretchedness to man;"
and, doubtless, the idea which he means to convey is just. "But," in the
words of De Quincey, "no man can be truly _great_, without at least
chequering his life with solitude." Separation from his kind, of course,
deprives a man of the humanizing influences, which are the consequences
of association; but it may, at the same time, strengthen some of the
noblest qualities of human nature. Thus, we are authorized to ascribe to
this agency, a portion of the Indian's fortitude under hardships and
suffering, his contempt for mere meanness, and above all, the proud
elevation of his character. The standards of comparison, which were
furnished by his experience, were few, and, of course, derived from the
ideas of barbarians; but all such as were in any way modified by the
solitude of his existence, were rendered impressive, solemn, and
exalted.
In the vast solitudes of Asia, whence the Indian races migrated to this
continent, so far as the loneliness of savage deserts and endless plains
might exert an influence, we should expect to find the same general
character. But the Asians are almost universally pastoral--the Americans
never; the wildest tribes of Tartary possess numerous useful
domesticated animals--the Americans, even in Mexico,[5] had none; the
Tartars are acquainted with the use of milk, and have been so from time
immemorial--the Indian, even at this day, has adopted it only in a few
localities, among the more enlightened tribes. The migration of the
latter either took place at a period before even his Asiatic father had
discovered its use, or the accidents which brought him to this
continent, were such as to preclude importing domesticated animals; and
the lapse of a few generations was sufficient to obliterate even the
recollection of such knowledge. "And," says Prescott,[6] "he might well
doubt, whether the wild, uncouth monsters, whom he occasionally saw
bounding with such fury over the distant plains, were capable of
domestication, like the meek animals which he had left grazing in the
green pastures of Asia." To this leading distinction--the adoption and
neglect of pastoral habits--may be referred most of the diversities
among races, unquestionably of one stock.
Reasoning from the effects upon human character, produced by the face of
different countries, we might expect to find, in the Indian, among other
things, a strong tendency toward poetical thought, embodied, not in the
mode of expression usually denominated poetry, but in the style of his
addresses, the peculiarities of his theories, or the construction of his
mythology, language, and laws. This expectation is totally disappointed;
but when we examine the _degree_ and _character_ of his advancement,
and recollect a few of the circumstances, among which the poetry looked
for would be obliged to grow, our disappointment loses its element of
surprise. The contemplation of Nature in her primitive, terrible, and
beautiful forms--the habit of meditation, almost the necessary
consequence of solitude--the strange, wild enchantment of an adventurous
life--have failed to develop in the Indian, any but selfish and sensual
ideas. Written poetry was, of course, not to be expected, even from the
indigenous civilization of Mexico and Peru; yet we might, with some
ground for hope, seek occasional traces of poetical thought and feeling.
We look in vain for any such thing.
"Extremes meet," says one of the wisest of adages; and the saying was
never more singularly and profoundly vindicated, than in its application
to civilization and barbarism. The savage rejects all that does not
directly gratify his selfish wants--the highly-civilized man is, in like
manner, governed by the principle of _utility_; and, by both, the merely
fanciful and imaginative is undervalued. Thus, as Mr. Macaulay[7]
ingeniously says, "A great poem, in a highly-polished state of society,
is the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius." But, for the same
reasons, the savage, who should display any remarkably poetical feeling
or tone of thought, would be quite as great a prodigy. Poetry flourishes
most luxuriantly midway between the two extremes. Its essence is the
contemplation of great passions and actions--of love, revenge, ambition.
Imagination is then vivified by the means of expression or articulation;
and, in the half-civilized state, neither a refined public sentiment,
nor the other extreme of barbarous isolation, restrains the exhibition
of great (and poetical) emotions.
The best of Hazlitt's numerous definitions of poetry, determines it to
be "the excess of imagination, beyond the actual or ordinary impression
of any object or feeling."[8] But the Indian was destitute of all
imagination; apparently, the composition of his nature included no such
element; and, certainly, the rude exigencies of his life did not admit
its action. Even the purity of his mythology, compared to that of the
Greeks and Romans,[9] has been (by Lord Lindsay) attributed to this
want--though, if such were its only effects, it might very well be
supplied.
The Indian has no humor, no romance--how could he possess poetical
feeling? The gratification of sensual wants is the end of his life--too
often, _literally_ the end! "He considers everything beneath his notice,
which is not necessary to his advantage or enjoyment."[10] To him a jest
is as unmeaning as the babbling of a brook; his wife is a beast of
burden; and even his courting is carried on by gifts of good things _to
eat_, sent to the parents.[11] Heaven is merely a hunting-ground; his
language has no words to express abstract qualities, virtues, vices, or
sentiments.[12] His idea of the Great Spirit, and the word which
expresses it, may be applied with equal propriety to a formidable
(though not beneficent) _animal_; indeed, the Indian words which we
translate "spirit," mean only superior power, without the qualification
of good or evil. He has not even the ordinary inhabitive instinct of the
human race; his attachment to any region of country depends upon its
capacity to furnish game, and the fading of the former keeps pace with
the disappearance of the latter. "Attachment to the graves of his
fathers," is an agreeable fiction--unfortunately, only a fiction.[13]
He has always been nomadic, without the pastoral habits which the word
supposes: a mere wandering savage, without purpose or motive, beyond the
gratification of the temporary want, whim, or passion, and void of
_everything_ deserving the name of sentiment.
An extravagant, and, I am sorry to say, groundless, notion has obtained
currency, among almost all writers upon the Indian character, that he is
distinguished for his _eloquence_. But the same authors tell us, that
his language, the vehicle of the supposed eloquence, can express only
material ideas.[14] Now, if we knew no more of his character than this,
we should be authorized to infer (what is, indeed, true), that he
possesses no standard for the distinction of good and evil, and that his
imagination is bounded by the lines of his sensible experience. How any
degree of eloquence can be compatible with this state of things, passes
comprehension. And what reflection would conclude, a little examination
will confirm. The mistake has, doubtless, grown out of a misconception
of the nature of eloquence itself.[15] If eloquence were all
_figure_--even if it were, in any considerable degree, _mere_
figure--then the tawdriest rhetorician would be the greatest orator. But
it is not so. On the contrary, the use of many words (or figures) to
express an idea, denotes not command of language, but the absence of
that power--just as the employment of numerous tools, to effect a
physical object, indicates, not skill in the branch of physics, to which
the object belongs, but rather awkwardness. Of course, much must be
placed, in both cases, to the account of clumsy instruments; but the
instrument of speech differs from others in this: it is fashioned _by_,
as well as _for_, its use; and a rude, unpolished language is,
therefore, an index, in two ways, of the want of eloquence among the
people who employ it.
In this view, the figurative elocution of the Indian, so far from
affording evidence of oratorical power, if it proves anything, proves
the opposite. It is the barrenness of his language, and not the
luxuriance of his imagination, which enforces that mode of speech.[16]
Imagination is the first element of oratory, simplicity its first
condition. We have seen that the Indian is wholly destitute of the
former; and the stilted, meretricious, and ornate style, of even his
ordinary communications, entirely excludes the latter from our
conception of his character.[17]
For example: take the expressions "bury the hatchet," for "make peace,"
and "a cloudless sky," for "prosperity"--the latter being the nearest
approximation to an abstract idea observed in Indian oratory. Upon
examining these, and kindred forms of speech, we shall at once perceive
that they are not the result of imagination, but are suggested by
_material_ analogies. Peace, to the savage, is, at best, but a negative
idea; and the _state_ of peacefulness, abstracted from the absence of
war, finds no corresponding word in his language. Even friendship only
means that relation, in which friends may be of _use_ to each other. As
his dialects are all synthetic,[18] his ideas are all concrete. To say,
"_I love_" without expressing _what_ or _whom_ I love, would be, so to
speak, very bad Indian grammar. He can not even say "two" correctly,
without applying the numeral to some object. The notion of absolute
being, number, emotion, feeling, posture, or relation, is utterly
foreign to his mode of thought and speech.
So, also, of the "cloudless sky," used to express a state of prosperity.
He does not mean, by the phrase, the serenity of mind which prosperity
produces, nor any other abstract inflexion or suggestion of the figure.
He is constantly exposed to the storms of heaven, in the chase, and on
the war path; and, even in his best "lodge," he finds but little shelter
from their fury. Clear weather is, therefore, grateful to him--bright
sunshine associates itself, in his mind, with comfort, or (that
supremest of Indian pleasures) undisturbed indolence. And the
transition, though, as we have said, an approach to an abstract
conception, is easy, even to the mind of a savage. His employment of
such illustrations is rather an evidence of rudeness, than of
eloquence--of barrenness, than of luxuriance of idea.[19]
From these considerations, it results, that even the very best specimens
of Indian oratory, deserve the name of _picturesque_, rather than of
_eloquent_--two characteristics which bear no greater affinity to each
other, than do the picture-writing of the Aztec and the alphabetical
system of the Greek. The speech of Logan--the most celebrated of Indian
harangues--even if genuine,[20] is but a feeble support to the theory of
savage eloquence. It is a mixture of the lament and the song of triumph,
which may be found in equal perfection among all barbarous people; but,
so far as we are aware, was never elsewhere dignified with that sounding
name. The slander of a brave and honorable man,[21] which it contains,
might be the result of a mistake easily made; the wrongs of which this
chief was the victim, might render even a savage eloquent; and the
mixture of bloody vaunting with profound grief, is scarcely to be
expected in any _but_ a savage. "Logan never knew fear," he says; "he
would not turn on his heel to save his life." This species of boasting
is perfectly in keeping with the Indian character; but the pathetic
reason for this carelessness, which follows--"There is no one to mourn
for Logan"--is one not likely to have occurred to an Indian, even in his
circumstances. And, granting that the expression _was_ used by the
orator, and not (as it seems probable it was) added by Jefferson, it is,
I believe, the only example on record of poetical feeling in any Indian
speech.
The _religion_ of the Indian has given as much troublesome material to
the builders of systems, as has been furnished by all his other
characteristics combined. The first explorers of America supposed that
they had found a people, quite destitute of any religious belief. But
faith in a higher power than that of man, is a necessity of the human
mind; and its organization, more or less enlightened, is as natural,
even to the most degraded savage, as the formation of his language. Both
depend upon general laws, common to the intellect of all races of men;
both are affected by the external circumstances of climate, situation,
and mode of life; and the state of one may always be determined by that
of the other. "No savage horde has been caught with its language in a
state of chaos, or as if just emerging from the rudeness of
indistinguishable sounds. Each appears, not as a slow formation by
painful processes of invention, but as a perfect whole, springing
directly from the powers of man."[22] And though this rigor of
expression is not equally applicable to the Indian's religion, the fact
is attributable solely to the difference in nature of the subjects. As
the "primary sounds of a language are essentially the same everywhere,"
the impulses and instincts of piety are common to all minds. But, as the
written language of the Indian was but the pictorial representation of
visible objects, having no metaphysical signification, so the symbols of
his religion, the objects of his adoration, were drawn from external
nature.[23] Even his faith in the Great Spirit is a graft upon his
system, derived from the first missionaries;[24] and, eagerly as he
adopted it, it is probable that its meaning, to him, is little more
exalted, than that of the "Great Beaver," which he believes to be the
first progenitor, if not the actual creator, of that useful animal.
We often see the fact, that the Indian believes in his _manitou_, cited
as an evidence, that he has the conception of a spiritual divinity. But
the word never conveyed such a meaning; it is applicable more properly
to material objects, and answers, with, if possible, a more intense and
superstitious significance, to the term _amulet_. The Indian's _manitou_
might be, indeed always was, some wild animal, or some part of a beast
or bird--such as a bear's claw, a buffalo's hoof, or a dog's tooth.[25]
And, though he ascribed exalted powers to this primitive guardian, it
must be remembered that these powers were only physical--such, for
example, as would enable it to protect its devotee from the knife of his
enemy, or give him success in hunting.
Materialism, then, reigns in the religion, as in the language, of the
Indian; and its effects are what might be expected. His whole system is
a degraded and degrading superstition; and, though it has been praised
for its superior purity, over that of the ancients, it seems to have
been forgotten, that this purity is only the absence of _one kind_ of
_im_purity: and that its cruel and corrupting influences, of another
sort, are ten-fold greater than those of the Greek mythology. The
faith of the Greek embodied itself in forms, ceremonies, and
observances--regularly appointed religious rites kept his piety alive;
the erection of grand temples, in honor of his deity, whatever might be
his conception of that deity's character, attested his genuine devotion,
and held constantly before his mind the abstract idea of a higher power.
The Indian, before the coming of the white man, erected no temples[26]
in honor of his divinities; for he venerated them only so long as they
conferred physical benefits[27] upon him; and his idea of beneficence
was wholly concrete. He had no established form of worship; the
ceremonies, which partook of a religious character, were grotesque in
their conception, variable in their conduct, and inhuman in their
details. Such, for example, are the torturing of prisoners, and the
ceremonies observed on the occasion of a young Indian's placing himself
under his guardian power.
The dogmas of the Indian religion, until varied by the teaching of
missionaries, were few and simple--being circumscribed, like everything
else belonging to him, by the material world. He believed in a good
spirit, and an evil spirit; but his conception was limited by the ideas
of benefit or injury, _to himself_; indeed, it may safely be doubted,
whether the word "spirit," in its legitimate sense, is at all applicable
to his belief. "Power in a state of exertion," is the more accurate
description of his imperfect notion: abstract existence he never
conceived; the verb "_to be_" except as relating to time, place, and
action, had no meaning in his language.[28] He believed, also, in
subordinate powers of good and evil; but, since his life was occupied
more in averting danger and calamity, than in seeking safety or
happiness, he paid far more respect to the latter than to the former--he
prayed oftener and more fervently to the devils, than to the angels. His
clearest notion of divinity, was that of a being able to injure him;
and, in this sense, his devotion might be given to man, bird, or beast.
There seems to be no doubt, that he believed in a sort of immortality,
even before the missionaries visited his country. But it was not so much
a new state of existence, as a continuation of present life.[29] He
killed horses upon the grave of the departed warrior, that he might be
mounted for his long journey; and buffalo meat and roasted maize were
buried with him, that he might not suffer from hunger.[30] On arriving
in the land of the blest, he believed, that the dead pursued the game of
that country, as he had done in this; and the highest felicity of which
he conceived, was the liberty to hunt unmolested by the war-parties of
his enemies. Heaven was, therefore, in his conception, only a more
genial earth, and its inheritors but keener sportsmen.
That this idea of immortality involved that of accountability, in some
form, seems to admit of no doubt; but this doctrine, like almost all
others belonging to the primitive savage, has been moulded to its
present definite shape, by the long-continued labors of Christian
missionaries.[31] He believed, indeed, that the bad Indians never
reached the happy hunting-grounds, but the distinction between the good
and the bad, in his mind, was not at all clear; and, since the idea of
the passage across the gulf of death most prevalent among all tribes,
is that of a narrow bridge, over which only steady nerves and sure feet
may carry the wanderer, it seems probable that the line was drawn
between the brave warrior and the successful hunter, on the one hand,
and the coward and the unskilful, on the other. If these views be
correct, the inferences to be drawn from the Indian's belief in
immortality and accountability, are of but slender significance.
Corrupt manners and degrading customs never exist, in conjunction with a
pure religious system. The outlines of social institutions are
metaphysically coincident with the limits of piety; and the refinement
of morals depends upon the purity of faith. We may thus determine the
prevailing spirit of a national religion, by observation of domestic
manners and habits; and, among all the relations of life, that of parent
and child is the best index to degree of advancement. Filial piety is
but the secondary manifestation of a devotional heart; and attachment
and obedience to a father on earth, are only imperfect demonstrations of
love to our Father in heaven. What, then--to apply the principle--is the
state of this sentiment in the Indian? By the answer to that question,
we shall be able to estimate the value of his religious notions, and to
determine the amount of hope, for his conversion, justified by their
possession. The answer may be given in a few words: There is no such
sentiment in the Indian character. Children leave their infirm parents
to die alone, and be eaten by the wolves;[32] or treat them with violent
indignity,[33] when the necessity of migration gives no occasion for
this barbarous desertion. Young savages have been known to beat their
parents, and even to kill them; but the display of attachment or
reverence for them, is quite unknown. Like the beast of the forest, they
are no sooner old enough to care for themselves, than they cease even to
remember, by whose care they have become so; and the slightest
provocation will produce a quarrel with a father, as readily as with a
stranger. The unwritten law of the Indian, about which so many writers
have dreamed, enacts no higher penalty for parricide, than for any other
homicide; and a command to honor his father and mother because they
_are_ his father and mother, would strike the mind of an Indian as
simply absurd.
If the possession of a religion, whose fruits are no better than these,
can, of itself, give ground for hope to the Christian philanthropist,
let him cherish it fondly. But it is much to be feared, that the
existence of such a system indefinitely postpones, if it does not
entirely preclude, the Indian's conversion. Even a bird which has never
known the forest, will eventually escape to the wilds which God has made
its home; and the young Indian, who has been reared in the city, will
fly to the woods and prairies, and return to the faith of his fathers,
because these, and only these, will satisfy his nature.[34]
A theme of praise, in itself more just, has been the Indian's courage;
but the same circumstances of poetical interest, which have magnified
men's views of his other qualities, have contributed to exaggerate this
also. If calm steadiness of nerve, in the moment of action, be an
element in true courage, that of the primitive savage was scarcely
genuine. In all his battles, there were but two possible aspects--the
furious onset, and the panic retreat: the firmness which plants itself
in line or square, and stubbornly contends for victory, was no part of
his character. A check, to him, always resulted in a defeat; and, though
this might, in some measure, be the consequence of that want of
discipline, which is incident to the savage state, the remark applies
with equal justice, whether he fought singly or in a body. He was easily
panic-struck, because the impulse of the forward movement was necessary
to keep him strung to effort; and the retrograde immediately became a
rout, because daring, without constancy, collapses with the first
reaction.
Notwithstanding the enervating influences attributed to refinement and
luxury, genuine, steady courage is one of the fruits borne by a high
civilization. It is the result of combination, thought, and the divinity
which attaches to the cultivated man. And, though it may seem rather
unfair to judge a savage by the rules of civilization, it has long been
received as a canon, that true valor bears an inverse ratio to
ferocious cruelty. Of all people yet discovered upon earth, the Indian
is the most ferocious. We must, therefore, either vary the meaning of
the word, when applied to different people, or deny the savage the
possession of any higher bravery, than that which lives only through the
onset.
Cunning supplied the place of the nobler quality; the object of his
warfare was to overcome by wily stratagem, rather than by open combat.
"Skill consisted in surprising the enemy. They followed his trail, to
kill him when he slept; or they lay in ambush near a village, and
watched for an opportunity of suddenly surprising an individual, or, it
might be, a woman and her children; and, with three strokes to each, the
scalps of the victims being suddenly taken off, the brave flew back with
his companions, to hang the trophies in his cabin."[35] If they
succeeded in taking prisoners, it was only that they might be reserved
for the most infernal torments, and the gratification of a brutal
ferocity, not the trial and admiration of the victim's courage, was the
purpose of their infliction.[36]
The fortitude of the Indian under suffering, has often been referred to,
in evidence of moral courage. And it is certainly true, that the display
so frequently made of triumph in the hour of death by torture,
indicates,[37] in part, an elevation of character, seldom found among
more civilized men. It is, however, the elevation of a barbarian; and
its manifestations are as much the fruit of impotent rage, as of a noble
fortitude. The prisoner at the stake knows that there is no escape; and
his intense hatred of his enemies takes the form of a wish, to deprive
them of a triumph. While his flesh is crisping and crackling in the
flames, therefore, he sings of the scalps he has taken, and heaps
opprobrious epithets upon the heads of his tormentors. But his song is
as much a cry of agony, as of exultation--his pain only adopts this mode
of expression. It is quite certain, also, that he does not suffer so
deeply, as would a white man in the same circumstances. By long
exposure, and the endurance of hardships incident to his savage life,
his body acquires an insensibility akin to that of wild animals.[38] His
nerves do not shrink or betray a tendency to spasm, even when a limb is
amputated. Transmitted from one generation to another, this physical
nature has become a peculiarity of the race. And when assisted by the
fierce hatred above referred to, it is not at all strange that it should
enable him to bear with fortitude, tortures which would conquer the
firmness of the most resolute white man.[39]
The Indian's dignified stoicism has been as much exaggerated, as his
courage and fortitude. It is not quite true that he never expresses
surprise, or becomes loquacious. But he has a certain stern
impassibility of feature--a coldness of manner--which have been mistaken
for dignity. His immobility of countenance, however, may be the effect
of sluggish sensibilities, or even of dull perceptions;[40] and the
same savage vanity, which leads him to make a display of strength or
agility before friend or enemy, prevents his acknowledging ignorance, by
betraying surprise.[41] We have been in company with Indians from the
Far West, while they saw a railroad for the first time. When they
thought themselves unnoticed, they were as curious about the singular
machinery of the locomotive, and as much excited by the decorations and
appointments of the cars, as the most ignorant white man. But the moment
they discovered that their movements were observed, they resumed their
dignified composure; and, if you had judged of the Indian country by
their subsequent deportment, you might have believed that the vast
prairies of the Missouri were everywhere intersected by railroads--that
the Indian had, in fact, never known any other mode of travelling. "On
first seeing a steamboat, however," says Flint, who well understands his
character, "he never represses his customary '_Ugh_!'"
Generally, among white men, he who is fondest of inflicting pain, is
least able to endure it. But the Indian reverses almost all the
principles, which apply to civilized life; and, accordingly, we find
that, with all his so-called fortitude, he is the most intensely cruel
of all living men. Before possession of the continent was taken by
Europeans, war was more constantly the occupation of his life, than it
has been since; but even now his only object in taking his enemies
alive, is to subject them to the most inhuman tortures.[42] And in these
brutal orgies, the women are most active, even taking the lead, in
applying the cord and the brand.[43] Nor is this cruelty confined to
enemies, as the practice of leaving the aged and infirm to die of
starvation sufficiently proves.
And his treachery is equal to his cruelty. No treaty can bind him longer
than superior force compels him to observe it. The discovery that his
enemy is unprepared for an attack, is sufficient reason to him for
making it; his only object in concluding peace, is to secure an
advantage in war; and before the prospect of a bloody inroad, his faith
melts away, like snow before the sun. The claims of gratitude he seldom
acknowledges; he cherishes the memory of a benefit, only until he finds
an opportunity of repaying it with an injury; and forbearance to avenge
the latter, only encourages its repetition.[44] The numerous pretty
stories published of Indian gratitude, are either exceptional cases, or
unmixed romances.
There have been some tribes of Indians in a measure reclaimed from their
state of barbarism; the Cherokees, I believe, (and perhaps one or two
other nations,) have even increased in numbers, under the influence of
civilization. But this is the result of numerous favorable causes
combined, and proves nothing, from which to infer the Indian's docility.
Other savages, on coming in contact with civilized men, have discovered
a disposition to acquire some of the useful arts--their comforts have
been increased, their sufferings diminished, and their condition
ameliorated, by the grafting of new ideas upon the old. But, between
the red man and the white, contiguity has brought about little more than
an exchange of vices.
Almost the only things coveted by the "redskin" from the "paleface,"
were his arms, his trinkets, and his "firewater." He could appreciate
whatsoever gave him superiority in war, gratified his childish vanity,
or ministered to his brutal appetite. But the greater comfort of the
white man's house--the higher excellence of his boat--his improved
agricultural implements or extended learning--none of these things
appealed to the Indian's passions or desires. The arts of peace were
nothing to him--refinement was worse than nothing. He would spend hours
in _decorating_ his person, but not a moment in _cleansing_ it: I
believe no tradition exists of an Indian ever having used soap or bought
a fine-tooth comb! He is, indeed, a "pattern of filthiness;" but even in
civilized life, we find that this is not at all incompatible with an
extravagant love of ornament; and, in this respect, the savage is not
behind his more enlightened brethren and sisters. Beads, ribands, and
scarlet cloth--with powder and lead, guns, tomahawks, and knives--are
the acquisitions which he prizes most highly.
Pre-eminent, however, above all these in his estimation, is the greatest
curse which has yet reached him--the liquid fire called whiskey! He is,
by nature, a drunkard, and the fury of his intoxication equals the
ferocity of his warfare. "All words would be thrown away," says Mr.
Flint,[45] "in attempting to portray, in just colors, the effects of
whiskey upon such a race." Fire should be kept away from
combustibles--whiskey from the Indian, and for the same reason. With
drunkenness, he possesses, also, its inseparable companion, the vice of
gambling.[46] He is the most inveterate gamester: Before the demon of
avarice everything gives way. He even forgets his taciturnity, in the
excitement of the game, and becomes loquacious and eager. He will stake
all his most valuable possessions, and, losing these, will even risk his
own liberty, or life, on the turn of a card. We were once witness to a
game in San Antonio (in Western Texas), among a party of Lipans,[47] a
race of fine-looking men, who range the table-lands north of the
sources of the Nueces. Two of them, one the handsomest warrior among
them, lost, first, the money, which they had just received as the price
of skins, brought to the city for sale. They then staked, successively,
their horses, their arms, their moccasins, and their blankets. The
"luck" was against them--everything was lost; and we supposed the game
was over. But--as a last resource, like drawing blood from their beating
hearts--each produced a _little leathern bottle_, containing whiskey!
And, as if these possessed a higher value than all the articles yet
lost, the game went on with increased interest! Even the potent "spirit"
thus evoked, could not prevail upon Fortune to change her face: the
whiskey was lost with the rest! Each rose to his feet, with the usual
guttural exclamation, and, afoot, and unarmed as he was, silently took
his way to the prairies; while the winners collected in a group, and
with much glee, proceeded to consume the liquid poison so cheaply
obtained.
We come, finally to the question of the Indian's fate: What is to become
of the race? The answer presents no difficulties, save such as grow out
of men's unwillingness to look unpleasant truths in the face. There has
been, of late years, much lamentation, among our own people, over the
gradual extinction of these interesting savages; and in Europe we have
been made the subject of indignant eloquence, for (what those, who know
nothing about it, are pleased to call) "our oppression of the Indian."
But, in the first place, the decay of the American races is neither so
rapid nor so universal, as is generally supposed;[48] and, in the second
place, if the fact were otherwise, we could, at the worst, be charged
only with accelerating a depopulation already begun. "The ten thousand
mounds in the Mississippi Valley, the rude memorials of an immensely
numerous former population, but, to our view, no more civilized than the
present races, are proofs that the country _was depopulated_, when the
white man first became acquainted with it. If we can infer nothing else
from these mounds, we can clearly infer, that this country once had its
millions."[49] What had become of this immense population? The
successive invasions of new hordes of barbarians from the north,
intestine wars, and the law, that men shall advance toward civilization,
or decay from the earth--these are the only causes to which we may
ascribe their disappearance.
The extinction of the Indian race is decreed, by a law of Providence
which we can not gainsay. Barbarism _must_ give way to civilization. It
is not only inevitable, but _right_, that it should be so. The tide of
empire, which has been flowing since the earliest times, has set
steadily toward the West. The Indian emigrated in the wrong direction:
and now, after the lapse of many centuries, the descendants of the first
Asians, having girdled the globe, meet on the banks of the Mississippi!
On the one side, are enlightenment, civilization, Christianity: on the
other, darkness, degradation, barbarism: and the question arises, which
shall give way? The Indian recedes: at the rate of seventeen miles a
year,[50] the flood rolls on! Already it has reached the shores of the
Pacific: One century will reduce the whole continent to the possession
of the white man; and, then, the lesson which all history teaches, will
be again taught--that two distinct races cannot exist in the same
country on equal terms. The weaker must be incorporated with the
stronger--or exterminated.[51]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Vol. III., page 394.
[3] There is, however, little necessity for any argument on the subject:
For, leaving out of the question the highest and most sacred of
authorities, almost all respectable writers upon ethnology, including
Buffon, Volney, Humboldt, &c., agree in assigning a common origin to all
nations,--though the last deduces from many particulars, the conclusion
that the American Indian was "isolated in the infancy of the world, from
the rest of mankind."--_Ancient Inhabitants of America_, vol. i., p.
250.
[4] It will be observed, that I assume the _unity_ of the Indian race;
and I am not sufficiently acquainted with the recent discussions on the
subject, to be certain whether the question is still considered open.
But the striking analogies between the customs, physical formation, and
languages of all the various divisions, (except the Esquimaux, who are
excluded), I think, authorize the assumption.
[5] _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. iii., p. 416.
[6] _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. iii., p. 417.
[7] _Essays_--Art. 'Milton.'
[8] _Lectures on English Poets_, p. 4.
[9] No very high compliment, but as high as it deserves. We shall see
anon.
[10] Warburton's _Conquest of Canada_, vol. i., p. 177.
[11] Bancroft's _United States_, vol. iii., p. 256.
[12] Hunter's _Memoirs_, p. 236. _Western Annals_, p. 712.
[13] _Flint's Geography_, p. 108.
[14] "All ideas are expressed by figures addressed to the senses."
_Warburton_, vol. i., p. 175. Bancroft, ut supra.
[15] See Bancroft, Hunter, Catlin, Flint, Jefferson, &c.--passim--all
supporters of Indian eloquence, but all informing us, that "combinations
of material objects were his _only_ means of expressing abstract ideas."
[16] Vide Bancroft's _United States_, vol. iii., pp. 257, 266, etc.
[17] _E. G._ "They style themselves the 'beloved of the Great
Spirit.'"--_Warburton_, vol. i., p. 186. "In the Iroquois language, the
Indians gave themselves the appellation of 'Angoueonoue', or 'Men of
Always.'"--_Chateaubriand's Travels in America_, vol. ii., p. 92. Note,
also, their exaggerated boastfulness, even in their best speeches:
"Logan never knew fear," &c.
[18] "The absence of all reflective consciousness, and of all logical
analysis of ideas, is the great peculiarity of American
speech."--_Bancroft_, vol. iii., p. 257.
[19] Warburton's _Conquest of Canada_, vol. i., p. 180.
[20] I have seen it hinted, though I have forgotten where, that
Jefferson, and not Logan, was the author of this speech; but the
extravagant manner in which Jefferson himself praises it, seems to
exclude the suspicion. "I may challenge the whole orations of
Demosthenes and Cicero," he says, "and of any other more eminent orator,
if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage
superior to the speech of Logan!" Praise certainly quite high enough,
for a mixture of lamentation and boastfulness.
[21] The evidence in this matter has long ago been thoroughly sifted;
and it is now certain that, so far from being present aiding at the
massacre of Logan's family, Colonel Cresap earnestly endeavored to
dissuade the party from its purpose. And yet the falsehood is
perpetuated even in the common school-books of the country, while its
object has been mouldering in his grave for a quarter of a
century.--_Western Annals_, p. 147. _American Pioneer_, vol. i., p. 7,
_et seq._
[22] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 254.
[23] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 285.--"The God of the savage was what the
metaphysician endeavors to express by the word _substance_." But the
Indian's idea of substance was altogether _concrete_.
[24] The best authority upon this subject is found in the _Jesuit_
"_Relaciones:_" but it is at least probable, that the preconceptions of
the good Fathers colored, and, perhaps, shaped, many of the religious
wonders there related.
[25] "Lettres Edifiantes," vol. vi., p. 200, _et seq._ Warburton, vol.
i., p. 187.
[26] The extravagant stories told of the Natchez Indians (among whom
there was said to be a remarkable temple for worship) are quite
incredible, even if they had not been disproved.
[27] When the _manitou_ of the Indian has failed to give him success in
the chase, or protection from danger, "he upbraids it with bitterness
and contempt, and threatens to seek a more effectual protector. If the
_manitou_ continues useless, this threat is fulfilled." Warb. _ut
supra_. _Vide_, also, Catlin's "American Indians," vol. i., p. 36, _et
seq._
[28] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 258.
[29] "He calls it [the soul] the shadow or image of his body, but its
acts and enjoyments are all the same as those of its earthly existence.
He only pictures to himself a continuation of present pleasures." Warb.
vol. i., p. 190. _Vide_, also, Catlin's "_American Indians_," vol. i.,
p. 158, _et seq._
[30] The Indian never believed in the resurrection of the body; but even
corn and venison were supposed to possess a spirit, which the spirit of
the dead warrior might eat.--_Jesuit_ "_Relacion_," 1633, p. 54.
[31] "The idea of retribution," says Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 299, "as
far as it has found its way among them, was derived from Europeans." And
the same remark may be made, of most of the other wonders, in which
enthusiastic travellers have discovered coincidences with Christianity.
[32] James's "_Expedition_," vol. i., p. 237.--Catlin's "_American
Indians_," vol. i., pp. 216-'18. The latter is a zealous apologist for
Indian cruelties and barbarisms.
[33] "_Conquest of Canada_," vol. i., pp. 194-'5.
[34] The following may serve to indicate the sort of impression of
Christianity which even the most earnest and enlightened preaching has
been able to make upon the Indian mind: "Here I saw a most singular
union; one of the [Indian] graves was surmounted by a cross, while close
to it a trunk of a tree was raised, covered with hieroglyphics,
recording the number of enemies slain by the tenant of the tomb. Here
presenting a hint to those who are fond of system-making on the religion
of these people," &c.--_Beltrami's Pilgrimage, &c._, vol. ii., p. 307.
Bancroft's _United States_, vol. iii., pp. 303-'4. Flint's _Geography_,
pp. 109, 126.
[35] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 281.
[36] "To inflict blows that can not be returned," says this historian
(Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 282), "is a proof of full success, and the
entire humiliation of the enemy. It is, moreover, an experiment of
courage and patience." But we think such things as much mere brutality,
as triumph.
[37] The frequent change of tense in this article, refers to those
circumstances in which the _present_ differs from the _past_ character
of the Indian.
[38] "It is to be doubted, whether some part of this vaunted stoicism be
not the result of a more than ordinary degree of physical
insensibility."--_Flint's Geography_, vol. i., p. 114.
[39] Many white men, however, have endured the utmost extremities of
Indian cruelty. See cases of Brebeuf, and Lallemand, in _Bancroft_, vol.
iii., p. 140.
[40] "It is intellectual culture which contributes most to diversify the
features."--_Humboldt's Personal Narrative_, vol. iii., p. 228.
[41] "They have probably as much curiosity [as the white], but a more
stern perseverance in repressing it."--_Flint's Geography_, vol. i., p.
124.
[42] "The enemy is assailed with treachery, and, if conquered, treated
with revolting cruelty." * * "A fiendish ferocity assumes full
sway."--_Conquest of Canada_, vol. i., p. 206.
[43] It is perhaps not very remarkable, however, that the women are most
cruel to the aged and infirm--the young and vigorous being sometimes
adopted by them, to console them for the loss of those who have
fallen.--_Idem_, p. 210.
[44] "We consider them a treacherous people, easily swayed from their
purpose, paying their court to the divinity of good fortune, and always
ready to side with the strongest. We should not rely upon their feelings
of to-day, as any pledge for what they will be to-morrow."--_Flint's
Geography_, vol. i., p. 120.
[45] "_Geography of the Mississippi Valley_," vol. i., p. 121.
[46] "The Indians are immoderately fond of play."--_Warburton_, vol. i.,
p. 218.
[47] These used cards; but they have, among themselves, numerous games
of chance, older than the discovery of the continent.
[48] "The Cherokee and Mobilian families of nations are more numerous
now than ever."--_Bancroft_, vol. iii., p. 253. In speaking of this
declamation about the extinction of the race, Mr. Flint very pertinently
remarks: "One would think it had been discovered, that the population,
the improvements, and the social happiness of our great political
edifice, ought never to have been erected in the place of these
habitations of cruelty."--_Geography_, vol. i., p. 107.
[49] Idem.
[50] This is De Tocqueville's estimate.--_Democracy in America_, vol.
ii., chap. 10.
[51] "We may as well endeavor to make the setting sun stand still on the
summit of the Rocky Mountains, as attempt to arrest the final extermination
of the Indian race!"--_Merivale on Colonization_--_Lecture_ 19.
The principle stated in the text will apply with equal force to the
negro-race; and those who will look the facts firmly in the face, can
not avoid seeing, that the ultimate solution of the problem of American
Slavery, can be nothing but _the sword_.
II.
THE VOYAGEUR.
"Spread out earth's holiest records here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear:
A zeal like this, what pious legends tell?"
The shapeless knight-errantry of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, rich as it was in romance and adventure, is not to be
compared, in any valuable characteristic, to the noiseless self-devotion
of the men who first explored the Western country. The courage of the
knight was a part of his savage nature; his confidence was in the
strength of his own right arm; and if his ruggedness was ever softened
down by gentler thoughts, it was only when he asked forgiveness for his
crimes, or melted in sensual idolatry of female beauty.
It would be a curious and instructive inquiry, could we institute it
with success, how much of the contempt of danger manifested by the
wandering knight was referable to genuine valor, and what proportion to
the strength of a Milan coat, and the temper of a Toledo or Ferrara
blade. And it would be still more curious, although perhaps not so
instructive, to estimate the purity and fidelity of the heroines of
chivalry; to ascertain the amount of true devotion given them by their
admirers, "without hope of reward."
But without abating its interest by invidious and ungrateful inquiries,
we can see quite enough--in its turbulence, its cruelty, arrogance, and
oppression--to make us thank Heaven that "the days of chivalry are
gone." And from that chaotic scene of rapine, raid, and murder, we can
turn with pleasure to contemplate the truer, nobler chivalry--the
chivalry of love and peace, whose weapons were the kindness of their
hearts, the purity of their motives, and the self-denial of their lives.
The term "_voyageur_"[52] literally signifies "traveller;" and by this
modest name are indicated some of the bravest adventurers the world has
ever seen. But it is not in its usual, common-place signification that I
employ the word, nor yet in that which is given it by most writers on
the subject of early French settlements and explorations. Men are often
affected by the names given them, either of opprobrium or commendation;
but words are quite as frequently changed, restricted, or enlarged in
meaning, by their application to men. For example: you apply the word
soldier to a class of men; and if robbery be one of the characteristics
of that class, "soldier" will soon come to mean "robber" too. And thus,
though the parallel is only logical, has it been with the term
"_voyageur_." The class of men to whom it is applied were
travellers--_voyageurs_; but they were _more_; and as the habits and
qualities of men came in time to be better understood than the meaning
of French words, the term, used in reference to Western history, took
much of its significance from the history and character of the men it
assumed to describe. Thus, _un voyageur_ means not only a traveller, but
a traveller with a purpose; an adventurer among the Western wilds; a
chivalrous missionary, either in the cause of science or religion. It
includes high courage, burning zeal for church and country, and the most
generous self-devotion. It describes such men as Marquette, La Salle,
Joliet, Gravier, and hundreds of others equally illustrious, who lived
and died among the dangers and privations of the wilderness; who opened
the way for civilization and Christianity among the savages, and won,
many of them, crowns of martyrdom.
They were almost all Frenchmen. The Spaniards who came to this continent
were mere gold-seekers, thirsting only for wealth; and if they sought to
propagate Christianity, or rather the Christian _name_, it was only a
sanguinary bigotry that prompted them. On the other hand, the English
emigrants came to take possession of the country for themselves. The
conversion of the natives, or territorial acquisition for the
mother-country, were to them objects of barely secondary importance.
They believed themselves persecuted--some of them _were_ persecuted--and
they fled: it was only safety for themselves, and the rich lands of the
Indian, that they sought. Providence reserved for the French chevaliers
and missionaries the glory of leaving their homes without compulsion,
real or imaginary, to penetrate an inhospitable wilderness; to undergo
fatigues; to encounter dangers, and endure privations of a thousand
kinds; enticed by no golden glitter, covetous of no riches, save such as
are "laid up in heaven!" They came not as conquerors, but as ministers
of peace, demanding only hospitality. They never attacked the savages
with sword or fagot; but extending hands not stained by blood, they
justified their profession by relief and love and kindly offices.
Sometimes, indeed, they received little tracts of land; not seized by
the hand of power, nor grasped by superior cunning, but possessed as the
free gift of simple gratitude; and upon these they lived in peace,
surrounded by savages, but protected by the respect inspired by
blameless and beneficent lives. Many of those whose vows permitted it,
intermarried among the converted natives, and left the seeds of many
meliorations in a stony soil; and many of them, when they died, were as
sincerely mourned by the simple children of the forest, as if they had
been chiefs and braves.
Such were the men of peace who penetrated the wilderness through the
French settlements in Canada, and preached the gospel to the heathen,
where no white man had ever before been seen; and it is particularly to
this class that I apply the word at the head of this article. But the
same gentle spirit pervaded other orders of adventurers--men of the
sword and buckler, as well as of the stole and surplice. These came to
establish the dominion of _La Belle France_; but it was not to oppress
the simple native, or to drive him from his lands. Kindness marked even
the conduct of the rough soldier; and such men as La Salle, and
Iberville, who were stern enough in war, and rigid enough in discipline,
manifested always an anxious solicitude for the _rights_, as well as for
the spiritual welfare of the Indian. They gave a generous confidence
where they were conscious of no wish to injure; they treated frankly and
on equal terms, with those whom their religion and their native kindness
alike taught them to consider brethren and friends. Take, for example,
that significant anecdote of La Salle, related by the faithful
chronicler[53] of his unfortunate expeditions. He was building the fort
of _Crevecoeur_, near the spot where now stands the city of Peoria, on
the Illinois river; and even the name of his little fortress
(_Crevecoeur_, Broken Heart) was a mournful record of his shattered
fortunes. The means of carrying out his noble enterprise (the colonizing
of the Mississippi valley) were lost; the labor of years had been
rendered ineffectual by one shipwreck; his men were discontented, even
mutinous, "attempting," says Hennepin, "first to poison, and then desert
him;" his mind was distracted, his heart almost broken, by accumulated
disasters. Surrounded thus by circumstances which might well have
rendered him careless of the feelings of the savages around him, he
observed that they had become cold and distant--that in effect they no
longer viewed him as their friend. The Iroquois,[54] drifting from the
shores of Lake Ontario, where they had always been the bitterest foes of
the French, had instilled fear and hatred into their minds; it was even
said that some of his own men had encouraged the growing discontent. In
this juncture, what measures does he take? Strengthen his
fortifications, and prepare for war, as the men of other nations had
done? Far from it. Soldier and adventurer as he was, he had no wish to
shed innocent blood; though with his force he might have defied all the
nations about him. He went as a friend, frankly and generously, among
them, and demanded the reasons of their discontent. He touched their
hearts by his confidence, convinced them of his friendship, and attached
them to himself more devotedly than ever. A whole history in one brief
passage!
But it is more especially to the _voyageurs_ of the church--the men of
faith and love--that I wish to direct my readers' attention: To such men
as Le Caron, a Franciscan, with all the zeal and courage and
self-abnegation of his order, who wandered and preached among the bloody
Iroquois, and upon the waters of Huron, as early as 1616: to Mesnard, a
devoted missionary of the same order, who, in 1660, founded a mission at
the Sault de Ste. Marie, and then went into the forest to induce the
savages to listen to the glad tidings he had brought, and never came
back: to Father Allouez, who rebuilt the mission five years afterward
(the first of these houses of God which was not destroyed or abandoned),
who subsequently crossed the lakes, and preached to the Indians on Fox
river, where, in one of the villages of the Miamis and Mascoutens,
Marquette found a cross still standing, after the lapse of years, where
Allouez had raised it, covered with the offerings of the simple natives
to an unknown God. He is the same, too, who founded Kaskaskia, probably
the earliest settlement in the great valley, and whose history ends
(significant fact!) with the record of his usefulness. To Father Pinet,
who founded Cahokia, and was so successful in the conversion of the
natives, that his little chapel could not contain the numbers who
resorted to his ministrations: to Father Marest, the first preacher
against intemperance; and, finally, to Marquette, the best and bravest
of them all, the most single-hearted and unpretending!
Enthusiasm is a characteristic of the French nation; a trait in some
individuals elevated to a sublime self-devotion, and in others degraded
to mere excitability. The vivacity, gesticulation, and grimace, which
characterize most of them, are the external signs of this nature; the
calm heroism of the seventeenth century, and the insane devotion of the
nineteenth, were alike its fruits. The _voyageur_ possessed it, in
common with all his countrymen. But in him it was not noisy, turbulent,
or egotistical; military glory had "neither part nor lot" in his
schemes; the conquests he desired to make were the conquests of faith;
the dominion he wished to establish was the dominion of Jesus.
In the pursuit of these objects, or rather of this single object, I have
said he manifested the enthusiasm of his race; but it was the noblest
form of that characteristic. The fire that burned in his bosom was fed
by no selfish purpose. To have thought of himself, or of his own
comforts, or glory, to the detriment of any Christian enterprise,
however dangerous or unpromising, would, in his eyes, have been a deadly
sin.
At Sault de Ste. Marie, Father Marquette heard of many savages (whom he
calls "God's children") living in barbarism, far to the west. With five
boatmen and one companion, he at once set out for an unexplored, even
unvisited wilderness. He had what they had not--the gospel; and his
heart yearned toward them, as the heart of a mother toward an afflicted
child. He went to them, and bound them to him "in the bond of peace." If
they received him kindly--as they usually did, for even a savage
recognises and respects genuine devotion--he preached to them, mediated
among them, softened their hearts, and gathered them into the fold of
God. If they met him with arms in their hands--as they sometimes did,
for savages, like civilized men, do not always know their friends--he
resolutely offered peace; and, in his own simple and pious language,
"God touched their hearts," and they cast aside their weapons and
received him kindly.
But the _voyageur_ had higher qualities than enthusiasm. He was capable
of being so absorbed in a cause as to lose sight of his own identity; to
forget that he was more than an instrument in the hands of God, to do
God's work: and the distinction between these traits is broad indeed!
Enthusiasm is noisy, obtrusive--self-abnegation is silent, retiring;
enthusiasm is officious, troublesome, careless of time and
place--self-abnegation is prudent, gentle, considerate. The one is
active and fragmentary--the other passive, but constant.
Thus, when the untaught and simple native was to be converted, the
missionary took note of the spiritual capacity as well as of the
spiritual wants; he did not force him to receive, at once, the whole
creed of the church, as a mere enthusiast would have done; for _that_
wisdom would feed an infant with strong meats, even before it had drawn
its mother's milk. Neither did he preach the gospel with the sword, like
the Spaniard, nor with fire and fagot, like the puritan. He was wise as
the serpent, but gentle as the dove. He took the wondering Indian by
the hand; received him as a brother; won him over to listen patiently;
and then taught him first that which he could most easily comprehend: he
led him to address the throne of grace, or, in the language of the time,
"to embrace the prayer;" because even the savage believed in Deity. As
his understanding was expanded, and his heart purified--as every heart
must be which truly lifts itself to God--he gradually taught him the
more abstruse and wonderful doctrines of the Church of Christ. Gently
and imperceptibly he led him on, until the whole tremendous work was
done. The untutored savage, if he knew nothing else, yet knew the name
of his Redeemer. The bloody warfare, the feuds and jealousies of his
tribe, if not completely overcome, at least were softened and
ameliorated. When he could not convert, he endeavored to humanize; and
among the tribes of the Illinois,[55] though they were never thoroughly
Christianized, the influence of the good fathers soon prevailed to
abolish the barbarous practice of torturing captives.[56] For though
they might not embrace the religion, the savages venerated its
teachers, and loved them for their gentleness.
And this gentleness was not want of courage; for never in the history of
the world has truer valor been exhibited than that shown by the early
missionary and his compeers, the first military adventurers! Read
Joutel's account of the melancholy life and death of La Salle; read the
simple, unpretending "Journal" of Marquette;[57] and compare their
constancy and heroism with that displayed at any time in any cause! But
the _voyageur_ possessed higher qualities than courage, also; and here
again we recur to his perfect abnegation of himself; his renunciation of
all personal considerations.
Courage takes note of danger, but defies it: the _voyageur_ was careless
of danger, because he counted it as nothing; he gave it no thought,
because it only affected _himself_; and he valued not his own safety and
comfort, so long as he could serve the cause by forgetting them. Mere
courage is combative, even pugnacious; but the _voyageur_ fought only
"the good fight;" he had no pride of conquest, save in the victories of
Faith, and rather would suffer, himself, than inflict suffering upon
others. Mere courage is restless, impatient, purposeless: but the
_voyageur_ was content to remain wherever he could do good, tentative
only in the cause of Christ, and distracted by no objects from his
mission. His religion was his inspiration; his conscience his reward.
His system may have been perverted, his zeal mistaken, his church a
sham; we are not arguing that question. But the purity of his
intentions, the sincerity of his heart, can not be doubted; and the most
intolerant protestant against "the corruptions of Rome" will, at least,
admit that even catholicism was better than the paganism of the savage.
"There is not," says Macaulay,[58] "and there never was on this earth, a
work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman
Catholic Church." And certainly all other systems combined have never
produced one tithe of the astounding results brought about by this
alone. Whether she has taught truth or falsehood; whether, on the whole,
it had been better or worse for the cause of Christianity, had no such
organization ever existed; whether her claims be groundless or
well-founded, are questions foreign to our purpose. But that her polity
is the most powerful--the best adapted to the ends she has in view--of
all that man has hitherto invented, there can be no doubt. Her
missionaries have been more numerous and more successful, ay, and more
devoted, than those of any other church. They have gone where even the
sword of the conqueror could not cleave his way. They have built
churches in the wilderness, which were time-worn and crumbling when the
first emigrant penetrated the forests. They have preached to youthful
savages who never saw the face of another white man, though they lived
to three-score years and ten. They have prayed upon the shores of lonely
lakes and rivers, which were not mapped by geographers for centuries
after their deaths. They have travelled on foot, unarmed and alone,
where an army could not march. And everywhere their zeal and usefulness
have ended only with their lives; and always with their latest breath
they have mingled prayers for the salvation of their flocks, with
aspirations for the welfare of their church. For though countless miles
of sea and land were between her and them, their loyalty and affection
to the great spiritual Mother were never forgotten. "In spite of oceans
and deserts; of hunger and pestilence; of spies and penal laws; of
dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks," they have been
found in every country, at all times, ever active and zealous. And
everywhere, in palace, or hovel, or wilderness, they have been true sons
of the church, loyal and obedient.
An organization capable of producing such results is certainly well
worth examination. For the influence she has wielded in ages past gives
promise of her future power; and it becomes those who think her
permanence pernicious to the world, to avoid her errors and yet imitate
her wisdom. If the system be a falsehood and a sham, it is a most
gigantic and successful one, and it is of strange longevity. It has
lived now more than fifteen hundred years, and one hundred and fifty
millions of people yet believe it. If it be a counterfeit, it is high
time the cheat were detected and exposed. Let those who have the truth
give forth its light, that the falsehood may wither and die. Unless they
do so, the life which has already extended over so many centuries may
gain fresh vigor, and renew its youth. Even yet the vision of the
essayist may be realized: "She may still exist in undiminished vigor,
when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast
solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch
the ruins of St. Paul's!"
It was to this church that the early _voyageurs_ belonged. And I do not
use that word "belonged" as it is employed in modern times among
protestants: I mean _more_ than that convenient, loosely-fitting
profession, which, like a garment, is thrown on and off, as the
exigencies of hypocrisy or cupidity may require. These men actually _did
belong_ to the church. They were hers, soul and body; hers, in life and
in death; hers to go whithersoever she might direct, to do whatsoever
she might appoint. They believed the doctrines they taught with an
abiding, _active_ faith; and they were willing to be spent in preaching
them to the heathen.
It has always been a leading principle in the policy of the Roman
church, to preserve her unity, and she has been enabled to do so,
principally by the ramified and elastic polity for which she has been
distinguished, to which she owes much of her extent and power, as well
as no small part of the reproach so liberally bestowed upon her in the
pages of history. There are many "arms" in her service: a man must be
impracticable indeed, when she can find no place in which to make him
useful, or to prevent his being mischievous. She never drives one from
the pale of the church who can benefit it as a communicant, or injure it
as a dissenter. If he became troublesome at home, she has, in all ages,
had enterprises on foot in which she might clothe him with authority,
and send him to the uttermost parts of the earth; thus ridding herself
of a dangerous member, and, by the same act, enlarging the sphere of her
own dominion. Does an enthusiast become noisy, or troublesome upon
unimportant points, the creed is flexible, and the mother will not
quarrel with her child, for his earnestness may convince and lead astray
more valuable sons and daughters. She will establish a new order, of
which the stubborn fanatic shall be founder; the new order is built into
the old church organization, and its founder becomes a dignitary of the
ecclesiastical establishment. Instead of becoming a dangerous heretic
and schismatic, he is attached to orthodoxy by cords stronger than
steel; henceforth all his earnest enthusiasm shall be directed to the
advancement of his order, and consequently of his church. Does one
exhibit inflexibility in some matter of conscience upon which the church
insists, there are many of God's children in the wilderness starving in
spirit for the bread of life; and to these, with that bread, shall the
refractory son be sent. He receives the commission; departs upon his
journey, glad to forget a difference with his spiritual superiors;
preaches to the heathen; remembers only that the church is his mother;
wins a crown of martyrdom, and is canonized for the encouragement of
others!
Thus she finds a place for all, and work enough for each; and thus are
thrown off the elements of schism and rebellion. Those who had most
courage in the cause of right; all who were likely to be guided in
matters of conscience by their own convictions; the most sincere and
single-hearted, the firmest and purest and bravest, were, in matters of
controversy, the most dangerous champions, should they range themselves
against the teaching of the church. They were consequently, at the
period of which I am writing, the men whom it was most desirable to send
away; and they were eminently well fitted for the arduous and wasting
duties of the missionary.
To this class belonged the large majority of the _voyageur_ priests: men
who might be inconvenient and obtrusive monitors, or formidable
adversaries in controversy, if they remained at home; but who could only
be useful--who of all men could be _most_ useful--in gathering the
heathen into the fold of the church. There were, doubtless, a few of
another class; the restless, intriguing, and disobedient, who, though
not formidable, were troublesome. But even when these joined the
missionary expeditions, they did but little to forward the work, and are
entitled to none of the honor so abundantly due to their more sincere
brethren. To this class, for example, belonged the false and egotistical
Hennepin, who only signalized himself by endeavoring to appropriate the
reputation so hardly won by the brave and unfortunate La Salle.[59]
It does not appear upon the record that any of these men--of either the
restless and ambitious, or of the better class--were literally _sent
away_. But such has been the politic practice of this church for many
ages; and we may safely believe, that when she was engaged in an
unscrupulous and desperate contest for the recovery, by fair means or
foul, of her immense losses, there might be many in the ranks of her
pious priesthood whom it would be inconvenient to retain at home. And
during that conflict especially, with the most formidable enemies she
ever had, she could not afford to be encumbered.
But whatever may have been the motives of their spiritual superiors, the
missionaries themselves were moved only by the considerations of which
we have spoken--the truest piety and the most burning zeal. Of these
influences they were conscious; but we shall perhaps not do the
character injustice if we add another spur to action, of which they were
_not_ conscious. There is a vein of romance in the French composition; a
love of adventure for the sake of the adventure itself, which, when not
tamed or directed, makes a Frenchman fitful, erratic, and unreliable.
When it is toned by personal ambition, it becomes a sort of Paladin
contempt for danger; sometimes a crazy furor. When accompanied by
powerful intellect, and strengthened by concentration on a purpose, it
makes a great commander--great for the quickness of his comprehension,
the suddenness of his resolutions, the rapidity of their execution. When
humanized by love, and quickened by religious zeal, it is purified of
every selfish thought, and produces the chivalrous missionary, whom
neither fire nor flood, neither desert nor pathless wilderness, shall
deter from obeying the command of Him who sent his gospel "unto every
creature." And thus are even those traits, which so often curse the
world with insane ambition and sanguinary war, turned by the power of a
true benevolence to be blessings of incalculable value.
Such were the purposes, such the motives, of this band of noble men; and
whatever may have been their errors, we must at least accord them the
virtues of _sincerity_, _courage_, _and self-denial_. But let us look a
little more closely at the means by which they accomplished undertakings
which, to any other race of men, would have been not only impracticable,
but utterly desperate. Take again, as the representative of his class,
the case of Father Marquette, than whom, obscure as his name is in the
wastes of history, no man ever lived a more instructive and exemplary
life.
From the year 1668 to 1671,[60] Marquette had been preaching at the
Sault de Sainte Marie, a little below the foot of Lake Superior. He was
associated with others in that mission; but the largest type, though it
thrust itself no higher than the smallest, will make the broadest
impress on the page of history; and even in the meager record of that
time, we may trace the influence of his gentle but firm spirit--those by
whom he was accompanied evidently took their tone from him. But he was
one of the Church's pioneers; that class whose eager, single-hearted
zeal is always pushing forward to new conquests of the faith; and when
he had put aside the weapons that opposed their way, to let his
followers in, his thoughts at once went on to more remote and suffering
regions. During his residence at the Sault, rumors and legends were
continually floating in of the unknown country lying to the west--"the
Land of the Great River," the Indians called it--until the mind of the
good father became fully possessed with the idea of going to convert the
nations who dwelt upon its shores. In the year 1671, he took the first
step in that direction, moving on to Point St. Ignatius, on the main
land, north of the island of Mackinac. Here, surrounded by his little
flock of wondering listeners, he preached until the spring of 1673; but
all the time his wish to carry the gospel where its sound had never been
heard was growing stronger. He felt in his heart the impulse of his
calling, to lead the way and open a path for the advance of light. At
the period mentioned, he received an order from the wise intendant in
New France, M. Talon, to explore the pathless wilderness to the
westward.
Then was seen the true spirit of the man, and of his order. He gathered
together no armament; asked the protection of no soldiers; no part of
the cargo of his little boat consisted of gunpowder, or of swords or
guns; his only arms were the spirit of love and peace; his trust was in
God for protection. Five boatmen, and one companion, the Sieur Joliet,
composed his party. Two light bark canoes were his only means of
travelling; and in these he carried a small quantity of Indian corn and
some jerked meat, his only means of subsistence.
Thus equipped, he set out through Green Bay and up Fox river, in search
of a country never yet visited by any European. The Indians endeavored
to dissuade him, wondering at his hardihood, and still more at the
motives which could induce him thus to brave so many dangers. They told
him of the savage Indians, to whom it would be only pastime to torture
and murder him; of the terrible monsters which would swallow him and his
companions, "canoes and all;" of the great bird called the _Piasau_,[61]
which devoured men, after carrying them in its horrible talons to
inaccessible cliffs and mountains; and of the scorching heat, which
would wither him like a dry leaf. "I thanked them kindly," says the
resolute but gentle father, "for their good counsel; but I told them
that I could not profit by it, since the salvation of souls was at
stake, for which object I would be overjoyed to give my life." Shaking
them by the hand, one by one, as they approached to bid him farewell, as
they thought, for the last time, he turned his back upon safety and
peace, and departed upon his self-denying pilgrimage.
Let him who sits at ease in his cushioned pew at home--let him who
lounges on his velvet-covered sofa in the pulpit, while his well-taught
choir are singing; who rises as the strains are dying, and kneels upon a
cushioned stool to pray; who treads upon soft carpets while he preaches,
in a white cravat, to congregations clad in broadcloth, silk, and
satin--let him pause and ponder on the difference between his works, his
trials, his zeal--ay, and his glory, both of earth and heaven!--and
those of Father James Marquette!
The little party went upon their way; the persuasions of their
simple-hearted friends could not prevail, for the path of duty was
before them, and the eye of God above. Having passed through Green Bay,
and painfully dragged their canoes over the rapids of Fox river, they
reached a considerable village, inhabited by the united tribes of
Kickapoos, Miamis, and Mascoutimes. Here they halted for a time, as the
mariner, about to prove the dangers of a long voyage, lingers for a day
in the last port he is likely to enter for many months. Beyond this
point no white man had ever gone; and here, if anywhere, the impulses of
a natural fear should have made themselves felt. But we hear of no
hesitation, no shrinking from the perilous task; and we know from the
unpretending "Journal" of the good father, that a retreat, nay, even a
halt--longer than was necessary to recruit exhausted strength, and renew
the memory of former lessons among the natives--was never thought of.
"My companion," said Marquette, referring to Joliet, "is an envoy from
the king of France, and I am an humble minister of God. I have no fear,
_because I shall consider it the highest happiness to die in the service
of my master!_" There was no bravado in this, for, unlike many from
whom you may, any day, hear the same declaration, he set forth
immediately to encounter the perils of his embassy.
The Indians, unable to prevail with him to abandon the enterprise, made
all their simple provision for his comfort; and, furnishing him with
guides and carriers across the portage to the Wisconsin river, parted
with him as one bound for eternity. Having brought them safely to the
river, the guides left them "alone in that unknown country, in the hand
of God;" and, trusting to the protection of that hand, they set out upon
their journey down the stream.[62] Seven days after, "with inexpressible
joy," they emerged upon the bosom of the great river. During all this
time they had seen no human being, though, probably, many a wandering
savage had watched them from the covert of the bank, as they floated
silently between the forests. It was an unbroken solitude, where the
ripple of their paddles sounded loudly on the ear, and their voices,
subdued by the stillness, were sent back in lonely echoes from the
shore.
They were the first white men who ever floated on the bosom of that
mighty river[63]--"the envoy from the king of France, and the
embassador of the King of kings." What were their thoughts we know not,
but from Marquette's simple "Journal;" for, in returning to Quebec,
Joliet's boat was wrecked in sight of the city, and all his papers
lost.[64] Of the Sieur himself, we know nothing, save as the companion
of Marquette on this voyage; but from this alone his fame is
imperishable.
They sailed slowly down the river, keeping a constant outlook upon the
banks for signs of those for whose spiritual welfare the good father had
undertaken his perilous journey. But for more than sixty leagues not a
human form or habitation could be seen. They had leisure, more than they
desired, to admire the grand and beautiful scenery of that picturesque
region. In some places the cliffs rose perpendicularly for hundreds of
feet from the water's edge; and nodding over their brows, and towering
against the sky, were stately pines and cedars of the growth of
centuries. Here, there lay between the river and the cliffs, a level
prairie, waving in all the luxuriance of "the leafy month of June;"
while beyond, the bluffs, enclosing the natural garden, softened by the
distance, and clothed in evergreen, seemed but an extension of the
primitive savanna. Here, a dense, primeval forest grew quite down to the
margin of the water; and, hanging from the topmost branches of the giant
oaks, festoons of gray and graceful moss lay floating on the rippled
surface, or dipped within the tide. Here, the large, smooth roots of
trees half undermined, presented seats and footholds, where the pleasant
shade invited them to rest, and shelter from the sultry summer sun.
Anon, an open prairie, with no cliff or bluff beyond, extended
undulating from the river, until the eye, in straining to measure its
extent, was wearied by the effort, and the plain became a waving sea of
rainbow colors; of green and yellow, gold and purple. Again, they passed
a gravelly beach, on which the yellow sand was studded with a thousand
sets of brilliant shells, and little rivulets flowed in from level
prairies, or stealthily crept out from under roots of trees or tangled
vines, and hastened to be hidden in the bosom of the great father of
waters.
They floated on, through the dewy morning hours, when the leaves were
shining in the sunlight, and the birds were singing joyously; before the
summer heat had dried the moisture, or had forced the feathered
songsters to the shade. At noon, when the silence made the solitude
oppressive; when the leaves hung wilting down, nor fluttered in the
fainting wind: when the prairies were no longer waving like the sea, but
trembling like the atmosphere around a heated furnace: when the _mirage_
hung upon the plain: tall trees were seen growing in the air, and among
them stalked the deer, and elk, and buffalo: while between them and the
ground, the brazen sky was glowing with the sun of June: when nothing
living could be seen, save when the _voyageur's_ approach would startle
some wild beast slaking his thirst in the cool river, or a flock of
waterfowl were driven from their covert, where the willow branches,
drooping, dipped their leaves of silvery gray within the water. They
floated on till evening, when the sun approached the prairie, and his
broad, round disc, now shorn of its dazzling beams, defined itself
against the sky and grew florid in the gathering haze: when the birds
began to reappear, and flitted noiselessly among the trees, in busy
preparation for the night: when beasts of prey crept out from
lurking-places, where they had dozed and panted through the hours of
noon: when the wilderness grew vocal with the mingled sounds of lowing
buffalo, and screaming panther, and howling wolf; until the shadows rose
from earth, and travelled from the east; until the dew began to fall,
the stars came out, and night brought rest and dreams of home!
Thus they floated on, "from morn till dewy eve," and still no sign of
human life, neither habitation nor footprint, until one day--it was the
twenty-fifth of June, more than two weeks since they had entered the
wilderness--in gliding past a sandy beach, they recognised the impress
of a naked foot! Following it for some distance, it grew into a trail,
and then a path, once more a place where human beings habitually walked.
Whose feet had trodden down the grass, what strange people lived on the
prairies, they knew not, what dangers might await them, they cared not.
These were the people whom the good father had come so far to convert
and save! And now, again, one might expect some natural hesitation; some
doubt in venturing among those who were certainly barbarians, and who
might, for aught they knew, be brutal cannibals. We could forgive a
little wavering, indeed, especially when we think of the frightful
stories told them by the Northern Indians of this very people. But fear
was not a part of these men's nature; or if it existed, it lay so deep,
buried beneath religious zeal and pious trust, that its voice never
reached the upper air. Leaving the boatmen with the canoes, near the
mouth of the river now called Des Moines, Marquette and Joliet set out
alone, to follow up the trail, and seek the people who had made it. It
led them to an open prairie, one of the most beautiful in the present
state of Iowa, and crossing this, a distance of six miles, they at last
found themselves in the vicinity of three Indian villages. The very
spot[65] where the chief of these stood might now be easily found, so
clear, though brief, is the description of the simple priest. It stood
at the foot of a long slope, on the bank of the river Moingona (or Des
Moines), about six miles due west of the Mississippi; and at the top of
the rise, at the distance of half a league, were built the two others.
"We commended ourselves unto God," writes the gentle father; for they
knew not at what moment they might need his intervention; and crying out
with a loud voice, to announce their approach, they calmly advanced
toward the group of lodges. At a short distance from the entrance to the
village, they were met by a deputation of four old men, who, to their
great joy, they perceived bore a richly-ornamented pipe of peace, the
emblem of friendship and hospitality. Tendering the mysterious calumet,
they informed the Frenchmen that they belonged to one of the tribes
called "Illinois" (or "Men"), and invited them to enter their lodges in
peace: an invitation which the weary _voyageurs_ were but too glad to
accept.
A great council was held, with all the rude but imposing ceremonies of
the grave and dignified Indian; and before the assembled chiefs and
braves, Marquette published his mission from his heavenly Master.
Passing, then, from spiritual to temporal things--for we do not hear of
any address from Joliet, who probably was no orator--he spoke of his
earthly king, and of his viceroy in New France; of his victories over
the Iroquois, the dreaded enemies of the peaceful Western tribes; and
then made many inquiries about the Mississippi, its tributaries, and
the nations who dwelt upon their banks. His advances were kindly
received, his questions frankly answered, and the council broke up with
mutual assurances of good-will. Then ensued the customary festival.
Hominy, fish, buffalo, and _dog-meat_, were successively served up, like
the courses of a more modern table; but of _the last_ "we declined to
partake," writes the good father, no doubt much to the astonishment and
somewhat to the chagrin of their hospitable friends; for even yet, among
the western Indians, dog-meat is a dish of honor.
Six days of friendly intercourse passed pleasantly away, diversified by
many efforts on the part of Marquette to instruct and convert the docile
savages. Nor were these entirely without result; they excited, at least,
the wish to hear more; and on his departure they crowded round him, and
urgently requested him to come again among them. He promised to do so, a
pledge which he afterward redeemed. But now he could not tarry; he was
bent upon his hazardous voyage down the Great River, and he knew that he
was only on the threshold of his grand discoveries. Six hundred
warriors, commanded by their most distinguished chief, accompanied him
back to his boats; and, after hanging around his neck the great calumet,
to protect him among the hostile nations of the south, they parted with
him, praying that the Great Spirit, of whom he had told them, might give
him a prosperous voyage, and a speedy and safe return.
These were the first of the nations of the Mississippi Valley visited by
the French, and it is from them that the state of Illinois takes its
name. They were a singularly gentle people; and a nature originally
peaceful had been rendered almost timid by the cruel inroads of the
murderous Iroquois.[66] These, by their traffic with the Dutch and
English of New-York, and by their long warfare with the French of
Canada, had acquired the use of fire-arms, and, of course, possessed an
immense advantage over those who were armed only with the primitive bow
and arrow. The restless and ambitious spirit of the singular
confederacy, usually called the Five Nations, and known among their
neighbors by the collective name of Iroquois, had carried their
incursions even as far as the hunting-grounds of the Shawanese, about
the mouth of the Ohio; and their successes had made them a terror to all
the western tribes. The Illinois, therefore, knowing the French to be at
war with these formidable enemies, were the more anxious to form an
alliance with them; and the native gentleness of their manners was,
perhaps, increased by the hope of assistance and protection. But,
whatever motives may have influenced them, besides their natural
character, their forethought was of vital service to the wanderers in
the countries of the south, whither they proceeded.
The little party of seven resumed their voyage on the last day of June,
and floating with the rapid current, a few days afterward passed the
rocks, above the site of Alton, where was painted the image of the
ravenous _Piasau_, of which they had been told by the Northern Indians,
and on the same day reached the mouth of the Pekitanoni, the Indian name
for the rapid and turbulent Missouri. Inwardly resolving, at some future
time, to ascend its muddy current, to cross the ridge beyond, and,
descending some river which falls into the Great South sea (as the
Pacific was then called), to publish the gospel to all the people of the
continent, the zealous father passed onward toward the south. Coasting
slowly along the wasting shore, lingering in the mouths of rivers, or
exploring dense forests in the hope of meeting the natives, they
continued on their course until they reached the mouth of a river which
they called the _Ouabache_, or Wabash, none other than the beautiful
Ohio.[67] Here they found the advanced settlement of Shawanese, who had
been pushed toward the southwest by the incessant attacks of the
Iroquois. But by this time, fired with the hope of ascertaining the
outlet of the Mississippi, they postponed their visit to these people
until their return, and floated on.
It is amusing, as well as instructive, to observe how little importance
the travellers gave to the river Ohio, in their geographical
assumptions. In the map published by Marquette with his "Journal," the
"_Ouabisquigou_" as he denominates it, in euphonious French-Indian,
compared to the Illinois or even to the Wisconsin, is but an
inconsiderable rivulet! The lonely wanderers were much farther from the
English settlements than they supposed; a mistake into which they must
have been led, by hearing of the incursions of the Iroquois; for even at
that early day they could not but know that the head-waters of the Ohio
were not distant from the hunting-grounds of that warlike confederacy.
Even this explanation, however, scarcely lessens our wonder that they
should have known so little of courses and distances; for had this river
been as short as it is here delineated, they would have been within four
hundred miles of Montreal.
After leaving the Ohio, they suffered much from the climate and its
incidents; for they were now approaching, in the middle of July, a
region of perpetual summer. Mosquitoes and other venomous insects (in
that region we might even call them _ravenous_ insects) became
intolerably annoying; and the _voyageurs_ began to think they had
reached the country of the terrible heats, which, as they had been
warned in the north, "would wither them up like a dry leaf." But the
prospect of death by torture and savage cruelty had not daunted them,
and they were not now disposed to be turned back by any excess of
climate. Arranging their sails in the form of awnings to protect them
from the sun by day and the dews by night, they resolutely pursued
their way.
Following the course of the river, they soon entered the region of
cane-brakes, so thick that no animal larger than a cat could penetrate
them; and of cotton-wood forests of immense size and of unparalleled
density. They were far beyond the limits of every Indian dialect with
which they had become acquainted--were, in fact, approaching the region
visited by De Soto, on his famous expedition in search of Juan Ponce de
Leon's fountain of youth.[68] The country was possessed by the Sioux and
Chickasaws, to whom the _voyageurs_ were total strangers; but they went
on without fear. In the neighborhood of the southern boundary of the
present state of Arkansas, they were met in hostile array by great
numbers of the natives, who approached them in large canoes made from
the trunks of hollow trees. But Marquette held aloft the symbol of
peace, the ornamented calumet, and the hearts of the savages were
melted, as the pious father believed, by the touch of God. They threw
aside their weapons, and received the strangers with rude but hearty
hospitality. They escorted them, with many demonstrations of welcome, to
the village of Michigamia; and, on the following day, having feasted
their strange guests plentifully, though not with the unsavory meats of
the Illinois, they marched in triumphal procession to the metropolis of
Akansea, about ten leagues distant, down the river.
This was the limit of their voyage. Here they ascertained, beyond a
doubt, that the Mississippi flowed into the gulf of Mexico, and not, as
had been conjectured, into the great South sea. Here they found the
natives armed with axes of steel, a proof of their traffic with the
Spaniards; and thus was the circle of discovery complete, connecting the
explorations of the French with those of the Spanish, and entirely
enclosing the possessions of the English. No voyage so important has
since been undertaken--no results so great have ever been produced by so
feeble an expedition. The discoveries of Marquette, followed by the
enterprises of La Salle and his successors, have influenced the
destinies of nations; and passing over all political speculations, this
exploration first threw open a valley of greater extent, fertility, and
commercial advantages, than any other in the world. Had either the
French or the Spanish possessed the stubborn qualities which _hold_, as
they had the useful which _discover_, the aspect of this continent
would, at this day, have been far different.
On the seventeenth of July, having preached to the Indians the glory of
God and the Catholic faith, and proclaimed the power of the _Grand
Monarque_--for still we hear nothing of speech-making or delivering
credentials on the part of Joliet--he set out on his return. After
severe and wasting toil for many days, they reached a point, as
Marquette supposed, some leagues below the mouth of the Moingona, or Des
Moines. Here they left the Mississippi, and crossed the country between
that river and the Illinois, probably passing through the very country
which now bears the good father's name, entering the latter stream at a
point not far from the present town of Peoria. Proceeding slowly up that
calm river, preaching to the tribes along its banks, and partaking of
their hospitality, he was at last conducted to Lake Michigan, at
Chicago, and by the end of September was safe again in Green Bay, having
travelled, since the tenth of June, more than three thousand miles.
It might have been expected that one who had made so magnificent a
discovery--who had braved so much and endured so much--would wish to
announce in person, to the authorities in Canada, or in France, the
results of his expedition. Nay, it would not have been unpardonable had
he desired to enjoy, after his labors, something of the consideration to
which their success entitled him. And, certainly, no man could ever have
approached his rulers with a better claim upon their notice than could
the unpretending _voyageur_. But vainglory was no more a part of his
nature, than was fear. The unaspiring priest remained at Green Bay, to
continue, or rather to resume, as a task laid aside only for a time, his
ministrations to the savages. Joliet hastened on to Quebec to report the
expedition, and Marquette returned to Chicago, for the purpose of
preaching the gospel to the Miami confederacy; several allied tribes who
occupied the country between Lake Michigan and the Des Moines river.
Here again he visited the Illinois, speaking to them of God, and of the
religion of Jesus; thus redeeming a promise which he had made them, when
on his expedition to the South.
But his useful, unambitious life was drawing to a close. Let us
describe its last scene in the words of our accomplished historian:--
"Two years afterward, sailing from Chicago to Mackinac, he entered a
little river in Michigan. Erecting an altar, he said mass, after the
rites of the Catholic church; then, begging the men who conducted his
canoe to leave him alone for a half hour,
"----'In the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.'
"At the end of the half hour they went to seek him, _and he was no
more_. The good missionary, discoverer of a world, had fallen asleep on
the margin of the stream that bears his name. Near its mouth, the
canoe-men dug his grave in the sand. Ever after, the forest rangers, in
their danger on Lake Michigan, would invoke his name. The people of the
West will build his monument."[69]
The monument is not yet built; though the name of new counties in
several of our western states testifies that the noble missionary is not
altogether forgotten, in the land where he spent so many self-denying
years.
Such was the _voyageur_ priest; the first, in chronological order, of
the succession of singular men who have explored and peopled the great
West. And though many who have followed him have been his equals in
courage and endurance, none have ever possessed the same combination of
heroic and unselfish qualities. It ought not to be true that this brief
and cursory sketch is the first distinct tribute yet paid to his
virtues; for no worthier subject ever employed the pen of the poet or
historian.
NOTE.--Struck with the fact that the history of this class of men,
and of their enterprises and sufferings, has never been written,
except by themselves in their simple "Journals" and
"Relations"--for the _resume_ given of these by Sparks, Bancroft,
and others, is of necessity a mere unsatisfactory abstract--the
writer has for some time been engaged in collecting and arranging
materials, with the intention of supplying the want. The
authorities are numerous and widely scattered; and such a work
ought to be thoroughly and carefully written, so that much time and
labor lies between the author and his day of publication. Should he
be spared, however, to finish the work, he hopes to present a
picture of a class of men, displaying as much of true devotion,
genuine courage, and self-denial, in the humble walk of the
missionary, as the pages of history show in any other department of
human enterprise.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] In common use, this word was restricted so as to indicate only the
boatmen, the carriers of that time; but I am writing of a period
anterior, by many years, to the existence of the Trade which made their
occupation.
[53] Joutel, who was one of La Salle's party, and afterward wrote an
account of the enterprise, entitled _Journal Historique_, published in
Paris, 1713. Its fidelity is as evident upon its face, as is the
simplicity of the historian.
[54] This was in the winter of 1679-'80; and the Five Nations, included
in the general term Iroquois, had not then made the conquest upon which
the English afterward founded their claim to the country. They were,
however, generally regarded as enemies by all the Illinois tribes.
[55] A collective name, including a number, variously stated, of
different tribes confederated.
[56] _Annals of the West_, by J. H. Perkins and J. M. Peck, p. 679. St.
Louis. 1850.
[57] The substance of the Journal may be found, republished by Dr.
Sparks, in the second edition of _Butler's Kentucky_, p. 493, _et seq._,
and in vol. x. of his _American Biography_.
[58] _Miscellanies_, "Review of Ranke's History of the Popes."
[59] In a book which he published at Utrecht, in 1697, entitled _A New
Discovery of a Vast Country_, he claims to have gone down the
Mississippi to its mouth before La Salle. The whole book is a mere
plagiarism. See Sparks's _Life of La Salle_, where the vain father is
summarily and justly disposed of.
[60] Most of these dates may be found in Bancroft's _United States_, vol
iii.
[61] The legend of the Piasau is well known. Within the recollection of
men now living, rude paintings of the monster were visible on the cliffs
above Alton, Illinois. To these images, when passing in their canoes,
the Indians were accustomed to make offerings of maize, tobacco, and
gunpowder. They are now quite obliterated.
[62] June 10, 1673.
[63] I mean, of course, the upper Mississippi; for De Soto had reached
it lower down one hundred and thirty-two years before.
[64] It was announced, some months since, that our minister at Rome, Mr.
Cass, had made discoveries in that city which threw more light upon this
expedition. But how this can be, consistently with the fact stated in
the text (about which there is no doubt), I am at a loss to divine.
[65] The place of Marquette's landing--which should be classic
ground--from his description of the country, and the distance he
specifies, could not have been far from the spot where the city of
Keokuk now stands, a short distance above the mouth of the Des Moines.
The locality should, if possible, be determined.
[66] It was by virtue of a treaty of purchase--signed at Fort Stanwix on
the 5th of November, 1768--with the Six Nations, who claimed the country
as their conquest, that the British asserted a title to the country west
of the Alleghenies, Western Virginia, Kentucky, etc.
[67] The geographical mistakes of the early French explorers have led to
some singular discussions about Western history--have even been used by
diplomatists to support or weaken territorial claims. Such, for example,
is the question concerning the antiquity of Vincennes, a controversy
founded on the mistake noticed in the text. Vide _Western Annals_. 2d
Ed. Revised by J. M. Peck.
[68] In 1541, De Soto crossed the Mississippi about the thirty-fifth
parallel of latitude, or near the northern boundary of the state of that
name. It is not certain how far below this Marquette went, though we are
safe in saying that he did not turn back north of that limit.
[69] Bancroft's _History of the United States_, vol. iii., p. 161, _et
seq._, where the reader may look for most of these dates.
III.
THE PIONEER.
"I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be--
The first low wash of waves where soon
Shall roll a human sea."
WHITTIER.
"The axe rang sharply 'mid those forest shades
Which, from creation, toward the sky had towered
In unshorn beauty."
SIGOURNEY.
[Illustration: THE PIONEER.]
Next, in chronological order, after the missionary, came the military
adventurer--of which class La Salle was the best representative. But the
expeditions led by these men, were, for the most part, wild and
visionary enterprises, in pursuit of unattainable ends. They were,
moreover, unskilfully managed and unfortunately terminated--generally
ending in the defeat, disappointment, and death of those who had set
them on foot. They left no permanent impress upon the country; the most
acute moral or political vision can not now detect a trace of their
influence, in the aspect of the lands they penetrated; and, so far from
hastening the settlement of the Great Valley, it is more probable that
their disastrous failures rather retarded it--by deterring others from
the undertaking. Their history reads like a romance; and their
characters would better grace the pages of fiction, than the annals of
civilization. Further than this brief reference, therefore, I find no
place for them, in a work which aims only to notice those who either
aided to produce, or indicated, the characteristics of the society in
which they lived.
Soon after them, came the Indian-traders--to whose generosity so many of
the captives, taken by the natives in those early times, were indebted
for their ransom. But--notwithstanding occasional acts of charity--their
unscrupulous rapacity, and, particularly, their introduction of
spirituous liquors among the savages, furnish good reason to doubt,
whether, on the whole, they did anything to advance the civilization of
the lands and people they visited. And, as we shall have occasion to
refer again, though briefly, to the character in a subsequent article,
we will pass over it for the present, and hasten on to the _Pioneer_.
Of this class, there are two sub-divisions: the floating, transitory,
and erratic frontierman--including the hunter, the trapper, the scout
and Indian-fighter: men who can not be considered _citizens_ of any
country, but keep always a little in advance of permanent emigration.
With this division of the class, we have little to do: first, because
they are already well understood, by most readers in this country,
through the earlier novels of Cooper, their great delineator; and,
second, because, as we have intimated, our business is chiefly with
those, whose footprints have been stamped upon the country, and whose
influence is traceable in its civilization. We, therefore, now desire to
direct attention to the other sub-division--the genuine "settler;" the
firm, unflinching, permanent emigrant, who entered the country to till
the land and to possess it, for himself and his descendants.
And, in the first place, let us inquire what motives could induce men to
leave regions, where the axe had been at work for many years--where the
land was reduced to cultivation, and the forest reclaimed from the wild
beast and the wilder savage--where civilization had begun to exert its
power, and society had assumed a legal and determined shape--to depart
from all these things, seeking a new home in an inhospitable
wilderness, where they could only gain a footing by severe labor,
constant strife, and sleepless vigilance? To be capable of doing all
this, from _any_ motive, a man must be a strange compound of qualities;
but that compound, strange as it is, has done, and is doing, more to
reclaim the west, and change the wilderness into a garden, than all
other causes combined.
A prominent trait in the character of the genuine American, is the
desire "to better his condition"--a peculiarity which sometimes embodies
itself in the disposition to forget the good old maxim, "Let well-enough
alone," and not unfrequently leads to disaster and suffering. A thorough
Yankee--using that word as the English do, to indicate national, not
sectional, character--is never satisfied with doing well; he always
underrates his gains and his successes; and, though to others he may be
boastful enough, and may, even truly, rate the profits of his enterprise
by long strings of "naught," he is always whispering to himself, "I
ought to do better." If he sees any one accumulating property faster
than himself, he becomes emulous and discontented--he is apt to think,
unless he goes more rapidly than any one else, that he is not moving at
all. If he can find no one of his neighbors advancing toward fortune,
with longer strides than he, he will imagine some successful
"speculator," to whom he will compare himself, and chafe at his
inferiority to a figment of his own fancy. If he possessed "a million a
minute," he would cast about for some profitable employment, in which he
might engage, "to pay expenses." He will abandon a silver-mine, of slow,
but certain gains, for the gambling chances of a gold "placer;" and if
any one within his knowledge dig out more wealth than he, he will leave
the "diggings," though his success be quite encouraging, and go
quixoting among the islands of the sea, in search of pearls and
diamonds. With the prospect of improvement in his fortunes--whether that
prospect be founded upon reason, be a naked fancy, or the offspring of
mere discontent--he regards no danger, cares for no hardship, counts no
suffering. Everything must bend before the ruling passion, "to better
his condition."
His spirit is eminently encroaching. Rather than give up any of his own
"rights," he will take a part of what belongs to others. Whatever he
thinks necessary to his welfare, to that he believes himself entitled.
To whatever point he desires to reach, he takes the straightest course,
even though the way lie across the corner of his neighbor's field. Yet
he is intensely jealous of his own possessions, and warns off all
trespassers with an imperial menace of "the utmost penalty of the law."
He has, of course, an excellent opinion of himself--and justly: for when
not blinded by cupidity or vexed by opposition, no man can hold the
scales of justice with a more even hand.
He is seldom conscious of having done a wrong: for he rarely moves until
he has ascertained "both the propriety and expediency of the motion." He
has, therefore, an instinctive aversion to all retractions and
apologies. He has such a proclivity to the forward movement, that its
opposite, even when truth and justice demand it, is stigmatized, in his
vocabulary, by odious and ridiculous comparisons. He is very stubborn,
and, it is feared, sometimes mistakes his obstinacy for firmness. He
thinks a safe retreat worse than a defeat with slaughter. Yet he never
rests under a reverse, and, though manifestly prostrate, will never
acknowledge that he is beaten. A check enrages him more than a decided
failure: for so long as his end is not accomplished, nor defeated, he
can see no reason why he should not succeed. If his forces are driven
back, shattered and destroyed, he is not cast down, but angry--he
forthwith swears vengeance and another trial. He is quite insatiable--as
a failure does not dampen him, success can never satisfy him. His plans
are always on a great scale; and, if they sometimes exceed his means of
execution, at least, "he who aims at the sun," though he may lose his
arrow, "will not strike the ground." He is a great projector--but he is
eminently practical, as well as theoretical; and if _he_ cannot realize
his visions, no other man need try.
He is restless and migratory. He is fond of change, for the sake of the
change; and he will have it, though it bring him only new labors and new
hardships. He is, withal, a little selfish--as might be supposed. He
begins to lose his attachment to the advantages of his home, so soon as
they are shared by others. He does not like near neighbors--has no
affection for the soil; he will leave a place on which he has expended
much time and labor, as soon as the region grows to be a "settlement."
Even in a town, he is dissatisfied if his next neighbor lives so near
that the women can gossip across the division-fence. He likes to be at
least one day's journey from the nearest plantation.
I once heard an old pioneer assign as a reason why he must emigrate from
western Illinois, the fact that "people were settling right under his
nose"--and the farm of his nearest neighbor was twelve miles distant, by
the section lines! He moved on to Missouri, but there the same
"impertinence" of emigrants soon followed him; and, abandoning his
half-finished "clearing," he packed his family and household goods in a
little wagon, and retreated, across the plains to Oregon. He is--or was,
two years ago--living in the valley of the Willamette, where, doubtless,
he is now chafing under the affliction of having neighbors in the same
region, and nothing but an ocean beyond.
His character seems to be hard-featured.
But he is neither unsocial, nor morose. He welcomes the stranger as
heartily as the most hospitable patriarch. He receives the sojourner at
his fireside without question. He regales him with the best the house
affords: is always anxious to have him "stay another day." He cares for
his horse, renews his harness, laughs at his stories, and exchanges
romances with him. He hunts with him; fishes, rides, walks, talks, eats,
and drinks with him. His wife washes and mends the stranger's shirts,
and lends him a needle and thread to sew a button on his only pair of
pantaloons. The children sit on his knee, the dog lies at his feet, and
accompanies him into the woods. The whole family are his friends, and
only grow cold and distant when they learn that he is looking for land,
and thinks of "settling" within a few leagues. If nothing of the sort
occurs--and this only "leaks out" by accident, for the pioneer never
pries inquisitively into the business of his guest, he keeps him as long
as he can; and when he can stay no longer, fills his saddle-bags with
flitches of bacon and "pones" of corn-bread, shakes him heartily by the
hand, exacts a promise to stop again on his return, and bids him
"God-speed" on his journey.
Such is American character, in the manifestations which have most
affected the settlement and development of the West; a compound of many
noble qualities, with a few--and no nation is without such--that are not
quite so respectable. All these, both good and bad, were possessed by
the early pioneer in an eminent, sometimes in an extravagant degree; and
the circumstances, by which he found himself surrounded after his
emigration to the West, tended forcibly to their exaggeration.
But the qualities--positive and negative--above enumerated, were, many
of them, at least, peculiarities belonging to the early emigrant, as
much before as after his removal. And there were others, quite as
distinctly marked, called into activity, if not actually created by his
life in the wilderness. Such, for example, was his self-reliance--his
confidence in his own strength, sagacity, and courage. It was but little
assistance that he ever required from his neighbors, though no man was
ever more willing to render it to others, in the hour of need. He was
the swift avenger of his own wrongs, and he never appealed to another to
ascertain his rights. Legal tribunals were an abomination to him.
Government functionaries he hated, almost as the Irish hate excisemen.
Assessments and taxes he could not endure, for, since he was his own
protector, he had no interest in sustaining the civil authorities.
Military organizations he despised, for subordination was no part of his
nature. He stood up in the native dignity of manhood, and called no
mortal his superior. When he joined his neighbors, to avenge a foray of
the savages, he joined on the most equal terms--each man was, for the
time, his own captain; and when the leader was chosen--for the
pioneers, with all their personal independence, were far too rational to
underrate the advantages of a head in the hour of danger--each voice was
counted in the choice, and the election might fall on any one. But, even
after such organization, every man was fully at liberty to abandon the
expedition, whenever he became dissatisfied, or thought proper to return
home. And if this want of discipline sometimes impaired the strength,
and rendered unavailing the efforts, of communities, it at least
fostered the manly spirit of personal independence; and, to keep that
alive in the breasts of a people, it is worth while to pay a yearly
tribute, even though that tribute be rendered unto the King of Terrors!
This self-reliance was not an arrogant and vulgar egotism, as it has
been so often represented in western stories, and the tours of
superficial travellers. It was a calm, just estimate of his own
capabilities--a well-grounded confidence in his own talents--a clear,
manly understanding of his own individual rights, dignity, and
relations. Such is the western definition of independence; and if there
be anything of it in the western character at the present day, it is due
to the stubborn and intense individuality of the first pioneer. He it
was who laid the foundation of our social fabric, and it is his spirit
which yet pervades our people.
The quality which next appears, in analyzing this character, is his
_courage_.
It was not mere physical courage, nor was it stolid carelessness of
danger. The pioneer knew, perfectly well, the full extent of the peril
that surrounded him; indeed, he could not be ignorant of it; for almost
every day brought some new memento, either of his savage foe, or of the
prowling beast of prey. He ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and
gathered, with the rifle slung over his shoulders; and, at every turn,
he halted, listening, with his ear turned toward his home; for well he
knew that, any moment, the scream of his wife, or the wail of his
children, might tell of the up-lifted tomahawk, or the murderous
scalping-knife.
His courage, then, was not ignorance of danger--not that of the child,
which thrusts its hand within the lion's jaws, and knows naught of the
penalty it braves. His ear was ever listening, his eye was always
watching, his nerves were ever strung, for battle. He was stout of
heart, and strong of hand--he was calm, sagacious, unterrified. He was
never disconcerted--excitement seldom moved him--his mind was always at
its own command. His heart never lost its firmness--no suffering could
overcome him--he was as stoical as the savage, whose greatest glory is
to triumph amidst the most cruel tortures. His pride sustained him when
his flesh was pierced with burning brands--when his muscles crisped and
crackled in the flames. To the force of character, belonging to the
white, he added the savage virtues of the red man; and many a captive
has been rescued from the flames, through his stern contempt for
torture, and his sneering triumph over his tormentors. The highest
virtue of the savage was his fortitude; and he respected and admired
even a "pale face," who emulated his endurance.
But fortitude is only passive courage--and the bravery of the pioneer
was eminently active. His vengeance was as rapid as it was sometimes
cruel. No odds against him could deter him, no time was ever wasted in
deliberation. If a depredation was committed in the night, the dawn of
morning found the sufferer on the trail of the marauder. He would follow
it for days, and even weeks, with the sagacity of the blood-hound, with
the patience of the savage: and, perhaps, in the very midst of the
Indian country, in some moment of security, the blow descended, and the
injury was fearfully avenged! The debt was never suffered to accumulate,
when it could be discharged by prompt payment--and it was never
forgotten! If the account could not be balanced now, the obligation was
treasured up for a time to come--and, when least expected, the debtor
came, and paid with usury!
It has been said, perhaps truly, that a fierce, bloody spirit ruled the
settlers in those early days. And it is unquestionable, that much of
that contempt for the slow vengeance of a legal proceeding, which now
distinguishes the people of the frontier west, originated then. It was,
doubtless, an unforgiving--eminently an unchristian--spirit: but
vengeance, sure and swift, was the only thing which could impress the
hostile savage. And, if example, in a matter of this sort, could be
availing, for their severity to the Indians, they had the highest!
The eastern colonists--good men and true--"willing to exterminate the
savages," says Bancroft,[70] who is certainly not their enemy, offered a
bounty for every Indian scalp--as we, in the west, do for the scalps of
wolves! "To regular forces under pay, the grant was _ten_ pounds--to
volunteers, in actual service, _twice that sum_; but if men would, of
themselves, without pay, make up parties and patrol the forests in
search of Indians, _as of old the woods were scoured for wild beasts_,
the chase was invigorated by the promised 'encouragement of _fifty_
pounds per scalp!'" The "fruitless cruelties" of the Indian allies of
the French in Canada, says the historian, gave birth to these humane and
nicely-graduated enactments! Nor is our admiration of their Christian
spirit in the least diminished, when we reflect that nothing is recorded
in history of "bounties on scalps" or "encouragement" to murder, offered
by Frontenac, or any other French-Canadian governor, as a revenge for
the horrible massacre at Montreal, or the many "fruitless cruelties" of
the bloody Iroquois![71]
The descendants of the men who gave these "bounties" and
"encouragements," have, in our own day, caressed, and wept and lamented
over the tawny murderer, Black-Hawk, and his "wrongs" and "misfortunes;"
but the theatre of Indian warfare was then removed a little farther
west; and the atrocities of Haverhill and Deerfield were perpetrated on
the western prairies, and not amid the forests of the east! Yet I do not
mean, by referring to this passage of history--or to the rivers of
wasted sentiment poured out a few years ago--so much to condemn our
forefathers, or to draw invidious comparisons between them and others,
as to show, that the war of extermination, sometimes waged by western
rangers, was not without example--that the cruelty and hatred of the
pioneer to the barbarous Indian, might originate in exasperation, which
even moved the puritans; and that the lamentations, over the fictitious
"wrongs" of a turbulent and bloody savage, might have run in a channel
nearer home.
Hatred of the Indian, among the pioneers, was hereditary; there was
scarcely a man on the frontier, who had not lost a father, a mother, or
a brother, by the tomahawk; and not a few of them had suffered in their
own persons. The child, who learned the rudiments of his scanty
education at his mother's knee, must decipher the strange characters by
the straggling light which penetrated the crevices between the logs;
for, while the father was absent, in the field or on the war-path, the
mother was obliged to bar the doors and barricade the windows against
the savages. Thus, if he did not literally imbibe it with his mother's
milk, one of the first things the pioneer learned, was dread, and
consequently hatred, of the Indian. That feeling grew with his growth,
strengthened with his strength--for a life upon the western border left
but few days free from sights of blood or mementoes of the savage. The
pioneer might go to the field in the morning, unsuspecting; and, at
noon, returning, find his wife murdered and scalped, and the brains of
his little ones dashed out against his own doorpost! And if a deadly
hatred of the Indian took possession of his heart, who shall blame him?
It may be said, the pioneer was an intruder, seeking to take forcible
possession of the Indian's lands--and that it was natural that the
Indian should resent the wrong after the manner of his race. Granted:
and it was quite as natural that the pioneer should return the enmity,
after the manner of _his_ race!
But the pioneer was _not_ an intruder.
For all the purposes, for which reason and the order of Providence
authorize us to say, God made the earth, this continent was
vacant--uninhabited. And--granting that the savage was in
possession--for this is his only ground of title, as, indeed, it is the
foundation of all primary title--there were at the period of the first
landing of white men on the continent, between Lake Superior and the
Gulf of Mexico, east of the Mississippi, about one hundred and eighty
thousand Indians.[72] That region now supports at least twenty millions
of civilized people, and is capable of containing quite ten times that
number, without crowding! Now, if God made the earth for any purpose, it
certainly was _not_ that it should be monopolized by a horde of nomad
savages!
But an argument on this subject, would not be worth ink and paper; and I
am, moreover, aware, that this reasoning may be abused. _Any_ attempt to
construe the purposes of Deity must be liable to the same
misapplication. And, besides, it is not my design to go so far back; I
seek not so much to excuse as to account for--less to justify than to
analyze--the characteristics of the class before me. I wish to establish
that the pioneer hatred of the Indian was not an unprovoked or
groundless hatred, that the severity of his warfare was not a mere
gratuitous and bloody-minded cruelty. There are a thousand actions, of
which we are hearing every day, that are indefensible in morals: and yet
we are conscious while we condemn the actors, that, in like
circumstances, we could not have acted differently. So is it with the
fierce and violent reprisals, sometimes made by frontier rangers. Their
best defence lies in the statement that they were men, and that their
manhood prompted them to vengeance. When they deemed themselves injured,
they demanded reparation, in such sort as that demand could then be
made--at the muzzle of a rifle or the point of a knife. They were equal
to the times in which they lived.--Had they not been so, how many
steamboats would now be floating on the Mississippi?
There was no romance in the composition of the pioneer--whatever there
may have been in his environment. His life was altogether too serious a
matter for poetry, and the only music he took pleasure in, was the sound
of a violin, sending forth notes remarkable only for their liveliness.
Even this, he could enjoy but at rare periods, when his cares were
forcibly dismissed. He was, in truth, a very matter-of-fact sort of
person. It was principally with facts that he had to deal--and
most of them were very "stubborn facts." Indeed, it may be
doubted--notwithstanding much good poetry has been written (in cities
chiefly), on solitude and the wilderness--whether a life in the woods
is, after all, very suggestive of poetical thoughts. The perils of the
frontier must borrow most of their "enchantment" from the "distance;"
and its sufferings and hardships are certainly more likely to evoke
pleasant fancies to him who sits beside a good coal fire, than to one
whose lot it is to bear them. Even the (so-called) "varied imagery" of
the Indian's eloquence--about which so much nonsense has been
written--is, in a far greater measure, the result of the poverty and
crude materialism of his language, than of any poetical bias,
temperament, or tone of thought. An Indian, as we have said before, has
no humor--he never understands a jest--his wife is a beast of
burthen--heaven is a hunting-ground--his language has no words to
express abstract qualities, virtues, or sentiments. And yet he lives in
the wilderness all the days of his life! The only trait he has, in
common with the poetical character, is his laziness.
But the pioneer was not indolent, in any sense. He had no
dreaminess--meditation was no part of his mental habit--a poetical
fancy would, in him, have been an indication of insanity. If he reclined
at the foot of a tree, on a still summer day, it was to sleep: if he
gazed out over the waving prairie, it was to search for the column of
smoke which told of his enemy's approach: if he turned his eyes toward
the blue heaven, it was to prognosticate to-morrow's storm or sunshine:
if he bent his gaze upon the green earth, it was to look for "Indian
sign" or buffalo trail. His wife was only a help-mate--he never thought
of making a divinity of her--she cooked his dinner, made and washed his
clothes, bore his children, and took care of his household. His children
were never "little cherubs,"--"angels sent from heaven"--but generally
"tow-headed" and very earthly responsibilities. He looked forward
anxiously, to the day when the boys should be able to assist him in the
field, or fight the Indian, and the girls to help their mother make and
mend. When one of the latter took it into her head to be married--as
they usually did quite early in life; for beaux were plenty and belles
were "scarce"--he only made one condition, that the man of her choice
should be brave and healthy. He never made a "parade" about
anything--marriage, least of all. He usually gave the bride--not the
"blushing" bride--a bed, a lean horse, and some good advice: and, having
thus discharged his duty in the premises, returned to his work, and the
business was done.
The marriage ceremony, in those days, was a very unceremonious affair.
The parade and drill which now attend it, would then have been as
ridiculous as a Chinese dance; and the finery and ornament, at present
understood to be indispensable on such occasions, then bore no sway in
fashion. Bridal wreaths and dresses were not known; and white kid gloves
and satin slippers never heard of. Orange blossoms--natural and
artificial--were as pretty then as now; but the people were more
occupied with substance, than with emblem.
The ancients decked _their_ victims for the sacrifice with gaudy colors,
flags, and streamers; the moderns do the same, and the offerings are
sometimes made to quite as barbarous deities.
But the bride of the pioneer was clothed in linsey-wolsey, with hose of
woollen yarn; and moccasins of deer-skin--or as an extra piece of
finery, high-quartered shoes of calf-skin--preceded satin slippers. The
bridegroom came in copperas-colored jeans--domestic manufacture--as a
holiday suit; or, perhaps, a hunting-shirt of buckskin, all fringed
around the skirt and cape, and a "coon-skin" cap, with moccasins.
Instead of a dainty walking-stick, with an opera-dancer's leg, in ivory,
for head, he always brought his rifle, with a solid maple stock; and
never, during the whole ceremony, did he divest himself of powder-horn
and bullet-pouch.
Protestant ministers of the gospel were few in those days; and the words
of form were usually spoken by a Jesuit missionary. Or, if the Pioneer
had objections to Catholicism--as many had--his place was supplied by
some justice of the peace, of doubtful powers and mythical appointment.
If neither of these could be procured, the father of the bride, himself,
sometimes assumed the functions, _pro hac vice_, or _pro tempore_, of
minister or justice. It was always understood, however, that such
left-handed marriages were to be confirmed by the first minister who
wandered to the frontier: and, even when the opportunity did not offer
for many months, no scandal ever arose--the marriage vow was never
broken. The pioneers were simple people--the refinements of high
cultivation had not yet penetrated the forests or crossed the
prairies--and good faith and virtue were as common as courage and
sagacity.
When the brief, but all-sufficient ceremony was over, the bridegroom
resumed his rifle, helped the bride into the saddle--or more frequently
to the pillion behind him--and they calmly rode away together.
On some pleasant spot--surrounded by a shady grove, or point of
timber--a new log-cabin has been built: its rough logs notched across
each other at the corners, a roof of oaken clapboards, held firmly down
by long poles along each course, its floor of heavy "puncheons," its
broad, cheerful fireplace, large as a modern bed-room--all are in the
highest style of frontier architecture. Within--excepting some
anomalies, such as putting the skillet and tea-kettle in the little
cupboard, along with the blue-edged plates and yellow-figured
tea-cups--for the whole has been arranged by the hands of the bridegroom
himself--everything is neatly and properly disposed. The oaken bedstead,
with low square posts, stands in one corner, and the bed is covered by a
pure white counterpane, with fringe--an heirloom in the family of the
bride. At the foot of this is seen a large, heavy chest--like a
camp-chest--to serve for bureau, safe, and dressing-case.
In the middle of the floor--directly above a trap-door which leads to a
"potato-hole" beneath--stands a ponderous walnut table, and on it sits a
nest of wooden trays; while, flanking these, on one side, is a
nicely-folded tablecloth, and, on the other, a wooden-handled
butcher-knife and a well-worn Bible. Around the room are ranged a few
"split-bottomed" chairs, exclusively for use, not ornament. In the
chimney-corners, or under the table, are several three-legged stools,
made for the children, who--as the bridegroom laughingly insinuates
while he points to the uncouth specimens of his handiwork--"will be
coming in due time." The wife laughs in her turn--replies, "no
doubt"--and, taking one of the graceful tripods in her hand, carries it
forth to sit upon while she milks the cow--for she understands what she
is expected to do, and does it without delay. In one corner--near the
fireplace--the aforesaid cupboard is erected--being a few oaken shelves
neatly pinned to the logs with hickory forks--and in this are arranged
the plates and cups;--not as the honest pride of the housewife would
arrange them, to display them to the best advantage--but piled away,
one within another, without reference to show. As yet there is no sign
of female taste or presence.
But now the house receives its mistress. The "happy couple" ride up to
the low rail-fence in front--the bride springs off without assistance,
affectation, or delay. The husband leads away the horse or horses, and
the wife enters the dominion, where, thenceforward, she is queen. There
is no coyness, no blushing, no pretence of fright or nervousness--if you
will, no romance--for which the husband has reason to be thankful! The
wife knows what her duties are and resolutely goes about performing
them. She never dreamed, nor twaddled, about "love in a cottage," or
"the sweet communion of congenial souls" (who never eat anything): and
she is, therefore, not disappointed on discovering that life is actually
a serious thing. She never whines about "making her husband happy"--but
sets firmly and sensibly about making him _comfortable_. She cooks his
dinner, nurses his children, shares his hardships, and encourages his
industry. She never complains of having too much work to do, she does
not desert her home to make endless visits--she borrows no misfortunes,
has no imaginary ailings. Milliners and mantua-makers she
ignores--"shopping" she never heard of--scandal she never invents or
listens to. She never wishes for fine carriages, professes no inability
to walk five hundred yards, and does not think it a "vulgar
accomplishment," to know how to make butter. She has no groundless
anxieties, she is not nervous about her children taking cold: a doctor
is a visionary potentate to her--a drug-shop is a depot of abominations.
She never forgets whose wife she is,--there is no "sweet confidante"
without whom she "can not live"--she never writes endless letters about
nothing. She is, in short, a faithful, honest wife: and, "in due time,"
the husband must make _more_ "three-legged stools"--for the "tow-heads"
have now covered them all!
Such is the wife and mother of the pioneer, and, with such influences
about him, how could he be otherwise than honest, straightforward, and
manly?
But, though a life in the woods was an enemy to every sort of
sentimentalism--though a more unromantic being than the pioneer can
hardly be imagined--yet his character unquestionably took its hue, from
the primitive scenes and events of his solitary existence. He was, in
many things, as simple as a child: as credulous, as unsophisticated. Yet
the utmost cunning of the wily savage--all the strategy of Indian
warfare--was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one
might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make
him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without
reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all,
you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable and outrageous
fictions, without fear of contradiction or of unbelief. He never
questioned the superior knowledge or pretensions of any one who claimed
acquaintance with subjects of which _he_ was ignorant.
The character of his intellect, like that of the Indian, was thoroughly
synthetical: he had nothing of the faculty which enables us to detect
falsehood, even in matters of which we know nothing by comparison and
analogy. He never analyzed any story told him, he took it as a unit;
and, unless it violated some known principle of his experience, or
conflicted with some fact of his own observation, never doubted its
truth. At this moment, there are men in every western settlement who
have only vague, crude notions of what a city is--who would feel
nervous if they stepped upon the deck of a steamboat--and are utterly at
a loss to conjecture the nature of a railroad. Upon either of these
mystical subjects they will swallow, without straining, the most absurd
and impossible fictions. And this is not because of their ignorance
alone, for many of them are, for their sphere in life, educated,
intelligent, and, what is better, sensible men. Nor is it by any means a
national trait: for a genuine Yankee will scarcely believe the truth;
and, though he may sometimes trust in very wild things, his faith is
usually an active "craze," and not mere passive credulity. The pioneer,
then, has not derived it from his eastern fathers: it is the growth of
the woods and prairies--an embellishment to a character which might
otherwise appear naked and severe.
Another characteristic, traceable to the same source, the stern reality
of his life, is the pioneer's gravity.
The agricultural population of this country are, at the best, not a
cheerful race. Though they sometimes join in festivities, it is but
seldom; and the wildness of their dissipation is too often in proportion
to its infrequency. There is none of the serene contentment--none of
that smiling enjoyment--which, according to travellers like Howitt,
distinguishes the tillers of the ground in other lands. _Sedateness_ is
a national characteristic, but the gravity of the pioneer is quite
another thing; it includes pride and personal dignity, and indicates a
stern, unyielding temper. There is, however, nothing morose in it: it is
its aspect alone, which forbids approach; and that only makes more
conspicuous the heartiness of your reception, when once the shell is
broken. Acquainted with the character, you do not expect him to _smile_
much; but now and then he _laughs_: and that laugh is round, free, and
hearty. You know at once that he enjoys it, you are convinced that he is
a firm friend and "a good hater."
It is not surprising, with a character such as I have described, that
the pioneer is not gregarious, that he is, indeed, rather solitary.
Accordingly, we never find a genuine specimen of the class, among the
emigrants, who come in shoals and flocks, and pitch their tents in
"colonies;" who lay out towns and cities, projected upon paper, and call
them New Boston, New Albany, or New Hartford, before one log is placed
upon another; nor are there many of the unadulterated stock among that
other class, who come from regions further south, and christen their
towns, classically, Carthage, Rome, or Athens: or, patriotically, in
commemoration of some Virginian worthy, some Maryland sharpshooter, or
"Jersey blue."
The real pioneer never emigrates gregariously; he does not wish to be
within "halloo" of his nearest neighbor; he is no city-builder; and, if
he does project a town, he christens it by some such name as Boonville
or Clarksville, in memory of a noted pioneer: or Jacksonville or
Waynesville, to commemorate some "old hero" who was celebrated for good
fighting.[73] And the reason why the outlandish and _outre_ so much
predominate in the names of western towns and cities, must be sought in
the fact referred to above, that the western man is not essentially a
town-projector, and that, consequently, comparatively few of the towns
were "laid out" by the legitimate pioneer. We shall have more to say of
town-building under another head; and, in the meantime, having said that
the pioneer is not gregarious, let us look at the _manner_ of his
emigration.
Many a time, in the western highways, have I met with the sturdy
"mover," as he is called, in the places where people are stationary--a
family, sometimes by no means small, wandering toward the setting sun,
in search of pleasant places on the lands of "Uncle Sam." Many a time,
in the forest or on the prairie--generally upon some point of timber
which puts a mile or two within the plain--have I passed the "clearing,"
or "pre-emption," where, with nervous arm and sturdy heart, the
"squatter"[74] cleaves out, and renders habitable, a home for himself
and a heritage for his children.
Upon the road, you first meet the pioneer himself, for he almost always
walks a few hundred yards ahead. He is usually above the medium height,
and rather spare. He stoops a little, too; for he has done a deal of
hard work, and expects to do more; but you see at once, that unless his
lungs are weak, his strength is by no means broken, and you are quite
sure that many a stately tree is destined to be humbled by his sinewy
arm. He is attired in frontier fashion: he wears a loose coat, called a
hunting-shirt, of jeans or linsey, and its color is that indescribable
hue compounded of copperas and madder; pantaloons, exceedingly loose,
and not very accurately cut in any part, of like color and material,
defend his lower limbs. His feet are cased in low, fox-colored shoes,
for of boots, he is, yet, quite innocent. Around his throat and wrists,
even in midsummer, you see the collar and wristbands of a heavy,
deep-red, flannel-shirt. Examine him very closely, and you will probably
find no other garment on his person.
His hair is dark, and not very evenly trimmed--for his wife or daughter
has performed the tonsure with a pair of rusty shears; and the longer
locks seem changed in hue, as if his dingy wool hat did not sufficiently
protect them against the wind and rain. Over his shoulder he carries a
heavy rifle, heavier than a "Harper's ferry musket," running about
"fifty to the pound." Around his neck are swung the powder-horn and
bullet-pouch, the former protected by a square of deer-skin, and the
latter ornamented with a squirrel's tail.
You take note of all these things, and then recur to his
melancholy-looking face, with its mild blue eyes and sharpened features.
You think he looks thin, and conjecture that his chest may be weak, or
his lungs affected, by the stoop in his shoulders; but when he lifts his
eyes, and asks the way to Thompson's ferry, or how far it is to water,
you are satisfied: for the glance of his eye is calm and firm, and the
tone of his voice is round and healthy. You answer his question, he nods
quietly by way of thanks, and marches on; and, though you draw your
rein, and seem inclined to further converse, he takes no notice, and
pursues his way.
A few minutes afterward, you meet the family. A small, light wagon,
easily dragged through sloughs and heavy roads, is covered with a white
cotton cloth, and drawn, by either two yokes of oxen, or a pair of lean
horses. A "patch-work" quilt is sometimes stretched across the flimsy
covering, as a guard against the sun and rain. Within this vehicle are
stowed all the emigrant's household goods, and still, it is not
overloaded.
There is usually a large chest, containing the wardrobe of the family,
with such small articles as are liable to loss, and the little store of
money. This is always in silver, for the pioneer is no judge of gold,
and, on the frontier, paper has but little exchangeable value. There are
then two light bedsteads--one "a trundle-bed"--a few plain chairs, most
of them tied on behind and at the sides; three or four stools, domestic
manufacture; a set of tent-poles and a few pots and pans. On these are
piled the "beds and bedding," tied in large bundles, and stowed in such
manner as to make convenient room for the children who are too young to
walk. In the front end of the wagon, sits the mother of the family: and,
peering over her head and shoulders, leaning out at her side, or gazing
under the edge of the cotton-covering, are numerous flaxen heads, which
you find it difficult to count while you ride past.
There are altogether too many of them, you think, for a man no older
than the one you met, a while ago; and you, perhaps, conjecture that the
youthful-looking woman has adopted some of her dead sister's children,
or, perchance, some of her brothers and sisters themselves. But you are
mistaken, they are all her offspring, and the father of every one of
them is the stoop-shouldered man you saw ahead. If you look closely, you
will observe that the mother, who is driving, holds the reins with one
hand, while, on the other arm, she supports an infant not _more_ than
six months old. It was for the advent of this little stranger, that they
delayed their emigration: and they set out while it was very young, for
fear of the approach of its successor. If they waited for their youngest
child to attain a year of age, they would never "move," until they would
be too old to make another "clearing."
You pass on--perhaps ejaculating thanks that your lot has been
differently cast, and thinking you have seen the last of them. But a few
hundred yards further, and you hear the tinkling of a bell; two or three
lean cows--with calves about the age of the baby--come straggling by.
You look for the driver, and see a tall girl with a very young face--the
eldest of the family, though not exceeding twelve or thirteen years in
age. You feel quite sure, that, besides her sun-bonnet and well-worn
shoes, she wears but one article of apparel--and that a loose dress of
linsey, rather narrow in the skirt, of a dirty brown color, with a tinge
of red. It hangs straight down about her limbs, as if it were wet, and
with every step--for she walks stoutly--it flaps and flies about her
ankles, as if shotted in the lower hem. She presents, altogether, rather
a slatternly figure, and her face is freckled and sunburnt.
But you must not judge her too rashly; for her eye is keen and
expressive, and her mouth is quite pretty--especially when she smiles. A
few years hence--if you have the _entree_--you may meet her in the best
and highest circles of the country. Perhaps, while you are dancing
attendance upon some new administration, asking for a "place," and
asking, probably, in vain, she may come to Washington, a beautiful and
accomplished woman--the wife of some member of Congress, whose
constituency is numbered by the hundred thousand!
You may pass on, now, and forget her; but, if you stop to talk five
minutes, she will not forget _you_--at least, if you say anything
striking or sensible. And when you meet her again, perhaps in a gilded
saloon, among the brightest and highest in the land--if you seek an
introduction, as you probably will--she will remind you of the meeting,
and to your astonishment, will laughingly describe the scene, to some of
her obsequious friends who stand around. And then she will perhaps
introduce you, as an old friend, to one of those flax-haired boys, who
peeped out of the wagon over his mother's shoulder, as you passed them
in the wilderness: and you recognise one of the members from California,
or from Oregon, whose influence in the house, though he is as yet a very
young man, is already quite considerable. If you are successful in your
application for a "place," it may be that the casual meeting in the
forest or on the prairie was the seed which, germinating through long
years of obscurity, finally sprung up _thus_, and bore a crop of high
official honors!
The next time you meet a family of emigrants on the frontier, you will
probably observe them a little more closely.
Not a few of those who bear a prominent part in the government of our
country--more than one of the first men of the nation--men whose names
are now heard in connection with the highest office of the
people--twenty years ago, occupied a place as humble in the scale of
influence, as that flaxen-haired son of the stoop-shouldered emigrant.
Such are the elements of our civilization--such the spirit of our
institutions!
We have hitherto been speaking only of the American pioneer, and we have
devoted more space to him, than we shall give to his contemporaries,
because he has exerted more influence, both in the settlement of the
country, and in the formation of sectional character and social
peculiarities, than all the rest combined.
The French emigrant was quite a different being. Even at this day, there
are no two classes--not the eastern and western, or the northern and
southern--between whom the distinction is more marked, than it has
always been between the Saxon and the Frank. The advent of the latter
was much earlier than that of the former; and to him, therefore, must be
ascribed the credit of the first settlement of the country. But, for all
purposes of lasting impression, he must yield to his successor. It was,
in fact, the American who penetrated and cleared the forest--who subdued
and drove out the Indian--who, in a word, reclaimed the country.
In nothing was the distinction between the two races broader, than in
the feelings with which they approached the savage. We have seen that
the hatred, borne by the American toward his red enemy, was to be
traced to a long series of mutual hostilities and wrongs. But the
Frenchman had no such injuries to avenge, no hereditary feud to
prosecute. The first of his nation who had entered the country were
non-combatants--they came to convert the savage, not to conquer him,
or deprive him of his lands. Even as early as sixteen hundred and
eight, the Jesuits had established friendly relations with the Indians
of Canada--and before the stern crew of the May Flower had landed on
Plymouth Rock, they had preached the gospel on the shores of Lake
Huron. Their piety and wisdom had acquired an influence over the
untutored Indian, long before the commencement of the hostilities,
which afterward cost so much blood and suffering. They had, thus,
smoothed the way for their countrymen, and opened a safe path through
the wilderness, to the shore of the great western waters. And the
people who followed and accompanied them, were peculiarly adapted to
improve the advantages thus given them.
They were a gentle, peaceful, unambitious people. They came as the
friend, not the hereditary enemy, of the savage. They tendered the
calumet--a symbol well understood by every Indian--and were received as
allies and brethren. They had no national prejudices to overcome: the
copper color of the Indian was not an insuperable objection to
intermarriage, and children of the mixed blood were not, for that
reason, objects of scorn. An Indian maiden was as much a woman to a
Frenchman, as if she had been a _blonde_; and, if her form was graceful
and her features comely, he would woo her with as much ardor as if she
had been one of his own race.
Nor was this peculiarity attributable only to the native gallantry of
the French character, as it has sometimes been asserted; the total want
of prejudice, which grows up in contemplating an inferior race, held in
limited subjection, and a certain easiness of temper and tone of
thought, had far more influence.
The Frenchman has quite enough vanity, but very little pride. Whatever,
therefore, is sanctioned by those who surrounded him, is, in his eyes,
no degradation. He married the Indian woman--first, because there were
but few females among the emigrants, and he could not live without "the
sex;" and, second, because there was nothing in his prejudices, or in
public sentiment, to deter him. The descendants of these
marriages--except where, as in some cases, they are upheld by the
possession of great wealth--have no consideration, and are seldom seen
in the society of the whites. But this is only because French manners
and feelings have long since faded out of our social organization. The
Saxon, with his unconquerable prejudices of race, with his pride and
jealousy, has taken possession of the country; and, as he rules its
political destinies, in most places, likewise, gives tones to its
manners. Had Frenchmen continued to possess the land--had French
dominion not given place to English--mixture of blood would have had but
little influence on one's position; and there would now have been, in
St. Louis or Chicago, as many shades of color in a social assembly, as
may be seen at a ball in Mexico.
The French are a more cheerful people, than the Americans. Social
intercourse--the interchange of hospitalities--the enjoyment of
amusements in crowds--are far more important to them than to any other
race. Solitude and misery are--or ought to be--synonyms in French; and
enjoyment is like glory--it must have witnesses, or it will lose its
attraction. Accordingly, we find the French emigrant seeking
companionship, even in the trials and enterprises of the wilderness. The
American, after the manner of his race, sought places where he could
possess, for himself, enough for his wants, and be "monarch of all he
surveyed."
But the Frenchman had no such pride. He resorted to a town, where the
amusements of dancing, _fetes_, and social converse, were to be
found--where the narrow streets were scarcely more than a division
fence, "across which the women could carry on their voluble
conversations, without leaving their homes."[75] This must have been a
great advantage, and probably contributed, in no slight degree, to the
singular peace of their villages--since the proximity afforded no
temptation to going abroad, and the distance was yet too great to allow
such whisperings and scandal, as usually break up the harmony of small
circles. Whether the fact is to be attributed to this, or to some other
cause, certain it is that these little communities were eminently
peaceful. From the first settlement of Kaskaskia, for example, down to
the transfer of the western country to the British--almost a century--I
find no record, even in the voluminous epistolary chronicles, of any
personal rencontre, or serious quarrel, among the inhabitants. The same
praise can not be given to any American town ever yet built.
A species of communism seems to be a portion of the French character;
for we discover, that, even at that early day, _paysans_, or _habitans_,
collected together in villages, had their _common fields_, where the
separate portion of each family was still a part of the common
stock--and their tract of pasture-land, where there was no division, or
separate property. One enclosure covered all the fields of the
community, and all submitted to regulations made by the free voice of
the people.
If one was sick, or employed in the service of the colony, or absent
on business of his own at planting or harvest time, his portion was
not therefore neglected: his ground was planted, or his crop was
gathered, by the associated labor of his neighbors, as thoroughly and
carefully as if he had been at home. His family had nothing to fear;
because in the social code of the simple villagers, each was as much
bound to maintain the children of his friend as his own. This state of
things might have its inconveniences and vices--of which, perhaps, the
worst was its tendency to merge the family into the community, and
thus--by obliterating the lines of individuality and personal
independence--benumbing enterprise and checking improvements: but it
was certainly productive of some good results, also. It tended to
make people careful each of the other's rights, kind to the afflicted,
and brotherly in their social intercourse. The attractive simplicity
of manners observable, even at this day, in some of the old French
villages, is traceable to this peculiar form of their early
organization.
It would be well if that primitive simplicity of life and manners, could
be combined with rapid, or even moderate improvement. But, in the
present state of the world, this can scarcely be; and, accordingly, we
find the Frenchman of the passing year, differing but little from his
ancestor of sixteen hundred and fifty--still living in the old
patriarchal style, still cultivating his share of the common field, and
still using the antiquated processes of the seventeenth century.
But, though not so active as their neighbors, the Americans, they were
ever much happier. They had no ambition beyond enough for the passing
hour: with that they were perfectly contented. They were very patient
of the deprivation, when they had it not; and seasons of scarcity saw
no cessation of music and dancing, no abridgment of the jest and song.
If the earth yielded enough in one year to sustain them till the
next, the amount of labor expended for that object was never
increased--superfluity they cared nothing for: and commerce, save such
limited trade as was necessary to provide their few luxuries, was
beyond both their capacity and desires. The prolific soil was suffered
to retain its juices; it was reserved for another people to discover
and improve its infinite productiveness.
They were indolent, careless, and improvident. Great enterprises were
above or below them. Political interests, and the questions concerning
national dominion, were too exciting to charm their gentle natures.
Their intelligence was, of course, not of the highest order: but they
had no use for learning--literature was out of place in the
wilderness--the pursuit of letters could have found no sympathy, and for
solitary enjoyment, the Frenchman cultivates nothing. Life was almost
altogether sensuous: and, though their morals were in keeping with their
simplicity, existence to them was chiefly a physical matter. The
fertility of the soil, producing all the necessaries of life with a
small amount of labor, and the amenity of the climate, rendering
defences against winter but too easy, encouraged their indolence, and
soothed their scanty energy.
"They made no attempt," said one[76] who knew them well, "to acquire
land from the Indians, to organize a social system, to introduce
municipal regulations, or to establish military defences; but cheerfully
obeyed the priests and the king's officers, and enjoyed the present
without troubling their heads about the future. They seem to have been
even careless as to the acquisition of property, and its transmission to
their heirs. Finding themselves in a fruitful country, abounding in
game--where the necessaries of life could be procured with little
labor--where no restraints were imposed by government, and neither
tribute nor personal service was exacted, they were content to live in
unambitious peace and comfortable poverty. They took possession of so
much of the vacant land around them, as they were disposed to till, and
no more. Their agriculture was rude: and even to this day, some of the
implements of husbandry and modes of cultivation, brought from France a
century ago, remain unchanged by the march of mind or the hand of
innovation. Their houses were comfortable, and they reared fruits and
flowers, evincing, in this respect, an attention to comfort and luxury,
which has not been practised by the English and American first
settlers. But in the accumulation of property, and in all the essentials
of industry, they were indolent and improvident, rearing only the bare
necessaries of life, and living from generation to generation without
change or improvement."
"They reared fruits and flowers," he says; and this simple fact denotes
a marked distinction between them and the Americans, not only in regard
to the things themselves, as would seem to be the view of the author
quoted, but in mental constitution, modes of thought, and motives to
action. Their tastes were elegant, ornate, and refined. They found
pleasure in pursuits which the American deems trivial, frivolous, and
unworthy of exertion.
If any trees sheltered the house of the American, they were those
planted by the winds; if there were any flowers at his door, they were
only those with which prodigal nature has carpeted the prairies; and you
may see now in the west, many a cabin which has stood for thirty years,
with not a tree, of shade or fruit, within a mile of its door!
Everything is as bare and as cheerless about the door-yard, as it was
the first winter of its enclosure. But, stretching away from it, in
every direction, sometimes for miles, you will see extensive and
productive fields of grain, in the highest state of cultivation. It is
not personal comfort, or an elegant residence, for which the American
cares, but the enduring and solid results of unwearied labor.
A Frenchman's residence is surrounded by flower-beds and orchards; his
windows are covered by creeping-vines and trellis-work; flower-pots and
bird-cages occupy the sills and surround the corridors; everything
presents the aspect of elegant taste, comfort, and indolence. The extent
of his fields, the amount of his produce, the intelligence and industry
of his cultivation, bear an immense disproportion to those of his less
ornamental, though more energetic, neighbor.
The distinction between the two races is as clear in their personal
appearance and bearing, as in the aspect of their plantations. The
Frenchman is generally a spruce, dapper little gentleman, brisk,
obsequious, and insinuating in manner, and usually betraying minute
attention to externals. The American is always plain in dress--evincing
no more taste in costume than in horticulture--steady, calm, and never
lively in manner: blunt, straightforward, and independent in discourse.
The one is amiable and submissive, the other choleric and rebellious.
The Frenchman always recognises and bows before superior rank: the
American acknowledges no superior, and bows to no man save in courtesy.
The former is docile and easily governed: the latter is intractable,
beyond control. The Frenchman accommodates himself to circumstances: the
American forces circumstances to yield to him.
The consequence has been, that while the American has stamped his
character upon the whole country, there are not ten places in the valley
of the Mississippi, where you would infer, from anything you see, that a
Frenchman had ever placed his foot upon the soil. The few localities in
which the French character yet lingers, are fast losing the distinction;
and a score or two of years will witness a total disappearance of the
gentle people and their primitive abodes. Even now--excepting in a few
parishes in Louisiana--the relics of the race bear a faded, antiquated
look: as if they belonged to a past century, as, indeed, they do, and
only lingered now, to witness, for a brief space, the glaring
innovations of the nineteenth, and then, lamenting the follies of modern
civilization, to take their departure for ever!
Let them depart in peace! For they were a gentle and pacific race, and
in their day did many kindly things!
"The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds
Of peacefulness and kindness."
Their best monument is an affectionate recollection of their simplicity:
their highest wish
----"To sleep in humble life,
Beneath the storm ambition blows."
FOOTNOTES:
[70] _History of the United States_, vol. iii., p. 336. Enacted in
Massachusetts.
[71] A detailed and somewhat tedious account of these savage inroads,
may be found in Warburton's _Conquest of Canada_, published by Harpers.
New-York. 1850.
[72] This is the estimate of Bancroft--and, I think, at least, thirty
thousand too liberal. If the number were doubled, however, it would not
weaken the position in the text.
[73] On the subject of naming towns, much might have been said in the
preceding article in favor of French taste, and especially that just and
unpretending taste, which led them almost alway to retain the Indian
names. While the American has pretentiously imported from the Old World
such names as Venice, Carthage, Rome, Athens, and even London and Paris,
or has transferred from the eastern states, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New York, the Frenchman, with a better judgment, has
retained such Indian names as Chicago, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Cahokia,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Wabash, and Mississippi.
[74] This word is a pregnant memento of the manner in which the vain
words of flippant orators fall, innocuous, to the ground, when they
attempt to stigmatize, with contemptuous terms, the truly noble.
"Squatter" is now, in the west, only another name for "Pioneer," and
that word describes all that is admirable in courage, truth, and
manhood!
[75] Perkins's _Western Annals_.
[76] "Sketches of the West," by Judge Hall, for many years a resident of
Illinois.
[Illustration: THE RANGER.]
IV.
THE RANGER.
"When purposed vengeance I forego,
Term me a wretch, nor deem me foe;
And when an insult I forgive,
Then brand me as a slave, and live."
SCOTT.
In elaborating the character of the pioneer, we have unavoidably
anticipated, in some measure, that of the Ranger--for the latter was, in
fact, only one of the capacities in which the former sometimes acted.
But--since, in the preceding article, we have endeavored to confine
the inquiry, so as to use the term _Pioneer_ as almost synonymous with
_Immigrant_--we have, of course, ignored, to some extent, the
subordinate characters, in which he frequently figured. We therefore
propose, now, briefly to review one or two of them in their natural
succession.
The progress of our country may be traced and measured, by the
representative characters which marked each period. The
missionary-priest came first, when the land was an unbroken wilderness.
The military adventurer, seeking to establish new empires, and acquire
great fortunes, entered by the path thus opened. Next came the hunter,
roaming the woods in search of wild beasts upon which he preyed. Making
himself familiar with the pathless forest and the rolling prairie, he
qualified himself to guide, even while he fled from, the stream of
immigration. At last came the pioneer, to drive away the savage, to
clear out the forests, and reclaim the land.
At first, he was _only_ a pioneer. He had few neighbors, he belonged to
no community--his household was his country, his family were his only
associates or companions. In the course of time others followed him--he
could occasionally meet a white man on the prairies; if he wandered a
few miles from home, he could see the smoke of another chimney in the
distance. If he did not at once abandon his "clearing" and go further
west, he became, in some sort, a member of society--was the
fellow-citizen of his neighbors. The Indians became alarmed for their
hunting grounds, or the nations went to war and drew them into the
contest: the frontier became unsafe: the presence of danger drew the
pioneers together: they adopted a system of defence, and the ranger was
the offspring and representative of a new order of things.
Rough and almost savage as he sometimes was, he was still the index to a
great improvement. Rude as the system was, it gave shape and order to
what had before been mere chaos.
The ranger marks a new era, then; his existence is another chapter in
the history of the west. Previous to his time, each pioneer depended
only on himself for defence--his sole protection, against the wild beast
and the savage, was his rifle--self-dependence was his peculiar
characteristic. The idea of a fighting establishment--the germ of
standing armies--had never occurred to him: even the rudest form of
civil government was strange to him--taxes, salaries, assessments, were
all "unknown quantities."
But, gradually, all this changed; and with his circumstances, his
character was also modified. He lost a little of his sturdy
independence, his jealousy of neighborhood was softened--his solitary
habits became more social--he acknowledged the necessity for concert of
action--he merged a part of his individuality into the community,
and--became a ranger.
In this capacity, his character was but little different to what it had
been before the change; and, though that change was a great improvement,
considered with reference to society, it may safely be doubted whether
it made the individual more respectable. He was a better _citizen_,
because he now contributed to the common defence: but he was not a
better _man_, because new associations brought novel temptations, and
mingling with other men wore away the simplicity, which was the
foundation of his manliness. Before assuming his new character,
moreover, he never wielded a weapon except in his own defence--or, at
most, in avenging his own wrongs. The idea of justice--claiming
reparation for an injury, which he alone could estimate, because by him
alone it was sustained--protected his moral sense. But, when he assumed
the vindication of his neighbor's rights, and the reparation of his
wrongs--however kind it may have been to do so--he was sustained only by
the spirit of hatred to the savage, could feel no such justification as
the consciousness of injury.
Here was the first introduction of the mercenary character, which
actuates the hireling soldier; and, though civilization was not then far
enough advanced, to make it very conspicuous, there were other elements
mingled, which could not but depreciate the simple nobility of the
pioneer's nature. Many of the qualities which, in him, had been merely
passive, in the ranger became fierce and active. We have alluded, for
example, to his hatred of the Indian; and this, habit soon strengthened
and exaggerated. Nothing marks that change so plainly as his adoption of
the barbarous practice of scalping enemies.
For this there might be some little palliation in the fact, that the
savage never considered a warrior overcome, though he were killed,
unless he lost his scalp; and so long as he could bring off the dead
bodies of his comrades, not mutilated by the process, he was but
partially intimidated. Defeat was, in that case, converted to a sort of
triumph; and having gone within one step of victory--for so this
half-success was estimated--was the strongest incentive to a renewal of
the effort. It might be, therefore, that the ranger's adoption of the
custom was a measure of self-defence. But it is to be feared that this
consideration--weak as it is, when stated as an excuse for cruelty so
barbarous--had but little influence in determining the ranger. Adopting
the code of the savage, the practice soon became a part of his warfare;
and the taking of the scalp was a ceremony necessary to the completion
of his victory. It was a bloody and inhuman triumph--a custom, which
tended, more forcibly than any other, to degrade true courage to mere
cruelty; and which, while it only mortified the savage, at the same
time, by rendering his hatred of the white men more implacable,
aggravated the horrors of Indian warfare. But the only measure of
justice in those days, was the _lex talionis_--"An eye for an eye," a
scalp for a scalp; and, even now, you may hear frontiermen justify,
though they do not practise it, by quoting the venerable maxim, "Fight
the devil with fire."
But, though the warfare of the ranger was sometimes distinguished by
cruelty, it was also ennobled by features upon which it is far more
pleasant to dwell.
No paladin, or knight, of the olden times, ever exhibited more wild,
romantic daring, than that which formed a part of the ranger's daily
action. Danger, in a thousand forms, beset him at every step--he defied
mutilation, death by fire and lingering torture. The number of his
enemies, he never counted, until after he had conquered them--the power
of the tribe, or the prowess of the warrior, was no element in his
calculations. Where he could strike first and most effectually, was his
only inquiry. Securing an avenue for retreat was no part of his
strategy--for he had never an intention or thought of returning, except
as a victor. "Keeping open his communications," either with the rear or
the flanks, had no place in his system; "combined movements" he seldom
attempted, for he depended for victory, upon the force he chanced to
have directly at hand. The distance from his "base of operations" he
never measured; for he carried all his supplies about his person, and he
never looked for reinforcements. Bridges and wagon-roads he did not
require, for he could swim all the rivers, and he never lost his way in
the forest. He carried his artillery upon his shoulder, his tactics were
the maxims of Indian warfare, and his only drill was the "ball-practice"
of the woods. He was his own commissary, for he carried his "rations" on
his back, and replenished his havresack with his rifle. He needed no
quartermaster; for he furnished his own "transportation," and selected
his own encampment--his bed was the bosom of mother-earth, and his tent
was the foliage of an oak or the canopy of heaven. In most
cases--especially in battle--he was his own commander, too; for he was
impatient of restraint, and in savage warfare knew his duty as well as
any man could instruct him. Obedience was no part of his
nature--subordination was irksome and oppressive. In a word, he was an
excellent soldier, without drill, discipline or organization.
He was as active as he was brave--as untiring as he was fearless.
A corps of rangers moved so rapidly, as apparently to double its
numbers--dispersing on the Illinois or Missouri, and reassembling on the
Mississippi, on the following day--traversing the Okan timber to-day,
and fording the Ohio to-morrow. One of them, noted among the Indians for
desperate fighting, and personally known for many a bloody meeting,
would appear so nearly simultaneously in different places, as to acquire
the title of a "Great Medicine;" and instances have been known, where as
many as three distinct war-parties have told of obstinate encounters
with the same men in one day! Their apparent ubiquity awed the Indians
more than their prowess.
General Benjamin Howard, who, in eighteen hundred and thirteen resigned
the office of governor of Missouri, and accepted the appointment of
brigadier-general, in command of the militia and rangers of Missouri
and Illinois, at no time, except for a few weeks in eighteen hundred and
fourteen, had more than one thousand men under his orders: And yet, with
this inconsiderable force, he protected a frontier extending from the
waters of the Wabash, westward to the advanced settlements of
Missouri--driving the savages northward beyond Peoria, and intimidating
them by the promptitude and rapidity of his movements.
Our government contributed nothing to the defenc
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