Journeys Through Bookland Volume Vii Part 9

[35-14] _Uprist_ is an old form for _uprose_.

[35-15] It was this att.i.tude of the sailors toward the mariner's brutal act of killing the bird that brought punishment upon them; they cared nothing for the death of the harmless bird, but only for its effect upon them.

[35-16] Note the striking alliteration in these two lines. Read this stanza and the succeeding one aloud, and see how much easier it is to read these alliterative lines rapidly than it is any of the other six lines. Such relation of movement to meaning is one of the artistic things about the poem.

[35-17] How far northward had the ship returned?

[35-18] When such a definite picture is presented, close your eyes and try to see it. Did you ever see the sun when it seemed to have no radiance--when it was just a red circle?

[36-19] A rout is a confused and whirling dance.

[36-20] The death-fires are a sort of phosph.o.r.escent light, or will-o'-the-wisp, supposed to portend death.

[36-21] The shipmates try in this manner to fasten all the guilt on the ancient mariner and mark him alone for punishment.

[37-22] _Wist_ means _knew_.

[37-23] _Gramercy_ is an exclamation derived from the French _grand merci_, which means _great thanks_.

[37-24] In a comment on _The Ancient Mariner_ Coleridge says: "I took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from my companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me: 'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same."

[39-25] Gossameres are the cobweb-like films seen floating in the air in summer.

[39-26] Death and Life-in-Death have been casting dice for the crew, as to whether they shall die, or live and suffer. Life-in-Death has won the ancient mariner.

[40-27] This is Coleridge's beautiful way of telling us that in the tropics there is little or no twilight.

[40-28] _Clomb_ is an old form of _climbed_.

[40-29] That is, the waning moon. Did you ever see the moon "with one bright star within the nether tip"?

[41-30] In his notes on the poem, Coleridge stated that the last two lines of this stanza were composed by Wordsworth.

[42-31] Can you see any reason for the repet.i.tion in this line, and for the unusual length? Does it suggest the _load_ and the _weariness_ in the next line?

[43-32] This is the turning point of the poem. As soon as the mariner felt in his heart love for the "happy living things," the spell which had been laid on him for the wanton slaying of the albatross began to break. In the third stanza from the end of the poem, this point is clearly brought out.

[44-33] _Silly_ here means _helpless, useless_.

[44-34] _Sheen_ means bright, _glittering_.

[45-35] Note this fine alliterative line.

[49-36] The mariner has been thrown into a trance, for the ship is being driven northward faster than a human being could endure.

[50-37] A charnel-dungeon is a vault or chamber underneath or near a church, where the bones of the dead are laid.

[50-38] The sin is finally expiated.

[52-39] The holy rood is the holy cross.

[52-40] "The silence sank like music on my heart," is among the beautiful lines that you will often hear quoted.

[53-41] An ivy-tod is a thick clump of ivy.

[57-42] A friend of Coleridge's once told him that she admired _The Ancient Mariner_, but had a serious fault to find with it--it had no moral. Do you think, as you read this stanza, that her objection was a valid one?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE BLACK HAWK TRAGEDY[58-1]

_By_ EDWIN D. COE

I do not pose as an Indian lover. In fact the instincts and impressions of my early life bent me in the opposite direction. My father's log house, in which I was born, stood within a few rods of Rock River, about forty-five miles west of this city. The stream was the boundary line, in a half-recognized way, between two tribes of Indians, and a common highway for both. I well remember their frequent and unheralded entries into our house, and their ready a.s.sumption of its privileges. I can see them yet--yes, and smell them, too. In some unventilated chamber of my rather capacious nostrils an abiding breath of that intense, all-conquering odor of fish, smoke and muskrat, which they brought with them, still survives. I well remember their impudent and sometimes bullying demeanor; and the horror of one occasion I shall never forget, when a stalwart Winnebago, armed with a knife, tomahawk and gun, seized my mother by the shoulder as she stood by her ironing table, and shook her because she said she had no bread for him. I wrapped myself in her skirts and howled in terror. Having been transplanted from the city to the wilderness, she had a mortal fear of Indians, but never revealed it to them. She had nerve, and resolution as well; and this particular fellow she threatened with her hot flat-iron and drove him out of the house. So you see I have no occasion for morbid or unnatural sympathy with any of the Indian kind.

Black Hawk was born in 1767 at Saukenuk. His father was the war chief of the nation and a very successful leader. Young Black Hawk inherited his martial spirit and conducted himself so valorously in battle that he was recognized as a brave when only fifteen years old. He was enthusiastic and venturesome, and before the close of his twentieth year had led several expeditions against the Osages and Sioux. It was his boast that he had been in a hundred Indian battles and had never suffered defeat.

Life pa.s.sed pleasantly with Black Hawk and his tribe at Saukenuk for many years. The location combined all the advantages possible for their mode of existence. When Black Hawk was taken to Washington after his capture in 1832, he made an eloquent and most pathetic speech at one of the many interviews which he held with the high officials of the government. He said: "Our home was very beautiful. My house always had plenty. I never had to turn friend or stranger away for lack of food.

The island was our garden. There the young people gathered plums, apples, grapes, berries and nuts. The rapids furnished us fish. On the bottom lands our women raised corn, beans and squashes. The young men hunted game on the prairie and in the woods. It was good for us. When I see the great fields and big villages of the white people, I wonder why they wish to take our little territory from us."

We are apt to regard the agriculture of the Indians as of small moment, but the Sauks and Foxes cultivated three thousand acres on the peninsula between the Rock and the Mississippi. Black Hawk said it was eight hundred acres, but the measurement of the cornfields shows that the area was nearly four times that. Of this the Foxes, who were much the smaller and weaker tribe, farmed five hundred acres; they also occupied considerable land on the opposite side of the Mississippi, where the city of Davenport now stands. These lands were all fenced with posts and rails, the latter being held in place by bark withes. The barrier was sufficient to keep the ponies out of the corn, but their lately acquired razor-back hogs gave them more trouble. The work of preparing a field for their planting involved much labor. The women heaped the ground into hills nearly three feet high, and the corn was planted in the top for many successive years without renewing the hills. Accordingly a field was much more easily prepared on the mellow bottom lands than on the tough prairie sod. They raised three kinds of corn: a sweet corn for roasting ears, a hard variety for hominy and a softer for meal. They also cultivated beans, squashes, pumpkins, artichokes and some tobacco.

The Sauks at one time sold three thousand bushels of corn to the government officials at Fort Crawford for their horses. The Winnebagoes at Lake Koshkonong sold four thousand bushels of corn to General Atkinson when he was pursuing Black Hawk in 1832. The hundreds of acres of corn hills still visible about the latter lake show how extensively that region was inhabited and farmed by the Indians.

Aside from the devastating wars which the tribe carried on with their new enemies west of the great river, whereby their numbers were steadily reduced, no serious shadow fell upon their life at and about Rock Island till the year 1804. A French trader had established himself a few miles below on the Mississippi. The young braves and squaws delighted in visiting his place and were always sure of a dance in the evening. One night in that year an Indian killed one of the habitues of the place, the provocation being unbearable. A few weeks after demand was made that he be given up, and he was at once surrendered and taken to Saint Louis.

Soon after, his relative, Quashquamme, one of the sub-chiefs of the tribe, and four or five other Sauks went to Saint Louis to work for his release. A bargain was made to the effect that a tract of land including parts of Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois, comprising fifty million acres, be ceded to the government, the consideration being the cancellation of a debt of $2,400, which the Indians owed trader Choteau, of Saint Louis, and a perpetual annuity of $1,000 thereafter. It was also tacitly agreed that the imprisoned Indian should be released. This part of the program was carried out, but the poor fellow had not gone three hundred feet before he was shot dead. We are sorry to say that General William Henry Harrison was the chief representative of the government in this one-sided treaty, though, of course, he knew nothing of the predetermined killing of the Indian prisoner. This treaty, made without due authority on the part of Quashquamme, was not accepted by the Sauks till 1816, when its ratification was made a side issue in an agreement which the government negotiated between the Sauks and the Osages or Sioux.

Black Hawk always claimed that he had never consented to the sale of Saukenuk; and it is but fair to Quashquamme to say that he always insisted that his cession of land went only to the Rock--and therefore did not include Saukenuk--and not to the Wisconsin, as the whites a.s.serted. I have been thus explicit, as the disagreement about this treaty led to the final conflict between the Sauks and the whites.

One proposition of the original paper was that the Indians should be allowed to occupy all the territory as aforetime until it was surveyed and sold to settlers. Along in the '20's the frontier line rapidly approached the great river; and about 1823, when still fifty miles distant, squatters began to settle on the Indian lands at Saukenuk.

Protest was made against this to the commander of Fort Armstrong (which was built on Rock Island in 1816) and to the government, but without avail.

The squatters, relying for protection on the troops near by, perpetrated outrages of the most exasperating character. They turned their horses into the Indian cornfields, threw down fences, whipped one young woman who had pulled a few corn suckers from one of their fields to eat, while on her way to work, and finally two ruffians met Black Hawk himself one day as he was hunting on the river bottom and accused him of shooting their hogs. He indignantly denied it, but they s.n.a.t.c.hed his rifle from his hand, wrenched the flint out, and then beat the old man with a hickory stick till the blood ran down his back, and he could not leave his house for days. Doubtless this indignity surpa.s.sed all other outrages in the proud old chief's estimation, and we can imagine him sitting in his cabin on the highest ground in the village, looking over the magnificent landscape, brooding upon the blight which had fallen upon the beautiful home of his tribe, and harboring thoughts of revenge.

Still he refrained from open resistance till the spring of 1831.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLACKHAWK AND THE TWO RUFFIANS]

It was the custom of the tribe to spend the winter months hunting and trapping in northeastern Missouri, returning in the spring to Saukenuk.

This time they found the whites more aggressive than ever. They had fenced in the most of the cultivated land, plowed over the burying ground, and destroyed a number of houses. They received the Indians with hostile looks, but Black Hawk at last did what he ought to have done at first, ordered the squatters all off the peninsula. He then went to an island where a squatter sold liquor and had paid no heed to his entreaties not to sell to the Indians, and with a party of his braves knocked in the heads of the whisky barrels and poured their contents on the ground. The liquor vendor immediately hurried to Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, with his tale of woe and represented that Black Hawk was devastating the country with torch and tomahawk.

Governor Reynolds at once issued a flamboyant proclamation calling for volunteers, and asked the United States authorities at Saint Louis for aid. A considerable body of regulars was dispatched up the river and reached Saukenuk before the volunteers. Black Hawk told his people to remain in their houses, and not to obey any orders to leave Saukenuk, for they had not sold their home and had done no wrong. But when he saw the undisciplined, lawless and wildly excited volunteers, who came a few days later, he told the people that their lives were in danger and they must go. Accordingly the next morning at an early hour all embarked in their canoes and crossed the Mississippi. They were visited there by the officials, and Black Hawk entered into an agreement to remain west of the river.

Black Hawk's band spent the fall and winter, after their expulsion from Saukenuk, in great unhappiness and want. It was too late to plant corn, and they suffered from hunger. Their winter's hunt was unsuccessful, as they lacked ammunition, and many of their guns and traps had gone to pay for the whisky they had drunk before Black Hawk broke up the traffic. In the meantime Black Hawk was planning to recover Saukenuk by force. He visited Canada, but received little encouragement there, except sympathy and the a.s.surance that his cause was just.