The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 12

"I don't know about breaking the Sabbath fifty per cent. I am willing to plead limited liability with a hundred others in the street-car."

Just then a man drove up with a buggy who had been sent for us. It seemed to take a load off my friend's mind. Now, there are men who would condemn a man for this, and say he should walk; and I know men who walk ten and twelve miles on Sunday. If that is not work I do not know what is. This month I saw an article in a paper condemning the young people who had to ride on Sunday to reach their meeting. The writer would not have them travel, even in an emergency. I wonder when the Pilgrims would have reached us on that basis. It is a far cry from the Mayflower to the Lucania. Is the Sabbath greater than its Lord? I was told of one preacher who was so particular that he sent word that no appointment must be made for him that involved street-car or railway travel. So a horse was driven ten miles to fetch him, and ten miles to take him back. When the horse reached his stable that night he had travelled forty miles to keep this man from breaking the Sabbath. Who gave these brethren the right to work their horses this way, and break the Sabbath? If Moses had a man stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, what right have you to be toasting your shins over a register that your man-servant must keep going evenly or catch it? In short, what right has any man to tamper with one of the commandments to suit himself, and place the remainder higher than love to his neighbor?

So long as the frontier Sabbath is what it is, it will be lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. Far be it from me to undervalue the Sabbath.

I value it highly, but I value freedom more. The man who rides in his carriage to church has no right to condemn my riding in the street-car, and he who rides in the street-car has no right to judge the man on the train. "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" "One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind."

"Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES, SANTA Fe, NEW MEXICO.

_Page 220._]

XXII.

THE FRONTIER OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

The South-west is different from all other parts of the country. The Anglo-Saxon is everywhere else in the ascendant. Here the Latin races are dominant. It is astonishing to find so many oldest churches all over the country. The superlative is a national trait. We have either the oldest or the youngest, the greatest or the smallest, or the only thing in the world. However, it is almost certain that the oldest church and house are to be found in Santa Fe. The Church of San Miguel was built seventy years before the landing of the Pilgrims, and the house next to the church fifty years. It is the oldest settled, is the farthest behind, has the most church-members per capita, and is the most ignorant and superst.i.tious part of the land. In one part Mormonism holds sway. In the other, Roman Catholicism of two centuries ago is still the prevailing religion.

It is a curious fact; but in this latter respect the North-east and the South-west almost join hands; for Lower Canada sent us Old France, and the South-west remains Old Spain. Here, as a man travels through Western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, only his Pullman car, and especially his Pullman porter, makes him realize that he is in America. In the eastern part of Texas the buzzards fill the air as they are hovering over the dead cattle. In the western part the dead cattle dry up and are blown away. Meat keeps indefinitely. There are no flies there, few insects, and the flowers are almost odorless, perhaps on account of the lack of insect-life. The very butcher-signs look strange. Instead of the fat, meek ox on a sign, we have a mad bull charging a Spanish matador.

Here comes a Mexican with a fifty-dollar hat on his head, and fifty cents would almost buy the rest of his clothes. He marches by with the strut of a drum-major. The best streets and the finest houses are often not homes. The plains look as if they would not keep a cow alive; and yet here in the South-west we find some of the finest grazing-lands in the world, although it takes twenty-five acres to feed a cow. But what of that? the acres are unlimited. The black-tailed antelope are seen running from your train; while the prairie-dog sits, like all small things, barking impudently, or, with a few electric twists of his little tail he dives below, where a rattlesnake and an owl keep his house in order, i.e., keep the population down so that the progeny would not kill all the gra.s.s, and so starve at last; with himself would go the cattle; so the economy of nature keeps up its reputation everywhere. As some have said, when salmon are scarce hens' eggs become dear; for the otter takes to the land and kills the rabbits, and the weasel, finding his stores low, visits the hen-coops--and up goes the price of eggs.

The minute-man in the South-west has a big field. He is often hundreds of miles from his next church. He preaches to the cowboys one day, to the Digger Indians or the blanket variety the next. He is off among the miners, and sometimes in less than four hours he must change from the cold mountain air to the heat which requires two roofs to the house in order to keep it cool enough. He eats steak that has come one thousand miles from the East, although ten thousand cattle are all about him. He pa.s.ses a million cows, and yet has to use condensed milk for his coffee or go without.

He finds himself in the midst of the grandest scenery on the continent. In his long journey he often finds himself sleeping on the plain outside the teepees of his red brother, rather risking the tarantulas, lizards, and rattlers that may come, than the thousands of smaller nuisances that are sure to come if he goes under cover. He is in the midst of a past age; and as he visits the pueblos, he would not be surprised to see De Soto come forth, so Spanish are his surroundings. The adobe building prevails everywhere, cool in summer, warm in winter, and in this climate well nigh indestructible.

The priesthood are centuries removed from those of the East. Here he will meet with men living in the Middle Ages, beating their backs with cactus until the blood streams, and often dying under self-inflicted blows. We often hear of America having no ruins, no ancient history.

This may be so in regard to time; but in regard to conditions we are in the time of Boadicea of the ancient Briton, and in the South-west are ruins of buildings that were inhabited when William was crowned at Westminster. So great are the States of the South-west that the counties are larger than New England States; and you may be stuck in a blizzard in northern Texas, while people in the southern portion are eating oranges out-doors with the oleanders for shade-trees.

I will close this chapter with a description given me in part by the Rev. E. Lyman Hood, who was Superintendent of Missions in the South-west until he was broken down by his arduous toil.

One evening he found himself at the opening of an immense canon, on the lofty tops of which the snow was perpetual. Sheltered beneath its mighty walls, flowers of semi-tropical luxuriance flourished, and birds of gorgeous plumage flitted here and there; while humming-birds, like b.a.l.l.s of metal, darted among the flowers. A little silver streamlet ran down the canon until lost in the blue distance; and here our minute-man stood lost in reverent admiration. The sun was going down in pomp of purple and gold; and the little stream changed its colors with the clouds, until in a moment it became black; a cold wind came down the canon, the flowers closed their petals, and with a twitter here and there the birds went to roost. And then our minute-man looked up aloft, where the sun still gilded the great canon's shoulders until they glowed like molten metal, and kissed the forehead of an Indian who stood like a statue waiting the sun's setting. Another moment and it was gone, and our Indian stood like a silhouette against the sky, when he at once wheeled toward the east, and, stooping, lit a fire; then drawing his ragged blanket around him, prepared to watch all night until the sun came up in the eastern horizon, watching for the return of his Saviour Montezuma. And thus far he has watched in vain.

A strange fact,--a poor tribe still waiting and watching for a Saviour in a land where there are over twenty million church-members, some of whom ride past him in their palace-cars to take a palatial steamer, and travel thousands of miles to find a soul to save. Over twelve denominations striving in Mexico to win souls, and scarcely a thing done for the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in our own land, and over forty tribes of Indians. And all this in the year of our Lord 1895.

XXIII.

DARK PLACES OF THE INTERIOR.

I want to picture out in this chapter one of the hardest fields the minute-man has to labor in. I think there are greater inequalities to be found in our land than in any other, at least a greater variety of social conditions. Times have changed much in the last twenty-five years. The consolidating of great business concerns has made a wide gulf between the employer and employee such as never before existed outside of slavery.

It is not true to say that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer; for the poor could not be poorer. There never was a time when men were not at starvation-point in some places. We have to-day thousands of men who never saw the owner of the property that they work upon. There is a fearful distance between the gentlemen and ladies in their four-in-hand turnout and the begrimed men who come up into the daylight out of our great coal-mines, or those who handle the heavy iron ore. I have seen men whose hands could be pared like a horse's hoof without drawing the blood, who were going back to Germany to stay,--men who had been lured over by the promise of big wages, who, as they said, averaged "feefty cent a day." I have seen sixty and seventy men living in a big hut, with two or three women cooking their vegetables in a great iron kettle, and dipping them out with tin ladles. I have seen little boys by the score working for a few cents a day, and four, five, and seven families living in one house, and where all the pay was store-pay, and did not average five dollars a week, and where it was not safe to walk at night, and murder was common,--and you could find within a few miles cities where there were men who would say that the whole of the above was a lie.

When I first talked on these regions, I could think of nothing else; and some good men advised me not to tell of what I had seen. It smacked too much of socialism, they said. I remarked, "You will hear of starving, bloodshed, and riot from that region before long." And so they did. The State troops were called out more than once. And here in the midst of this misery our minute-man went. Before the mines were opened, a little stream of clear water flowed between green banks and through flowery meads; cattle dotted the meadows, and peaceful farm-houses nestled under the trees. But all this was soon changed.

The green sod was turned up, the clear stream became a muddy, discolored torrent, and wretched little houses took the place of the farm-houses. Low saloons abounded. Our minute-man was warned that his life would be in danger. On the other hand, he was offered three times the salary he was getting as a missionary if he would become a foreman. But the man is one of the last of that n.o.ble army of pioneers that count not their life dear.

When our man tried to find a place to preach, there was none save an old dilapidated schoolhouse. The window-sashes were broken, the panels of the door gone. The place was beyond a little stream, which had to be crossed upon a log. It was nearly dark before his audience arrived.

The women, much as they wanted to go, were ashamed of the daylight.

Many of the young girls had on but one garment. The men were a rough-looking lot. The place was lighted with candles in lanterns, the flames of which fluttered with the draughts, and gutters of tallow ran down. What a contrast to the church a few miles away, where the seats were cushioned, and a quartet choir sang, "The Earth is the Lord's,"

with a magnificent organ accompaniment! What a gulf between these poor souls and those who came in late, not because of poor clothes, but because of fine ones! And yet I suppose they did not perceive it, perhaps they did not know. But it does seem to me that when men hear that "The Earth is the Lord's," it ought to make them think how small a proportion of earth they will make when mingled with the dust from which they came.

But to return to our meeting. Our man is not from the colleges, but is a rare man (don't misunderstand me. Nothing is so much needed to-day as well-educated men; and I am not one of those who think that it spoils a razor to sharpen it); and he has not spoken long before the tears fall fast, and many a poor fellow who once sang the songs of Zion comes home to his Father's house. Still, they tell our man it is not safe for him to come; but he does; and under great difficulties he builds a church and parsonage. And then he tries to have a reading-room. Naturally he thinks that the man who is making so much money out of the earth will help him. He offers twenty-five dollars, which our minute-man spurns. He is going to give double that out of his meagre salary, and tells the man so; but the man's excuse is that he pays four hundred dollars a year towards the church music. Think of that. And he pays to hear that "The Earth is the Lord's," and still does not hear. The little room is built and furnished without his help, and saves many a poor fellow from drink.

Our man has several other places to preach in, each worse than the other. In one town it is on Sunday afternoon, but he has to wait for the room until the dance is over. In another town he builds a church; and to this day may be seen the bullet-holes near the pulpit, where men have shot at him, hoping to kill their best friend. As he is pa.s.sing along the street one day with a companion, a man runs across the road from a saloon, plunges a knife into the heart of the man who is walking with our minute-man, and he drops dead in his tracks. Amid such scenes as this our hero still works. He has been the means of stopping more than one strike; and one would think that the rich companies would at least give more than they do to help these men at the front, who would make Pinkerton's men and State troops unnecessary.

In the meantime the men are here. Can we expect that these men, coming from their huts on the Danube,--seeing our fine houses, the American workingmen's children well clothed and attending school,--are going to be content? Do we want them to be? The worst thing that could happen to them and ourselves would be for them to be content with their present condition. No greater danger could menace the Republic than thousands of Europeans coming here to live, and remaining in their present condition. We condemn them for coming and underworking our men; and we condemn them when they want more, and are bound to get it.

Many say, "Keep them out." But there are several things in the way.

Rich corporations, mine-owners, and railways are bound to get them.

And would you keep the men from which we sprung in overcrowded Europe, while we have a continent with but seventy millions? Is there any real love in that which sends a missionary to Europe to save souls on the Don, that will not let their bodies live on the Hudson? Do we believe that "The Earth is the Lord's"? Let me close this chapter with a quotation from Roger Williams's letter to the Town of Providence:--

"I have only one motion and pet.i.tion which I earnestly pray the town to lay to heart, as ever they look for a blessing from G.o.d on the town, in your families, your corn and cattle, and your children after you. It is this, that after you have got over the black brook of some soul bondage yourselves, you tear not down the bridge after you, by leaving no small pittance for distressed souls that come after you."

XXIV.

THE DANGEROUS NATIVE CLa.s.sES.

We hear much about the dangerous foreigners that come to us, but little about the dangerous native. There is not a type, whether of poverty or ignorance, but what we can match it. Leaving out the negro, we have over ninety per cent Anglo-Saxon in the South. Here we find a strange lot of paradoxes,--the most American, the most ignorant, the most religious, the most superst.i.tious, and the most lawless. Take the lowest cla.s.s of Crackers, and we have the whole of the above combined, with millions of mountain whites to match. Yet in this same South land are the most gentlemanly, and the most lady-like, and the most hospitable people in the country. The Cracker cla.s.ses are descendants of the English, but what kind of English? The offscourings of prison and dockyards, sent over to work on the plantations before slave labor was introduced.

The mountain whites are the descendants of the Scotch-Irish. As many people seem to think this means a Scotch parent on one side and an Irish upon the other, it may be well to state that the Scotch-Irish are the descendants of Scotch people who immigrated to Ireland. But it ought not to be forgotten that the mountain whites are the descendants of Scotch-Irish of two centuries ago, a very different people from the Scotch-Irish of to-day. Here in the mountains we find some three millions, often without schools, and waiting sometimes for years for a funeral sermon after the person has been buried. Towns can be found over seventy years old organized with a court-house and no church.

"Yes," they say, "the Methodists started one some years ago; but the Baptists threw the timber into the c.u.mberland, and sence then we ain't had no church."

Here one of our minute-men had two horses shot under him, and another missionary was nearly killed.

Here you may find families of twenty and more, living in a wretchedly constructed house, on bacon and corn-meal, hoe-cakes, and dodgers. I started once to stay over night in one of these houses. As we came near to the place, I found that my host was a school-teacher. He had taught twenty-two schools. He meant by this that he had taught that many years. The kitchen was as black as smoke could make it; the b.u.t.ter was stringy, caused by the cows eating cotton-seed; and my seat a plank worn smooth by use, with legs which stuck up through it, which would have been better had they been worn more. I suppose in some way I involuntarily showed my feelings; for the woman noticed it, and said, "Yer oughter put up with one night what we uns have ter all the time."

I said "That's the trouble; I could when I got used to it."

The room I slept in had a hole in the end that you could drive a span of horses through. It had been left for a chimney. As I found out that the day before a rattlesnake had come into the house, and the good woman had to defend herself with the fire-poker, I did not sleep so well as I might. The possibility of a rattler in the dark, and no poker handy, filled me with uneasy thoughts; but as people get up with the sun, the time pa.s.sed, and I was glad to get back to civilized life.

I noticed that the cotton was ridged up with concave rows of earth, which was covered with rank weeds. This was done to keep the water from running off too quickly. I asked whether sage would not hold the ridges as good as weeds. "Oh, yes!" they said, and it brought a dollar a pound; but they had never thought of that.

Some of the States do not have seventy school-days in the year; and the whole South to-day has not as many public libraries as the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. A man needs perfect health to enjoy some of the pastoral work which he must do if he intends making a success among the mountain whites. One thing should never be forgotten. The poor whites of the mountains were loyal to the Union, and out from this type came the greatest American we have had, Abraham Lincoln.

Here, then, is plenty of material to work on,--families big enough to start a small church, and who do not send to England for pug-dogs for lack of progeny. Here is the rich fields, and here must the race be lifted before the millions of blacks can have a chance. Education must be pushed; and then will come a period of scepticism, for this people are fifty years behind the times.