Western Characters Part 5

"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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PIONEER.]

Next, in chronological order, after the missionary, came the military adventurer--of which cla.s.s 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 pa.s.s over it for the present, and hasten on to the _Pioneer_.

Of this cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sumed 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 acc.u.mulating 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 pa.s.sion, "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 ent.i.tled.

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 trespa.s.sers 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 a.s.sign 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 b.u.t.ton 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 "G.o.d-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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sistance 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 excis.e.m.e.n.

a.s.sessments 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 a.n.a.lyzing 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 fort.i.tude; and he respected and admired even a "pale face," who emulated his endurance.

But fort.i.tude is only pa.s.sive 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 acc.u.mulate, 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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ma.s.sacre at Montreal, or the many "fruitless cruelties" of the b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sage 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 fict.i.tious "wrongs" of a turbulent and b.l.o.o.d.y 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, G.o.d made the earth, this continent was vacant--uninhabited. And--granting that the savage was in possession--for this is his only ground of t.i.tle, as, indeed, it is the foundation of all primary t.i.tle--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 G.o.d 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 a.n.a.lyze--the characteristics of the cla.s.s 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 b.l.o.o.d.y-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 circ.u.mstances, 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 a.s.sist 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 "c.o.o.n-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 a.s.sumed 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.