Woman on the American Frontier Part 32

Some forty years since, a capitalist who now counts his fortune by the tens of millions, informed his wife that if he was only in possession of five thousand dollars, he could derive great gains from a business into which he designed to enter. To his astonishment she immediately brought him a bank book showing a balance of five thousand dollars, the savings of many years, and told him to use it as he thought best. Those h.o.a.rdings judiciously invested laid the foundation of one of the largest properties owned by a single man upon this continent.

As a conserving agency, the spirit and influence of woman is of course most strongly exerted within the circle of her own family. Here she knits the ties that binds that circle together, and gathers and holds the material and moral resources which make the household what it is. When disaster comes, it is her study to prevent disintegration and keep the home uninjured and unbroken.

While a family were flying from a ferocious band of tories during the Revolution, in the confusion, one of the children was left behind. It was the eldest daughter who first discovered the fact, and only she dared to return and save her little brother from their blood-thirsty enemies. It was dark and rainy, and imminent danger would attend the effort to rescue the lad. But the brave girl hastened back; reached the house still in possession of the British; begged the sentinel to let her enter; and though repeatedly repulsed doubled the earnestness of her entreaties, and finally gained admittance. She found the child in his chamber, hastened down stairs and pa.s.sing the sentry, fled with the shot whizzing past her head, and with the child soon joined the rest of the family.

When deprived of her natural protector and left the sole guardian of her children she becomes a prodigy of watchful care.

Some years since, one of the small islands on our coast was inhabited by a single poor family. The father was taken suddenly ill. There was no physician. The wife, on whom every labor for the household devolved, was sleepless in care and tenderness by the bedside of her suffering husband.

Every remedy in her power to procure was administered, but the disease was acute, and he died.

Seven young children mourned around the lifeless corpse. They were the sole beings upon that desolate spot. Did the mother indulge the grief of her spirit, and sit down in despair? No! she entered upon the arduous and sacred duties of her station. She felt that there was no hand to a.s.sist her in burying her dead. Providing, as far as possible, for the comfort of her little ones, she put her babe into the arms of the oldest, and charged the two next in age to watch the corpse of their father. She unmoored her husband's fishing boat, which, but two days before, he had guided over the seas to obtain food for his family. She dared not yield to those tender recollections which might have unnerved her arm. The nearest island was at the distance of three miles. Strong winds lashed the waters to foam. Over the loud billows, that wearied and sorrowful woman rowed, and was preserved. She reached the next island, and obtained the necessary aid.

With such energy did her duty to her desolate babes inspire her, that the voyage which, depended upon her individual effort was performed in a shorter time than the returning one, when the oars were managed by two men, who went to a.s.sist in the last offices to the dead.

But female influence in the way of conservation, is not bounded by the narrow limits of home, family, and kindred. It is also seen on a wider field and in the preservation of other interests. The property, health, and life of strangers often become the object of woman's careful guardianship.

Nearly thirty years since a heavily freighted vessel set sail from an English port bound for the Pacific coast. After a voyage of more than three months it reached the Sandwich Islands, and after remaining there a week, sailed in the direction of Oregon and British Columbia.

When two days out from Honolulu, the captain and mate were taken down with fever, which not only confined them, to their berths, but by its delirium incapacitated them from giving instructions respecting the navigation of the vessel. The third officer, upon whom the command devolved, was shortly afterwards washed overboard and lost in a gale. The rest of the crew were of the most common and ignorant cla.s.s of sailors, not even knowing how to read and write. The heavens, overspread with clouds which obscured both the sun and the stars, was a sealed book to the man at the wheel, and the good ship, at the mercy of the winds and waves, was drifting they knew not whither.

At this juncture the wife of the captain stepped to the front, and boldly a.s.sumed the command. She had been reared on Cape Cod, and was a woman of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. Her husband, in the early stages of his illness, had thoughtfully instructed her in the rudiments of navigation, and foreseeing that such knowledge might be the means of enabling her to steer the ship safely to port, she diligently employed every moment that she could spare from the necessary attendance on the sick men, in studying the manual of navigation. She soon learned how to calculate lat.i.tude and longitude. When the third officer was washed overboard she knew that all must then depend upon her, and at once put herself in communication with the steersman, and instructed him as to their true position. The men all recognized the value of her knowledge, and obeyed her as if she had been their chief from the outset. The correctness of her calculations was soon proved, and such was her firmness and kindness while in command, that the sailors came to regard her as a superior being who had been sent from heaven to help them out of their dangers. The clouds at length cleared away, the wind subsided, and after a voyage of twenty-five days, the ship made the mouth of the Columbia River. Meanwhile by diligent nursing she had also contributed to save the lives of her husband and his second officer. But for her knowledge and firmness it was acknowledged by all that the ship would have been lost; and a large salvage was allowed her by the owners as a reward for her energy and intelligence in saving the vessel and its valuable cargo.

Another of these guardians on the deep was Mrs. Spalding, of Georgia. She was one of those patriot women of the Revolution of whom we have already spoken. The part she bore in that struggle, and the anxieties to which she had been necessarily subjected, so impaired her health that some years after the termination of the war an ocean voyage and a European climate was prescribed for her restoration.

While crossing the Atlantic a large ship painted black, carrying twelve guns, was seen to windward running across their course. She was evidently either a privateer or a pirate. As there was no hope of out-sailing her, it was judged best to boldly keep the vessel on her course, trusting that its size and appearance might deter the strange craft from attacking it.

Mr. Spalding, realizing the danger of their situation, and not daring to trust himself with an interview till the crisis was past, requested the captain to go below and do what he could for the security of his family.

The captain on visiting the cabin, found that Mrs. Spalding had placed her daughter-in-law and the other inmates of the cabin, for safety, in the two state-rooms, filling the berths with the cots and bedding from the outer cabin. She had then taken her station beside the scuttle, which led from the outer cabin to the magazine, with two buckets of water. Having noticed that the two cabin-boys were heedless, she had determined herself to keep watch over the magazine. She did so till the danger was past. The captain took in his light sails, hoisted his boarding nettings, opened his ports, and stood on upon his course. The privateer waited till the ship was within a mile, then fired a gun to windward, and stood on her way. This ruse preserved the ship.

America, like England, has had her Grace Darlings, whose lives have been devoted to the rescue of drowning sailors. Such a life was that of Kate Moore, who some years since resided on a secluded island in the Sound.

Disasters frequently occur to vessels which are driven round Montauk Point, and sometimes in the Sound when they are homeward bound; and at such times she was always on the alert. She had so thoroughly cultivated the sense of hearing, that she could distinguish amid the howling storm the shrieks of the drowning mariners, and thus direct a boat, which she had learned to manage most dexterously, in the darkest night, to the spot where a fellow mortal was perishing. Though well educated and refined, she possessed none of the affected delicacy which characterizes too many town-bred misses, but, adapting herself to the peculiar exigencies of her father's humble yet honorable calling, she was ever ready to lend a helping hand, and shrank from no danger if duty pointed that way. In the gloom and terror of the stormy night, amid perils at all hours of the day and all seasons of the year, she launched her barque on the threatening waves, and a.s.sisted her aged and feeble father in saving the lives of twenty-one persons during the last fifteen years. Such conduct, like that of Grace Darling, to whom Kate Moore has been justly compared, needs no comment; it stamps its moral at once and indelibly upon the heart of every reader.

That great land ocean which stretches southwestward from Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri, to the fountains of the great rivers of Texas, has its perils to be guarded against as well as the stormy Atlantic. The voyagers over that expanse, as well as the mariners on the ocean, have not seldom owed their safety to the watchfulness of the prairie woman, who possesses, in common with her more cultivated and conventional sisters, a keen insight into character. This enables her to take early note of danger arising from the agency of bad men, and avoid it.

In 1858, a gentleman, accompanied by a Creek Indian as a guide, while escorting his sister to her husband, who was stationed at Fort Wayne, in the Indian Territory, near the southwest corner of Missouri, lost the trail, and the party found themselves, at nightfall, in an immense plain, which showed no signs of any habitation. Riding southward in the darkness, they saw, at last, a light twinkling in the distance, and, directing their course toward it, they discovered that it proceeded from the window of a lonely cabin. Knocking at the door, a man of singularly repulsive appearance responded to the summons--invited them in. Three rough-looking characters were sitting around the fire. The hospitalities of the cabin were bargained for, the horses and Indian being quartered in a shed, while the gentleman and his sister were provided with shakedowns in the two part.i.tions of the loft. The only inmates of the house besides the four whom we have mentioned was a girl some fifteen years of age, the daughter of one of the men. The lady, who was very much fatigued, was waited upon by this girl, who moved about as if she was in a dream. She was very pale, and had a look as if she was repressing some great fear, or was burdened by some terrible secret.

When she accompanied the lady to her sleeping apartment, she whispered to her hurriedly that she wished to speak to her brother, but begged her to call him without making any noise, as their lives depended upon their preserving silence. The lady, though astonished and terrified at such a revelation at that hour and place, checked the exclamation which rose to her lips, and, lifting the part.i.tion of cotton cloth which hung between the apartments, in a low tone asked her brother to come and hear what the girl had to say.

Her information was of a terrible character. They were, she said, in a den of murderers. She knew not how they could escape, unless by a miracle. It was the intention of the a.s.sa.s.sins, she believed, to murder and rob the whole party. Then, telling them to keep awake and be on their guard, she glided down to the room below. The brother and sister, listening sharply for a few minutes, heard the girl say in a loud tone, as if she intended the guests should hear her, that she was going out to the shed to look for her ear-ring, which she believed she had dropped there. They surmised she was going to put the Indian on his guard.

The gentleman had a pair of revolvers, and resolved to sell his life dearly, should he be attacked. Peering down into the room below, he saw, by the dim light, the ruffians making preparations for b.l.o.o.d.y work. Axes, knives, pistols, and guns had been brought out, and, in low whispers, the miscreants were evidently discussing the plan of attack. Sometime after midnight two of the men stole out of the door, with the obvious intention of killing the Indian, as the first act in the b.l.o.o.d.y drama. For a few minutes after their disappearance all was still, and then the silence was broken by two pistols shots in quick succession, followed by a triumphant war-whoop, which served to tell the story. The Indian, who was also armed with a revolver, must have shot his two a.s.sailants. The gentleman fired down the hatchway of the loft, killing one of the villains as he was running out of the door. The other, after shouting loudly for his partners in murder, took to his heels and fled away.

It appeared that the Indian guide, having been notified of his danger by the girl, rose from his bed and ensconced himself behind the shed. When the two men came out to attack him, he shot them both dead, and then waited, expecting that the others would have come out and furnished him with a new target.

The girl came out of her hiding place, whither she had run on hearing the shots, and looked sharply into the faces of the three dead ruffians, and finding that her father was not among them, expressed her joy that her unworthy parent had escaped the fate he richly deserved.

She told her story to the gentleman and lady while they were standing on guard and waiting for the morning to dawn. It appeared that she had been brought to the den a few days before by her father, and had become knowing to a murder which he and his companions had committed. Her mother, a pious woman, had instructed her daughter in the principles of Christianity, and had checked the evil propensities of her husband as long as she lived, but after her death, which had taken place shortly before the events we have been describing, all constraint had been removed from the evil propensities of the misguided man, and he joined the murderous gang who had just met their fate.

The natural goodness of the young girl's nature, fostered by the teachings of her guardian mother, thus exerted itself to save three lives from the a.s.sa.s.sin's stroke.

She gladly accompanied the lady on her route the following morning, and ever remained her attached _protege_.

Montana is one of the newest and wildest of our territories. Its position so far to the north and the peculiarly rugged face of the country, make it the fitting abode for the genius of the storms. Gathering their battalions the tempests sweep the summits and whirling round the flanks of the mountains, roar through the deep, lonely gorges with a sound louder than the ocean surges in a hurricane. The snows fill the ravines in drifts one hundred feet in depth, and such are the rigors of winter that the women who live in the fur-trading posts on that section of our northern border, are often carried across the mountains into Oregon or Washington territory, to shield them from the severities of the inclement season.

Late in the fall of 1868, a party consisting of thirty soldiers, while faring on through the mountains of that territory, were overtaken by one of these fearful snowstorms. The wind blew from the north directly in their faces, and the snow was soon piled in drifts which put a thorough embargo upon their further progress. Selecting the fittest place that could be found they pitched their tents on the snow, but hardly had they fastened the tent ropes when a blast lifted the tents in a moment, and whirled them into the sky. After a night of great suffering they found in the morning that all their mules were missing. They had probably strayed or been driven by the fury of the blast into a deep ravine south of the camp, where they had been buried beneath the enormous drifts.

The storm raged and the snow fell nearly all day. The rations were all gone, and progress against the wind and through the drifts was impossible.

Another night of such bitter cold and exposure would in all probability be their last.

They shouted in unison, but their shouts were drowned in the shrieks of the tempest. Towards night the storm lulled and again they shouted, but no sound came back but the sigh of the blast. Help! help! they cried. Unhappy men, could help come to them except from on high! What was left to them but to wind their martial cloaks around them and die like soldiers in the path of duty!

But what G.o.d-sent messenger is this coming through the drifts to meet them?

Not a woman! Yes, a poor, weak woman has heard their despairing cry and has hastened to succor them. Drenched and shivering with the storm she told them to follow her, and conducted them to a recess in the crags, where beneath an overhanging ledge and between projecting cliffs, a s.p.a.cious shelter was afforded them. They crowded in and warmed their numbed limbs before a great fire, while their preserver brought out her stores of food for the wayfarers.

But how could a woman be there in the heart of the mountains in the wintry weather, with only the storm to speak to her?

Her husband was a miner and she a brave and self-reliant woman. He had left her two weeks before to carry his treasure of gold dust to the nearest settlement She was all _alone! Alone_ in that rock-encompa.s.sed cabin in the realms of desolation, and still the heroine-guardian who had s.n.a.t.c.hed thirty fellow beings from the jaws of death.

Solitude is the theatre where untold thousands of devoted women--the brave, the good, the loving--for ages past have acted their unviewed and unrecorded dramas in the great battle of frontier life. Warriors and statesmen have their need of praise, and crowds surround them to throw the wreath of laurel or of bay upon their fainting brows, or to follow their plumed hea.r.s.e to the mausoleum which a grateful people has raised to their memory.

"Yet it may be a higher courage dwells In one meek heart which braves an adverse fate, Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells Warmed by the fight or cheered through high debate, The soldier dies _surrounded_, could he live _Alone_ to suffer and alone to strive?"

CHAPTER XXI.

WOMAN AS AN EDUCATOR ON THE FRONTIER

"Within the house, within the family the woman is all: she is the inspiring, moulding, embellishing, and controlling power." This terse description of woman's influence in the household applies with double force and significance to the position of the pioneer wife and mother. Her life in that position was one long battle, one long labor, one long trial, one long sorrow. Out of this varied, searching, continuous educational process came discipline of the body, of the mind, and of the whole moral nature. Adversity, her

"Stern, ragged nurse, whose rigid lore, With patience, many a year, she bore,"

taught her the practice of the heroic as well as of the gentler virtues; courage, labor, fort.i.tude, plain living, charity, sobriety, pity. In that school these virtues became habitual to her mind; because their practice was enforced by the stress of circ.u.mstances. Daily and nightly, in those homes on the frontier, there is some danger to be faced, some work to be done, some suffering to be borne or some self-denial to be exercised, some sufferer to be relieved or some sympathy to be extended.

There is a two-fold result from this educational process: first, the transmission, by the law of hereditary descent, of marked traits of character to her children, who show, in a greater or less degree, their mother's nature as developed in this severe school; second, woman becomes fitted to mould the character and instruct the mind of her children in the light of her own experience and discipline. Woman is the great educator of the frontier.

Within the first half of the 18th century, in that narrow belt of thinly settled country which follows the indentation of the Atlantic ocean, in lonely cabins in the forest, or on the, hill-slope, or by the unvisited sea, most of the representative men of our Revolutionary Era first saw the light, and were pillowed on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the frontier mothers.

The biographical records of our country are bright with the names of men--the brave, the wise, the good--who were born of pioneer women, and who inherited from them those traits which, in after life, made them great and ill.u.s.trious in the learned professions, in the camp, and in the councils of their native country. Who can doubt that the daughters, too, of those strong women, and the sisters of those eminent men, inheriting similar traits, exercised in their sphere as potent though silent an influence as did their brothers in the high stations to which they were called.

As by a strain of blood, inherited traits come down to succeeding generations, and, as from the breast of the mother the first elements of bodily strength are received, so from her lips are obtained those first principles of good and incentives of greatness which the sterner features and blunter feelings of the father are rarely sufficient to inculcate.

On parent knees, or later, in intervals of work or play, the soldier who fought to make us a free republic, and the statesman who laid deep and wide the foundations of our const.i.tution, acquired from their mothers' lips those lessons of virtue and duty which made their after careers so useful to their country and memorable in history.

We have said that woman was the great _educator_ on the frontier. She was something more than an _educator_, as the term is usually applied.

The teaching of the rudiments of school-learning was a fraction in the sum-total of her training and influence.

The means of moulding and guiding the minds of the young upon the border are very different from what they are in more settled states of society.