In Camp at Quindaro. The Poem of “The Kansas Emigrants.”
In Camp at Quindaro. The Poem of “The Kansas Emigrants.”
35
“Sing ’em,” said his brother-in-law, jokingly. Bryant was a good singer, and he at once tuned up with a fine baritone voice, recalling a familiar tune that fitted the measure of the poem.
“Oh, come now, Uncle Charlie,” cried Sandy, from his blankets in the corner of the tent, “that’s ‘Old Dundee.’ Can’t you give us something lively? Something not quite so solemn?”
“Not so solemn, my laddie? Don’t you know that this is a solemn age we are in, and a very solemn business we are on? You’ll think so before we get out of this Territory, or I am greatly mistaken.”
“Sandy’ll think it’s solemn, when he has to trot over a piece of newly broken prairie, carrying a pouchful of seed corn, dropping five grains in each sod,” said his father, laughing, as he blew out the candle.
“It’s a good song; a bully good song,” murmured the boy, turning over to sleep. “But it ought to be sung to something with more of a rig-a-jig-jig to it.” So saying, he was off to the land of dreams.
36CHAPTER IV.AMONG THE DELAWARES.
Quindaro was a straggling but pretty little town built among the groves of the west bank of the Missouri. Here the emigrants found a store or trading-post, well supplied with the goods they needed, staple articles of food and the heavier farming-tools being the first required. The boys looked curiously at the big breaking-plough that was to be of so much consequence to them in their new life and labors. The prairies around their Illinois home had been long broken up when they were old enough to take notice of such things; and as they were town boys, they had never had their attention called to the implements of a prairie farm.
“It looks like a plough that has been sat down on and flattened out,” was Oscar’s remark, after they had looked the thing over very critically. It had a long and massive beam, or body, and big, strong handles, suggestive of hard work to be done with it. “The nose,” as Sandy called the point of the share, was long, flat, and as sharp as a knife. It was this thin and knife-like point that was to cut into the virgin turf of the prairie, and, as the sod37was cut, the share was to turn it over, bottom side up, while the great, heavy implement was drawn along by the oxen.
“But the sod is so thick and tough,” said Oscar, “I don’t see how the oxen can drag the thing through. Will our three yoke of cattle do it?”
The two men looked at each other and smiled. This had been a subject of much anxious thought with them. They had been told that they would have difficulty in breaking up the prairie with three yoke of oxen; they should have four yoke, certainly. So when Mr. Howell explained that they must get another yoke and then rely on their being able to “change work” with some of their neighbors who might have cattle, the boys laughed outright.
“Neighbors!” cried Sandy. “Why, I didn’t suppose we should have any neighbors within five or ten miles. Did you, Oscar? I was in hopes we wouldn’t have neighbors to plague us with their pigs and chickens, and their running in to borrow a cupful of molasses, or last week’s newspaper. Neighbors!” and the boy’s brown face wore an expression of disgust.
“Don’t you worry about neighbors, Sandy,” said his uncle. “Even if we have any within five miles of us, we shall do well. But if there is to be any fighting, we shall want neighbors to join forces with us, and we shall find them handy, anyhow, in case of sickness or trouble. We cannot get along38in a new country like this without neighbors, and you bear that in mind, Master Sandy.”
The two leaders of this little flock had been asking about the prospects for taking up claims along the Kansas River, or the Kaw, as that stream was then generally called. To their great dismay, they had found that there was very little vacant land to be had anywhere near the river. They would have to push on still further westward if they wished to find good land ready for the pre-emptor. Rumors of fighting and violence came from the new city of Lawrence, the chief settlement of the free-State men, on the Kaw; and at Grasshopper Falls, still further to the west, the most desirable land was already taken up, and there were wild stories of a raid on that locality being planned by bands of Border Ruffians. They were in a state of doubt and uncertainty.
“There she is! There she is!” said Charlie, in a loud whisper, looking in the direction of a tall, unpainted building that stood among the trees that embowered the little settlement. Every one looked and saw a young lady tripping along through the hazel brush that still covered the ground. She was rather stylishly dressed, “citified,” Oscar said; she swung a beaded work-bag as she walked.
“Who is it? Who is it?” asked Oscar, breathlessly. She was the first well-dressed young lady he had seen since leaving Iowa.39
“Sh-h-h-h!” whispered Charlie. “That’s Quindaro. A young fellow pointed her out to me last night, just after we drove into the settlement. She lives with her folks in that tall, thin house up there. I have been looking for her to come out. See, she’s just going into the post-office now.”
“Quindaro!” exclaimed Sandy. “Why, I thought Quindaro was a squaw.”
“She’s a full-blooded Delaware Indian girl, that’s what she is, and she was educated somewhere East in the States; and this town is named for her. She owns all the land around here, and is the belle of the place.”
“She’s got on hoop-skirts, too,” said Oscar. “Just think of an Indian girl––a squaw––wearing hoops, will you?” For all this happened, my young reader must remember, when women’s fashions were very different from what they now are. Quindaro––that is to say, the young Indian lady of that time––was dressed in the height of fashion, but not in any way obtrusively. Charlie, following with his eyes the young girl’s figure, as she came out of the post-office and went across the ravine that divided the settlement into two equal parts, mirthfully said, “And only think! That is a full-blooded Delaware Indian girl!”
But, their curiosity satisfied, the boys were evidently disappointed with their first view of Indian civilization. There were no blanketed Indians loafing around in the sun and sleeping under the40shelter of the underbrush, as they had been taught to expect to see them. Outside of the settlement, men were ploughing and planting, breaking prairie, and building cabins; and while our party were looking about them, a party of Delawares drove into town with several ox-carts to carry away the purchases that one of their number had already made. It was bewildering to boys who had been brought up on stories of Black Hawk, the Prophet, and the Sacs and Foxes of Illinois and Wisconsin. A Delaware Indian, clad in the ordinary garb of a Western farmer and driving a yoke of oxen, and employing the same curious lingo used by the white farmers, was not a picturesque object.
“I allow that sixty dollars is a big price to pay for a yoke of cattle,” said Mr. Howell, anxiously. He was greatly concerned about the new purchase that must be made here, according to the latest information. “We might have got them for two-thirds of that money back in Illinois. And you know that Iowa chap only reckoned the price of these at forty-five, when we traded with him at Jonesville.”
“It’s no use worrying about that now, Aleck,” said his brother-in-law. “I know you thought then that we should need four yoke for breaking the prairie; but, then, you weren’t certain about it, and none of the rest of us ever had any sod-ploughing to do.”
“No, none of us,” said Sandy, with delightful41gravity; at which everybody smiled. One would have thought that Sandy was a veteran in everything but farming.
“I met a man this morning, while I was prowling around the settlement,” said Charlie, “who said that there was plenty of vacant land, of first-rate quality, up around Manhattan. Where’s that, father––do you know?Hedidn’t, but some other man, one of the New England Society fellows, told him so.”
But nobody knew where Manhattan was. This was the first time they had ever heard of the place. The cattle question was first to be disposed of, however, and as soon as the party had finished their breakfast, the two men and Charlie sallied out through the settlement to look up a bargain. Oscar and Sandy were left in the camp to wash the dishes and “clean up,” a duty which both of them despised with a hearty hatred.
“If there’s anything I just fairly abominate, it’s washing dishes,” said Sandy, seating himself on the wagon-tongue and discontentedly eyeing a huge tin pan filled with tin plates and cups, steaming in the hot water that Oscar had poured over them from the camp-kettle.
“Well, that’s part of the play,” answered Oscar, pleasantly. “It isn’t boy’s work, let alone man’s work, to be cooking and washing dishes. I wonder what mother would think to see us at it?” And a suspicious moisture gathered in the lad’s eyes,42as a vision of his mother’s tidy kitchen in far-off Illinois rose before his mind. Sandy looked very solemn.
“But, as daddy says, it’s no use worrying about things you can’t help,” continued the cheerful Oscar; “so here goes, Sandy. You wash, and I’ll dry ’em.” And the two boys went on with their disagreeable work so heartily that they soon had it out of the way; Sandy remarking as they finished it, that, for his part, he did not like the business at all, but he did not think it fair that they two, who could not do the heavy work, should grumble over that they could do. “The worst of it is,” he added, “we’ve got to look forward to months and months of this sort of thing. Father and Uncle Charlie say that we cannot have the rest of the family come out until we have a house to put them in––a log-cabin, they mean, of course; and Uncle Charlie says that we may not get them out until another spring. I don’t believe he will be willing for them to come out until he knows whether the Territory is to be slave or free. Do you, Oscar?”
“No, indeed,” said Oscar. “Between you and me, Sandy, I don’t want to go back to Illinois again, for anything; but I guess father will make up his mind about staying only when we find out if there is to be a free-State government or not. Dear me, why can’t the Missourians keep out of here and let us alone?”
“It’s a free country,” answered Sandy, sententiously.43“That’s what Uncle Charlie is always saying. The Missourians have just as good a right here as we have.”
“But they have no right to be bringing in their slavery with ’em,” replied the other. “That wouldn’t be a free country, would it, with one man owning another man? Not much.”
“That’s beyond me, Oscar. I suppose it’s a free country only for the white man to come to. But I haven’t any politics in me. Hullo! there comes the rest of us driving a yoke of oxen. Well, on my word, they have been quick about it. Uncle Charlie is a master hand at hurrying things, I will say,” added Sandy, admiringly. “He’s done all the trading, I’ll be bound!”
“Fifty-five dollars,” replied Bryant, to the boys’ eager inquiry as to the price paid for the yoke of oxen. “Fifty-five dollars, and not so very dear, after all, considering that there are more people who want to buy than there are who want to sell.”
“And now we are about ready to start; only a few more provisions to lay in. Suppose we get away by to-morrow morning?”
“Oh, that’s out of the question, Uncle Aleck,” said Oscar. “What makes you in such a hurry? Why, you have all along said we need not get away from here for a week yet, if we did not want to; the grass hasn’t fairly started yet, and we cannot drive far without feed for the cattle. Four yoke, too,” he added proudly.44
“The fact is, Oscar,” said his father, lowering his voice and looking around as if to see whether anybody was within hearing distance, “we have heard this morning that there was a raid on this place threatened from Kansas City, over the border. This is the free-State headquarters in this part of the country, and it has got about that the store here is owned and run by the New England Emigrant Aid Society. So they are threatening to raid the place, burn the settlement, run off the stock, and loot the settlers. I should like to have a company of resolute men to defend the place,” and Mr. Bryant’s eyes flashed; “but this is not our home, nor our fight, and I’m willing to ‘light out’ right off, or as soon as we get ready.”
“Will they come to-night, do you think?” asked Sandy, and his big blue eyes looked very big indeed. “Because we can’t get off until we have loaded the wagon and fixed the wheels; you said they must be greased before we travelled another mile, you know.”
It was agreed, however, that there was no immediate danger of the raid––certainly not that night; but all felt that it was the part of prudence to be ready to start at once; the sooner, the better. When the boys went to their blankets that night, they whispered to each other that the camp might be raided and so they should be ready for any assault that might come. Sandy put his “pepper-box” under his pillow, and Charlie had his trusty45rifle within reach. Oscar carried a double-barrelled shot-gun of which he was very proud, and that weapon, loaded with buckshot, was laid carefully by the side of his blankets. The two elders of the party “slept with one eye open,” as they phrased it. But there was no alarm through the night, except once when Mr. Howell got up and went out to see how the cattle were getting on. He found that one of the sentinels who had been set by the Quindaro Company in consequence of the scare, had dropped asleep on the wagon-tongue of the Dixon party. Shaking him gently, he awoke the sleeping sentinel, who at once bawled, “Don’t shoot!” to the great consternation of the nearest campers, who came flying out of their blankets to see what was the matter. When explanations had been made, all laughed, stretched themselves, and then went to bed again to dream of Missouri raiders.
The sun was well up in the sky next day, when the emigrants, having completed their purchases, yoked their oxen and drove up through the settlement and ascended the rolling swale of land that lay beyond the groves skirting the river. Here were camps of other emigrants who had moved out of Quindaro before them, or had come down from the point on the Missouri opposite Parkville, in order to get on to the road that led westward and south of the Kaw. It was a beautifully wooded country. When the lads admired the trees, Mr.46Howell somewhat contemptuously said: “Not much good, chiefly black-jacks and scrub-oaks”; but the woods were pleasant to drive through, and when they came upon scattered farms and plantations with comfortable log-cabins set in the midst of cultivated fields, the admiration of the party was excited.
“Only look, Uncle Charlie,” cried Sandy, “there’s a real flower-garden full of hollyhocks and marigolds; and there’s a rose-bush climbing over that log-cabin!” It was too early to distinguish one flower from another by its blooms, but Sandy’s sharp eyes had detected the leaves of the old-fashioned flowers that he loved so well, which he knew were only just planted in the farther northern air of their home in Illinois. It was a pleasant-looking Kansas home, and Sandy wondered how it happened that this cosey living-place had grown up so quickly in this new Territory. It looked as if it were many years old, he said.
“We are still on the Delaware Indian reservation,” replied his uncle. “The Government has given the tribe a big tract of land here and away up to the Kaw. They’ve been here for years, and they are good farmers, I should say, judging from the looks of things hereabouts.”
Just then, as if to explain matters, a decent-looking man, dressed in the rude fashion of the frontier, but in civilized clothes, came out of the cabin, and, pipe in mouth, stared not unkindly at the passing wagon and its party.47
“Howdy,” he civilly replied to a friendly greeting from Mr. Howell. The boys knew that “How” was a customary salutation among Indians, but “Howdy” struck them as being comic; Sandy laughed as he turned away his face. Mr. Bryant lingered while the slow-moving oxen plodded their way along the road, and the boys, too, halted to hear what the dark-skinned man had to say. But the Indian––for he was a “civilized” Delaware––was a man of very few words. In answer to Mr. Bryant’s questions, he said he was one of the chiefs of the tribe; he had been to Washington to settle the terms of an agreement with the Government; and he had lived in that cabin six years, and on the present reservation ever since it was established.
All this information came out reluctantly, and with as little use of vital breath as possible. When they had moved on out of earshot, Oscar expressed his decided opinion that that settler was no more like James Fenimore Cooper’s Indians than the lovely Quindaro appeared to be. “Why, did you notice, father,” he continued, “that he actually had on high-heeled boots? Think of that! An Indian with high-heeled boots! Why, in Cooper’s novels they wear moccasins, and some of them go barefoot. These Indians are not worthy of the name.”
“You will see more of the same sort before we get to the river,” said his father. “They have a48meeting-house up yonder, by the fork of the road, I am told. And, seeing that this is our first day out of camp on the last stage of our journey, suppose we stop for dinner at Indian John’s, Aleck? It will be a change from camp-fare, and they say that John keeps a good table.”
To the delight of the lads, it was agreed that they should make the halt as suggested, and noon found them at a very large and comfortable “double cabin,” as these peculiar structures are called. Two log-cabins are built, end to end, with one roof covering the two. The passage between them is floored over, and affords an open shelter from rain and sun, and in hot weather is the pleasantest place about the establishment. Indian John’s cabin was built of hewn logs, nicely chinked in with slivers, and daubed with clay to keep out the wintry blasts. As is the manner of the country, one of the cabins was used for the rooms of the family, while the dining-room and kitchen were in the other end of the structure. Indian John regularly furnished dinner to the stage passengers going westward from Quindaro; for a public conveyance, a “mud-wagon,” as it was called, had been put on this part of the road.
“What a tuck-out I had!” said Sandy, after a very bountiful and well-cooked dinner had been disposed of by the party. “And who would have supposed we should ever sit down to an Indian’s table and eat fried chicken, ham and eggs, and49corn-dodger, from a regular set of blue-and-white plates, and drink good coffee from crockery cups? It just beats Father Dixon’s Indian stories all to pieces.”
Oscar and Charlie, however, were disposed to think very lightly of this sort of Indian civilization. Oscar said: “If these red men were either one thing or the other, I wouldn’t mind it. But they have shed the gaudy trappings of the wild Indian, and their new clothes do not fit very well. As Grandfather Bryant used to say, they are neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring. They are a mighty uninteresting lot.”
“Well, they are on the way to a better state of things than they have known, anyhow,” said Charlie. “The next generation will see them higher up, I guess. But I must say that these farms don’t look very thrifty, somehow. Indians are a lazy lot; they don’t like work. Did you notice how all those big fellows at dinner sat down with us and the stage passengers, and the poor women had to wait on everybody? That’s Indian.”
Uncle Charlie laughed, and said that the boys had expected to find civilized Indians waiting on the table, decked out with paint and feathers, and wearing deerskin leggings and such like.
“Wait until we get out on the frontier,” said he, “and then you will see wild Indians, perhaps, or ‘blanket Indians,’ anyhow.”
“Blanket Indians?” said Sandy, with an interrogation point in his face.50
“Yes; that’s what the roving and unsettled bands are called by white folks. Those that are on reservations and earning their own living, or a part of it,––for the Government helps them out considerably,––are called town Indians; those that live in wigwams, or tepees, and rove from place to place, subsisting on what they can catch, are blanket Indians. They tell me that there are wild Indians out on the western frontier. But they are not hostile; at least, they were not, at last accounts. The Cheyennes have been rather uneasy, they say, since the white settlers began to pour into the country. Just now I am more concerned about the white Missourians than I am about the red aborigines.”
They were still on the Delaware reservation when they camped that evening, and the boys went into the woods to gather fuel for their fire.
They had not gone far, when Sandy gave a wild whoop of alarm, jumping about six feet backward as he yelled, “A rattlesnake!” Sure enough, an immense snake was sliding out from under a mass of brush that the boy had disturbed as he gathered an armful of dry branches and twigs. Dropping his burden, Sandy shouted, “Kill him! Kill him, quick!”
The reptile was about five feet long, very thick, and of a dark mottled color. Instantly, each lad had armed himself with a big stick and had attacked him. The snake, stopped in his attempt to get51away, turned, and opening his ugly-looking mouth, made a curious blowing noise, half a hiss and half a cough, as Charlie afterward described it.
“Take care, Sandy! He’ll spring at you, and bite you in the face! See! He’s getting ready to spring!”
And, indeed, the creature, frightened, and surrounded by the agile, jumping boys, each armed with a club, seemed ready to defend his life with the best weapons at his command. The boys, excited and alarmed, were afraid to come near the snake, and were dancing about, waiting for a chance to strike, when they were startled by a shot from behind them, and the snake, making one more effort to turn on himself, shuddered and fell dead.
Mr. Howell, hearing the shouting of the boys, had run out of the camp, and with a well-directed rifle shot had laid low the reptile.
“It’s only a blow-snake,” he said, taking the creature by the tail and holding it up to view. “He’s harmless. Well! Of course a dead snake is harmless, but when he was alive he was not the sort of critter to be afraid of. I thought you had encountered a bear, at the very least, by the racket you made.”
“He’s a big fellow, anyhow,” said Oscar, giving the snake a kick, “and Sandy said he was a rattlesnake. I saw a rattler once when we lived in Dixon. Billy Everett and I found him down on the bluff below the railroad; and he was spotted all over. Besides, this fellow hasn’t any rattles.”52
“The boys have been having a lesson in natural history, Charlie,” said Mr. Howell to his brother-in-law, as they returned with him to camp, loaded with firewood; Sandy, boy-like, dragging the dead blow-snake after him.
53CHAPTER V.TIDINGS FROM THE FRONT.
Supper was over, a camp-fire built (for the emigrants did their cooking by a small camp-stove, and sat by the light of a fire on the ground), when out of the darkness came sounds of advancing teams. Oscar was playing his violin, trying to pick out a tune for the better singing of Whittier’s song of the Kansas Emigrants. His father raised his hand to command silence. “That’s a Yankee teamster, I’ll be bound,” he said, as the “Woh-hysh! Woh-haw!” of the coming party fell on his ear. “No Missourian ever talks to his cattle like that.”
As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or “prairie schooner,” drawn by three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagon was a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her. Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her head from within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls, from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens were weary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-colored homespun drove the oxen, and a boy about54ten years old trudged behind the driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cows and oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of Oscar Bryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends from Illinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was driving the wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, “Friends?”
“Friends, most assuredly,” said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. “I guess you have been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious.”
“Well, we have, and that’s a fact. But we’re main glad to be able to camp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driven them into the timber a piece.” He assisted the woman and children to get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up, drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen were soon lying down among the underbrush.
“Well, yes, wehavehad a pretty hard time getting here. We are the last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you from?”
“We are from Lee County, Illinois,” replied Mr. Bryant. “We came in by the way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped at Quindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?”
The Yankee Emigrant.
The Yankee Emigrant.
55
“Yes,” replied the man. “We came up the river in the first place, on the steamboat ‘Black Eagle,’ and when we got to Leavenworth, a big crowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on the boat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again. The captain of the boat kicked up a great fuss about it, and wanted to put us ashore on the other side of the river; but the Missouri men wouldn’t have it. They put a ‘committee,’ as they called the two men, on board the steamboat, and they made the skipper take us down the river.”
“How far down did you go?” asked Bryant, his face reddening with anger.
“Well, we told the committee that we came through Ioway, and that to Ioway we must go; so they rather let up on us, and set us ashore just opposite Wyandotte. I was mighty ’fraid they’d make us swear we wouldn’t go back into Kansas some other way; but they didn’t, and so we stivered along the road eastwards after they set us ashore, and then we fetched a half-circle around and got into Parkville.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you bought those clothes that you have got on at Parkville,” said Mr. Howell, with a smile.
“You guess about right,” said the sad-colored stranger. “A very nice sort of a man we met at the fork of the road, as you turn off to go to Parkville from the river road, told me that my clothes were too Yankee. I wore ’em all the way from Woburn, Massachusetts, where we came from, and I hated to give ’em up. But discretion is better than valor, I have heern tell; so I made the trade, and here I am.”56
“We had no difficulty getting across at Parkville,” said Mr. Bryant, “except that we did have to go over in the night in a sneaking fashion that I did not like.”
“Well,” answered the stranger, “as a special favor, they let us across, seeing that we had had such hard luck. That’s a nice-looking fiddle you’ve got there, sonny,” he abruptly interjected, as he took Oscar’s violin from his unwilling hand. “I used to play the fiddle once, myself,” he added. Then, drawing the bow over the strings in a light and artistic manner, he began to play “Bonnie Doon.”
“Come, John,” his wife said wearily, “it’s time the children were under cover. Let go the fiddle until we’ve had supper.”
John reluctantly handed back the violin, and the newcomers were soon in the midst of their preparations for the night’s rest. Later on in the evening, John Clark, as the head of the party introduced himself, came over to the Dixon camp, and gave them all the news. Clark was one of those who had been helped by the New England Emigrant Aid Society, an organization with headquarters in the Eastern States, and with agents in the West. He had been fitted out at Council Bluffs, Iowa, but for some unexplained reason had wandered down as far south as Kansas City, and there had boarded the “Black Eagle” with his family and outfit. One of the two men with him57was his brother; the other was a neighbor who had cast in his lot with him. The tall lad was John Clark’s nephew.
In one way or another, Clark had managed to pick up much gossip about the country and what was going on. At Tecumseh, where they would be due in a day or two if they continued on this road, an election for county officers was to be held soon, and the Missourians were bound to get in there and carry the election. Clark thought they had better not go straight forward into danger. They could turn off, and go west by way of Topeka.
“Why, that would be worse than going to Tecumseh,” interjected Charlie, who had modestly kept out of the discussion. “Topeka is the free-State capital, and they say that there is sure to be a big battle there, sooner or later.”
But Mr. Bryant resolved that he would go west by the way of Tecumseh, no matter if fifty thousand Borderers were encamped there. He asked the stranger if he had in view any definite point; to which Clark replied that he had been thinking of going up the Little Blue; he had heard that there was plenty of good vacant land there, and the land office would open soon. He had intended, he said, to go to Manhattan, and start from there; but since they had been so cowardly as to change the name of the place, he had “rather soured on it.”58
“Manhattan?” exclaimed Charlie, eagerly. “Where is that place? We have asked a good many people, but nobody can tell us.”
“Good reason why; they’ve gone and changed the name. It used to be Boston, but the settlers around there were largely from Missouri. The company were Eastern men, and when they settled on the name of Boston, it got around that they were all abolitionists; and so they changed it to Manhattan. Why they didn’t call it New York, and be done with it, is more than I can tell. But it was Boston, and it is Manhattan; and that’s all I want to know aboutthatplace.”
Mr. Bryant was equally sure that he did not want to have anything to do with a place that had changed its name through fear of anybody or anything.
Next day there was a general changing of minds, however. It was Sunday, and the emigrants, a God-fearing and reverent lot of people, did not move out of camp. Others had come in during the night, for this was a famous camping-place, well known throughout all the region. Here were wood, water, and grass, the three requisites for campers, as they had already found. The country was undulating, interlaced with creeks; and groves of black-jack, oak, and cottonwood were here and there broken by open glades that would be smiling fields some day, but were now wild native grasses.
There was a preacher in the camp, a good man59from New England, who preached about the Pilgrim’s Progress through the world, and the trials he meets by the way. Oscar pulled his father’s sleeve, and asked why he did not ask the preacher to give out “The Kansas Emigrant’s Song” as a hymn. Mr. Bryant smiled, and whispered that it was hardly likely that the lines would be considered just the thing for a religious service. But after the preaching was over, and the little company was breaking up, he told the preacher what Oscar had said. The minister’s eyes sparkled, and he replied, “What? Have you that beautiful hymn? Let us have it now and here. Nothing could be better for this day and this time.”
Oscar, blushing with excitement and native modesty, was put up high on the stump of a tree, and, violin in hand, “raised the tune.” It was grand old “Dundee.” Almost everybody seemed to know the words of Whittier’s poem, and beneath the blue Kansas sky, amid the groves of Kansas trees, the sturdy, hardy men and the few pale women joyfully, almost tearfully, sang,––
We crossed the prairie, as of oldThe pilgrims crossed the sea,To make the West, as they the East,The homestead of the free!We go to rear a wall of menOn freedom’s Southern line,And plant beside the cotton-treeThe rugged Northern pine!60We’re flowing from our native hillsAs our free rivers flow;The blessing of our Mother-landIs on us as we go.We go to plant her common schoolsOn distant prairie swells,And give the Sabbaths of the wildThe music of her bells.Upbearing, like the Ark of old,The Bible in our van,We go to test the truth of GodAgainst the fraud of man.No pause, nor rest, save where the streamsThat feed the Kansas run,Save where our pilgrim gonfalonShall flout the setting sun!We’ll tread the prairie as of oldOur fathers sailed the sea,And make the West, as they the East,The homestead of the free!
“It was good to be there,” said Alexander Howell, his hand resting lovingly on Oscar’s shoulder, as they went back to camp. But Oscar’s father said never a word. His face was turned to the westward, where the sunlight was fading behind the hills of the far-off frontier of the Promised Land.
Oscar was put up High on the Stump of a Tree, and, Violin in Hand, “Raised the Tune.”
Oscar was put up High on the Stump of a Tree, and, Violin in Hand, “Raised the Tune.”
61
The general opinion gathered that day was that they who wanted to fight for freedom might better go to Lawrence, or to Topeka. Those who were bent on finding homes for themselves and little ones should press on further to the west, where there was land in plenty to be had for the asking, or, rather, for the pre-empting. So, when Monday morning came, wet, murky, and depressing, Bryant surrendered to the counsels of his brother-in-law and the unspoken wish of the boys, and agreed to go on to the newly-surveyed lands on the tributaries of the Kaw. They had heard good reports of the region lying westward of Manhattan and Fort Riley. The town that had changed its name was laid out at the confluence of the Kaw and the Big Blue. Fort Riley was some eighteen or twenty miles to the westward, near the junction of the streams that form the Kaw, known as Smoky Hill Fork and the Republican Fork. On one or the other of these forks, the valleys of which were said to be fertile and beautiful beyond description, the emigrants would find a home. So, braced and inspired by the consciousness of having a definite and settled plan, the Dixon party set forth on Monday morning, through the rain and mist, with faces to the westward.
62CHAPTER VI.WESTWARD HO!
The following two or three days were wet and uncomfortable. Rain fell in torrents at times, and when it did not rain the ground was steamy, and the emigrants had a hard time to find spots dry enough on which to make up their beds at night. This was no holiday journey, and the boys, too proud to murmur, exchanged significant nods and winks when they found themselves overtaken by the discomforts of camping and travelling in the storm. For the most part, they kept in camp during the heaviest of the rain. They found that the yokes of the oxen chafed the poor animals’ necks when wet.
And then the mud! Nobody had ever seen such mud, they thought, not even on the black and greasy fat lands of an Illinois prairie. Sometimes the wagon sunk in the road, cut up by innumerable wheels, so that the hubs of their wheels were almost even with the surface, and it was with the greatest difficulty that their four yoke of oxen dragged the wagon from its oozy bed. At times, too, they were obliged to unhitch their team and63help out of a mud-hole some other less fortunate brother wayfarer, whose team was not so powerful as their own.
One unlucky day, fording a narrow creek with steep banks, they had safely got across, when they encountered a slippery incline up which the oxen could not climb; it was “as slippery as a glare of ice,” Charlie said, and the struggling cattle sank nearly to their knees in their frantic efforts to reach the top of the bank. The wagon had been “blocked up,” that is to say, the wagon-box raised in its frame or bed above the axles, with blocks driven underneath, to lift it above the level of the stream. As the vehicle was dragged out of the creek, the leading yoke of cattle struggling up the bank and then slipping back again, the whole team of oxen suddenly became panic-stricken, as it were, and rushed back to the creek in wild confusion. The wagon twisted upon itself, and cramped together, creaked, groaned, toppled, and fell over in a heap, its contents being shot out before and behind into the mud and water.
“Great Scott!” yelled Sandy. “Let me stop those cattle!” Whereupon the boy dashed through the water, and, running around the hinder end of the wagon, he attempted to head off the cattle. But the animals, having gone as far as they could without breaking their chains or the wagon-tongue, which fortunately held, stood sullenly by the side of the wreck they had made, panting with their exertions.64
“Here is a mess!” said his father; but, without more words, he unhitched the oxen and drove them up the bank. The rest of the party hastily picked up the articles that were drifting about, or were lodged in the mud of the creek. It was a sorry sight, and the boys forgot, in the excitement of the moment, the discomforts and annoyances of their previous experiences. This was a real misfortune.
But while Oscar and Sandy were excitedly discussing what was next to be done, Mr. Howell took charge of things; the wagon was righted, and a party of emigrants, camped in a grove of cottonwoods just above the ford, came down with ready offers of help. Eight yoke of cattle instead of four were now hitched to the wagon, and, to use the expressive language of the West, the outfit was “snaked” out of the hole in double-quick time.
“Ho, ho, ho! Uncle Charlie,” laughed Sandy, “you look as if you had been dragged through a slough. You are just painted with mud from top to toe. Well, I never did see such a looking scarecrow!”
“It’s lucky you haven’t any looking-glass here, young Impudence. If you could see your mother’s boy now, you wouldn’t know him. Talk about looks! Take a look at the youngster, mates,” said Uncle Charlie, bursting into a laugh. A general roar followed the look, for Sandy’s appearance65was indescribable. In his wild rush through the waters of the creek, he had covered himself from head to foot, and the mud from the wagon had painted his face a brilliant brown; for there is more or less of red oxide of iron in the mud of Kansas creeks.
It was a doleful party that pitched its tent that night on the banks of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper through the trying experience. “It is a part of the play,” he said, “and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, ‘as of old the pilgrims crossed the sea,’ is a Sunday-school picnic, might better try it with the Dixon emigrants; that’s all.”
But, after a very moist and disagreeable night, the sky cleared in the morning. Oscar was out early, looking at the sky; and when he shouted “Westward ho!” with a stentorian voice, everybody came tumbling out to see what was the matter. A long line of white-topped wagons with four yoke of oxen to each, eleven teams all told, was stringing its way along the muddy road in which the red sun was reflected in pools of red liquid mud. The wagons were overflowing with small children; coops of fowls swung from behind, and a general air of thriftiness seemed to be characteristic of the company.66
“Which way are you bound?” asked Oscar, cheerily.
“Up the Smoky Hill Fork,” replied one of the ox-drivers. “Solomon’s Fork, perhaps, but somewhere in that region, anyway.”
One of the company lingered behind to see what manner of people these were who were so comfortably camped out in a wall-tent. When he had satisfied his curiosity, he explained that his companions had come from northern Ohio, and were bound to lay out a town of their own in the Smoky Hill region. Oscar, who listened while his father drew this information from the stranger, recalled the fact that the Smoky Hill and the Republican Forks were the branches of the Kaw. Solomon’s Fork, he now learned, was one of the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, nearer to the Republican Fork than to the main stream. So he said to his father, when the Ohio man had passed on: “If they settle on Solomon’s Fork, won’t they be neighbors of ours, daddy?”
Mr. Bryant took out a little map of the Territory that he had in his knapsack, and, after some study, made up his mind that the newcomers would not be “neighbors enough to hurt,” if they came no nearer the Republican than Solomon’s Fork. About thirty-five miles west and south of Fort Riley, which is at the junction of the Smoky Hill and the Republican, Solomon’s Fork branches off to the northwest. Settlers anywhere along67that line would not be nearer the other fork than eighteen or twenty miles at the nearest. Charlie and Sandy agreed with Oscar that it was quite as near as desirable neighbors should be. The lads were already learning something of the spirit of the West. They had heard of the man who had moved westward when another settler drove his stakes twenty miles from his claim, because the country was “gettin’ too crowded.”
That day, passing through the ragged log village of Tecumseh, they got their first letters from home. When they left Illinois, they had not known just where they would strike, in the Territory, but they had resolved that they would not go further west than Tecumseh; and here they were, with their eyes still fixed toward the west. No matter; just now, news from home was to be devoured before anybody could talk of the possible Kansas home that yet loomed before them in the dim distance. How good it was to learn all about the dear ones left at home; to find that Bose was keeping guard around the house as if he knew that he was the protector of the two mothers left to themselves in one home; to hear that the brindle calf had grown very large, and that a circus was coming to town the very next day after the letter was written!
“That circus has come and gone without our seeing it,” said Sandy, solemnly.
“Sandy is as good as a circus, any day,” said his uncle, fondly. “The greatest show in the country68would have been willing to hire you for a sight, fixed out as you were last night, after we had that upset in the creek.” The boys agreed that it was lucky for all hands that the only looking-glass in camp was the little bit of one hidden away in Uncle Charlie’s shaving-case.
The next day, to their great discomfiture, they blundered upon a county election. Trudging into Libertyville, one of the new mushroom towns springing up along the military road that leads from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, they found a great crowd of people gathered around a log-house in which the polls were open. Country officers were to be chosen, and the pro-slavery men, as the Borderers were now called in this part of the country, had rallied in great numbers to carry the election for their men. All was confusion and tumult. Rough-looking men, well armed and generally loud voiced, with slouched hats and long beards, were galloping about, shouting and making all the noise possible, for no purpose that could be discovered. “Hooray for Cap’n Pate!” was the only intelligible cry that the newcomers could hear; but who Captain Pate was, and why he should be hurrahed for, nobody seemed to know. He was not a candidate for anything.
“Hullo! there’s our Woburn friend, John Clark,” said Mr. Howell. Sure enough, there he was with a vote in his hand going up to the cabin where the polls were open. A lane was formed69through the crowd of men who lounged about the cabin, so that a man going up to the door to vote was obliged to run the gauntlet, as it were, of one hundred men, or more, before he reached the door, the lower half of which was boarded up and the upper half left open for the election officers to take and deposit the ballots.
“I don’t believe that man has any right to vote here,” said Charlie, with an expression of disgust on his face. “Why, he came into the Territory with us, only the other day, and he said he was going up on the Big Blue to settle, and here he is trying to vote!”
“Well,” said Uncle Charlie, “I allow he has just as good a right to vote as any of these men who are running the election. I saw some of these very men come riding in from Missouri, when we were one day out of Quindaro.” As he spoke, John Clark had reached the voting-place, pursued by many rough epithets flung after him.
He paused before the half-barricaded door and presented his ballot. “Let’s see yer ticket!” shouted one of the men who stood guard, one either side of the cabin-door. He snatched it from Clark’s hand, looked at it, and simply said, “H’ist!” The man on the other side of the would-be voter grinned; then both men seized the Woburn man by his arms and waist, and, before he could realize what was happening, he was flung up to the edge of the roof that projected over the low door. Two70other men sitting there grabbed the newcomer by the shoulders and passed him up the roof to two others, who, straddling the ridge-pole, were waiting for him. Then the unfortunate Clark disappeared over the top of the cabin, sliding down out of sight on the farther side. The mob set up a wild cheer, and some of them shouted, “We don’t want any Yankee votes in this yer ’lection!”
“Shameful! Shameful!” burst forth from Mr. Bryant. “I have heard of such things before now, but I must say I never thought I should see it.” He turned angrily to his brother-in-law as Mr. Howell joined the boys in their laugh.
“How can you laugh at such a shameful sight, Aleck Howell? I’m sure it’s something to cry over, rather than to laugh at––a spectacle like that! A free American citizen hustled away from the polls in that disgraceful fashion!”
“But, Charlie,” said Uncle Aleck, “you’ll admit that it was funny to see the Woburn man hoisted over that cabin. Besides, I don’t believe he has any right to vote here; do you?”
“He would have been allowed to vote fast enough if he had had the sort of ballot that those fellows want to go into the box. They looked at his ballot, and as soon as they saw what it was, they threw him over the cabin.”