The Prairie (2 page)

J. F. Cooper Paris June 1832

I pray thee, shepherd, if that love or gold,
Can in this desert place buy entertainment,
Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.
—As you like it.

Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of
adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense and
but half-tenanted territories of the United States. As the warmth of
controversy however subsided, and party considerations gave place to
more liberal views, the wisdom of the measure began to be generally
conceded. It soon became apparent to the meanest capacity, that, while
nature had placed a barrier of desert to the extension of our population
in the west, the measure had made us the masters of a belt of fertile
country, which, in the revolutions of the day, might have become the
property of a rival nation. It gave us the sole command of the great
thoroughfare of the interior, and placed the countless tribes of
savages, who lay along our borders, entirely within our control; it
reconciled conflicting rights, and quieted national distrusts; it
opened a thousand avenues to the inland trade, and to the waters of
the Pacific; and, if ever time or necessity shall require a peaceful
division of this vast empire, it assures us of a neighbour that will
possess our language, our religion, our institutions, and it is also to
be hoped, our sense of political justice.

Although the purchase was made in 1803, the spring of the succeeding
year was permitted to open, before the official prudence of the
Spaniard, who held the province for his European master, admitted the
authority, or even of the entrance of its new proprietors. But the
forms of the transfer were no sooner completed, and the new government
acknowledged, than swarms of that restless people, which is ever found
hovering on the skirts of American society, plunged into the thickets
that fringed the right bank of the Mississippi, with the same careless
hardihood, as had already sustained so many of them in their toilsome
progress from the Atlantic states, to the eastern shores of the "father
of rivers."
[1]

Time was necessary to blend the numerous and affluent colonists of the
lower province with their new compatriots; but the thinner and more
humble population above, was almost immediately swallowed in the vortex
which attended the tide of instant emigration. The inroad from the
east was a new and sudden out-breaking of a people, who had endured a
momentary restraint, after having been rendered nearly resistless by
success. The toils and hazards of former undertakings were forgotten, as
these endless and unexplored regions, with all their fancied as well as
real advantages, were laid open to their enterprise. The consequences
were such as might easily have been anticipated, from so tempting an
offering, placed, as it was, before the eyes of a race long trained in
adventure and nurtured in difficulties.

Thousands of the elders, of what were then called the New States
[2]
,
broke up from the enjoyment of their hard-earned indulgences, and were
to be seen leading long files of descendants, born and reared in the
forests of Ohio and Kentucky, deeper into the land, in quest of that
which might be termed, without the aid of poetry, their natural and more
congenial atmosphere. The distinguished and resolute forester who
first penetrated the wilds of the latter state, was of the number. This
adventurous and venerable patriarch was now seen making his last remove;
placing the "endless river" between him and the multitude his own
success had drawn around him, and seeking for the renewal of enjoyments
which were rendered worthless in his eyes, when trammelled by the forms
of human institutions.
[3]

In the pursuit of adventures such as these, men are ordinarily governed
by their habits or deluded by their wishes. A few, led by the phantoms
of hope, and ambitious of sudden affluence, sought the mines of the
virgin territory; but by far the greater portion of the emigrants
were satisfied to establish themselves along the margins of the
larger water-courses, content with the rich returns that the generous,
alluvial, bottoms of the rivers never fail to bestow on the most
desultory industry. In this manner were communities formed with magical
rapidity; and most of those who witnessed the purchase of the empty
empire, have lived to see already a populous and sovereign state,
parcelled from its inhabitants, and received into the bosom of the
national Union, on terms of political equality.

The incidents and scenes which are connected with this legend, occurred
in the earliest periods of the enterprises which have led to so great
and so speedy a result.

The harvest of the first year of our possession had long been passed,
and the fading foliage of a few scattered trees was already beginning to
exhibit the hues and tints of autumn, when a train of wagons issued from
the bed of a dry rivulet, to pursue its course across the undulating
surface, of what, in the language of the country of which we write, is
called a "rolling prairie." The vehicles, loaded with household goods
and implements of husbandry, the few straggling sheep and cattle that
were herded in the rear, and the rugged appearance and careless mien of
the sturdy men who loitered at the sides of the lingering teams, united
to announce a band of emigrants seeking for the Elderado of the West.
Contrary to the usual practice of the men of their caste, this party had
left the fertile bottoms of the low country, and had found its way, by
means only known to such adventurers, across glen and torrent, over
deep morasses and arid wastes, to a point far beyond the usual limits of
civilised habitations. In their front were stretched those broad plains,
which extend, with so little diversity of character, to the bases of the
Rocky Mountains; and many long and dreary miles in their rear, foamed
the swift and turbid waters of La Platte.

The appearance of such a train, in that bleak and solitary place, was
rendered the more remarkable by the fact, that the surrounding country
offered so little, that was tempting to the cupidity of speculation,
and, if possible, still less that was flattering to the hopes of an
ordinary settler of new lands.

The meagre herbage of the prairie, promised nothing, in favour of a hard
and unyielding soil, over which the wheels of the vehicles rattled as
lightly as if they travelled on a beaten road; neither wagons nor beasts
making any deeper impression, than to mark that bruised and withered
grass, which the cattle plucked, from time to time, and as often
rejected, as food too sour, for even hunger to render palatable.

Whatever might be the final destination of these adventurers, or the
secret causes of their apparent security in so remote and unprotected
a situation, there was no visible sign of uneasiness, uncertainty, or
alarm, among them. Including both sexes, and every age, the number of
the party exceeded twenty.

At some little distance in front of the whole, marched the individual,
who, by his position and air, appeared to be the leader of the band. He
was a tall, sun-burnt, man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance
and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and flexible; but it
was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was, only at moments,
however, as some slight impediment opposed itself to his loitering
progress, that his person, which, in its ordinary gait seemed so
lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies, which lay
latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible,
strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his countenance
were coarse, extended and vacant; while the superior, or those nobler
parts which are thought to affect the intellectual being, were low,
receding and mean.

The dress of this individual was a mixture of the coarsest vestments of
a husbandman with the leathern garments, that fashion as well as use,
had in some degree rendered necessary to one engaged in his present
pursuits. There was, however, a singular and wild display of prodigal
and ill judged ornaments, blended with his motley attire. In place of
the usual deer-skin belt, he wore around his body a tarnished silken
sash of the most gaudy colours; the buck-horn haft of his knife was
profusely decorated with plates of silver; the marten's fur of his cap
was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the buttons
of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering coinage of
Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of beautiful mahogany, riveted and
banded with the same precious metal, and the trinkets of no less than
three worthless watches dangled from different parts of his person.
In addition to the pack and the rifle which were slung at his back,
together with the well filled, and carefully guarded pouch and horn,
he had carelessly cast a keen and bright wood-axe across his shoulder,
sustaining the weight of the whole with as much apparent ease, as if he
moved, unfettered in limb, and free from incumbrance.

A short distance in the rear of this man, came a group of youths very
similarly attired, and bearing sufficient resemblance to each other,
and to their leader, to distinguish them as the children of one family.
Though the youngest of their number could not much have passed the
period, that, in the nicer judgment of the law, is called the age of
discretion, he had proved himself so far worthy of his progenitors as
to have reared already his aspiring person to the standard height of
his race. There were one or two others, of different mould, whose
descriptions must however be referred to the regular course of the
narrative.

Of the females, there were but two who had arrived at womanhood; though
several white-headed, olive-skinned faces were peering out of the
foremost wagon of the train, with eyes of lively curiosity and
characteristic animation. The elder of the two adults, was the sallow
and wrinkled mother of most of the party, and the younger was a
sprightly, active, girl, of eighteen, who in figure, dress, and mien,
seemed to belong to a station in society several gradations above that
of any one of her visible associates. The second vehicle was covered
with a top of cloth so tightly drawn, as to conceal its contents,
with the nicest care. The remaining wagons were loaded with such rude
furniture and other personal effects, as might be supposed to belong
to one, ready at any moment to change his abode, without reference to
season or distance.

Perhaps there was little in this train, or in the appearance of its
proprietors, that is not daily to be encountered on the highways of this
changeable and moving country. But the solitary and peculiar scenery,
in which it was so unexpectedly exhibited, gave to the party a marked
character of wildness and adventure.

In the little valleys, which, in the regular formation of the land,
occurred at every mile of their progress, the view was bounded, on two
of the sides, by the gradual and low elevations, which gave name to
the description of prairie we have mentioned; while on the others,
the meagre prospect ran off in long, narrow, barren perspectives, but
slightly relieved by a pitiful show of coarse, though somewhat luxuriant
vegetation. From the summits of the swells, the eye became fatigued with
the sameness and chilling dreariness of the landscape. The earth was not
unlike the Ocean, when its restless waters are heaving heavily, after
the agitation and fury of the tempest have begun to lessen. There
was the same waving and regular surface, the same absence of foreign
objects, and the same boundless extent to the view. Indeed so very
striking was the resemblance between the water and the land, that,
however much the geologist might sneer at so simple a theory, it would
have been difficult for a poet not to have felt, that the formation of
the one had been produced by the subsiding dominion of the other. Here
and there a tall tree rose out of the bottoms, stretching its naked
branches abroad, like some solitary vessel; and, to strengthen the
delusion, far in the distance, appeared two or three rounded thickets,
looming in the misty horizon like islands resting on the waters. It
is unnecessary to warn the practised reader, that the sameness of
the surface, and the low stands of the spectators, exaggerated the
distances; but, as swell appeared after swell, and island succeeded
island, there was a disheartening assurance that long, and seemingly
interminable, tracts of territory must be passed, before the wishes of
the humblest agriculturist could be realised.

Still, the leader of the emigrants steadily pursued his way, with no
other guide than the sun, turning his back resolutely on the abodes
of civilisation, and plunging, at each step, more deeply if not
irretrievably, into the haunts of the barbarous and savage occupants of
the country. As the day drew nigher to a close, however, his mind, which
was, perhaps, incapable of maturing any connected system of forethought,
beyond that which related to the interests of the present moment,
became, in some slight degree, troubled with the care of providing for
the wants of the hours of darkness.

On reaching the crest of a swell that was a little higher than the usual
elevations, he lingered a minute, and cast a half curious eye, on either
hand, in quest of those well known signs, which might indicate a place,
where the three grand requisites of water, fuel and fodder were to be
obtained in conjunction.

It would seem that his search was fruitless; for after a few moments of
indolent and listless examination, he suffered his huge frame to descend
the gentle declivity, in the same sluggish manner that an over fatted
beast would have yielded to the downward pressure.

His example was silently followed by those who succeeded him, though
not until the young men had manifested much more of interest, if not of
concern in the brief enquiry, which each, in his turn, made on gaining
the same look-out. It was now evident, by the tardy movements both of
beasts and men, that the time of necessary rest was not far distant. The
matted grass of the lower land, presented obstacles which fatigue began
to render formidable, and the whip was becoming necessary to urge
the lingering teams to their labour. At this moment, when, with the
exception of the principal individual, a general lassitude was getting
the mastery of the travellers, and every eye was cast, by a sort of
common impulse, wistfully forward, the whole party was brought to a
halt, by a spectacle, as sudden as it was unexpected.