The American family Robinson

The Prairie on Fire.
The lofty mountains, mighty forests, rivers and valleys of the West, many portions of which have never been explored, furnish abundant resources for the gratification of the Naturalist, the Lapidary, and the Antiquarian. It is with the view of directing attention to these sources of information, that the author has grouped together in this little work, many startling incidents in prairie life, and alluded to relics of antiquity, bearing unmistakable indications of a high order of civilization and science, in regard to which subsequent discoveries have proved the hypothesis he assumes correct. That this country has been peopled by a civilized race of sentient beings anterior to the existence of the present tribes of Indians or their ancestors, is no longer a matter of uncertainty; for everywhere throughout the West, and in many places East of the Mississippi Valley, incontrovertible evidences attest the high antiquity of monuments and relics of a people, whose race, name and customs have been lost in the deep gloom that hangs over the mighty past. In order more successfully to call attention to these ancient reminiscences of our own country, and to incite a spirit of inquiry in the minds of the young, he has incidentally alluded to them while following the family of Mr. Duncan in their toilsome journey and wanderings through the Great American Desert. To those unacquainted with the antiquarian characteristics of this continent, some of the allusions may appear improbable; yet sufficiently competent authority has been consulted in the preparation of this work to give the allusions reliable authenticity. If we shall be successful in awakening such an inquiry, we shall be content, and feel that our labors have not been unrewarded.
Philadelphia 1853.
Chapter First.
Mr. Duncan's Discontentment. He starts for the West.
Near the Cold Springs, in Lafayette county, Missouri, lived Mr. Duncan, a sturdy woodsman, who emigrated thither with his father, while the Mississippi valley was still a wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts, or the still more savage Indians. His grandfather was an eastern man; but had bared his brawny arm on many a battle field, and had earned the right to as many broad acres as he chose to occupy. So, at least, he said, on leaving his eastern home, after peace had been declared, for the then verge of civilization—the Ohio. Here the soldier lived to see the wilderness blossom like the rose, and here he died, grieving that infirmity prevented his flying from the din of the sledge hammer, and the busy hum of mechanical life. Mr. Duncan's father, in the vigor of manhood, crossed the Mississippi, and settled at the Cold Springs, a region then isolated from civilization, as the Ohio was many years before the white man had planted his foot west of the Alleghanies. But he lived to see the silent echoes resound to the shrill whistle of the engine, and luxury with its still but mighty sway enervate the sons and daughters of the pioneers, until the one quailed at the sight of danger and the other dosed away the morning in kid slippers and curl-papers. Time claimed its own, and he died; and then his son, the Mr. Duncan of our narrative, began to turn his attention to the west, as his grandfather and his father had done before him. He had married a trapper's daughter, twenty years before, and his family consisted now of four sons and two daughters, an adopted son, and his brother-in-law, Andy Howe, who had spent his life in trapping, and trading with the Indians.