The brave pioneers, leaving old homes in other lands to find new ones in this, have made sacrifices of kindred, family ties, and early associations, at the behest of some stern necessity (it may be growing out of bankruptcy of business, though not of pride and honor, or manly character), or ambition to be peers among their fellows.
Or, mayhap, the change was made by promptings
of parental love for children whose prospects in life might be made better thereby, and the family unity still preserved by locating lands in close proximity, where from his home the father might by some well-known signal call his children all around him. Where the faithful watch-dog’s warning was echoed in every yard, and thus gave information of passing events worthy of his attention enacting in the neighborhood. Where the smoke from cabin chimneys high arose, mingled in mid air, and died away in peaceful brotherhood. Where the blended prayer of parent and child might go up in joint procession from the school-house-churches through the shining trees that answered well for steeples then, or passing through clouds to Him who had made so many little groves, where homes might be made and prepared the most beautiful spots on earth for final resting-place, where each, as the journey of life should be over, might be laid away by kindred hands, far from the hurrying, noisy crowds, who rush madly along, or stop only to envy the dead the ground they occupy, and speculate how much filthy lucre each sepulchre is worth.
Others went to the new country with downy cheeks of youth, and others still with full-grown beards, who were fired with high ambition to make name, fame, home, and fortune, carrying underneath their sombre hats bright ideas and wonderful possibilities, with hearts full of manly purposes, beating quickly at the mention of mother’s name or father’s pride, sister’s prayer or brother’s love.
And with all these to buoy them up, would build homes on gentle slope, or in shady grove, and thus become by slow degrees “one among us.”
I was with the first who went to this new country, and I know whereof I write. I know more than I have told, or will tell, lest by accident I betray the petty jealousies that cropped out; when Yankee-boys, forgetting the girls they left behind them, would pay more attention to our western girls than was agreeable to “us boys.”
Others there were who had followed the retreating footsteps of the Indians. These were connecting links between two kinds of life, savage and civilized. Good enough people in their way, but they could not bear the hum of machinery, or the glitter of church-spires, because the first drove back the wild game, and the devotees who worshipped beneath the second, forbade the exercise of careless and wicked noises mingling with songs of praise.
A few, perhaps, had fled from other States to avoid the consequences of technical legal constructions which would sadly interfere with their unpuritanical ways. But these were not numerous. The early settlers, taken all in all, possessed many virtues and qualifications that entitled them to the honor which worthy actions and noble deeds guarantee to those who do them. They had come from widely different birth-lands, and brought with them habits that had made up their lives; and though each may have felt sure their own was the better way, they soon learned that honest people may differ and still be honest. And to govern themselves accordingly, each yielded, without sacrifice of principle, their hereditary whims
and peculiar ways, and left the weightier matters of orthodoxy or heterodoxy to be argued by those who had nothing better with which to occupy their time than to muddle their own and other people’s brains with abstruse themes.
The “early settlers” were eminently practical, and withal successful in moulding out of the heterogeneous mass of whims and prejudices a common public sentiment, acceptable to all, or nearly so. And thus, they grew, not only in numbers but in wealth, power, intelligence, and patriotism, until to-day there may be found on the once happy home of Pow-e-shiek a people rivalling those of any other State, surpassing many of them in that greatest and noblest of all virtues, “love for your neighbor.”