The early American depended upon his rifle in supporting and defending his family. Without it he had not dared to move across the Alleghanies. With it he dared to go anywhere, knowing that it would furnish him food and fending. When the deer and turkey became less numerous near him, he moved his home farther westward, where game was more abundant.
His progress was bitterly contested by the Indian savages all the way cross the American continent, but they perished before this engine of civilization, which served its purpose across the timbered Appalachians, down the watershed to the Mississippi, up the long and winding streams of the western lands, over the Rockies, and down the slopes of the Sierras to the farther sea. Had it never known change it had not been American. An ax is an ax, because a tree is a tree, whether in the Alleghanies or the Rockies; but the rifle met in time different conditions. The great plains furnished larger game animals, and demanded longer range in arms, so that in time the rifle shot a heavier ball.
When the feverish intensity of American life had asked yet more haste, there came the repeating rifle, firing rapidly a number of shots, an invention now used all over the earth. In time there came also the revolving pistol, rapid, destructive, American. These things had not to do with the early west-bound man, this wilderness traveler, himself perforce almost savage, shod with moccasins, wearing the fringed hide tunic that was never in the designs of Providence intended for any unmanly man, and that fits ill to-day the figure of any round-paunched city dweller. Feather or plume he did not wear in his hat, for such things pertained rather to the hired voyager than to the independent home builder. Ornamentation was foreign to his garb and to his weaponry. He had much to do. The way was hard. No matter how he must travel, this long rifle was with him. At his belt, in the little bag of buckskin, were the bullets in their stoppered pouch, the cleaning worm, the extra flint or two, the awl for mending shoon or clothing.
So were equipped the early Americans, gaunt, keen, tireless, that marched to meet the invading forces at the battle of New Orleans; and when the officers of the British army, on the day after that stricken field, found half their dead shot between the eyes, they knew they could lead their troops no more against such weaponry and such weapon bearers. The rifle had won the West, and it would hold it fast.
| [1] | In a careful test an old squirrel-rifle, for three generations in the author’s family, and now nearly one hundred years old, was fired five times, at a distance of 60 yards, and the point of the finger would cover all five of the balls, which made practically but one ragged hole. The author’s father handled the old weapon on this occasion. Again, in the author’s hands, it shot out in succession the spots or pips of a playing card, the ten of clubs, at such distance as left the spots only clearly distinguishable. This piece was altered from flint lock to pill-percussion lock, and later to the percussion cap lock. |
CHAPTER III
THE AMERICAN BOAT
Here is that fairy ship of the wilderness, the birch-bark canoe, the first craft of America, antedating even the arrival of the white man. It is the ship of risk and of adventure, belonging by right to him who goes far and travels light, who is careless of his home coming. It is a boat that now carries the voyager, and now is carried by him. It is a great-hearted craft. You shall take it upon your shoulders, and carry it a mile across the land trail, without needing to set it down; but when you place it on the water it in turn will carry you and your fellow, and yet another, and your household goods of the wilderness up to five times your weight.
Freakish as a woman, as easily unsettled, yet if you be master it shall take you over combing waves, and down yeasty rapids and against steady current, until finally you shall find yourself utterly apart from the familiar haunts of man, about you only the wilderness, the unadventured. This is the ship of the wilderness, the fairy ship, the ship of heroes. To-day it is passing away. With it goes great store of romance and adventure.