Their manners were natural, cordial, and full of a lightsome heartness that robed accost with sunshine,—a quietude withal—that rare quality —that irked them not at all—one gathered from their Indian kin-folk. Their knowledge of each other was simply universal—their kin ties almost as general. These ties were brightened and friendships reknit in the holiday season of the year, the leisure of the long winters, when the far-scattered hewn log houses—small to the eye—were ever found large enough to hold the welcome arrivals,—greeted with a kiss that said, "I am of your blood." These widespread affiliations broke down aught like "caste." Wealth or official position were practically unheeded by a people in no fear of want and unaccustomed to luxuries, who sought their kinswoman and her brood for themselves, not for what they had in store. The children and grandchildren of men, however assured in fortune or position, wove anew equalizing ties, seeking out their mates as they came to hand; hence a genial, not a downward level, putting to shame fine-spun theories of democracy in other lands—spun, not worn.
This satisfaction of station—as said—grew out of the slight exertion necessary for all the wants of life, with unlimited choice of the finest land on the continent; the waters alive with fish and aquatic fowl; rabbits and prairie fowl at times by actual cart-load; elk not far, and countless buffalo behind,—furnishing meat, bedding, clothing and shoes to any who could muster a cart or go in search; the woods and plains in season, ripe with delicious wild fruit, for present use or dried for winter,—the whole backed by abundant breadstuffs. The quota of the farmers along the rivers, whose fertile banks were dotted by windmills, whose great arms stayed the inconstant winds, and yoked the fickle couriers to the great car of general plenty.
A LAND OF PEACE.
Poverty in one sense certainly existed; age and improvidence are always with us, but it was not obtrusive, made apparent only towards the close of the long winter, when some old veteran of the canoe or saddle would make a "grand promenade" through the Settlement, with his ox and sled, making known his wants, incidentally, at his different camps among his old friends, finding always before he left his sled made the heavier by the women's hands. This was simply done; few in the wild country but had met with sudden exigencies in supply, knew well the need at times of one man to another, and, when asked for aid, gave willingly. Or it may be that some large-hearted, jovial son of the chase had overrated his winter store, or underrated the assiduity of his friends. His recourse in such case being the more carefully estimated stock of some neighbor, who could in no wise suffer the reproach to lie at his door, that he had turned his back, in such emergence, upon his good-natured, if injudicious countryman.
This practical communism—borrowed from the Indians, among whom it was inviolable—was, in the matter of hospitality, the rule of all, —a reciprocation of good offices, in the absence of all houses of public entertainment, becoming a social necessity. The manner of its exercise hearty, a knitting of the people together,—no one was at a loss for a winter camp when travelling. Every house he saw was his own, the bustling wife, with welcome in her eyes, eager to assure your comfort. The supper being laid and dealt sturdily with, the good man's pipe and your own alight and breathing satisfaction, —a neighbor soul drops in to swell the gale of talk, that rocks you at last into a restful sleep. How now, my masters! Smacks not this of Arcady?
Early and universal marriage was the rule. Here you received the blessings of home in the married life, and the care of offspring. There were thus no defrauded women—called, by a cruel irony, "old maids"; no isolated, mistaken men, cheated out of themselves, and robbed of the best training possible for man. This vital fact was fraught with every good.
On the young birds leaving the parent nest, they only exchanged it for one near at hand—land for the taking; a house to be built, a wife to be got—a share of the stock, some tools and simple furniture, and the outfit was complete. The youngest son remained at home to care for the old father and mother, and to him came the homestead when they were laid away. The conditions were all faithful, home life dear indeed.
To the Hunters accepting their fall in the chase no wilder thought could scarce be broached than that of solicitude as to the future of their young. Boys who sat a horse almost as soon as they could walk, whose earliest plaything was a bow and arrows; girls as apt in other ways, happy; sustained in their environment with a faith truly simple and reverent.
With so large an infusion of Norse blood and certain traditions anent "usquebae" and "barley bree" it would—with so large a liberty—be naturally expected, a liberal proportion of drouthy souls, but with an abundance of what cheers and distinctly inebriates in their midst they were a temperate people in its best sense, with no tippling houses to daily tempt them astray their supplies of spirits were nearly always for festive occasions. "Regales" after a voyage or weddings that lasted for days, and these at times under such guard as may be imagined from the presence of a custodian of the bottle, who exercised with what skill he might his certainly arduous task of determining instantly when hilarity grew into excess.
This novel feature applies, however, almost entirely to the English-speaking part of the people. The Gallic and Indian blood of the Hunters disdained such poor toying with a single cherry and drank and danced and drank and danced again with an abandon, an ardor and full surrender to the hour characteristic alike of the strength of the heads, the lightness of their heels and the contempt of any restraint whatever.