When I had landed from the steamer Warrior, at the wharf, I left all other considerations to hasten and report myself to my dear wife, leaving my little canoe on deck and in the especial charge of the Captain, till I should return for it in the afternoon, and remove it to safe storage with my other Indian articles, to form an interesting part of my Museum. On my return to the steamer it was “missing,” and like one that I have named on a former occasion, by some medicine operation, for ever severed from my sight, though not from my recollections, where it will long remain, and also in a likeness which I made of it ([plate 240], a), just after the trick it played me on the shore of the Mascotin Island.
After I had finished the likeness of my friend Joe, and had told him the two stories, I sat down and wrote thus in my note-book, and now copy it into my Letter:—
The West—not the “Far West,” for that is a phantom, travelling on its tireless wing: but the West, the simple West—the vast and vacant wilds which lie between the trodden haunts of present savage and civil life—the great and almost boundless garden-spot of earth! This is the theme at present. The “antres vast and deserts idle,” where the tomahawk sleeps with the bones of the savage, as yet untouched by the trespassing ploughshare—the pictured land of silence, which, in its melancholy alternately echoes backward and forward the plaintive yells of the vanished red men, and the busy chaunts of the approaching pioneers. I speak of the boundless plains of beauty, and Nature’s richest livery, where the waters of the “great deep” parted in peace, and gracefully passed off without leaving deformity behind them. Over whose green, enamelled fields, as boundless and free as the ocean’s wave, Nature’s proudest, noblest men have pranced on their wild horses, and extended, through a series of ages, their long arms in orisons of praise and gratitude to the Great Spirit in the sun, for the freedom and happiness of their existence.—The land that was beautiful and famed, but had no chronicler to tell—where, while “civilized” was yet in embryo, dwelt the valiant and the brave, whose deeds of chivalry and honour have passed away like themselves, unembalmed and untold—where the plumed war-horse has pranced in time with the shrill sounding war-cry, and the eagle calumet as oft sent solemn and mutual pledges in fumes to the skies. I speak of the neutral ground (for such it may be called), where the smoke of the wigwam is no longer seen, but the bleaching bones of the buffaloes, and the graves of the savage, tell the story of times and days that are passed—the land of stillness, on which the red man now occasionally re-treads in sullen contemplation, amid the graves of his fathers, and over which civilized man advances, filled with joy and gladness.
Such is the great valley of the Mississippi and Missouri, over almost every part of which I have extended my travels, and of which and of its future wealth and improvements, I have had sublime contemplations.
I have viewed man in the artless and innocent simplicity of nature, in the full enjoyment of the luxuries which God had bestowed upon him. I have seen him happier than kings or princes can be; with his pipe and little ones about him. I have seen him shrinking from civilized approach, which came with all its vices, like the dead of night, upon him: I have seen raised, too, in that darkness, religion’s torch, and seen him gaze and then retreat like the frightened deer, that are blinded by the light; I have seen him shrinking from the soil and haunts of his boyhood, bursting the strongest ties which bound him to the earth, and its pleasures; I have seen him set fire to his wigwam, and smooth over the graves of his fathers; I have seen him (’tis the only thing that will bring them) with tears of grief sliding over his cheeks, clap his hand in silence over his mouth, and take the last look over his fair hunting grounds, and turn his face in sadness to the setting sun. All this I have seen performed in Nature’s silent dignity and grace, which forsook him not in the last extremity of misfortune and despair; and I have seen as often, the approach of the bustling, busy, talking, whistling, hopping, elated and exulting white man, with the first dip of the ploughshare, making sacrilegious trespass on the bones of the valiant dead. I have seen the skull, the pipe, and the tomahawk rise from the ground together, in interrogations which the sophistry of the world can never answer. I have seen thus, in all its forms and features, the grand and irresistible march of civilization. I have seen this splendid Juggernaut rolling on, and beheld its sweeping desolation; and held converse with the happy thousands, living, as yet, beyond its influence, who have not been crushed, nor yet have dreamed of its approach.
I have stood amidst these unsophisticated people, and contemplated with feelings of deepest regret, the certain approach of this overwhelming system, which will inevitably march on and prosper, until reluctant tears shall have watered every rod of this fair land; and from the towering cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, the luckless savage will turn back his swollen eye, over the blue and illimitable hunting grounds from whence he has fled, and there contemplate, like Caius Marius on the ruins of Carthage, their splendid desolation.
Such is the vast expanse of country from which Nature’s men are at this time rapidly vanishing, giving way to the modern crusade which is following the thousand allurements, and stocking with myriads, this world of green fields. This splendid area, denominated the “Valley of the Mississippi,” embraced between the immutable barriers on either side, the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains; with the Gulf of Mexico on the South, and the great string of lakes on the North, and the mighty Mississippi rolling its turbid waters through it, for the distance of four thousand miles, receiving its hundred tributaries, whose banks and plateaus are capable of supporting a population of one hundred millions, covered almost entirely with the richest soil in the world, with lead, iron, and coal, sufficient for its population—with twelve thousand miles of river navigation for steamers, within its embrace, besides the coast on the South, and the great expanse of lakes on the North—with a population of five millions, already sprinkled over its nether half, and a greater part of the remainder of it, inviting the world to its possession, for one dollar and 25 cents (five shillings) per acre!
I ask, who can contemplate, without amazement, this mighty river alone, eternally rolling its boiling waters through the richest of soil, for the distance of four thousand miles; over three thousand five hundred of which, I have myself been wafted on mighty steamers, ensconced within “curtains damasked, and carpets ingrain;” and on its upper half, gazed with tireless admiration upon its thousand hills and mounds of grass and green, sloping down to the water’s edge, in all the grace and beauty of Nature’s loveliest fabrication. On its lower half, also, whose rich alluvial shores are studded with stately cotton wood and elms, which echo back the deep and hollow cough of the puffing steamers. I have contemplated the bed of this vast river, sinking from its natural surface; and the alligator driven to its bosom, abandoning his native bog and fen, which are drying and growing into beauty and loveliness under the hand of the husbandman.
I have contemplated these boundless forests melting away before the fatal axe, until the expanded waters of this vast channel, and its countless tributaries, will yield their surplus to the thirsty sunbeam, to which their shorn banks will expose them; and I have contemplated, also, the never-ending transit of steamers, ploughing up the sand and deposit from its bottom, which its turbid waters are eternally hurrying on to the ocean, sinking its channel, and thereby raising its surrounding alluvions for the temptations and enjoyment of man.
All this is certain. Man’s increase, and the march of human improvements in this New World, are as true and irresistible as the laws of nature, and he who could rise from his grave and speak, or would speak from the life some half century from this, would proclaim my prophecy true and fulfilled. I said above, (and I again say it,) that these are subjects for “sublime contemplation!” At all events they are so to the traveller, who has wandered over and seen this vast subject in all its parts, and able to appreciate—who has seen the frightened herds, as well as multitudes of human, giving way and shrinking from the mountain wave of civilization, which is busily rolling on behind them.