CHAPTER VI.
JASPER GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS VISIT TO BLACK HAWK.—AUNT INDIANA'S WIG.
Aunt Indiana, Jasper, John Hanks, and young Abraham Lincoln sat between the dying logs in the great fireplace and the open door. The company was after a little time increased for Thomas Lincoln came slowly into the clearing, and saying, "How-dy?" and "The top of the day to ye all," sat down in the sunshine on the log step; and soon after came Dennis Hanks and dropped down on a puncheon.
"I think that you are misled," said Jasper, "when you say that Black Hawk was born at Kaskaskia. If I remember rightly, he said to me: 'I was born in this Sac village. Here I spent my youth; my fathers' graves are here, and the graves of my children, and here where I was born I wish to die.' Rock Island, as the northern islands, rapids, and bluffs of the Mississippi are called, is a very beautiful place. Black Hawk clings to the spot as to his life. 'I love to look down,' he said, 'upon the big rivers, shady groves, and green prairies from the graves of my fathers,' and I do not wonder at this feeling. His blood is the same and his rights are the same as any other king, and he loves Nature and has a heart.
"It is my calling to teach and preach among the Indians and new towns of Illinois. This call came to me in Pennsylvania. God willed it, and I had no will but to obey. I heard the Voice within, just as I heard it in Germany on the Rhine. There it said, 'Go to America.' In Pennsylvania it said, 'Go to the Illinois.'
"I went. I have walked all the way, teaching and preaching in the log school-houses. I sowed the good seed, and left the harvest to the heavens. Why should I be anxious in regard to the result? I walk by faith, and I know what the result will be in God's good time, without seeking for it. Why should I stop to number the people? I know.
"I wanted an Indian guide and interpreter, and the inward Voice told me to go to Black Hawk and secure one from the chief himself. So I went to the bluffs of the Mississippi, and told Black Hawk all my heart, and he let me preach in his lodges, and I made some strong winter shoes for him, and tried to teach the children by signs. So I was fed by the ravens of the air. He had no interpreter or runner such as he would trust to go with me; but he told me if I would return in the May moon, he would provide me one. He said that it would be a boy by the name of Waubeno, whose father was a noble warrior and had had a strange and mysterious history. The boy was then traveling with an old uncle by the name of Main-Pogue. These names sound strange to German ears: Waubeno and Main-Pogue! I promised to return in May. I am on my way.
"If I get the boy Waubeno—and the Voice within tells me that I will—I intend to travel a circuit, round and round, round and round, teaching and preaching. I can see my circuit now in my mind. This is the map of it: From Rock Island to Fort Dearborn (Chicago); from Fort Dearborn to the Ohio, which will bring me here again; and from the Ohio to the Mississippi, and back to Rock Island, and so round and round, round and round. Do you see?"
The homely travels of Thomas Lincoln and the limited geography of Andrew Crawford had not prepared Jasper's audience to see even this small circuit very distinctly. Thomas Lincoln, like the dwellers in the Scandinavian valleys, doubtless believed that there "are people beyond the mountains, also" but he knew little of the world outside of Kentucky and Illinois. Mrs. Eastman was quite intelligent in regard to New England and the Middle States, but the West to her mind was simply land—"oceans of it," as she expressed herself—"where every one was at liberty to choose without infringin' upon anybody."