The French in the Heart of America

by John H. Finley

This is one picture. I put beside it another. Out on the farther edge of the Mississippi Valley one finds the other extreme. Within the past twenty-two years certain tracts of vacant land have been purchased by the government from the Indians (and let me here say that the government has been trying to deal fairly with these people; mistakes have been made, but I should say that the nation had in its recent treatment of them, despite reports I have heard in Paris, pauperized rather than robbed them). These tracts have been opened to settlement—all the rest of the great public domain that was immediately desirable having been occupied, as we have seen. When, in 1889, the first of these tracts, nearly two million acres, was to be opened, twenty thousand people were waiting just outside its borders—some on swift horses, some in wagons or buggies, and some in railroad trains. When the signal was given there was a race across the border and a scramble for farm sites; and on the part of the passengers on the trains, for town lots, when the trains had reached the predetermined sites of cities. At the close of the first day the future capital of what has for many years been a State had a population of several thousand inhabitants living in tents, and within a hundred days a population of fifteen thousand people, mostly men, an electric system in operation, a street-railway under contract, streets, alleys, parks, boulevards, stores, and bridges, four thousand houses under construction, five banks, fifteen hotels, fifty grocery stores, six printing-offices, and three daily papers—about as striking and unpleasant a contrast to that peaceful life on the St. Lawrence as one can well imagine. Practically all of the available land (nearly two million acres) was taken during the course of a few days.

At the later opening of another tract one hundred thousand persons took part in the race for the "last of the people's land." And these scenes but illustrate the rough races to the gold-fields and the iron mountains and the oil-wells, in eagerness to seize whatever earth had to offer and turn it to immediate wealth—rough, restless precursors, producers, poets eager for to-day, yet coming by and by, as we have seen, to be ready to spend for to-morrow, building schools and universities, enlarging the field of public provision and service, and filling the land, once neighborly, individualistic, with institutions of philanthropy.

But the habitant of that farther valley is considerate neither of himself nor of generous nature. He is ready to spend his all, or her all, of to- day for to-day and for to-morrow, and to some extent unselfishly, but not to save it. He lives "angerously" and takes all the risks. His thought of the future is not nepotic or thrifty; it is likely to be altruistic, publicistic. I suppose that the constitution and laws of Oklahoma, whose land was the last to be added to the public domain and its commonwealth among the last to the roll of States, has been more generous-minded toward its children than any other. It set apart not only sections sixteen and thirty-six in every township for the public schools; it reserved two more sections in every township for kindred uses. But in all this, as I pointed out, it is spending for the future, not saving, hoarding.

The nepotic conservationist of the St. Lawrence, fixed in his place, saves because if he leaves but an exhausted field behind him he is robbing his children and grandchildren of their rightful, personal heritage. The "boomer" of Oklahoma exploits and spends lavishly because of a sublime confidence in the illimitability of the resources of nature and in the resourcefulness of the coming generations.

But the natural scientists—the foresters, the physiographers, the geologists—have within a very few years been making themselves heard in warning. They have said that "the mountains of France, of Spain, and China have been denuded of their forests in large measure so that the supply of wood is inadequate to meet the needs of the people," [Footnote: C. R. Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States," p. 3.] that "in Spain and Italy, though warm countries, the people suffer more from the cold than in America because of insufficient fuel," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 2.] that "one-half of the people of the world go to bed hungry," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 3.] or at any rate insufficiently nourished for the next day's work. But few listened to them except in the hills and in the valleys of abandoned farms. France, Italy, Spain, China were remote. The optimism fostered of new teeming acres and newly discovered mines was heedless of the warning. It tore down barns and built bigger, and it gave even more generously to the need of the hour and the day.

But the scientists came even nearer home in their studies and statistics. These are some of the ominous and disturbing facts that are getting to the ears of the people out of their laboratories and experiment stations:

The coal-fields of the United States (which lie almost exclusively in and upon the eastern and western edges of the Mississippi Valley) were, at the rate at which coal was used a few decades ago, practically inexhaustible. But the per-capita consumption has increased from about a ton in 1870 to 5.6 tons in 1907. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 23.] Up to 1908, 7,240,000,000 [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] tons had been mined, but over ten million tons were wasted in the mining of seven billions. You may recall the prophecy which I quoted earlier, that if the mining and wasting go on at the same rate of increase as in the past few decades the supposed illimitable fields will be exhausted in one hundred and fifty years—that is by the year 2050. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] This is one of the statistics of those watchmen on the walls who, instead of standing in high places with telescopes, sit at microscopes or over tables of figures. That seems a long period of time, one hundred and fifty years, but it was only a little longer ago that a French explorer saw the first signs of coal in that valley along the Illinois, and, as the scientist has intimated, there is no reason why we should not expect a future of thousands of years for the coal that has been thousands or millions of years in the making.

The petroleum and natural-gas fields are also nearly all in that valley or on its edges. (I think it was in the narrow valley of La Belle Rivière, which Père Bonnecamp found so dark on that Celoron expedition, that this oil of the rocks was first found.) [Footnote: Natural gas and burning springs were early known to the French pioneers and Jesuits who penetrated the Iroquois country, as the following extracts show:

"It was during this interval that, in order to pass away the time, I went with M. de LaSalle, under the escort of two Indians, about four leagues south of the village where we were staying, to see a very extraordinary spring. Issuing from a moderately high rock, it forms a small brook. The water is very clear but has a bad odor, like that of the mineral marshes of Paris, when the mud on the bottom is stirred with the foot. I applied a torch and the water immediately took fire and burned like brandy, and was not extinguished until it rained. This flame is among the Indians a sign of abundance or sterility according as it exhibits the contrary qualities. There is no appearance of sulphur, saltpetre or any other combustible material. The water has not even any taste, and I can neither offer nor imagine any better explanation, than that it acquires this combustible property by passing over some aluminous land."—Galinee's journal, 1669, in "Marshall Historical Writings," p. 209.

"… The spring in the direction of Sonnontouan is no less wonderful; for its water—being of the same nature as the surrounding soil, which has only to be washed in order to obtain perfectly pure sulphur—ignites when shaken violently, and yields sulphur when boiled. As one approaches nearer to the country of the Cats, one finds heavy and thick water, which ignites like brandy, and boils up in bubbles of flame when fire is applied to it. It is, moreover, so oily, that all our Savages use it to anoint and grease their heads and their bodies."—"Jesuit Relations, 1657," 43:261.