But you must not judge her too rashly; for her eye is keen and expressive, and her mouth is quite pretty—especially when she smiles. A few years hence—if you have the entrée—you may meet her in the best and highest circles of the country. Perhaps, while you are dancing attendance upon some new administration, asking for a “place,” and asking, probably, in vain, she may come to Washington, a beautiful and accomplished woman—the wife of some member of Congress, whose constituency is numbered by the hundred thousand!
You may pass on, now, and forget her; but, if you stop to talk five minutes, she will not forget you—at least, if you say anything striking or sensible. And when you meet her again, perhaps in a gilded saloon, among the brightest and highest in the land—if you seek an introduction, as you probably will—she will remind you of the meeting, and to your astonishment, will laughingly describe the scene, to some of her obsequious friends who stand around. And then she will perhaps introduce you, as an old friend, to one of those flax-haired boys, who peeped out of the wagon over his mother's shoulder, as you passed them in the wilderness: and you recognise one of the members from California, or from Oregon, whose influence in the house, though he is as yet a very young man, is already quite considerable. If you are successful in your application for a “place,” it may be that the casual meeting in the forest or on the prairie was the seed which, germinating through long years of obscurity, finally sprung up thus, and bore a crop of high official honors!
The next time you meet a family of emigrants on the frontier, you will probably observe them a little more closely.
Not a few of those who bear a prominent part in the government of our country—more than one of the first men of the nation—men whose names are now heard in connection with the highest office of the people—twenty years ago, occupied a place as humble in the scale of influence, as that flaxen-haired son of the stoop-shouldered emigrant. Such are the elements of our civilization—such the spirit of our institutions!
We have hitherto been speaking only of the American pioneer, and we have devoted more space to him, than we shall give to his contemporaries, because he has exerted more influence, both in the settlement of the country, and in the formation of sectional character and social peculiarities, than all the rest combined.
The French emigrant was quite a different being. Even at this day, there are no two classes—not the eastern and western, or the northern and southern—between whom the distinction is more marked, than it has always been between the Saxon and the Frank. The advent of the latter was much earlier than that of the former; and to him, therefore, must be ascribed the credit of the first settlement of the country. But, for all purposes of lasting impression, he must yield to his successor. It was, in fact, the American who penetrated and cleared the forest—who subdued and drove out the Indian—who, in a word, reclaimed the country.
In nothing was the distinction between the two races broader, than in the feelings with which they approached the savage. We have seen that the hatred, borne by the American toward his red enemy, was to be traced to a long series of mutual hostilities and wrongs. But the Frenchman had no such injuries to avenge, no hereditary feud to prosecute. The first of his nation who had entered the country were non-combatants—they came to convert the savage, not to conquer him, or deprive him of his lands. Even as early as sixteen hundred and eight, the Jesuits had established friendly relations with the Indians of Canada—and before the stern crew of the May Flower had landed on Plymouth Rock, they had preached the gospel on the shores of Lake Huron. Their piety and wisdom had acquired an influence over the untutored Indian, long before the commencement of the hostilities, which afterward cost so much blood and suffering. They had, thus, smoothed the way for their countrymen, and opened a safe path through the wilderness, to the shore of the great western waters. And the people who followed and accompanied them, were peculiarly adapted to improve the advantages thus given them.
They were a gentle, peaceful, unambitious people. They came as the friend, not the hereditary enemy, of the savage. They tendered the calumet—a symbol well understood by every Indian—and were received as allies and brethren. They had no national prejudices to overcome: the copper color of the Indian was not an insuperable objection to intermarriage, and children of the mixed blood were not, for that reason, objects of scorn. An Indian maiden was as much a woman to a Frenchman, as if she had been a blonde; and, if her form was graceful and her features comely, he would woo her with as much ardor as if she had been one of his own race.
Nor was this peculiarity attributable only to the native gallantry of the French character, as it has sometimes been asserted; the total want of prejudice, which grows up in contemplating an inferior race, held in limited subjection, and a certain easiness of temper and tone of thought, had far more influence.