And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West, dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance. The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot. Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they noticed the insults of the boys.
Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback, with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud. They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some, being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops, their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families, paying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied. Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence, moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also, and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.
Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual life is all the world to them, and if that is encompassed with toil and hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they were always searching the flat prairie-horizon for some promise or hope of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull monotony of toil?
"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives. One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on their lives, I think truly
The individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few? Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment, how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course, would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and depressing, we should discern the meaning of much that viewed separately seems hard and bitter and useless.
The settlers of this State have chiefly emigrated from the older States—Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern and Middle States. There are many foreigners—Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch and Irish—who generally live in colonies. The German element predominates, especially in the cities. In the south-western part of the State there is a colony of Russian Mennonites, and at Amana, in the eastern part, there are several flourishing German colonies where the members hold all property in common. They preserve to some extent the quaint customs and costumes of the Fatherland, and one set down in the midst of their homes without knowing where he was might well believe himself in Germany. The Swedes and Norwegians bear a good character for industry and sobriety: the young women are in great demand as house-servants and command good wages.
The emigrants from older States were many of them farmers of small means, who came through in covered wagons with their families and household stuff. In pleasant weather this mode of travelling was not disagreeable, but in rainy or cold weather it was very uncomfortable. No one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth. Sometimes, as a protection against rain, a large square of black oil-cloth was spread over the white cover. The front of the wagon was left open: at the back the cover was drawn together by a string run through the hem. Before leaving his old home the farmer generally held a public sale and disposed of his household furniture, farming utensils and the horses and cattle he did not intend to take with him. Sometimes this property went by private sale to the purchaser of his farm. He reserved the bedding, a few cooking utensils and other necessaries. These were loaded into the wagon, a feed-box for the horses was fastened behind, an axe strapped to it, and a tar-bucket hung underneath. Flour and bacon were stored away in a box under the driver's seat, or, if they expected no chance for replenishing on the way, another wagon was filled with stores. Then, when all was ready, the farmer and his family looked their last upon their old home, bade good-bye to the friends who had gathered to see them off, took their places in the wagon and began the long, tedious journey to "Ioway." Hitherto they had had a local habitation and a name: now, for several months, they were to be known simply as "movers." Among the memories of a childhood spent in a village on the old National 'Pike those pertaining to movers are the earliest. It was the pastime of my playmates and myself to hang on the fence and watch the long train of white-covered wagons go by, always toward the setting sun. Sometimes there were twenty in a train, and the slow creak of the wagons, the labored stepping of the horses, had an important sound to our childish ears. It was
The tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be.
Looking backward to that time, it seems to me now that they went by every day. It was a common sight, but one which never lost its interest to us. The cry of "Movers! movers!" would draw us from our play to hang idly on the fence until the procession had passed. In some instances nightfall overtook them just as they reached our village, and they camped by the roadside, lighting fires on the ground with which to cook their evening meal. Our timidity was greater than our curiosity, and we seldom went near their camps. Movers, in our estimation, were above "stragglers," the name by which we knew the vagrants—forerunners of the great tribe of tramps—who occasionally passed along the road with a bundle on a stick over their shoulders; but still, they were a vague, unknown class, whose intentions toward us were questionable, and we remained in the vicinity of our mothers' apron-strings so long as they were in the neighborhood.