Woman on the American Frontier / A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"

by William Worthington Fowler

CHAPTER XIII.

WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE ON THE NORTHERN BORDER.

The vanguard of the "Great Army" which for nearly three centuries has been hewing its pathway across the continent, may be divided into certain corps d'armée, each of which moves on a different line, thus acting on the Napoleonic tactics, and subjugating in detail the various regions through which it passes. One corps, spreading out in broad battalions, marches across the great prairies and winding through the gorges of the Rocky mountains, encamps on the shore of Peaceful sea: another, skirting the waves of the gulfs and fording the wide rivers of the South, plants its outposts on the Rio Grande; a third cuts its way through the trackless forests on the northern border till it strikes the lakes, and then crossing these inland seas or passing round them, pauses and breathes for a season in that great expanse known as the country of the Red River of the North.

Each of these mighty pioneer divisions has its common toils, dangers, and sufferings. Each, too, has toils, dangers, and sufferings peculiar to itself. The climate is the deadly foe of the northern pioneer. The scorching air of a brief summer is followed closely by the biting frost of a long winter. The snow, piled in drifts, blocks his passage and binds him to his threshold. Sometimes by a sudden change in the temperature a thaw converts the vast frozen mass into slush. In the depth of those arctic winters sometimes fire, that necessary but dangerous serf, breaks its chains and devastates its master's dwelling; then frost allies its power to that of fire, and the household often succumbs to disaster, or barely survives it.

Fire, frost, starvation, and wild beasts made frantic by winter's hunger, are the imminent perils of the northern pioneer!

The record of woman in these regions on the northern frontier is crowded with incidents which display a heroism as stern, a hardihood as rugged, a fortitude as steadfast, as was ever shown by her sex under the most trying situations into which she is brought by the exigencies of border life.

Such a record is that of Mrs. Dalton, who spent her life from early womanhood in that region.

Naturally of a frail and delicate organization, reared in the ease and luxury of an eastern home, and possessed of those strong local attachments which are characteristic of females of her temperament, it was with the utmost reluctance that she consented to follow her husband into the wilderness. Having at last consented, she showed the greatest firmness in carrying out a resolution which involved the loss of a happy home at the place of her nativity, and consigned her to a life of hardship and danger.

Her first experience in this life was in the wilds of northern New York, her husband having purchased a small clearing and a log-cabin in that region on the banks of the Black river. She was transported thither, reaching her destination one cold rainy evening early in May, after a wearisome journey, for this was before the days of rapid transit.

Her first impressions must have been gloomy indeed. Without was pouring rain and a black sky; the forest was dark as Erebus; within no fire blazed on the hearth in the only room on the first floor of the cabin, and the flickering light of a tallow candle made the darkness but the more visible; a rude table and settles made out of rough planks, were all the furniture the cabin could boast; there was no ladder to reach the loft which was to be her sleeping room; the only window, without sash or glass, was a mere opening in the side of the cabin; the rain beat in through the cracks in the door and through the open window, and trickled through the roof, which was like a sieve, while the wind blew keenly through a hundred seams and apertures in the log walls.