Journeys Through Bookland Volume V Part 30

My mother was ill in bed, and the terrified maid summoned my father from outside, with the story that the baby's ankle was out of joint. He hurried in, gave it one look, and, being a hasty, impetuous man, he declared, "Yes, the child's ankle is out of joint; I must go for a doctor;" and in another moment he would have been off on a seven-mile tramp through the dark to Watertown. But the mother, a level-headed woman, experienced in emergencies, called out from her bed, "Wait a minute; bring me the child and a candle;" and a minute later she had discovered a little sliver which p.r.i.c.ked him when he set his foot down, and extricated it between thumb and finger. "There," said she; "I don't think you need walk to Water-town to-night."

Indians were so numerous that I don't remember when they first came out of the haze into my consciousness, but probably in my third year. They were Winnebago and Pottawatomi, the river being a common inheritance of both tribes. In the winter of 1839-40, about thirty families of the former tribe camped for several weeks opposite our home and were very sociable and friendly. Diligent hunters and trappers, they acc.u.mulated fully a hundred dollars worth of otter, beaver, bear, deer, and other skins. But a trader came up from Watertown in the spring and got the whole lot in exchange for a four-gallon keg of whisky. That was a wild night that followed. Some of the noisiest came over to our house, and when denied admittance threatened to knock the door down, but my father told them he had two guns ready for them, and they finally left. He afterwards said that he depended more on a heavy hickory club which he had on hand than on the guns--it could be fired faster.

An ugly squaw whose nose had been bitten off years before in a fight, stabbed her brother that night, because he refused her more whisky. He had, according to custom, been left on guard, and was entirely sober.

The next day the Indians horrified my mother by declaring that they should cut the squaw into inch pieces if her brother died. They went down to Lake Koshkonong two days later, but he died the first day out.

The squaw escaped and lived a lonely life for years after, being known up and down the river as "Old Mag."

At any time of the year we were liable to receive visits from Indians pa.s.sing to and fro between Lakes Horicon and Koshkonong. They would come into the house without ceremony further than staring into the windows before entering. Being used only to town life in the East, my mother was afraid of them, but she always carried a bold face and would never give them bread, which they always demanded, unless she could readily spare it.

One summer afternoon, when she had finished her housework and had sat down to sew, half a dozen Indians, male and female, suddenly bolted in and clamored for bread. She shook her head and told them she had none for them. When she came West she had brought yeast cakes which, by careful renewal, she kept in succession until the family home was broken up in 1880. Upon the afternoon referred to, she had a large pan of yeast cakes drying before the fireplace. Seeing them, the Indians scowled at her, called her a lying woman, and made a rush for the cakes, each one taking a huge bite. Those familiar with the article know how bitter is the mixture of raw meal, hops, and yeast, and so will not wonder that presently a look of horror came over the Indians' faces and that then they sputtered the unsavory stuff out all over the newly scrubbed floor.

My mother used to say that if they had killed her she could not have kept from laughing. They looked very angry at first, but finally concluded that they had not been poisoned and had only "sold"

themselves, they huddled together and went out chattering and laughing, leaving my mother a good share of her day's work to do over again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HALF A DOZEN INDIANS BOLTED IN]

One day I saw a big Indian shake her by the shoulder because she wouldn't give him bread. She was ironing at the time, and threatened him with a hot flat iron till he hurried out. Another came in one warm summer afternoon, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, glowering at her. For once she was thoroughly frightened. He had with him a tomahawk, having a hollow handle and head, that could be used as a pipe. However, her wits did not desert her. Seeing the cat sleeping peacefully in the corner, she cried, "How did that cat get in here!" and catching up the broom she chased p.u.s.s.y around till she reached the door, when seizing the heavy iron latch she pulled it wide open, sending Mr.

Indian into the middle of the room; she then pushed the door back against the wall and set a chair against it. The Indian stood still for a minute, then uttered a grunt and took himself off, probably thinking she was too dangerous a person for him to attempt to bully.

The Indians used to offer for sale venison, fish, and maple sugar, but the line was always drawn on the latter, for it was commonly reported that they strained the sap through their blankets. And you should have seen their blankets! About 1846 a company of civilized Oneidas, some of whom my father had known in the East, camped near by and manufactured a large number of handsome and serviceable baskets. From wild berries they would make dyes that never faded, and print them on the baskets with stamps cut from potatoes. Some of their designs were quite artistic. A small basket and a rattle which they gave my year-old sister showed their good will.

I soon learned to have no fear of the tribesmen, although sometimes a fleet of fifty canoes would be in sight at once, pa.s.sing down the river to Koshkonong; but the first Germans who came to our parts nearly scared the life out of me. Their heavy beards, long coats, broad-visored caps, and arm-long pipes, made me certain that nothing less than a fat boy of five would satisfy their appet.i.tes; and whenever they appeared I would hunt my mother. They had bought a considerable tract of land about five miles from our place, and always wanted to know of us the road thither.

The result was just such a "jabber match" as could be expected where neither side knew the other's tongue; but by pointing and motioning my mother was always able to direct them. Sometimes they wished to come in and make tea or coffee on our stove, and eat the luncheon of bread and meat that they had brought across the water. They would then always urge their food upon me, so I came to like their black bread very much and soon revised my first estimate of their character. All those people cut fine farms out of the heavy timber and died rich.

The first settlers were mostly Americans, from New York and New England; but before leaving the old farm we used to hear of English, Irish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Welsh settlements. The latter people enveloped and overflowed our own particular community and came to form a good portion of the population.

Besides the numerous nationalities on this front edge of advancing settlement, there were people of many and diverse individualities--the uneasy, the unlucky, the adventurous, the men without money but full of hope, the natural hunters, the trappers, the lovers of woods and solitudes, and occasionally one who had left his country for his country's good; all these cla.s.ses were represented. But on the whole the frontier's people were an honest, kindly, generous cla.s.s, ready to help in trouble or need of any kind.

If there was sickness, watchers by the bedside and harvesters in the field were promptly forthcoming. If a new house or barn was to be raised, every available man came. If a cow was mired, and such was often the case, her owner easily got all the help he wanted. Husking and logging and quilting bees were common, and in the autumn there were bees for candle-dipping, when the family supply of candles would be made for a year; and all such events would of course be followed by a supper, and perhaps a frolic. Visits among the women folk were all-day affairs; if the husbands were invited, it would be of an evening, and the call then would last till midnight with a supper at ten. There was a word of comfort and good cheer in those forest homes. I doubt if any child in modern palaces enjoys happier hours than were mine on winter evenings, when I rested on the broad stone hearth in front of the big fireplace, with its blazing four-foot log, the dog on one side and the cat on the other, while my father told stories that had to be repeated as the stock ran out, and I was gradually lulled to sleep by the soft thunder of my mother's spinning wheel. What could be more luxurious for any youngster?

I remember that when I was about six I saw my first apple. Half of it came to me, and I absorbed it as if to the manor born. What a revelation it was to a lad who could be satisfied with choke-cherries and crab apples! In those times, when a visitor called it was common to bring out a dish of well-washed turnips, with plate and case knife, and he could slice them up or sc.r.a.pe them as he chose.

The woods abounded in wild fruits, which the women made the most of for the winter season. Berries, grapes, plums, and crab apples were all utilized. The latter were especially delicious for preserves. The boy who ate them raw off the tree could not get his face back into line the same day; but he would eat them. However, pumpkins were our main reliance for present and future pies and sauce; such pumpkins do not grow now in these latter days. There were two sugar bushes on our place, and a good supply of maple sugar was put up every spring. Many other dainties were added to our regular menu, and a boy with such a cook for a mother as I had, needed no sympathy from any one the whole world round.

The river was three hundred feet wide opposite our house, and about two feet deep, so teams could be driven across at ordinary stages, but foot pa.s.sengers depended on our boat, a large "dugout." I remember how beautiful it was, when first scooped out from a huge ba.s.swood log, clean, white, and sweet-smelling. Strangers and neighbors alike would call across, "Bring over the boat;" and if they were going from our side they would take it over and leave the job of hollering to us. At five years of age I could pole it around very nicely.

One day, when I was first trusted to go in the boat alone, a stranger called over, and as my father was busy, he told me to go after him. The man expressed much wonderment, and some hesitancy to trusting himself to the skill and strength of a bare-footed boy of five; but I a.s.sured him I was a veteran at the business. He finally got in very gingerly, and sat down flat on the bottom. All the way over he kept wondering at and praising my work until I was ready to melt with mingled embarra.s.sment and delight. At the sh.o.r.e he asked me unctuously how much he should pay.

"Oh, nothing," I said. "But let me pay you. I'd be glad to," said he.

"Oh, no, we never take pay," I replied, and dug my toes into the sand, not knowing how to get out of the sc.r.a.pe, yet well pleased at his high estimate of my service. All the time he was plunging down first into one pocket of his barn-door trousers and then the other, till at last he fished out an old "bungtown" cent, which with much graciousness and pomposity he pressed upon me, until my feeble refusals were overcome. I took the coin and scampered away so fast that I must have been invisible in the dust I raised. Showing it to my father, I was told that I ought not to have taken it; but I explained how helpless I had been, and repeated word for word what the man had said, and, unintentionally, somewhat copied his tone and manner. The twinkle in my father's eye showed that he understood. That copper was my first-earned money; if it had only been put out at compound interest, I ought, if the mathematicians are right, to be now living in _otium c.u.m dignitate_,[2]

perhaps.

[Footnote 2: _Otium c.u.m dignitate_ is a Latin expression meaning _ease with dignity_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE FISHED OUT AN OLD BUNGTOWN CENT]

Steve Peck was one of the most notable of the marked characters above hinted at. He was a roistering blade, who captained all the harumscarums of the section. Peck was a surveyor and had helped at the laying out of Milwaukee. Many were the stories told of his escapades, but s.p.a.ce will not permit of their rehearsal here. He had selected a choice piece of land and built a good house; then he induced the daughter of an Aberdeen ex-merchant of aristocratic family but broken fortune, who had sought a new chance in the wilds of Wisconsin, to share them with him. But wife and children could not hold him to a settled life, and he sold out one day to a German immigrant, gave his wife a few dollars and disappeared, not to be seen or heard of in those parts again.

Another character was a man named Needham, who also was somewhat of a mystery. The women considered that he had been "crossed in love." He affected a sombre style, rather imitating the manners and habits of the Indians. His cabin was near the river, and he was a constant hunter.

Many times when playing by the sh.o.r.e I would become conscious of a strange, noiseless presence, and looking up would see Needham paddling by, swift and silent. It always gave me the shudders and sent me to the house. One day, on coming home from school, I saw a great platter of red meat on the table. I asked who had killed the beef; it was a practice to share the meat with the neighbors, whenever a large animal was killed, taking pay in kind. I was told it was not beef, and being unable to guess was at last informed that it was bear meat, which Mr. Needham had left. As he had killed the animal near where I hunted the cows every night, the news gave me a sensation.

Uncle Ben Piper, the only gray-haired man in the community, kept tavern and was an oracle on nearly all subjects. He was also postmaster, and a wash-stand drawer served as post office. It cost twenty-five cents in those times to pa.s.s a letter between Wisconsin and the East. Postage did not have to be prepaid, and I have known my father to go several days before he could raise the requisite cash to redeem a letter which he had heard awaited him in the wash-stand drawer, for Uncle Ben was not allowed to accept farm produce or even bank script for postage.

An Englishman named Pease, who lived near us, had "wheels." He thought the Free Masons and the women were in league to end his life. Every night he ranged his gun and farm tools beside his bed, to help ward off the attack that he constantly expected. Nothing could induce him to eat any food that a woman had prepared. In changing "work" with my father, which often occurred, he would bring his own luncheon and eat it by the fire during mealtime. But after my sister was born, he refused to enter the house; he told the neighbors that "women were getting too thick up at Coe's." Pease had nicknames for all the settlers but one, and while very polite to their faces, he always applied his nicknames in their absence.

A man named Rugg lost caste with his neighbors because he dug and used a potato pit in an Indian mound from which he had thrown out a large number of human bones. Some of the bones were of gigantic size.

There were many good hunters among the settlers; the Smith brothers scorned to shoot a bird or squirrel except through the head. If there were sickness in the family of any neighbor, the Smiths saw that partridges, quail, or pigeons, properly shot, were supplied. Another Smith was a bee hunter, and a very successful one, too. Those were the days when the beautiful pa.s.senger pigeons at times seemed to fill the woods and the sky. Deer were very abundant; I have seen them eating hay with my father's cows; and in the spring and fall seasons the river was covered with wild ducks and geese.

Two events in my seventh year left a strong impression upon me. The first was an address by a colored man named Lewis Was.h.i.+ngton, a runaway slave, who had a natural gift of oratory and made many speeches in this state. I was so curious to see a genuine black man that I got too close to him when he was in the convulsion of putting on his overcoat, and caught a considerable thump. No harm was done, but he apologized very earnestly. I have read that his campaigning of the state was quite effective.

The other occurrence was the visit to Watertown of Herr Dreisbach with his famous menagerie. Our indulgent father took my brother and myself and a neighbor's daughter to see the "great instructive exhibition." It took our ox-team three hours to make the seven miles, and the elephant's footprints by the bridges, and other impedimenta of the great show, which we pa.s.sed, carried our excitement, which had been cruelly growing for three weeks, well-nigh up to an exploding climax. I was told not to lose my ticket, or I could not get in; and when the ticket taker seized hold of it, I held on until he finally yelled angrily, "Let go, you little cuss!" whereupon my father came to his rescue. The show on the whole was very satisfactory, except for the color of Columbus, the fine old elephant, which for some reason, probably from the show bills on the barns, I had expected to be of a greenish tint. I also had supposed that the lion would drag his chariot at least half a mile, with the driver in heroic pose, instead of merely two cars' length. Herr Dreisbach afterwards showed on Rock Prairie, in the open country, a few miles east of Janesville. People came from great distances to attend, even from as far as Baraboo, sometimes camping out two nights each way.

Our first public edifice was a log schoolhouse about twenty feet square.

It was on the opposite side of the river, nearly a mile distant, but I began to attend school before I was fully five years old. One of the things I remember of one of my early teachers most distinctly is, that she used to hang a five-franc piece, tied with blue ribbon, around the neck of the scholar who had "left off at the head." I was occasionally favored, but my mother's satisfaction was greatly modified by her fear that I would lose the coin while taking it back the next day.

The teachers probably could not have pa.s.sed a normal school examination, but they could do what our graduates now cannot do--that is, make and mend a quill pen. Those were all the pens we had, and many a time have I chased our geese to get a new quill. The teachers patiently guided our wobbling ideas from the alphabet to cube root. The lessons over, we were told to "toe the crack," and "make obeisance," and were then put through our paces in the field of general knowledge. I still remember, from their drilling, the country, territory, county, and town in which we lived; that James K. Polk was president, that George M. Dallas was vice-president, and that Henry Dodge was governor. What ancient history that now seems!

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHASING THE GEESE TO GET A NEW QUILL]

Near the school lived a family named Babc.o.c.k, with four well-grown boys.

One of them used often to come over at noon to see one of the teachers.

One noon, on running to the schoolroom after something that I wanted, I was horrified to see my loved teacher struggling to prevent the young fellow from kissing her. I felt very sorry for her, and on going home promptly reported the outrage to my mother. She evidently did not approve, but did not make as much of a demonstration over it as I had expected. I doubt now, if the teacher was as greatly in need of my sympathy as I then thought. The Babc.o.c.ks all went to the war, as I am told, and one of them became colonel of his regiment. He came home to be fatally and mysteriously shot one night on his way to his room in Chicago; the why and how were never revealed.

The winter after I was six years old I went to a school taught by a fine young man named Martin Piper, a relative of Uncle Ben's. The next summer he enlisted in the Mexican War with another of our young neighbors, John Bradshaw. I saw the volunteers from Watertown filling two wagons that carried them to Milwaukee, and I could not keep the tears back, for I feared I should never see John and Martin again. And so it was; they both perished at Vera Cruz.

My last winter's school was taught by my father. I remember that we used to cross the river, which only froze along the edges, on cakes of ice which he would cut out and pole across. The school closed in the spring with an "exhibition," consisting of declamations, dialogues, a little "play," and a spelling contest. The whole countryside was there, and about thirty of us youngsters were put up in the attic, which was floored over with loose boards, to make room for our elders. The only light we had was what percolated up through the cracks, and all that we could see of the exhibition was through them. As we hustled around, sampling them to see where we could see best, we made a good deal of disturbance.

The best place, next the chimney, we were driven back from, for repeated burning had weakened the support. (The beam next to the chimney used to catch fire nearly every day, and we younger ones used to watch it and report to the teacher, who would calmly throw a dipper of water up and put the fire out for the time being.) A fat woman sat under the dangerous place that evening, and made a great outcry if we came near to enjoy the desirable outlook--stout people always seem fearful that something will fall on them. I remember also that her little girl, a pretty creature in curls and a pink dress, spoke "Mary had a little lamb," by having it "lined out" to her.

Our schoolhouse was so set in a n.o.ble grove of oaks, elms and maples with a heavy undergrowth, that we could not be seen from the road.

Nearly every day droves of cattle went by, and we used to run up through the thicket to see them. It must have been an odd sight to the drovers to see a dozen or more little half-scared faces peering out of the brush, and no building in sight. They would often give us a noisy salute, whereupon we would scamper back, telling of our narrow escape from dangerous beasts and men.

The presidential election in the fall of 1848 aroused a good deal of interest, for Wisconsin had now become a state, and citizens could vote for national candidates. I was in Jonathan Piper's store one evening, with my father, when about a dozen men were present. A political discussion sprang up and grew hot, and finally a division was called for. Two or three voted for Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate; one for Lewis Ca.s.s, the Democrat; and the rest for Martin Van Buren, Free Soiler. The State went with the lone voter, for Ca.s.s carried it by a small plurality.

Good health was the rule among the hardworking, plain-living pioneers, but plowing up the soil released the poison which nature seemed to have put there on guard, and every one at one time or another came down with the "shakes." However, the potent influence of suns.h.i.+ne, quinine, and cholagogue speedily won their way, and in a few years malaria had become a mere reminiscence.

In November, 1848, my parents moved to Beaver Dam, and thus our life in the Rock River country came to an end. The splendid primeval forest has now gone, and even before we left much of it had been converted into log heaps and burned. Every night scores of fires would gleam out where the finest hardwood logs, worth now a king's ransom, were turned into smoke and ashes. Even the mills which that grand pioneer, Andrew Hardgrave, had built in 1844, to the great rejoicing of all the people, are gone, and the river flows on over its smooth limestone floor, unvexed as of old. But fine brick buildings have taken the place of the old log structures, and land brings at least twenty times as much per acre as then. Who can argue against that?

THE BUCCANEERS

During the seventeenth century there were a great number of pirates who committed serious ravages upon the settlements in the West Indies and upon the mainland adjacent, and whose expeditions extended even to the coasts of Chili and Peru. These men were called buccaneers; and the meaning of the word gives some intimation of the origin of the buccaneers themselves.

At an earlier day, many of the settlers in the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, made their living by hunting cattle and preserving the meat by the _boucan_ process. These hunters used to form parties of five or six in number, and arming themselves with musket, bullet bag, powderhorn and knife, they took their way on foot through the tangled forests of the country. When they killed one of the wild cattle, its flesh was cut into long strips and laid upon gratings, constructed of green sticks, where it was exposed to the smoke of a wood fire, which was fed by the fat and waste parts of the animals. The grating upon which the meat was laid was called a _boucan_, and the hunters were called _boucaniers_. Later these hunters were driven from Hayti by the Spaniards and took refuge in some of the neighboring islands, where they revenged themselves for some of the ill-treatment by preying upon the possessions of their oppressors wherever they could find them.

At the same time affairs in Europe brought France and England on the one hand, and Spain on the other, into collision; and as a result, the Spanish possessions in America became the object of French and English attacks. Accordingly, those two nations were inclined to look with a lenient eye upon the depredations committed by the buccaneers, so long as the property of the English and French was respected. As a natural consequence, many of the disreputable and daring characters of both nations joined themselves with the original buccaneers, whom they soon made as corrupt as themselves. Eventually these pirates increased so in number, and grew so daring in their operations that it was necessary for all nations to unite in putting them down; and by that time, the word _buccaneer_ had come to mean _pirate_ in its worst sense.