The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 1

The Minute Man of the Frontier.

by W. G. Puddefoot.

PREFACE.

In a very able review of Maspero's "Dawn of Civilization," the writer says "that for hundreds of years it was believed that history had two eyes; but now we know she has at least three, and that archaeology is the third."

This may account for the saying that "history is a lie agreed to;" for it needs to be argus-eyed to give us any adequate idea of the truth; and while the writer of the following sketches does not aspire to the rank of a historian, he has been induced to print them for two or three reasons. First, because urged to by friends; and secondly, because of the unique condition of American frontier life that is so rapidly pa.s.sing away forever.

One may read Macaulay, Froude, Knight, and, in fact, a half-dozen histories of England, and then sit down to the gossipy sketches of Sidney culled from Pepys's, Evelyn's, and other diaries, and get a truer view of English life than in all the great histories combined.

It would be impossible to give even the slightest sketch of a country so large as ours for a single decade in many volumes; although, in one sense, we are more h.o.m.ogeneous than many suppose.

There was a greater difference in two counties in England before the advent of the railways than between two of our Northern States to-day.

To-day a man may travel from Boston to San Francisco, and he will find the same headlines in his morning papers, and for three thousand miles will find the scenery desecrated by the wretched quack medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts that produce "that tired feeling" which they profess to cure.

If he goes into one county in the mother country, he will find the people singeing the bristles of their swine, and counting by the score, in another by the stone, etc., and customs kept up that had grown settled before travel became general. But with us it is different. We had no time to become crystallized before the iron horse, the great cosmopolitan of the age, rapidly levelled all distinctions; and it is only by getting away from the railway, and into settlements that still retain all the primitiveness of an earlier day, that we find the conditions of which much of this book treats.

I.

THE FRONTIER IN RELATION TO THE WORLD.

The opening up of a new frontier is world-wide in its operations.

Minnesota entered the Union as a State in 1858. The putting to practical use the Falls of St. Anthony was felt all over Europe.

Thousands of little country mills, nestling amid the trees, and adding to the beauty of the English pastoral scenery, to-day stand idle, the great wheels covered with green moss; and Tennyson's "Miller" becomes a reminiscence. Iowa became a State in 1846, and now leads the world in the production of corn; and although it is a thousand miles from the seaboard, yet through its immense production, and with the cheapening of transportation, we find over seventy thousand Italians emmigrating to this country, as, in spite of low wages, they cannot compete on the plains of Lombardy. (See Wells's "Economic Changes.")--We find that the man at the front can s.h.i.+p from Chicago to Liverpool the product of five acres of grain for less money than the cost of manuring one acre of land in England. (_Ibid._)

Every time a new frontier in America is opened, it means both prosperity and disaster. So large are the opportunities, so rich the results, that at first all calculations are upset. Natural gas in the Middle States changes the price of coal in Europe. The finding of a tin-mine is felt in Cornwall and Wales the next day. The opening of the iron-mines in Michigan makes Cornish towns spring up in the upper peninsula, while the finding of ore in desolate places has caused communities to spring up with all the conditions of a cosmopolitan civilization, and we have to-day men living twenty-five miles from trees or gra.s.s. But such is the energy of the frontier type, that gra.s.s-plats have been carried and planted on the solid rocks, as in Duluth, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are expended in the grading of streets, and the opening of the sewers, all having to be blasted to do the work.

North Dakota was a wilderness of 150,000 square miles, and had not produced a single bushel of wheat for sale, in 1881. In 1886 it produced nearly 35,000,000 bushels; in 1887, 62,553,000. (See Wells's "Recent Economic Changes.") The opening up of these immense territories starts railways from California to Siberia; for, with the Great West competing, Russia is stirred to greater effort. India, with her great commerce with Great Britain, needs a shorter route; and the Suez ca.n.a.l is made. Australia must compete with the Western plains; and great steamers, filled with refrigerators, are constructed for carrying fresh beef. The South American republics respond in return.

The hardy pioneer, ever on the move, explores well nigh impracticable routes in search of precious metals. The inventive mechanic must respond with an engine that can climb anywhere; and in almost inaccessible mountain eyries the eagle is disturbed by the shriek of the locomotive, and the bighorn must take refuge with the bison in the National Park. The news of new mines flies around the world, fortunes are made and lost in a day, and the destinies of nations determined. A great crop starts railways, steams.h.i.+ps. Miners, smelting-works, iron and steel, respond. Letters fly across the Atlantic, and returning steamers are filled with eager men and women, who answer the letters in person. Down from the far north, Sweden and Norway have responded with over a million of their children. Great Britain has sent nearly six millions. Germany follows with 4,417,950; Italy, 392,000; France, 315,130; Austria, 304,976; Denmark, 114, 858; Hungary, 141,601; Switzerland, 167,203; Russia and Poland, 326,994; Netherlands, 99,516; and so on: in all, a total for Europe in fifty years of over 13,000,000, the great majority of whom have been started from their homes by the opening up of new frontiers.

It has been stated on good authority, that sixty per cent of the Germans that come are between the ages of fifteen and forty, while all Germany has only thirty per cent of that age.

On the authority of Dr. Farr, quoted by R. Mayo Smith in his "Emigration and Immigration," he calculates the money value of the immigrants from the British Isles from 1837 to 1876 reached the enormous sum of 1,400,000 pounds sterling, or 7,000,000,000 of dollars, an average of 175,000,000 dollars a year; while the amount sent back from British North America and the United States since 1848 was but 32,294,596. And what has been produced by the immigrant and exported amounts to many hundred millions of dollars. It has been computed that the country has been pushed forward a quarter of a century by this vast ma.s.s of immigrants, nearly all of whom labor for a living.

The frontiers of America will yet change the world. When in the not distant future hundreds of millions cover the great continent, dotted with schools and churches, and an intelligent population speaking one language, and with other millions in Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea, using the same language, the time will come when they will arbitrate for the world, and war shall be no more. Long before the Atlantic cable was stretched across the ocean, millions of heartstrings were vibrating from this land to all parts of Europe; and to-day the letters fly homeward from the frontier immigrants in their sod houses, bearing good cheer in words and money.

The freedom of the frontier is contagious, and the poor European strives harder than ever to reach his kin across the sea. And when we consider that only 300,000 square miles out of 1,500,000 miles of arable land is under cultivation, and that already the farmers of England and most parts of Europe are being pushed to the wall, we begin to realize that the growth of the frontiers of the United States not only influences our own land, but changes materially the course of events in the whole world. The above figures are by Mr. Edward Atkinson, as quoted in substance from "Recent Economic Changes."

To show the growth of one State during the past fifty years, let us take Michigan. In 1840 Michigan had a population of 212,267; in 1890, 2,093,889. In 1840 there were three small railroads, with a total mileage of 59 miles. In 1890 there were over 7,000 miles. "In 1840 [I quote from Hon. B. W. Cutcheon, in "Fifty Years' Growth in Michigan"]

mining had not begun. In 1890 over 7,000,000 tons of iron were s.h.i.+pped from her mines; while the output of copper had reached over a 100,000,000 lbs., and valued at $15,845,427.28. The salt industry, a late one, rose from 4,000 bbls. in 1860 to 3,838,937 bbls. in 1890; while the value of her lumber products for 1890 was over $55,000,000.

In 1840 there were neither graded nor high schools, normal schools nor colleges. In 1890, 654,502 children were of school age, with an enrolment of 427,032, with 33,975 additional attending private schools. These children were taught by 15,990 teachers, who received in salaries $3,326,287."

In 1840 Michigan had 30,144 horses and mules, 185,190 neat cattle, 99,618 sheep. In 1890 there were 579,896 horses, 3,779 mules, of milch cows 459,475, oxen and other cattle 508,938, of sheep 2,353,779, of swine 893,037. The total value came to $74,892,618. Over 1,700 men are engaged in the fisheries, with nearly a million dollars invested, with a total yield of all fish of 34,490,184 lbs., valued at over a million and a half of dollars. The value of her apples and peaches in 1890 was $944,332; of cherries, pears, and plums, $65,217; of strawberries, $166,033; of other berries, $267,398; and of grapes, $122,394. The wheat crop for 1891 was valued at $27,486,910; the oats at $9,689,441; besides 811,977 bushels of buckwheat, and 2,522,376 bushels of barley.

The capital invested in lumber alone was $111,302,797. "While her great University, which saw its first student in 1841, and which had but three teachers, one of them acting as president, has grown to be one of the largest in the nation, with eighty professors and instructors and 2,700 students registered on her rolls, conferring 623 degrees upon examination." And all this but the partial record of fifty years in one State.

Since Michigan was entered as a State fourteen new States have been formed (not counting Texas) and three Territories, with an aggregate of over 17,000,000 square miles of land, and a population of nearly 15,000,000, nearly all of which fifty years ago was wilderness, the home of the Indian and the wild beasts. With such stupendous changes in so short a time, we see that the American frontiers have a direct and powerful influence in changing the histories and destinies of the nations of the whole world.

II.

EARLY REMINISCENCES.

It was in the spring of 1859 that I first saw the frontier. Our way was over the New York Central, very little of which had two tracks. I have a very vivid recollection of the worm fences, the log houses, and the great forests that we pa.s.sed on our way to Upper Canada. I remember the hunters coming towards the train with their moccasons on and the bucks slung over their shoulders. I have since that time seen many men who were the first to cut a tree in this county or that town.

There were about forty thousand miles of railway in the whole land at that date, against nearly two hundred thousand miles to-day. Cities which are now the capitals of States were the feeding-ground of buffalo; wolves and black bears had their dens where to-day we can see a greater miracle in stone than Cheops; i.e., a stone State House built inside the appropriation! Then six miles of travel on the new roads smashed more china than three thousand miles by sea and rail.

The little towns were but openings in a forest that extended for hundreds of miles. The best house in the village without a cellar; roots were kept in pits. Houses could be rented for two dollars per month, where to-day they are twelve dollars. Pork was two dollars a hundred; beef by the quarter, two and one-half cents a pound; potatoes, fifteen cents a bushel. Men received seventy-five cents a day for working on the railroad. Cord-wood was two dollars a cord; and you could get it cut, split, and piled for fifty cents a cord. Men wore stogy boots, generally with one leg of the trousers outside and one in. Blue denham was the prevailing suit for workingmen. The shoemaker cut his shoes, and they were sent out to be bound by women.

The women wore spring-heeled shoes, print dresses, and huge sunbonnets; and in the summer-time the settlers went barefooted. The roads were simply indescribable. When a tree fell, it was cut off within an inch of the ruts; the wagon would sink to the hubs, and need prying out with poles; harnesses were never cleaned, and boot-blacking had no sale. But the schoolhouse was in every towns.h.i.+p. In the older settlements could be seen the log hut in which the young couple started housekeeping, then a log house of more pretentious size; the frame-house which followed, and a fine brick house where the family now lived, showing the rapid progress made.

This was in western Canada. Toronto was separated from Yorkville, but was a busy, substantial city. I remember the stores being closed when Lincoln was buried, and black bunting hung along the princ.i.p.al streets. I remember, too, the men who were loudest in their curses at the government and against Lincoln, how the tears came to their eyes, and how that event brought them to their senses. Most of them were shoemakers from New England.

In 1873 I crossed into Michigan with my family. Even as late as that the greater part of northern Michigan, and especially the upper peninsula, was _terra incognita_ to most of the people of that State.

The railroads stopped at a long distance this side the Straits of Mackinaw. The lumbermen had but skimmed the best of the trees; and, with the exception of a few isolated settlements on the lakes and up the larger rivers, it was an unbroken wilderness, abounding in fish, deer, bears, wolves, and wild-cats; in fact, a hunter's paradise, as it is even to this day.

But with the extension of the railways to the Straits of Mackinaw, and the opening of new lines to the north into the iron mines of Menominee to the Gogebic range, the great copper mines of the Keweenaw peninsula, and the ever-increasing traffic of the lakes, the changes were simply marvellous. Some things I shall say will seem paradoxical, but they are nevertheless true to life.

The greater parts of southern Michigan and southern Wisconsin were settled by people from New York State; and long before the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin were opened up, new States had risen in the West, and the tide of immigration swept past towards new frontiers, leaving vast frontiers behind them. Sometimes a few stray men with money at their command would pierce the country and form a settlement, as in the case of Traverse City. Here for years the mail was brought by the Indians on dog-sledges in the winter. It took eight days to reach Grand Rapids on snow-shoes. It is four hundred miles by water to Chicago. Sometimes the winters were so long that the provisions had to be dealt out very sparingly; but all the time the little colony was growing, and when at last the railroads reached it, the traveller, after riding for miles through virgin forests, would come upon a little city of four thousand people, with good churches, fine schools, and one store that cost one hundred thousand dollars to build.

If it chanced to be summer-time he would see the tepees of the Indians along the bay, and two blocks back civilized homes with all the conveniences and luxuries of modern life. Here a huge canoe made of a single log, and there a mammoth steamer with all the elegances of an ocean-liner. Should he go on board of one of the steamers coasting around the lakes with supplies, he would pa.s.s great bays with lovely islands, and steam within a stone's throw of a comparatively rare bird, the great northern diver, and suddenly find himself near a wharf with a village in sight--a great saw-mill cutting its hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber a day; and near by, Indian graves with the food still fresh inside, and a tame deer with a collar and bell around its neck trotting around the streets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN CAMP, GRAND TRAVERSE BAY, MICHIGAN.

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He can sit and fish for trout on his doorstep that borders the little stream, or he can get on the company's locomotive and run twenty miles back into the woods and see the coveys of partridges rising in clouds, and here and there a timid doe and her fawn, whose curiosity is greater than their fears, until the whistle blows, and they are off like a shot into the deep forest, near where the black bear is munching raspberries in a ten-thousand-acre patch, while millions of bushels of whortleberries will waste for lack of pickers. He can sit on a point of an inland lake and catch minnows on one side, and pull up black ba.s.s on the other; and if a "tenderfoot" he will bring home as much as he can carry, expecting to be praised for his skill. He is mortified at the request to please bury them. He will ride over ground that less than fifteen years ago could be bought for a song and to-day produces millions, and is dotted with towns and huge furnaces glowing night and day.

If in the older settled parts, he will ride through cornfields whose ta.s.sels are up to the car windows, where the original settler paddled his skiff and caught pickerel and the ague at the same time, and who is still alive to tell the story. He can talk with a man who knew every white man by name when he first went there, and remembers the Indian peeping in through his log-cabin window, but whose grandchildren have graduated from a university with twenty-seven hundred students, where he helped build the log schoolhouse; who remembers when he had to send miles for salt, and yet was living over a bed of it big enough to salt the world down.

He had nothing but York State pumpkins and wild cranberries for his Thanksgiving dinner, with salt pork for turkey; and he lives to-day in one of the great fruit belts of the world, and s.h.i.+ps his turkeys by the ton to the East; and to-day in the North the same experience is going on. Places where the mention of an apple makes the teeth water, and where you can still see them come wrapped in tissue paper like oranges, and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, you can enter a lumber-camp and find the men regaled on roast chicken and eating cuc.u.mbers before the seed is sown in that part of the country.

Here are farms worth over eighty thousand dollars, which but a few years ago were entered by the homesteader who had to live on potatoes and salt, and cut wild hay in summer, and draw it to town on a cedar jumper, in order to get flour for his hungry children. Here on an island are men living who used to leave their farming to see the one steamer unload and load, or watch a schooner drawn up over the Rapids, and who now see sweeping by their farms a procession of craft whose tonnage is greater than all the ocean ports of the country.

I have sat on the deck of a little steamer and drawn pictures for the Indians, who took them and marched off with the smile of a schoolboy getting a prize chromo, and in less than five years from that time I have at the same place sat down in a hotel lighted with electricity, and a menu equal to any in the country, with a bronze portrait of General Grant embossed on the top. Within ten years I have preached, with an Indian chief for an interpreter, in a log house in which a half-brother of Riel of North-Western fame was a hearer, where to-day there are self-supporting churches and flouris.h.i.+ng schools.

Less than sixteen years ago I stopped at the end of the Michigan Central Railway, northern division; every lot was filled with stumps.

A school was being rapidly built, while the church had a lot only. The next time I visited the town it had fine churches and schools. The hotel had a beautiful conservatory filled with choice flowers. I could take my train, pa.s.s on over the Straits of Mackinaw, on by rail again, and clear to the Pacific, with sleeper and dining-car attached.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW NEAR PETOSKEY, MICHIGAN.

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