Woman on the American Frontier Part 13

The following "first day," which world's people call the Sabbath, meeting was attended at Newtown by the whole family, and then John Estaugh was moved by the Spirit to speak words that sank into the hearts of his hearers. It was a discourse on the trials and temptations of daily life, drawing a contrast between this course of earthly probation, with its toils, sufferings, and sorrows, and that higher life, with its rewards to the faithful beyond the grave.

Elizabeth listened to the preacher with meek attention; he seemed to be speaking to her, for all the lessons of the discourse were applicable to herself. As the deep tones of the good man ceased to vibrate in her ears, and there was stillness for a full half hour in the house, she pondered over it deeply. The impression made by the young preacher seemed to open a new window in her soul; he was a G.o.d-sent messenger, whose character and teachings would lift still higher her life, and sanctify her mission with a holier inspiration.

A few days of united duties and oneness of heart made John and Elizabeth more thoroughly acquainted with each other than they could have been by years of ordinary fas.h.i.+onable intercourse.

They were soon obliged to separate, the young preacher being called to other meetings of his sect in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When they bade each other farewell, neither knew that they would ever meet again, for John Estaugh's duty might call him from the country ere another winter, and his avocations in the new world were absorbing and continuous. With a full heart, but with the meekness characteristic of her sect, Elizabeth turned away to her daily round of good works with a new and holier zeal.

In May following they met again. John Estaugh, in company with numerous other Friends, stopped at her house to lodge while on their way to the quarterly meeting at Salem. The next day a cavalcade started from her hospitable door on horseback, for that was before the days of wagons in Jersey.

John Estaugh, always kindly in his impulses, busied himself with helping a lame and very ugly old woman, and left his hostess to mount her horse as she could. Most young women would have felt slighted; but in Elizabeth's n.o.ble soul the quiet, deep tide of feeling rippled with an inward joy. "He is always kindest to the poor and neglected," thought she; "verily he is a good youth."

She was leaning over the side of her horse, to adjust the buckle of the girth, when he came up on horseback and enquired if anything was out of order. She thanked him, with slight confusion of manner, and a voice less calm than her usual utterance. He a.s.sisted her to mount, and they trotted along leisurely behind the procession of guests, speaking of the soil and climate of this new country, and how wonderfully the Lord had here provided a home for his chosen people. Presently the girth began to slip, and the saddle turned so much on one side that Elizabeth was obliged to dismount.

It took some time to readjust the girth, and when they again started, the company were out of sight. There was brighter color than usual in the maiden's cheeks, and unwonted radiance in her mild, deep eyes.

After a short silence, she said, in a voice slightly tremulous, "Friend John, I have a subject of importance on my mind, and one which nearly interests thee. I am strongly impressed that the Lord has sent thee to me as a partner for life, I tell thee my impression frankly, but not without calm and deep reflection, for matrimony is a holy relation, and should be entered into with all sobriety. If thou hast no light on the subject, wilt thou gather into the stillness and reverently listen to thy own inward revealings? Thou art to leave this part of the country to-morrow, and not knowing when I should see thee again, I felt moved to tell thee what lay upon my mind."

The young man was taken by surprise. Though accustomed to that suppression of emotion which characterizes his religious sect, the color came and went rapidly in his face, for a moment. But he soon, became calmer, and replied, "This thought is new to me, Elizabeth, and I have no light thereon. Thy company has been right pleasant to me, and thy countenance ever reminds me of William Penn's t.i.tle-page, '_Innocency with her open face_.' I have seen thy kindness to the poor, and the wise management of thy household. I have observed, too, that thy warm-heartedness is tempered with a most excellent discretion, and that thy speech is ever sincere. a.s.suredly, such is the maiden I would ask of the Lord as a most precious gift; but I never thought of this connection with thee. I came to this country solely on a religious visit, and it might distract my mind to entertain this subject at present. When I have discharged the duties of my mission, we will speak further."

"It is best so," rejoined the maiden, "but there is one thing disturbs my conscience. Thou hast spoken of my true speech; and yet, friend John, I have deceived thee a little, even now, while we conferred together on a subject so serious. I know not from what weakness the temptation came, but I will not hide it from thee. I allowed thee to suppose, just now, that I was fastening the girth of my horse securely; but, in plain truth, I was loosening the girth, John, that the saddle might slip, and give me an excuse to fall behind our friends; for I thought thou wouldst be kind enough to come and ask if I needed thy services."

They spoke no further upon this topic; but when John Estaugh returned to England in July, he pressed her hand affectionately, as he said, "Farewell, Elizabeth: if it be the Lord's will I shall return to thee soon."

The young preacher made but a brief sojourn in England. The Society of Friends in London appreciated his value as a laborer among them and would have been pleased to see him remain, but they knew how fruitful of good had been his labors among the brethren in the wilderness, and deemed it a wise resolution when he informed them that he should shortly return to America.

Early in September he set sail from London and reached New York the following month. A few days after landing he journeyed on horseback to the dwelling where Elizabeth was awaiting him, and they were soon after married at Newtown Meeting according to the simple form of the Society of Friends.

Neither of them made any change of dress for the occasion; there was no wedding feast; no priest or magistrate was present; in the presence of witnesses they simply took each other by the hand and solemnly promised to be kind and faithful to each other. The wedded pair then quietly returned to their happy home, prepared to resume together that life of good words and kind deeds which each had thus far pursued alone.

Thrice during the long period of their union did she cross the Atlantic to visit her aged parents, and not seldom he left her for a season when called to preach abroad. These temporary separations were hard for her to bear, but she cheerfully gave him up to follow in the path of his duty wherever it might lead him. Amid her cares and pleasures as a wife she neither grew self-absorbed nor, like many of her s.e.x, bounded her benevolence within the area of the household. Her heart was too large, her charity too abounding, to do that, and her sense of duty to her fellow-men always dominated that narrow feeling which concentrates kindness on self or those nearest to one.

While her husband performed his n.o.ble work in the care of souls, she pursued her career within the sphere where it was so allotted. As a housewife she was notable; to her might be applied the words of King Lemuel, in the Proverbs of Solomon, celebrating and describing the good wife, "and her works praised her in the gates." As a neighbor she was generous and sympathetic; she stretched out her hand to the poor and needy; she was at once a guardian and a minister of mercy to the settlement.

When, after forty years of happiness in wedlock, her husband was taken from her, she gave evidence of her appreciation of his worth in a preface which she published to one of his religious tracts ent.i.tled, "Elizabeth Estaugh's testimony concerning her beloved husband, John Estaugh." In this preface she says:

"Since it pleased Divine Providence so highly to favor me with being the near companion to this dear worthy, I must give some small account of him.

Few, if any, in a married state, ever lived in sweeter harmony than we did.

He was a pattern of moderation in all things; not lifted up with any enjoyments, nor cast down at disappointments; a man endowed with many good gifts, which rendered him very agreeable to his friends, and much more to me, his wife, to whom his memory is most dear and precious."

Elizabeth survived her excellent husband twenty years, useful and honored to the last. The monthly meeting of Haddonfield, in a published testimonial, speaks of her thus:

"She was endowed with great natural abilities, which, being sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, were much improved; whereby she became qualified to act in the affairs of the church, and was a serviceable member, having been clerk to the woman's meeting nearly fifty years, greatly to their satisfaction She was a sincere sympathizer with the afflicted; of a benevolent disposition, and in distributing to the poor, was desirous to do it in a way most profitable and durable to them, and, if possible, not to let the right hand know what the left did. Though in a state of affluence as to this world's wealth, she was an example of plainness and moderation.

Her heart and house were open to her friends, whom to entertain seemed one of her greatest pleasures. Prudently cheerful and well knowing the value of friends.h.i.+p, she was careful not to wound it herself nor to encourage others in whispering supposed failings or weaknesses. Her last illness brought great bodily pain, which she bore with much calmness of mind and sweetness of spirit. She departed this life as one falling asleep, full of days, 'like unto a shock of corn fully ripe.'"

The maiden name of this gentle and useful woman has been preserved in Haddonfield, thus appropriately commemorating her manifold services in the early days of the settlement of which she was the pioneer-mother.

CHAPTER X.

ROMANCE OF THE BORDER.

The romance of border-life is inseparably a.s.sociated with woman, being her natural attendant during her wanderings through the wilderness. A distinguished American orator has suggested that a series of novels might be written founded upon the true stories of the border-women of our country. Such a contribution to our literature has thus far been made only to a limited extent. The reason for this deficiency will be obvious on a moment's reflection. The _true stories_ of the pioneer wives and mothers are often as interesting as any work of fiction, and need no embellishment from the imagination of a writer, because they are crowded with incidents and situations as thrilling as those which form the staple out of which novels are fabricated; love and adventure, hair-breadth escapes, heart-rending tragedies on the frontier, are thus woven into a narrative of absorbing and permanent interest, _permanent_ because it is part of the history and biography of America. Some of the truest of these stories are those which are most deeply fraught with tenderness and romance. What is more calculated to move the mind and heart of man for example than a story of two lovers environed by some deadly danger, or of separation and reunion, or a love faithful unto death?

Many years ago a young pioneer traveling across the plains met a lady to whom he became attached, and after a short courts.h.i.+p they were united in marriage. A trip over the plains in those days was not one to be chosen for a honey-moon excursion but the pair bore their labors and privations cheerfully; perils and hards.h.i.+ps only seemed to draw them closer together, and they were looking forward to a home on the Pacific slope where in plenty and repose they would be indemnified for the pains and fatigues of the journey. But their life's romance was destined, alas! to a sudden and mournful end. While crossing one of the rapid mountain streams their boat filled with water, and though the young man struggled manfully to gain the sh.o.r.e with his bride, the rush of the torrent bore them down and they sank to rise no more. An hour later their bodies were found locked together in a last embrace. The rough mountaineers had not the heart to unclasp that embrace but buried them by the side of the river in one grave.

The Indian was of course an important factor in the composition of these border romances. He was generally the villain in the plot of the story, and too often a successful villain whose wiles or open attacks were the means of separating two lovers. These tales have often a tragical catastrophe, but sometimes the _denouement_ is a happy one, thanks to the courage and constancy of the heroine or hero.

[Footnote: Potters Life of Daniel Boone] Among the adventurers whom Daniel Boone the famous hunter and Indian fighter of Kentucky, describes as having re-inforced his little colony was a young gentleman named Smith, who had been a major in the militia of Virginia, and possessed a full share of the gallantry and n.o.ble spirit of his native State. In the absence of Boone he was chosen, on account of his military rank and talent, to command the rude citadel which contained all the wealth of this patriarchal band, their wives, their children, and their herds. It held also an object particularly dear to this young soldier--a lady, the daughter of one of the settlers, to whom he had pledged his affections. It came to pa.s.s upon a certain day when a siege was just over, tranquillity restored, and the employment of husbandry resumed, that this young lady, with a lady companion, strolled out, as young ladies in love are very apt to do, along the bank of the Kentucky River.

Having rambled about for some time they espied a canoe lying by the sh.o.r.e, and in a frolic stepped into it, with the determination of visiting a neighbor on the opposite bank. It seems that they were not so well skilled in navigation as the Lady of the Lake who paddled her own canoe very dexterously; for instead of gliding to the point of destination they were whirled about by the stream, and at length thrown on a sandbar from which they were obliged to wade to the sh.o.r.e. Full of the mirth excited by their wild adventure they hastily arranged their dresses and were proceeding to climb the bank, when three Indians rushed from a neighboring covert, seized the fair wanderers, and forced them away. Their savage captors evincing no sympathy for their distress, nor allowing them time for rest or reflection, hurried them along during the whole day by rugged and th.o.r.n.y paths. Their shoes were worn off by the rocks, their clothes torn, and their feet and limbs lacerated and stained with blood. To heighten their misery one of the savages began to make love to Miss ------, (the intended of Major S.) and while goading her along with a pointed stick, promised in recompense for her sufferings to make her his squaw. This at once roused all the energies of her mind and called its powers into action. In the hope that her friends would soon pursue them she broke the twigs as she pa.s.sed along and delayed the party as much as possible by tardy and blundering steps. The day and the night pa.s.sed, and another day of agony had nearly rolled over the heads of these afflicted girls, when their conductors halted to cook a hasty repast of buffalo meat.

The ladies meanwhile were soon missed from the garrison. The natural courage and sagacity of Smith now heightened by love, gave him the wings of the wind and the fierceness of the tiger. The light traces of feminine feet led him to the place of embarkation; the canoe was traced to the opposite sh.o.r.e; the deep prints of the moccasin in the sand told the rest of the story.

The agonized Smith, accompanied by a few of his best woodsmen, pursued the spoil-enc.u.mbered foe. The track once discovered they kept it with that unerring sagacity so peculiar to our hunters. The bended gra.s.s, the disentangled briars, and the compressed shrubs afforded the only, but to them the certain indication of the route of the enemy. When they had sufficiently ascertained the general course of the retreat of the Indians, Smith quitted the trace, a.s.suring his companions that they would fall in with them at the pa.s.s of a certain stream-head for which he now struck a direct course, thus gaining on the foe who had taken the most difficult paths.

Having arrived at the stream, they traced its course until they discovered the water newly thrown upon the rocks. Smith, leaving his party, now crept forward upon his hands and knees, until he discovered one of the savages seated by a fire, and with a deliberate aim shot him through the heart. The women rushed towards their deliverer, and recognizing Smith, clung to him in the transport of newly awakened joy and grat.i.tude; while a second Indian sprang towards him with his tomahawk. Smith, disengaging himself from the ladies, aimed a blow at his antagonist with his rifle, which the savage avoided by springing aside, but at the same moment the latter received a mortal wound from another hand. The other and only remaining Indian fell in attempting to escape. Smith with his interesting charge returned in triumph to the fort where his gallantry no doubt was repaid by the sweetest of all rewards.

The May flower, or trailing arbutus, has been aptly styled our national flower. It lifts its sweet face in the desolate and rugged hillside, and flourishes in the chilly air and earth of early spring. So amid the rude scenes of frontier-life, love and romance peep out, and courts.h.i.+p is conducted in log cabins and even in more untoward places.

A tradition of the early settlement of Auburn, New York, relates that while Captain Hardenberg, the stout young miller, was busy with his sacks of grain in his little log-mill, he was unexpectedly a.s.saulted and overwhelmed with the arrows not of the savages but of love. The sweet eyes as well as the blooming health and courage of the daughter of Roeliffe Brinkerhoff who had been sent by her father to the mill, made young Hardenberg capitulate, and during the hour while she was waiting for the grist he managed thoroughly to a.s.sure her of the state of his affections; the courts.h.i.+p thus well begun resulted soon after in a wedding.

The imagination of the poet garnering the anecdotes and early traditions of the frontier around which lingers an aroma of love, has clothed them with new life, adorned them with bright colors, endowed them with fresh and vernal perfume and then woven them into a wreath with the magic art of poesy. From out of a group of stern features on Plymouth rock, graven with the deep lines of austere and almost cruel duty, the sweet face of Rose Standish looks winningly at us. The rugged captain of the Pilgrim band wooes Priscilla Mullins, through his friend John Alden, and finds too late that love does not prove fortunate when made by proxy; and Evangeline, maid, wife and widow comes back to us in beauty and sorrow from the far Acadian border. These romances of our eastern country have been fortunate in having a poet to make them immortal. But the West is equally fruitful in incidents which furnish material, and only lack the poet or novelist to work them up into enduring form.

The western country seems naturally fitted in many ways for love and romance. In that region the mind is uncramped and unfettered by the excessive schooling and over-training which prevails in the older settlements of the East. The heart heats more freely and warmly when its current is unchecked by conventionalities. Life is more intense in the West. The transitions of life are more frequent and startling. Both men and things are continually changing. In such a society impulse governs largely: the cooler and more selfish faculties of man's nature are less dominant.

When we add to these conditions, the changes, hards.h.i.+ps, and enforced separations of the frontier as frequent concomitants, we have exactly a state of society which is fruitful in romantic incidents--brides torn from their husband's embrace and hurried away; but restored as suddenly and strangely; two faithful lovers parted forever or re-united miraculously; and thrilling scenes in love's melodrama acted and re-acted on different stages but always with startling effect.

The effects of the romantic incidents in the lives of our pioneer women are also heightened by the extraordinary freshness and ever-changing scenery of the wilderness. Nature there spreads out like a mighty canvas: the forest, the mountains, and the prairies show clear and distinct through the crystal air so that peak and tree and even the tall blades of gra.s.s are outlined with a microscopic nearness. Over this vivid surface bison are browsing, and antelopes gambolling; plumed warriors flit by on their ponies, as the pioneer-men and women with wagons, oxen and horses are moving westward.

This is the scene where love springs spontaneously out of the close companions.h.i.+p which danger enforces.

The story of the Chase family is an ill.u.s.tration of the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction, and might readily furnish the groundwork upon which the genius of some future Cooper could construct an American romance of thrilling interest.

The stage whereon this drama of real life was acted lay in that rich, broad expanse between the Arkansas and the South Platte Rivers. The time, 1847.

The princ.i.p.al actors were the Chase family, consisting of old Mr. Chase, his wife, sons, and grandsons, Mary, his daughter, La Bonte and Kilbuck two famous hunters and mountaineers, Antoine a guide and Arapahoe Indians.

The scene opens with a view of three white-tilted Conestoga wagons or "prairie schooners," each drawn by four pair of oxen rumbling along through a plain enameled with the verdure and many tinted flowers of spring. The day is drawing to its close, and the rays of the sinking sun throw a mellow light over a waving sea of vernal herbage. The wagons are driven by the sons of Mr. Chase and contain the women and the household goods of the family. Behind the great swaying "schooners" walk the men with shouldered rifles, and a troup of mounted men have just galloped up to bid adieu to the departing emigrants. From out this group, the mild face of Mary Chase beams with a parting smile in response to rough but kindly farewells of these her old friends and neighbors. The last words of warning and G.o.d-speed are spoken by the mounted men, who gallop away and leave them making their first stage on a journey which will carry them northward and westward more than two thousand miles from their old home in Missouri.

And now the sun has set, and still in the twilight the train moves on, stopping as the darkness falls, at a rich bottom, where the loose cattle, starting some hours before them, have been driven and corralled. The oxen are unyoked, the wagons drawn up, so as to form the sides of a small square. A huge fire is kindled, the women descend and prepare the evening meal, boiling great kettles of coffee, and baking corn-cakes in the embers.

The whole company stretch themselves around the fire, and having finished their repast, address themselves to sweet sleep, such as tired voyagers over the plains can so well enjoy. The men of the party are soon soundly slumbering; but the women, depressed with the thoughts that they are leaving their home and loved friends and neighbors, perhaps forever, their hearts filled with forebodings of danger and misfortune, cast only wakeful eyes upon the darkened plain or up to the inscrutable stars that are s.h.i.+ning with marvelous brightness in the azure firmament. Far into the night they wake and watch, silently weeping until nature is exhausted, and a sleep, troubled with sad dreams, visits them.

With the first light of morning the camp is astir, and as the sun rises, the wagons are again rolling along across the upland prairies, to strike the trail leading to the south fork of the Platte. Slowly and hardly, fifteen miles each day, they toil on over the heavy soil. At night, while in camp, the hours are beguiled by Antoine, their Canadian guide, who tells stories of wild life and perilous adventures among the hunters and trappers who make the prairies and mountains their home. His descriptions of Indian fights and slaughters, and of the sufferings and privations endured by the hunters in their arduous life, fix the attention of the women of the party, and especially of Mary Chase, who listens with greater interest because she remembers that such was the life led by one very dear to her--one long supposed to be dead, and of whom, since his departure, fifteen years before, she has heard not a syllable. Her imagination now pictures him anew, as the most daring of these adventurous hunters, and conjures up his figure charging through the midst of yelling savages, or as stretched on the ground, peris.h.i.+ng of wounds, or of cold and famine.

Among the characters that figure in Antoine's stories is a hunter named La Bonte, made conspicuous by his deeds of hardihood and daring. At the first mention of his name Mary's face is suffused with blushes; not that she for a moment dreamed that it could be her long lost La Bonte, for she knows that the name is a common one, but because from a.s.sociations which still linger in her memory, it recalled a sad era in her former life, to which she could not revert without a strange mingling of pleasure and pain. She remembers the manly form of La Bonte as she first saw him, and the love which sprang up between them; and then the parting, with the hope of speedy reunion. She remembers how two years pa.s.sed without tidings of her lover, when, one bitter day, she met a mountaineer, just returned from the far West to settle in his native State; and, inquiring tremblingly after La Bonte, he told how he had met his death from the Blackfeet Indians in the wild gorges of the Yellowstone country.

Now, on hearing once more that name, a spring of sweet and bitter recollections is opened and a vague hope is raised in her breast that the lover of her youth is still alive. She questions the Canadian, "Who was this La Bonte who you say was such a brave mountaineer?" Antoine replies, "He was a fine fellow--strong as a buffalo-bull, a dead shot, cared not a rush for the Indians, left a girl that he loved in Missouri, said the girl did not love him, and so he followed the trail to the mountains. He hasn't gone under yet; be sure of that," says the good natured guide, observing the emotion which Mary showed, and suspecting that she took a more than ordinary interest in the young hunter.

As the guide ceased to speak, Mary turns away and bursts into a flood of tears. The mention of the name of one whom she had long believed dead, and the recital of his praiseworthy qualities, awake the strongest feelings which she had cherished towards one whose loss she still bewails.

The scene now changes to the camp of a party of hunters almost within rifle-shot of the spot where the Chase family are sitting around their evening fire. There are three in this party: one is Kilbuck, so known on the plains, another is a stranger who has chanced to join them, the third is a hunter named _La Bonte_.