MISSOURI IN ITS WILD AND UNCULTIVATED STATE.
There was about one-fourth of the entire territory of Missouri that was
covered with timber, and three-fourths in prairie land, with an annual
growth of sage-grass, as it was called, about one and one-half feet
high, and as thick as it could well grow; in fact the prairie lands in
the commencement of its settlement were one vast meadow, where the
farmer could cut good hay suitable for the wintering of his stock almost
without regard to the selection of the spot; in other words, it was
meadow everywhere outside of the timber lands. This condition of things
would apply also to the States of Illinois, Iowa, and some of the other
Western States, with the exception of Missouri, which had a greater
proportion of timber than either of the others mentioned. The timber in
all these States grew in belts along the rivers and their tributaries,
the prairie covering the high rolling lands between the streams that
made up the water channels of those States.
Many of the streams in the first settling of these States were bold,
clear running water, and many of them in Missouri were sufficiently
strong almost the year round to afford good water power for running
machinery, and it was the prediction in the commencement of the
settlement of these States by the best-informed people, that the water
would increase, for the reason that the swampy portions in the bottom
lands, and where there were small lakes, would, by the settlement of the
country, become diverted, its force to run directly into and strengthen
the larger streams for all time to come. And to show how practical
results overthrow theories, the fact proved to be exactly the reverse of
their predictions. There has been a continuous slow decline in the
natural flow of water-supply from the first settlement of the country.
Many places that I can now remember that were ponds or small lakes, or
in other words little reservoirs, which held the water for months while
it would be slowly passing out and feeding the streams, have now become
fields and plowed ground. Roads and ditches have been made that let the
water off at once after a rainfall. The result has been that streams
that used to turn machinery have become not much more than outlets for
the heavy rainfalls that occur in the rainy season, and if twenty of
those streams, each one of which had water enough to run machinery
seventy years ago, were all put together now into one stream, there
would not be sufficient power to run a good plant of machinery. The
numerous springs that could be found on every forty or eighty acres of
land in the beginning, have very many of them entirely failed.
The wells of twenty or thirty feet in depth that used to afford any
quantity of water for family uses, many of them in order to get water
supplies have to be sunk to a much greater depth. Little streams that
used to afford any quantity of water for the stock have dried up, giving
no water supply, only in times of abundance of rain. All the first
settlers in the State located along the timber belts, without an
exception, and cultivated the timber lands to produce their grain and
vegetables. It was many years after the forest lands were settled before
prairie lands were cultivated to any extent, and it was found later that
the prairie lands were more fertile than they gave them credit for being
before real tests in the way of farming were made with them. The sage
grass had the tenacity to stand a great deal of grazing and tramping
over, and still grow to considerable perfection. It required years of
grazing upon the prairie before the wild grass, which was universal in
the beginning, gave way, but in the timber portions the vegetation that
was found in the first settling of the land gave way almost at once. In
two years from the time a farmer moved upon a new spot and turned his
stock loose upon it, the original wild herbs that were found there
disappeared and other vegetation took its place. The land being
exceedingly fertile, never failed to produce a crop of vegetation, and
when one variety did appear and cover the entire surface as thick as it
could grow for a few years, it seemed to exhaust the quality of the soil
that produced that kind, and that variety would give way and something
new come up.
The older the country has become, as a rule, the more obnoxious has been
the vegetation that the soil has produced of its own accord. But there
has been in my recollection, which goes back more than seventy years, a
great many changes in the crops of vegetation on those lands, showing to
my satisfaction that there is an inherent potency in nature, in rich
soil that will cover itself every year with a growth of some kind. If it
is not cultivated and made to produce fruit, vegetables, and cereals, it
will nevertheless produce a crop of some kind.
The first settlers in the Mississippi Valley were as a rule poor people,
who were industrious, economizing, and self-sustaining. From ninety-five
to ninety-seven per cent of the entire population manufactured at home
almost everything necessary for good living. A great many of them when
they were crossing the Ohio and Mississippi to their new homes would
barely have money enough to pay their ferriage across the rivers, and
one of the points in selling out whatever they had to spare when they
made up their minds to emigrate was to be sure to have cash enough with
them to pay their ferriage. They generally carried with them a pair of
chickens, ducks, geese, and if possible a pair of pigs, their cattle and
horses. The wife took her spinning wheel, a bunch of cotton or flax, and
was ready to go to spinning as soon as she landed on the premises, often
having her cards and wheel at work before her husband could build a log
cabin. Going into a land, as it was then, that flowed with milk and
honey they were enabled by the use of their own hands and brains to make
an independent and good living. There was any quantity of game, bear,
elk, deer, wild turkeys, and wild honey to be found in the woods, so
that no man with a family, who had pluck and energy enough about him to
stir around, ever need to be without a supply of food. At that time
nature afforded the finest of pasture, both summer and winter, for his
stock.
While the people as a rule were not educated, many of them very
illiterate as far as education was concerned, they were thoroughly
self-sustaining when it came to the knowledge required to do things that
brought about a plentiful supply of the necessities of life. In those
times all were on an equality, for each man and his family had to
produce what was required to live upon, and when one man was a little
better dressed than another there could be no complaint from his
neighbor, for each one had the same means in his hands to bring about
like results, and he could not say his neighbor was better dressed than
he was because he had cheated some other neighbor out of something, and
bought the dress; for at that time the goods all had to come to them in
the same way--by their own industry. There was but little stealing or
cheating among them. There was no money to steal, and if a man stole a
piece of jeans or cloth of any kind he would be apprehended at once.
Society at that time was homogeneous and simple, and opportunities for
vice were very rare. There were very few old bachelors and old maids,
for about the only thing a young man could do when he became twenty-one,
and his mother quit making his clothes and doing his washing, was to
marry one of his neighbor's daughters. The two would then work together,
as was the universal custom, and soon produce with their own hands
abundance of supplies to live upon.
The country was new, and when a young man got married his father and
brothers, and his wife's father and brothers, often would turn out and
help him put up a log cabin, which work required only a few days, and he
and his spouse would move into it at once. They would go to work in the
same way as their fathers had done, and in a few years would be just as
independent as the old people. The young ladies most invariably spun and
wove, and made their bridal dresses. At that time there were millions of
acres of land that a man could go and squat on, build his cabin, and
sometimes live for years upon it before the land would come into market,
and with the prosperity attending such undertakings, as a general thing
would manage in some way, when the land did come into market, to pay
$1.25 per acre for as much as he required for the maintenance of his
family.
Men in those days who came to Missouri and looked at the land often
declined to select a home in the State on account of their having no
market for their products, as above stated, everybody producing all that
was needed for home consumption and often a surplus, but were so far
away from any of the large cities of the country, without transportation
of either steamboats or railroads, for it was before the time of
steamboats, much less railroads--for neither of them in my early
recollections were in existence--to make them channels of business and
trade. Men in the early settlement often wondered if the rich land of
the State would ever be worth $5 per acre.
Missouri at that time was considered the western confines of
civilization, and it was believed then that there never would be in the
future any white settlements of civilized people existing between the
western borders of Missouri and the Pacific Coast, unless it might be
the strip between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Pacific Ocean,
which the people at that time knew but little or nothing about.
In 1820 and 1830 there were a great many peaceable tribes of Indians,
located by the Government all along the western boundary of Missouri, in
what was then called the Indian Territory, and has since then become the
States of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma Territory. I remember the names
of many of the tribes who were our nearest neighbors across the line,
and among them were the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandottes, Kickapoos,
Miamis, Sacs, Foxes, Osages, Peorias, and Iowas, all of whom were
perfectly friendly and docile, and lived for a great many years in close
proximity to the white settlers, even coming among them to trade without
any outbreaks or trespassing upon the rights of the white people in any
way or manner worth mentioning.
There was a long period existing from 1825 to 1860 of perfect harmony
between these tribes and the white people, and in fact even to this day
there is no disturbance between these tribes and their neighbors, the
whites. The Indian troubles have been among the Sioux, Arapahoes,
Cheyennes, Apaches, Utes, and some other minor tribes, all of which, at
the present time, seem to have submitted to their fate in whatever
direction it may lie. There is one remark that I will venture here, and
it is this, that while the white people were in the power of the Indians
and understood it, we got along with the Indian a great deal better
than when the change to the white people took place. In the early days
white men respected the Indian's rights thoroughly, and would not be the
aggressors, and often they were at the mercy of the Indians, but as soon
as they began to feel that they could do as they pleased, became more
aggressive and had less regard for what the Indian considered his
rights. Then in the early days Indians were paid their annuities in an
honest way, and there was no feeling among them that they were
mistreated by the agent whose duty it was to pay them this annuity.
I was acquainted with one Indian agent by the name of Major Cummings,
who for a long time was a citizen of Jackson County, and for a great
many years agent for a number of the tribes living along the borders of
Missouri. There never was a complaint or even a suspicion, to the best
of my knowledge, that he or his clerks ever took one cent of the
annuities that belonged to the Indians. The money was paid to them in
silver, either in whole or half dollars, and the head of every family
received every cent of his quota. Therefore we had a long period of
quiet and peace with our red brethren. It is only since the late war
that there has been so much complaint from the Indians with reference to
the scanty allowances and poor food and blankets.