(1822-1893)
He told the red man's story; far and wide
He searched the unwritten annals of his race;
He sat a listener at the Sachem's side,
He tracked the hunter through his wild-wood chase.
High o'er his head the soaring eagle screamed;
The wolfs long howl rang nightly; through the vale
Tramped the lone bear; the panther's eyeballs gleamed;
The bison's gallop thundered on the gale.
Soon o'er the horizon rose the cloud of strife,
Two proud, strong nations battling for the prize:
Which swarming host should mould a nation's life;
Which royal banner flout the western skies.
Long raged the conflict; on the crimson sod
Native and alien joined their hosts in vain;
The lilies withered where the lion trod,
Till Peace lay panting on the ravaged plain.
A nobler task was theirs who strove to win
The blood-stained heathen to the Christian fold;
To free from Satan's clutch the slaves of sin;
These labors, too, with loving grace he told.
Halting with feeble step, or bending o'er
The sweet-breathed roses which he loved so well,
While through long years his burdening cross he bore,
From those firm lips no coward accents fell.
A brave bright memory! His the stainless shield
No shame defaces and no envy mars!
When our far future's record is unsealed,
His name will shine among its morning stars.
--Holmes.
The stories in this volume deal, for the most part, with single actions,
generally with deeds of war and feats of arms. In this one I desire
to give if possible the impression, for it can be no more than
an impression, of a life which in its conflicts and its victories
manifested throughout heroic qualities. Such qualities can be shown in
many ways, and the field of battle is only one of the fields of human
endeavor where heroism can be displayed.
Francis Parkman was born in Boston on September 16, 1822. He came of
a well-known family, and was of a good Puritan stock. He was rather a
delicate boy, with an extremely active mind and of a highly sensitive,
nervous organization. Into everything that attracted him he threw
himself with feverish energy. His first passion, when he was only about
twelve years old, was for chemistry, and his eager boyish experiments in
this direction were undoubtedly injurious to his health. The interest in
chemistry was succeeded by a passion for the woods and the wilderness,
and out of this came the longing to write the history of the men of the
wilderness, and of the great struggle between France and England for the
control of the North American continent. All through his college career
this desire was with him, and while in secret he was reading widely to
prepare himself for his task, he also spent a great deal of time in the
forests and on the mountains. To quote his own words, he was "fond of
hardships, and he was vain of enduring them, cherishing a sovereign
scorn for every physical weakness or defect; but deceived, moreover, by
the rapid development of frame and sinew, which flattered him into the
belief that discipline sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an
athlete, he slighted the precautions of a more reasonable woodcraft,
tired old foresters with long marches, stopped neither for heat nor for
rain, and slept on the earth without blankets." The result was that his
intense energy carried him beyond his strength, and while his muscles
strengthened and hardened, his sensitive nervous organization began to
give way. It was not merely because he led an active outdoor life. He
himself protests against any such conclusion, and says that "if any pale
student glued to his desk here seek an apology for a way of life whose
natural fruit is that pallid and emasculate scholarship, of which New
England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this
sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no
better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or
the oar."
The evil that was done was due to Parkman's highly irritable organism,
which spurred him to excess in everything he undertook. The first
special sign of the mischief he was doing to himself and his health
appeared in a weakness of sight. It was essential to his plan of
historical work to study not only books and records but Indian life from
the inside. Therefore, having graduated from college and the law-school,
he felt that the time had come for this investigation, which would
enable him to gather material for his history and at the same time
to rest his eyes. He went to the Rocky Mountains, and after great
hardships, living in the saddle, as he said, with weakness and pain, he
joined a band of Ogallalla Indians. With them he remained despite his
physical suffering, and from them he learned, as he could not have
learned in any other way, what Indian life really was.
The immediate result of the journey was his first book, instinct with
the freshness and wildness of the mountains and the prairies, and called
by him "The Oregon Trail." Unfortunately, the book was not the only
outcome. The illness incurred during his journey from fatigue and
exposure was followed by other disorders. The light of the sun became
insupportable, and his nervous system was entirely deranged. His
sight was now so impaired that he was almost blind, and could neither
read nor write. It was a terrible prospect for a brilliant and ambitious
man, but Parkman faced it unflinchingly. He devised a frame by which
he could write with closed eyes, and books and manuscripts were read to
him. In this way he began the history of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac,"
and for the first half-year the rate of composition covered about six
lines a day. His courage was rewarded by an improvement in his health,
and a little more quiet in nerves and brain. In two and a half years he
managed to complete the book. He then entered upon his great subject of
"France in the New World." The material was mostly in manuscript, and
had to be examined, gathered, and selected in Europe and in Canada.
He could not read, he could write only a very little and that with
difficulty, and yet he pressed on. He slowly collected his material and
digested and arranged it, using the eyes of others to do that which he
could not do himself, and always on the verge of a complete breakdown
of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee,
which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely
depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head,
resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity
of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange,
undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived
by one who has felt them." The resources of surgery and medicine were
exhausted in vain. The trouble in the head and eyes constantly recurred.
In 1858 there came a period when for four years he was incapable of the
slightest mental application, and the attacks varied in duration from
four hours to as many months. When the pressure was lightened a little
he went back to his work. When work was impossible, he turned to
horticulture, grew roses, and wrote a book about the cultivation of
those flowers which is a standard authority.
As he grew older the attacks moderated, although they never departed.
Sleeplessness pursued him always, the slightest excitement would deprive
him of the power of exertion, his sight was always sensitive, and at
times he was bordering on blindness. In this hard-pressed way he fought
the battle of life. He says himself that his books took four times as
long to prepare and write as if he had been strong and able to use his
faculties. That this should have been the case is little wonder, for
those books came into being with failing sight and shattered nerves,
with sleeplessness and pain, and the menace of insanity ever hanging
over the brave man who, nevertheless, carried them through to an end.
Yet the result of those fifty years, even in amount, is a noble one, and
would have been great achievement for a man who had never known a sick
day. In quality, and subject, and method of narration, they leave little
to be desired. There, in Parkman's volumes, is told vividly, strongly,
and truthfully, the history of the great struggle between France and
England for the mastery of the North American continent, one of the
most important events of modern times. This is not the place to give
any critical estimate of Mr. Parkman's work. It is enough to say that it
stands in the front rank. It is a great contribution to history, and
a still greater gift to the literature of this country. All Americans
certainly should read the volumes in which Parkman has told that
wonderful story of hardship and adventure, of fighting and of
statesmanship, which gave this great continent to the English race and
the English speech. But better than the literature or the history is
the heroic spirit of the man, which triumphed over pain and all other
physical obstacles, and brought a work of such value to his country
and his time into existence. There is a great lesson as well as a lofty
example in such a career, and in the service which such a man rendered
by his life and work to literature and to his country. On the tomb of
the conqueror of Quebec it is written: "Here lies Wolfe victorious."
The same epitaph might with entire justice be carved above the grave of
Wolfe's historian.
"REMEMBER THE ALAMO"
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.
* * *
The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are past;
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
--Theodore O'Hara.
"Thermopylae had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none." These
were the words with which a United States senator referred to one of
the most resolute and effective fights ever waged by brave men against
overwhelming odds in the face of certain death.
Soon after the close of the second war with Great Britain, parties of
American settlers began to press forward into the rich, sparsely settled
territory of Texas, then a portion of Mexico. At first these immigrants
were well received, but the Mexicans speedily grew jealous of them, and
oppressed them in various ways. In consequence, when the settlers
felt themselves strong enough, they revolted against Mexican rule, and
declared Texas to be an independent republic. Immediately Santa Anna,
the Dictator of Mexico, gathered a large army, and invaded Texas. The
slender forces of the settlers were unable to meet his hosts. They were
pressed back by the Mexicans, and dreadful atrocities were committed
by Santa Anna and his lieutenants. In the United States there was great
enthusiasm for the struggling Texans, and many bold backwoodsmen and
Indian-fighters swarmed to their help. Among them the two most famous
were Sam Houston and David Crockett. Houston was the younger man, and
had already led an extraordinary and varied career. When a mere lad he
had run away from home and joined the Cherokees, living among them for
some years; then he returned home. He had fought under Andrew Jackson in
his campaigns against the Creeks, and had been severely wounded at the
battle of the Horse-shoe Bend. He had risen to the highest political
honors in his State, becoming governor of Tennessee; and then suddenly,
in a fit of moody longing for the life of the wilderness, he gave up his
governorship, left the State, and crossed the Mississippi, going to join
his old comrades, the Cherokees, in their new home along the waters
of the Arkansas. Here he dressed, lived, fought, hunted, and drank
precisely like any Indian, becoming one of the chiefs.
David Crockett was born soon after the Revolutionary War. He, too, had
taken part under Jackson in the campaigns against the Creeks, and had
afterward become a man of mark in Tennessee, and gone to Congress as a
Whig; but he had quarreled with Jackson, and been beaten for Congress,
and in his disgust he left the State and decided to join the Texans. He
was the most famous rifle-shot in all the United States, and the most
successful hunter, so that his skill was a proverb all along the border.
David Crockett journeyed south, by boat and horse, making his way
steadily toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging their
life-and-death fight. Texas was a wild place in those days, and the old
hunter had more than one hairbreadth escape from Indians, desperadoes,
and savage beasts, ere he got to the neighborhood of San Antonio, and
joined another adventurer, a bee-hunter, bent on the same errand as
himself. The two had been in ignorance of exactly what the situation in
Texas was; but they soon found that the Mexican army was marching toward
San Antonio, whither they were going. Near the town was an old Spanish
fort, the Alamo, in which the hundred and fifty American defenders of
the place had gathered. Santa Anna had four thousand troops with
him. The Alamo was a mere shell, utterly unable to withstand either a
bombardment or a regular assault. It was evident, therefore, that those
within it would be in the utmost jeopardy if the place were seriously
assaulted, but old Crockett and his companion never wavered. They were
fearless and resolute, and masters of woodcraft, and they managed to
slip through the Mexican lines and join the defenders within the walls.
The bravest, the hardiest, the most reckless men of the border were
there; among them were Colonel Travis, the commander of the fort, and
Bowie, the inventor of the famous bowie-knife. They were a wild and
ill-disciplined band, little used to restraint or control, but they were
men of iron courage and great bodily powers, skilled in the use of their
weapons, and ready to meet with stern and uncomplaining indifference
whatever doom fate might have in store for them.
Soon Santa Anna approached with his army, took possession of the town,
and besieged the fort. The defenders knew there was scarcely a chance
of rescue, and that it was hopeless to expect that one hundred and
fifty men, behind defenses so weak, could beat off four thousand trained
soldiers, well armed and provided with heavy artillery; but they had no
idea of flinching, and made a desperate defense. The days went by, and
no help came, while Santa Anna got ready his lines, and began a furious
cannonade. His gunners were unskilled, however, and he had to serve the
guns from a distance; for when they were pushed nearer, the American
riflemen crept forward under cover, and picked off the artillerymen.
Old Crockett thus killed five men at one gun. But, by degrees, the
bombardment told. The walls of the Alamo were battered and riddled; and
when they had been breached so as to afford no obstacle to the rush of
his soldiers, Santa Anna commanded that they be stormed.
The storm took place on March 6, 1836. The Mexican troops came on well
and steadily, breaking through the outer defenses at every point,
for the lines were too long to be manned by the few Americans. The
frontiersmen then retreated to the inner building, and a desperate
hand-to-hand conflict followed, the Mexicans thronging in, shooting
the Americans with their muskets, and thrusting at them with lance and
bayonet, while the Americans, after firing their long rifles, clubbed
them, and fought desperately, one against many; and they also used their
bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect. The fight reeled to and
fro between the shattered walls, each American the center of a group of
foes; but, for all their strength and their wild fighting courage, the
defenders were too few, and the struggle could have but one end. One by
one the tall riflemen succumbed, after repeated thrusts with bayonet and
lance, until but three or four were left. Colonel Travis, the commander,
was among them; and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting
disease, but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in
the final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with
his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then these
fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy Crockett.
Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his back to the wall,
ringed around by the bodies of the men he had slain. So desperate was
the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who thronged round about him
were beaten back for the moment, and no one dared to run in upon him.
Accordingly, while the lancers held him where he was, for, weakened
by wounds and loss of blood, he could not break through them, the
musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined
to give him mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he
was taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his fate
cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was left alive.
At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over. Every one of the
hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in death. Yet they died well
avenged, for four times their number fell at their hands in the battle.
Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his bloody and
hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling Texas plains, going
north through the Indian Territory, had told Houston that the Texans
were up and were striving for their liberty. At once in Houston's mind
there kindled a longing to return to the men of his race at the time of
their need. Mounting his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was
hailed by the Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their
forces, eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto,
he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of "Remember the
Alamo." Almost immediately, the Mexicans were overthrown with terrible
slaughter; Santa Anna himself was captured, and the freedom of Texas was
won at a blow.