LIGHT BEGINS TO DAWN.
Father's farm improved with astonishing rapidity and became quite a
pleasant place. Some of the stumps rotted out, some we tore out and some
were burned up. In these ways many had disappeared and it began to look
like old land. It was rich and productive and, in truth, it looked as
level as a house floor. Some seasons it was rather wet, not being
ditched sufficiently to take the water off. Yet father raised large
crops of corn, potatoes, oats and wheat. Wheat grew very large but
sometimes ran too much to straw; some seasons, rust would strike it and
then the grain would shrink, but as that and gets older, and the more
the clay is worked up with the soil, the better wheat it raises. In my
opinion it will be as good wheat land as the oak openings or prairies of
the West for all time to come.
Father built him a good frame barn and was getting along well. He bought
him a nice pair of black horses which proved to be very good and
serviceable. It began to seem like home to mother. She too possessed
very good conversational powers. Her conversation was always accompanied
with a style of frankness and goodness, peculiar to herself, which gained
many friends, who became warmly attached to her, enjoyed her hospitality,
witnessed her good cheer, as they gathered around her board and enjoyed
luxuries, which in some of the years past we had not been able to
procure. The learned and illiterate, the rich and the poor, shared alike
her hospitality. No one ever asked for bread, at her door, who was
refused, if she had it, even to the poor Indian. We had many comers and
goers, and I think there were but few in the town of Dearborn who had
more friends than father and mother.
Several years after we planted the first thirteen apple trees, father set
out a little orchard of fifty trees, west of them. Some of these proved
to be very good fruit and supplied us with better apples, of our own
raising, (and in fact some earlier apples) than we had been used to
getting from along the Rouge. Then it could be said of us that we sat
under our own vine and apple tree and ate the fruit of our hands, without
any one to molest us or make us afraid. And, it could be said of father,
that he made the place, where the wilderness stood, to blossom as the
rose. Everything seemed to work together for our good and all nature
seemed more cheerful.
The evening breeze that kissed the rose and made the morning glory (that
grew by our window) unfold its robe, so that it would be ready in the
morning to display its beauty, and caused the sunflower, aided by the
evening dew, to change its face so that it would be ready to look toward
the sun, bore away on its wings, over the fields, the fragrance of the
rose and the joyful songs of civilization. In the stillness of the
beautiful evenings the air, under the starry canopy of heaven was made
vocal with the songs and tunes of other days, which had been learned and
sung oftimes before in a native land nearly eight hundred miles away.
Now the pioneer felt himself safe. He could retire to his bed, in his log
house, and quietly rest in sleep, without draining any more of the
redman's approach, or having by his own strong arm, to defend his family.
Now he need have no fear of Mr. Bruin entering his pig pen and carrying
off his pig, as he did ours one night some years before. He tore the hog
so badly that it died, although it was rescued by father and his dog. The
bear escaped to the woods. Now how changed the scene with us. We could
retire and sleep soundly; feeling as secure as if we had gone to bed way
down in the State of New York. We could leave the leather string of the
door latch hanging out for any one to enter, as nearly all the early
settlers were friends. The ax was now left stuck in the wood block on the
wood pile. The rifle hung in its hooks, not to be disturbed. In other
nights, of our first settlement, father did not feel safe; the string of
the door latch was taken in, the door was fastened and blockaded on the
inside, his ax and rifle were placed with care back of the curtains, at
the head of his bed. None of us knew what might happen before the light
of another morning, for we were in a wilderness land and neighbors were
far apart. How different a few years have made it! Now nature seems to
smile upon us and the evening, when it comes in its beauty, seems to
offer us quiet and repose, rest and security. Now when nature puts on her
sable habiliments of night, the blue canopy was covered with stars, that
glistened and shone in their glory, as they looked down upon us and
seemed to witness our prosperity. How they illumined our beautiful spring
nights! The beautiful feathered songsters, that had returned from the
south, warbled their songs in our ears anew and seemed to exert
themselves, to make their notes clear, and let us know they had come. The
little grey phebe-birds, the robins and the blue birds were the first
harbingers of spring. As night put on its shade their little notes were
hushed in the darkness, then the whip-poor-will took up the strain. He
would come, circle around and over our house and door yard and then light
down. He too came to visit us, he had found our place again. In fact, he
found us every spring after we settled in Michigan, and cut out a little
hole in the woods. At first his song seemed to be "whip-poor-will,
whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;" then, by listening, it could be made out
to say, "good-will, good-will." In later years, by the aid of
imagination, his notes were interpreted, "peace and plenty, peace and
plenty." But, whatever we might imagine him to say, his song was always
the same. He was a welcome visitor and songster, and his appearance in
spring was always hailed with joy.
Sometimes I would rise early in the morning and go out of the door just
at daylight. I could hear the notes of the little songsters, just waking,
singing their first songs of the morning. I would listen to see if I
could hear the gobbling of the wild turkeys. I hardly ever failed to hear
them, sometimes in different directions. I frequently could hear two or
three at once. The old gobblers commonly selected the largest trees, in
the thickest woods, with limbs high up, for their roosts and as soon as
it came daylight, in the east, they would be up strutting and gobbling.
They could be heard, in a still morning, for a mile or two. The gobbling
of the turkey, the drumming of the partridge upon his log, the crowing of
our and the neighbors' roosters and the noise of woodpeckers pounding the
tops of old trees, were the principal sounds I could hear when I set out
with my rifle in hand. I made my way through the prickly ash brush,
sometimes getting my clothes torn and my hands and face scratched, when
going into the dark woods in the early morning. I went for the nearest
turkey that I heard, often wading through the water knee deep, the woods
being nearly always wet in the spring.
If the turkey did not happen to be too far off and I got near it, before
it was light, and got my eye on it, before it saw me and flew away, I
would crawl up, and get behind some tree that came in range between me
and it so that it could not see me. I had lo be careful not to step on a
stick, as the breaking of a stick or any noise that I was liable to make
would scare the turkey away. If I had the good luck to get up to that
tree without his discovering me, I would sit or stand by it and look with
one eye at the old turkey as he gobbled, strutted, spread his wings then
drew them on the limb where he stood and turned himself around to listen
and see if there was anything new for him to gobble at. If he heard the
distant woodpecker, pounding away with his beak, on the old hollow top,
he would stretch up his neck and gobble again as cheerfully as before.
Then I would put my rifle up aside the tree to see if it was light
enough for me to see the sights on it. If it was not I would have to take
it down and wait a few minutes for it to get lighter.
I felt very uneasy and impatient, while waiting, and wanted to take that
turkey, by the legs, and carry him home over my shoulder. When it was
light enough so I thought it was dangerous to wait, as the turkey might
discover me or fly off his perch then I would draw up my rifle, by the
side of the tree, and shoot at him. Sometimes the old turkey would retain
all his feathers, fly away and leave me, to wade back to the house,
thinking to myself I had had a hard job for nothing. The great trouble in
shooting wild turkeys on the roosts, in the spring of the year and in the
early morning, is in not being able to see the sights on the rifle plain
enough. Of course, I was sometimes rewarded, for my early rising and wet
feet, by a nice turkey to take home to father and mother for dinner.
This style of hunting for the wild turkeys was known by the settlers in
an early day. Another way I had of capturing the turkeys by shooting
them, was by the use of a small instrument that I almost always carried
in my vest pocket when in the woods. It was made from the hollow bone of
a turkey's wing. I called it a turkey call. By holding the end of my hand
and sucking it right, it would make a noise, or squeak, very similar to
the turkey's voice. Sometimes, when I heard one gobbling in the woods, I
would go as near as I could, and not let him see me, and hide myself
behind an old log, or root, where a tree had been blown down, take the
hollow bone out of my pocket and call. I have seen them come up on the
run, sometimes one, at other times more. While lying in ambush once I
shot two, at the same time, with one rifle bullet and got them both.
I have often shot at a flock, in the woods. They would scatter and fly in
all directions. I would run ahead, near where I thought they lighted,
hide and call. If a lone turkey heard the shrill note, he would answer
and was easily decoyed up to me. In this way I was very sure to get him.
Father made one of the luckiest shots at wild turkeys of which I ever
knew. They had a notion of coming into his buckwheat field and filling
their crops with buckwheat, sometimes two or three times a day. Father
discovered them in the field; he went away round and approached them from
the woods, on the back side of the field, where they came in. The turkeys
discovered him through the brush and fence and huddled up, with their
heads together. He said they were just getting ready to fly. He shot
amongst them, with a shot gun, and killed four at once. There are at the
present time, 1875, scattering wild turkeys in the town of Dearborn, but
they have mostly disappeared. Tame turkeys, in abundance, have long since
taken their place.