THE WHOA-HAW TRAIL
There are no pleasures where women are not.
--Marie de Romba.
How shall I tell of those stirring times in such way that readers who
live in later and different days may catch in full their flavor? How
shall I write now so that at a later time men may read of the way
America was taken, may see what America then was and now is, and what
yet, please God! it may be? How shall be set down that keen zest of a
nation's youth, full of ambition and daring, full of contempt for
obstacles, full of a vast and splendid hope? How shall be made plain
also that other and stronger thing which so many of those days have
mentioned to me, half in reticence--that feeling that, after all, this
fever of the blood, this imperious insistence upon new lands, had under
it something more than human selfishness?
I say I wish that some tongue or brush or pen might tell the story of
our people at that time. Once I saw it in part told in color and line,
in a painting done by a master hand, almost one fit to record the
spirit of that day, although it wrought in this instance with another
and yet earlier time. In this old canvas, depicting an early Teutonic
tribal wandering, appeared some scores of human figures, men and women
half savage in their look, clad in skins, with fillets of hide for head
covering; men whose beards were strong and large, whose limbs, wrapped
loose in hides, were strong and large; women, strong and large, who bore
burdens on their backs. Yet in the faces of all these there shone, not
savagery alone, but intelligence and resolution. With them were flocks
and herds and beasts of burden and carts of rude build; and beside these
traveled children. There were young and old men and women, and some were
gaunt and weary, but most were bold and strong. There were weapons for
all, and rude implements, as well, of industry. In the faces of all
there was visible the spirit of their yellow-bearded leader, who made
the center of the picture's foreground.
I saw the soul of that canvas--a splendid resolution--a look forward, a
purpose, an aim to be attained at no counting of cost. I say, as I gazed
at that canvas, I saw in it the columns of my own people moving westward
across the Land, fierce-eyed, fearless, doubting nothing, fearing
nothing. That was the genius of America when I myself was young. I
believe it still to be the spirit of a triumphant democracy, knowing
its own, taking its own, holding its own. They travel yet, the dauntless
figures of that earlier day. Let them not despair. No imaginary line
will ever hold them back, no mandate of any monarch ever can restrain
them.
In our own caravans, now pressing on for the general movement west of
the Missouri, there was material for a hundred canvases like yonder one,
and yet more vast. The world of our great western country was then still
before us. A stern and warlike people was resolved to hold it and
increase it. Of these west-bound I now was one. I felt the joy of that
thought. I was going West!
At this time, the new railroad from Baltimore extended no farther
westward than Cumberland, yet it served to carry one well toward the
Ohio River at Pittsburg; whence, down the Ohio and up the Missouri to
Leavenworth, my journey was to be made by steamboats. In this prosaic
travel, the days passed monotonously; but at length I found myself upon
that frontier which then marked the western edge of our accepted domain,
and the eastern extremity of the Oregon Trail.
If I can not bring to the mind of one living to-day the full picture of
those days when this country was not yet all ours, and can not restore
to the comprehension of those who never were concerned with that life
the picture of that great highway, greatest path of all the world,
which led across our unsettled countries, that ancient trail at least
may be a memory. It is not even yet wiped from the surface of the earth.
It still remains in part, marked now no longer by the rotting
head-boards of its graves, by the bones of the perished ones which once
traveled it; but now by its ribands cut through the turf, and lined by
nodding prairie flowers.
The old trail to Oregon was laid out by no government, arranged by no
engineer, planned by no surveyor, supported by no appropriation. It
sprang, a road already created, from the earth itself, covering two
thousand miles of our country. Why? Because there was need for that
country to be covered by such a trail at such a time. Because we needed
Oregon. Because a stalwart and clear-eyed democracy needs America and
will have it. That was the trail over which our people outran their
leaders. If our leaders trifle again, once again we shall outrun them.
There were at this date but four places of human residence in all the
two thousand miles of this trail, yet recent as had been the first hoofs
and wheels to mark it, it was even then a distinct and unmistakable
path. The earth has never had nor again can have its like. If it was a
path of destiny, if it was a road of hope and confidence, so was it a
road of misery and suffering and sacrifice; for thus has the democracy
always gained its difficult and lasting victories. I think that it was
there, somewhere, on the old road to Oregon, sometime in the silent
watches of the prairie or the mountain night, that there was fought out
the battle of the Old World and the New, the battle between oppressors
and those who declared they no longer would be oppressed.
Providentially for us, an ignorance equal to that of our leaders existed
in Great Britain. For us who waited on the banks of the Missouri, all
this ignorance was matter of indifference. Our men got their beliefs
from no leaders, political or editorial, at home or abroad. They waited
only for the grass to come.
Now at last the grass did begin to grow upon the eastern edge of the
great Plains; and so I saw begin that vast and splendid movement across
our continent which in comparison dwarfs all the great people movements
of the earth. Xenophon's March of the Ten Thousand pales beside this of
ten thousand thousands. The movements of the Goths and Huns, the
Vandals, the Cimri--in a way, they had a like significance with this,
but in results those migrations did far less in the history of the
world; did less to prove the purpose of the world.
I watched the forming of our caravan, and I saw again that canvas which
I have mentioned, that picture of the savages who traveled a thousand
years before Christ was born. Our picture was the vaster, the more
splendid, the more enduring. Here were savages born of gentle folk in
part, who never yet had known repulse. They marched with flocks and
herds and implements of husbandry. In their faces shone a light not less
fierce than that which animated the dwellers of the old Teutonic
forests, but a light clearer and more intelligent. Here was the
determined spirit of progress, here was the agreed insistence upon an
_equal opportunity!_ Ah! it was a great and splendid canvas which might
have been painted there on our Plains--the caravans west-bound with the
greening grass of spring--that hegira of Americans whose unheard command
was but the voice of democracy itself.
We carried with us all the elements of society, as has the Anglo-Saxon
ever. Did any man offend against the unwritten creed of fair play, did
he shirk duty when that meant danger to the common good, then he was
brought before a council of our leaders, men of wisdom and fairness,
chosen by the vote of all; and so he was judged and he was punished. At
that time there was not west of the Missouri River any one who could
administer an oath, who could execute a legal document, or perpetuate
any legal testimony; yet with us the law marched _pari passu_ across the
land. We had leaders chosen because they were fit to lead, and leaders
who felt full sense of responsibility to those who chose them. We had
with us great wealth in flocks and herds--five thousand head of cattle
went West with our caravan, hundreds of horses; yet each knew his own
and asked not that of his neighbor. With us there were women and little
children and the gray-haired elders bent with years. Along our road we
left graves here and there, for death went with us. In our train also
were many births, life coming to renew the cycle. At times, too, there
were rejoicings of the newly wed in our train. Our young couples found
society awheel valid as that abiding under permanent roof.
At the head of our column, we bore the flag of our Republic. On our
flanks were skirmishers, like those guarding the flanks of an army. It
_was_ an army--an army of our people. With us marched women. With us
marched home. _That_ was the difference between our cavalcade and that
slower and more selfish one, made up of men alone, which that same year
was faring westward along the upper reaches of the Canadian Plains. That
was why we won. It was because women and plows were with us.
Our great column, made up of more than one hundred wagons, was divided
into platoons of four, each platoon leading for a day, then falling
behind to take the bitter dust of those in advance. At noon we parted
our wagons in platoons, and at night we drew them invariably into a
great barricade, circular in form, the leading wagon marking out the
circle, the others dropping in behind, the tongue of each against the
tail-gate of the wagon ahead, and the last wagon closing up the gap. Our
circle completed, the animals were unyoked and the tongues were chained
fast to the wagons next ahead; so that each night we had a sturdy
barricade, incapable of being stampeded by savages, whom more than once
we fought and defeated. Each night we set out a guard, our men taking
turns, and the night watches in turn rotating, so that each man got his
share of the entire night during the progress of his journey. Each morn
we rose to the notes of a bugle, and each day we marched in order, under
command, under a certain schedule. Loosely connected, independent,
individual, none the less already we were establishing a government. We
took the American Republic with us across the Plains!
This manner of travel offered much monotony, yet it had its little
pleasures. For my own part, my early experience in Western matters
placed me in charge of our band of hunters, whose duty it was to ride at
the flanks of our caravan each day and to kill sufficient buffalo for
meat. This work of the chase gave us more to do than was left for those
who plodded along or rode bent over upon the wagon seats; yet even for
these there was some relaxation. At night we met in little social
circles around the camp-fires. Young folk made love; old folk made
plans here as they had at home. A church marched with us as well as the
law and courts; and, what was more, the schools went also; for by the
faint flicker of the firelight many parents taught their children each
day as they moved westward to their new homes. History shows these
children were well taught. There were persons of education and culture
with us.
Music we had, and of a night time, even while the coyotes were calling
and the wind whispering in the short grasses of the Plains, violin and
flute would sometimes blend their voices, and I have thus heard songs
which I would not exchange in memory for others which I have heard in
surroundings far more ambitious. Sometimes dances were held on the
greensward of our camps. Regularly the Sabbath day was observed by at
least the most part of our pilgrims. Upon all our party there seemed to
sit an air of content and certitude. Of all our wagons, I presume one
was of greatest value. It was filled with earth to the brim, and in it
were fruit trees planted, and shrubs; and its owner carried seeds of
garden plants. Without doubt, it was our mission and our intent to take
with us such civilization as we had left behind.
So we marched, mingled, and, as some might have said, motley in our
personnel--sons of some of the best families in the South, men from the
Carolinas and Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana, men from Pennsylvania and
Ohio; Roundhead and Cavalier, Easterner and Westerner, Germans, Yankees,
Scotch-Irish--all Americans. We marched, I say, under a form of
government; yet each took his original marching orders from his own
soul. We marched across an America not yet won. Below us lay the Spanish
civilization--Mexico, possibly soon to be led by Britain, as some
thought. North of us was Canada, now fully alarmed and surely led by
Britain. West of us, all around us, lay the Indian tribes. Behind, never
again to be seen by most of us who marched, lay the homes of an earlier
generation. But we marched, each obeying the orders of his own soul.
Some day the song of this may be sung; some day, perhaps, its canvas may
be painted.