relentless limitations of pioneer life. There was not a team of horses
in our entire region. The team with which my brother had driven us
through the wilderness had been hired at Grand Rapids for that occasion,
and, of course, immediately returned. Our lumber was delivered by
ox-teams, and the absolutely essential purchases we made "outside" (at
the nearest shops, forty miles away) were carried through the forest on
the backs of men. Our mail was delivered once a month by a carrier who
made the journey in alternate stages of horseback riding and canoeing.
But we had health, youth, enthusiasm, good appetites, and the
wherewithal to satisfy them, and at night in our primitive bunks we
sank into abysses of dreamless slumber such as I have never known since.
Indeed, looking back upon them, those first months seem to have been a
long-drawn-out and glorious picnic, interrupted only by occasional hours
of pain or panic, when we were hurt or frightened.
Naturally, our two greatest menaces were wild animals and Indians, but
as the days passed the first of these lost the early terrors with which
we had associated them. We grew indifferent to the sounds that had made
our first night a horror to us all--there was even a certain homeliness
in them--while we regarded with accustomed, almost blase eyes the
various furred creatures of which we caught distant glimpses as they
slunk through the forest. Their experience with other settlers had
taught them caution; it soon became clear that they were as eager to
avoid us as we were to shun them, and by common consent we gave each
other ample elbow-room. But the Indians were all around us, and every
settler had a collection of hair-raising tales to tell of them. It was
generally agreed that they were dangerous only when they were drunk;
but as they were drunk whenever they could get whisky, and as whisky
was constantly given them in exchange for pelts and game, there was a
harrowing doubt in our minds whenever they approached us.
In my first encounter with them I was alone in the woods at sunset with
my small brother Harry. We were hunting a cow James had bought, and our
young eyes were peering eagerly among the trees, on the alert for any
moving object. Suddenly, at a little distance, and coming directly
toward us, we saw a party of Indians. There were five of them, all men,
walking in single file, as noiselessly as ghosts, their moccasined feet
causing not even a rustle among the dry leaves that carpeted the woods.
All the horrible stories we had heard of Indian cruelty flashed into
our minds, and for a moment we were dumb with terror. Then I remembered
having been told that the one thing one must not do before them is to
show fear. Harry was carrying a rope with which we had expected to lead
home our reluctant cow, and I seized one end of it and whispered to him
that we would "play horse," pretending he was driving me. We pranced
toward the Indians on feet that felt like lead, and with eyes so glazed
by terror that we could see nothing save a line of moving figures;
but as we passed them they did not give to our little impersonation
of care-free children even the tribute of a side-glance. They were,
we realized, headed straight for our home; and after a few moments we
doubled on our tracks and, keeping at a safe distance from them among
the trees, ran back to warn our mother that they were coming.
As it happened, James was away, and mother had to meet her unwelcome
guests supported only by her young children. She at once prepared a
meal, however, and when they arrived she welcomed them calmly and gave
them the best she had. After they had eaten they began to point at
and demand objects they fancied in the room--my brother's pipe, some
tobacco, a bowl, and such trifles--and my mother, who was afraid to
annoy them by refusal, gave them what they asked. They were quite
sober, and though they left without expressing any appreciation of her
hospitality, they made her a second visit a few months later, bringing a
large quantity of venison and a bag of cranberries as a graceful return.
These Indians were Ottawas; and later we became very friendly with them
and their tribe, even to the degree of attending one of their dances,
which I shall describe later.
Our second encounter with Indians was a less agreeable experience. There
were seven "Marquette warriors" in the next group of callers, and they
were all intoxicated. Moreover, they had brought with them several jugs
of bad whisky--the raw and craze-provoking product supplied them by the
fur-dealers--and it was clear that our cabin was to be the scene of an
orgy. Fortunately, my brother James was at home on this occasion, and as
the evening grew old and the Indians, grouped together around the fire,
became more and more irresponsible, he devised a plan for our safety.
Our attic was finished, and its sole entrance was by a ladder through
a trap-door. At James's whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up
into the attic, and from the back window let down a rope, to which he
tied all the weapons we had--his gun and several axes. These Eleanor
drew up and concealed in one of the bunks. My brother then directed that
as quietly as possible, and at long intervals, one member of the family
after another was to slip up the ladder and into the attic, going quite
casually, that the Indians might not realize what we were doing. Once
there, with the ladder drawn up after us and the trap-door closed, we
would be reasonably safe, unless our guests decided to burn the cabin.
The evening seemed endless, and was certainly nerve-racking. The Indians
ate everything in the house, and from my seat in a dim corner I watched
them while my sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they
made in the firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech
as they talked together. Occasionally one of them would pull a hair from
his head, seize his scalping-knife; and cut the hair with it--a most
unpleasant sight! When either of my sisters approached them some of the
Indians would make gestures, as if capturing and scalping her. Through
it all, however, the whisky held their close attention, and it was due
to this that we succeeded in reaching the attic unobserved, James coming
last of all and drawing the ladder after him. Mother and the children
were then put to bed; but through that interminable night James and
Eleanor lay flat upon the floor, watching through the cracks between the
boards the revels of the drunken Indians, which grew wilder with every
hour that crawled toward sunrise. There was no knowing when they would
miss us or how soon their mood might change. At any moment they might
make an attack upon us or set fire to the cabin. By dawn, however, their
whisky was all gone, and they were in so deep a stupor that, one after
the other, the seven fell from their chairs to the floor, where they
sprawled unconscious. When they awoke they left quietly and without
trouble of any kind. They seemed a strangely subdued and chastened band;
probably they were wretchedly ill after their debauch on the adulterated
whisky the traders had given them.
That autumn the Ottawa tribe had a great corn celebration, to which we
and the other settlers were invited. James and my older sisters attended
it, and I went with them, by my own urgent invitation. It seemed to me
that as I was sharing the work and the perils of our new environment,
I might as well share its joys; and I finally succeeded in making
my family see the logic of this position. The central feature of the
festivity was a huge kettle, many feet in circumference, into which the
Indians dropped the most extraordinary variety of food we had ever seen
combined. Deer heads went into it whole, as well as every kind of meat
and vegetable the members of the tribe could procure. We all ate some of
this agreeable mixture, and later, with one another, and even with
the Indians, we danced gaily to the music of a tom-tom and a drum. The
affair was extremely interesting until the whisky entered and did its
unpleasant work. When our hosts began to fall over in the dance and
slumber where they lay, and when the squaws began to show the same ill
effects of their refreshments, we unostentatiously slipped away.
During the winter life offered us few diversions and many hardships. Our
creek froze over, and the water problem became a serious one, which
we met with increasing difficulty as the temperature steadily fell. We
melted snow and ice, and existed through the frozen months, but with
an amount of discomfort which made us unwilling to repeat at least that
special phase of our experience. In the spring, therefore, I made a
well. Long before this, James had gone, and Harry and I were now the
only outdoor members of our working-force. Harry was still too small to
help with the well; but a young man, who had formed the neighborly habit
of riding eighteen miles to call on us, gave me much friendly aid. We
located the well with a switch, and when we had dug as far as we could
reach with our spades, my assistant descended into the hole and threw
the earth up to the edge, from which I in turn removed it. As the well
grew deeper we made a half-way shelf, on which I stood, he throwing the
earth on the shelf, and I shoveling it up from that point. Later, as he
descended still farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the
earth into buckets and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my
sister, who was now pressed into service. When the excavation was deep
enough we made the wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I
recall that well with calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but
it was a thoroughly practical well, and it remained the only one we had
during the twelve years the family occupied the cabin.
During our first year there was no school within ten miles of us, but
this lack failed to sadden Harry or me. We had brought with us from
Lawrence a box of books, in which, in winter months, when our outdoor
work was restricted, we found much comfort. They were the only books
in that part of the country, and we read them until we knew them all by
heart. Moreover, father sent us regularly the New York Independent, and
with this admirable literature, after reading it, we papered our walls.
Thus, on stormy days, we could lie on the settle or the floor and read
the Independent over again with increased interest and pleasure.
Occasionally father sent us the Ledger, but here mother drew a definite
line. She had a special dislike for that periodical, and her severest
comment on any woman was that she was the type who would "keep a dog,
make saleratus biscuit, and read the New York Ledger in the daytime."
Our modest library also contained several histories of Greece and Rome,
which must have been good ones, for years later, when I entered college,
I passed my examination in ancient history with no other preparation
than this reading. There were also a few arithmetics and algebras, a
historical novel or two, and the inevitable copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
whose pages I had freely moistened with my tears.
When the advantages of public education were finally extended to me,
at thirteen, by the opening of a school three miles from our home,
I accepted them with growing reluctance. The teacher was a spinster
forty-four years of age and the only genuine "old maid" I have ever met
who was not a married woman or a man. She was the real thing, and
her name, Prudence Duncan, seemed the fitting label for her rigidly
uncompromising personality. I graced Prudence's school for three months,
and then left it at her fervid request. I had walked six miles a day
through trackless woods and Western blizzards to get what she could
give me, but she had little to offer my awakened and critical mind.
My reading and my Lawrence school-work had already taught me more than
Prudence knew--a fact we both inwardry--admitted and fiercely resented
from our different viewpoints. Beyond doubt I was a pert and trying
young person. I lost no opportunity to lead Prudence beyond her
intellectual depth and leave her there, and Prudence vented her chagrin
not alone upon me, but upon my little brother. I became a thorn in her
side, and one day, after an especially unpleasant episode in which Harry
also figured, she plucked me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from
her. From that time I studied at home, where I was a much more valuable
economic factor than I had been in school.
The second spring after our arrival Harry and I extended our operations
by tapping the sugar-bushes, collecting all the sap, and carrying it
home in pails slung from our yoke-laden shoulders. Together we made one
hundred and fifty pounds of sugar and a barrel of syrup, but here again,
as always, we worked in primitive ways. To get the sap we chopped a gash
in the tree and drove in a spile. Then we dug out a trough to catch the
sap. It was no light task to lift these troughs full of sap and empty
the sap into buckets, but we did it successfully, and afterward built
fires and boiled it down. By this time we had also cleared some of our
ground, and during the spring we were able to plow, dividing the work in
a way that seemed fair to us both. These were strenuous occupations
for a boy of nine and a girl of thirteen, but, though we were not
inordinately good children, we never complained; we found them very
satisfactory substitutes for more normal bucolic joys. Inevitably, we
had our little tragedies. Our cow died, and for an entire winter we went
without milk. Our coffee soon gave out, and as a substitute we made
and used a mixture of browned peas and burnt rye. In the winter we were
always cold, and the water problem, until we had built our well, was
ever with us.
Father joined us at the end of eighteen months, but though his presence
gave us pleasure and moral support, he was not an addition to our
executive staff. He brought with him a rocking-chair for mother and a
new supply of books, on which I fell as a starving man falls upon food.
Father read as eagerly as I, but much more steadily. His mind was always
busy with problems, and if, while he was laboring in the field, a new
problem presented itself to him, the imperishable curiosity that was in
him made him scurry at once to the house to solve it. I have known him
to spend a planting season in figuring on the production of a certain
number of kernels of corn, instead of planting the corn and raising
it. In the winter he was supposed to spend his time clearing land for
orchards and the like, but instead he pored over his books and problems
day after day and often half the night as well. It soon became known
among our neighbors, who were rapidly increasing in number, that we had
books and that father like to read aloud, and men walked ten miles or
more to spend the night with us and listen to his reading. Often, as his
fame grew, ten or twelve men would arrive at our cabin on Saturday and
remain over Sunday. When my mother once tried to check this influx of
guests by mildly pointing out, among other things, the waste of candles
represented by frequent all-night readings, every man humbly appeared
again on the following Saturday with a candle in each hand. They were
not sensitive; and, as they had brought their candles, it seemed fitting
to them and to father that we girls should cook for them and supply them
with food.
Father's tolerance of idleness in others, however, did not extend to
tolerance of idleness in us, and this led to my first rebellion, which
occurred when I was fourteen. For once, I had been in the woods all day,
buried in my books; and when I returned at night, still in the dream
world these books had opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with
a brow dark with disapproval. As it happened, mother had felt that day
some special need of me, and father reproached me bitterly for being
beyond reach--an idler who wasted time while mother labored. He ended
a long arraignment by predicting gloomily that with such tendencies I
would make nothing of my life.
The injustice of the criticism cut deep; I knew I had done and was doing
my share for the family, and already, too, I had begun to feel the call
of my career. For some reason I wanted to preach--to talk to people,
to tell them things. Just why, just what, I did not yet know--but I had
begun to preach in the silent woods, to stand up on stumps and address
the unresponsive trees, to feel the stir of aspiration within me.
When my father had finished all he wished to say, I looked at him and
answered, quietly, "Father, some day I am going to college."
I can still see his slight, ironical smile. It drove me to a second
prediction. I was young enough to measure success by material results,
so I added, recklessly:
"And before I die I shall be worth ten thousand dollars!"
The amount staggered me even as it dropped from my lips. It was the
largest fortune my imagination could conceive, and in my heart I
believed that no woman ever had possessed or would possess so much. So
far as I knew, too, no woman had gone to college. But now that I had put
my secret hopes into words, I was desperately determined to make those
hopes come true. After I became a wage-earner I lost my desire to make
a fortune, but the college dream grew with the years; and though my
college career seemed as remote as the most distant star, I hitched my
little wagon to that star and never afterward wholly lost sight of its
friendly gleam.
When I was fifteen years old I was offered a situation as
school-teacher. By this time the community was growing around us with
the rapidity characteristic of these Western settlements, and we
had nearer neighbors whose children needed instruction. I passed
an examination before a schoolboard consisting of three nervous and
self-conscious men whose certificate I still hold, and I at once began
my professional career on the modest salary of two dollars a week and my
board. The school was four miles from my home, so I "boarded round" with
the families of my pupils, staying two weeks in each place, and
often walking from three to six miles a day to and from my little log
school-house in every kind of weather. During the first year I had about
fourteen pupils, of varying ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was
hardly a book in the school-room except those I owned. One little girl,
I remember, read from an almanac, while a second used a hymn-book.
In winter the school-house was heated by a woodstove, to which the
teacher had to give close personal attention. I could not depend on
my pupils to make the fires or carry in the fuel; and it was often
necessary to fetch the wood myself, sometimes for long distances through
the forest. Again and again, after miles of walking through winter
storms, I reached the school-house with my clothing wet through, and
in these soaked garments I taught during the day. In "boarding round"
I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the
sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or
two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the man
of the house to delicately retire to the barn while we women got to bed,
and to disappear again in the morning while we dressed. In some places
the meals were so badly cooked that I could not eat them, and often the
only food my poor little pupils brought to school for their noonday meal
was a piece of bread or a bit of raw pork.
I earned my two dollars a week that year, but I had to wait for my wages
until the dog tax was collected in the spring. When the money was thus
raised, and the twenty-six dollars for my thirteen weeks of teaching
were graciously put into my hands, I went "outside" to the nearest shop
and joyously spent almost the entire amount for my first "party dress."
The gown I bought was, I considered, a beautiful creation. In color it
was a rich magenta, and the skirt was elaborately braided with black
cable-cord. My admiration for it was justified, for it did all a young
girl's eager heart could ask of any gown--it led to my first proposal.
The youth who sought my hand was about twenty years old, and by an
unhappy chance he was also the least attractive young person in the
countryside--the laughing-stock of the neighbors, the butt of his
associates. The night he came to offer me his heart there were already
two young men at our home calling on my sisters, and we were all sitting
around the fire in the living-room when my suitor appeared. His costume,
like himself, left much to be desired. He wore a blue flannel shirt and
a pair of trousers made of flour-bags. Such trousers were not uncommon
in our region, and the boy's mother, who had made them for him, had
thoughtfully selected a nice clean pair of sacks. But on one leg was
the name of the firm that made the flour--A. and G. W. Green--and by a
charming coincidence A. and G. W. Green happened to be the two young men
who were calling on my sisters! On the back of the bags, directly in the
rear of the wearer, was the simple legend, "96 pounds"; and the striking
effect of the young man's costume was completed by a bright yellow sash
which held his trousers in place.
The vision fascinated my sisters and their two guests. They gave
it their entire attention, and when the new-comer signified with an
eloquent gesture that he was calling on me, and beckoned me into an
inner room, the quartet arose as one person and followed us to the door.
Then, as we inhospitably closed the door, they fastened their eyes to
the cracks in the living-room wall, that they might miss none of the
entertainment. When we were alone my guest and I sat down in facing
chairs and in depressed silence. The young man was nervous, and I was
both frightened and annoyed. I had heard suppressed giggles on the other
side of the wall, and I realized, as my self-centered visitor failed
to do, that we were not enjoying the privacy the situation seemed to
demand. At last the youth informed me that his "dad" had just given him
a cabin, a yoke of steers, a cow, and some hens. When this announcement
had produced its full effect, he straightened up in his chair and asked,
solemnly, "Will ye have me?"
An outburst of chortles from the other side of the wall greeted the
proposal, but the ardent youth ignored it, if indeed he heard it. With
eyes staring straight ahead, he sat rigid, waiting for my answer; and I,
anxious only to get rid of him and to end the strain of the moment,
said the first thing that came into my head. "I can't," I told him. "I'm
sorry, but--but--I'm engaged."
He rose quickly, with the effect of a half-closed jack-knife that is
suddenly opened, and for an instant stood looking down upon me. He was
six feet two inches tall, and extremely thin. I am very short, and, as
I looked up, his flour-bag trousers seemed to join his yellow sash
somewhere near the ceiling of the room. He put both hands into
his pockets and slowly delivered his valedictory. "That's darned
disappointing to a fellow," he said, and left the house. After a
moment devoted to regaining my maidenly composure I returned to the
living-room, where I had the privilege of observing the enjoyment of
my sisters and their visitors. Helpless with mirth and with tears of
pleasure on their cheeks, the four rocked and shrieked as they recalled
the picture my gallant had presented. For some time after that incident
I felt a strong distaste for sentiment.
Clad royally in the new gown, I attended my first ball in November,
going with a party of eight that included my two sisters, another girl,
and four young men. The ball was at Big Rapids, which by this time had
grown to be a thriving lumber town. It was impossible to get a team of
horses or even a yoke of oxen for the journey, so we made a raft and
went down the river on that, taking our party dresses with us in trunks.
Unfortunately, the raft "hung up" in the stream, and the four young men
had to get out into the icy water and work a long time before they
could detach it from the rocks. Naturally, they were soaked and chilled
through, but they all bore the experience with a gay philosophy.