USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 19
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"No-no, worldlins, you couldn't, the most high larn'd ither, couldn't make any of them thare things-you couldn't make woods -you couldn't make trees-you couldn't make fishes-no, you couldn't make airth-you couldn't make air-you couldn't make fire-you couldn't make-hem !- no you couldn't-make water." (Sorry are we to record, but Mr. Carlton here was guilty of sniggering; and even Uncle John, in spite of his official dignity, did look as if he would laugh when meeting was out. Poor Philip, however, quickly emerged and went on.) "No-not one of you could make a spring branch nor the like."
Ah! poor Philip had you only had a little of the learning you despised ! Had you, at least, only seen Miss Carbon's Chemistry for Boarding Schools of Young Ladies! But did not Philip make us sweat for our sins, for he went on:
"Yes! yes! some folks laff in meetin, but wait till they gits to h-1, and maybe they'll laff tother side of their mouth. The fire
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FIRST YEAR
down thare's hot, I allow, and will scorch off folk's ruffles and melt their goold buttins, and the devel and his angils pelt them with red hot balls of brimrock and fire!"
But the two dogs had just now returned from an unsuccessful hunt, and forthwith they plunged headlong into the pit below; and then, the barking and yelping of the dogs; the scampering and squealing of the pigs; the flapping of screaming geese's wings, and the squawking of insulted ganders, together with the hoarse and continued roaring of the preacher, produced a tempest rarely equalled in the best organized fanatical assemblies here, and never surely excelled. And the instant meeting was over, we of Glenville hurried away glad to escape from the noise of bedlam and the almost papistical curses of poor Philip.
CHAPTER XXII.
SECOND YEAR.
"Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand- Or, say to them Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,
Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim, In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power, and person."
OUR second summer opened with the electioneering campaign of Mr. Glenville, the people's candidate for a seat in the next legislature.1 His opponent, in all intellectual respects, was un- qualified for the seat, being destitute of important knowledges, void of tact and skill, and having indeed-for he had been our representative before-only exposed himself and us to perpetual ridicule. He could read and write, and perhaps cipher a little, and therefore, was all along considered a smart fellow, till it was discovered we had one in the district, "a powerful heap smarter" 1
1 John M. Young was elected to the legislature from the counties of Owen and Green in August 1828. I find no record of his having been a member of an earlier legislature. This could not have been Hall's "second summer" in Indiana; it was more nearly his fifth or sixth.
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-- John Glenville, Esq., of Glenville. For John read without spelling the hard words, wrote like engraving, and could "kalkilate in his head faster nor Jerry Simpson with chalk or coal, although Jerry had been a schoolmaster." And our neighbor Ashford offered to stake five barrels of corn, that-"Johnny was jist the powerfullest smartest feller in the hole universal county, and could out sifer Jerry or other men all to smash."
Glenville's ability, however, would have prejudiced our cause, had any doubt existed as to his moral integrity; for, a bad man out there was very properly dreaded in proportion to his clever- ness,2 and therefore, power to harm. Indeed, we always pre- ferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one; and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart can- didate; since unhappily smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness.
Our opponents, therefore, neither insisted that Jerry was smarter than John, nor attacked John's character: but they con- tended that "Jerry could do no harm if he did no good, but that John could if he would, and would if he took a bad turn; also, that Jerry had been tried once and did no harm, but that John had never been tried and so no one could exactly tell what he would be till he was tried."
A
To this was answered, that "Jerry could do no good if he would, and had often voted so as to keep others from doing us any good, and so had prevented good if he had done no evil; that John if able to do harm, was also able to do good and so he had never done harm in private life, it was reasonable to believe he would do none in public life; and that as Jerry had a trial and did no good, so John ought to have one too, and if he did harm, we could send Jerry the year after."
John was then attacked on the score of pride and aristocracy ; and, as usual, all the sins of his family were laid at Glenville's door, especially his sisters' ruffles-our metal buttons-the carpet wall; and above all, Carlton's irreverent sniggering in meeting. But then, most who had met us at Susan Ashford's wedding said "we warnt so stuck up as folks said; and that mammy Ashford herself thought it was not a bit proud to have a carpet wall, or
2 In the English sense.
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the like, and that Mr. Carltin was a right down clever feller, powerful funny, and naterally addicted to laffin." And to crown all, Mr. Ashford himself, and belonging to poor Philip's sect, publicly avowed that "he hisself had actially laff'd in meetin- for the water came so sudden like-only he kept his face kivered with his hat, and nobody hadn't seen him."
The enemy then affirmed that Glenville himself had laughed: but he procured certificates from every body at church to this point that "nobody had seen or heard John Glenville laughing; and these were read wherever Jerry's party had made the charge.3 For any silly charge, if uncontradicted out there, and maybe in here-defeats an election ; either because the charge is deemed an offset against the candidate, or people like to see their candidate in earnest, and his rebutting allegations looks like zeal for their interest, and shows a due sense in his mind of popular favour. Beside, if any one neglects a trifling charge, his enemies will soon bring larger and more plausible ones-whereas his alertness scares them.
At last it was boldly alleged that "John would have laughed if he had not expected to be a candidate!" But to this it was triumphantly replied that "Jerry would have laughed if he had been at meetin"-for Squire Chippy and Col. Skelpum gave two separate certificates, that "Jerry Simpson had laughed when he heard tell of it !! " Hence poor Philip's sermon was celebrated over all our district ; and everywhere was spoken and even spouted the sentence "no one couldn't make airth," and so through all the four old-fashioned chemical elements : till all men were asham- ed to bring even against "poor Carltin" a charge, to which all plainly showed, if they had been at meeting, they would have been equally liable themselves. And so our party triumphed over what once seriously threatened to defeat us.
The price of liberty, eternal vigilance, is well paid in a New Purchase. With us it was watched by all classes, and through- out the year : it was indeed the universal business. Our offices all, from Governor down to a deputy constable's deputy and
3 However, since it can do no harm now, Glenville did laugh; but nobody either saw or heard him but myself-and of course I did not sign any certificate.
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fence-viewer's clerk's first assistant, were in the direct gift of the people. We even elected magistrates, clerks of court, and the judges presiding and associate! And some who knew better, yet for rabblerousing purposes, gravely contended that trustees of colleges, and all presidents, professors, and teachers should be elected directly by the people !4
Our social state, therefore, was for ever in ferment; for ever was some election, doing, being done, done or going to be done; and each was bitterly contested as that of president or governor. In all directions candidates were perpetually scouring the country with hats, saddle-bags, and pockets crammed with certificates, de- fending and accusing, defaming and clearing up, making licentious speeches, treating to corn whiskey, violating the Sabbath, and cursing the existing administration or the administration's wife and wife's father ! And every body expected at some time to be a candidate for something ; or that his uncle would be ; or his cousin, or his cousin's wife's cousin's 'friend would be ; so that every body, and every body's relations, and every body's relations' friends, were for ever electioneering, till the state of nasty, pitiful intrigues and licentious slanders and fierce hostility, was like a rotten carcass where maggots are, each for himself and against his neighbour, wriggling and worming about !
. Men were turned into mutual spies, and watched and treasured and reported and commented upon, looks, words and actions, even the most trifling and innocent ! And we were divided, house against house ! and man against man; and settlements, politically considered, were clannish and filled with animosity. The sov- ereign people was, indeed, feared by the candidate who truckled to-day, and most heartily despised when he ruled to-morrow.
The very boys verging on manhood were aware of their future political importance ; and even several years before voting, they were feared, petted, courted and cajoled, becoming of course conceited, unmannerly and disrespectful. Their morals were consequently often sadly hurt; and boys then voted frauduently. Standing either over the No. 21 pasted in the shoe, or between No. 21 in
4 This would seem to indicate an excess of a certain kind of democracy in the West and the need of the "short ballot." Hall was evidently of the opinion that elective offices were altogether too numerous.
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SECOND YEAR
the hat, and No. 22 in the shoe, they would sometimes deliberately swear, when challenged as to age, that they were over 21, or between 21 and 22 !! Such depraved lads, destitute of reverence, will talk loud and long, and confidently, in any company, con- tradicting and even rebuking their betters-and all the time a rabblerouser 5 affects to listen and admire such firmness and independence of spirit !! Get out! you scornful puppy ! and do not prate to me about religious cant ; can any thing come up to the cant and whine of a selfish, godless rabblerouser? And dare such a one say that evangelical missionaries are not safer guides, and better friends to the people than-He! Out with you, atheist.
We had of course in the Purchase a passion for stump-speech- ing. But recollect, we often mount the stump only figuratively : and very good stump-speeches are delivered from a table, a chair, a whiskey barrel, and the like. Sometimes we make our best stump speeches on horse-back. In this case, when the horse is excited by our eloquence, or more commonly by the mischievous boys, more action goes with the speech than even Demosthenes in- culcated-often it became altogether circumambulatory.
Once a candidate stood near the tail of Isam Greenbriar's ox cart at Woodville, when some of his opponents,-(perhaps some of his own friends, for the joke was tempting)-noiselessly drew out the forward pins, when at the most unexpected instant, aye, in the very climax of his most ferocious effervescence, Mr. Rhodomontade was canted into the dirt!
Again, our candidate for fence-viewer, with some half dozen friends, was once hard at work with certificates and speeches in Sam Dreadnought's wagon; when Sam, having several miles to drive before dark, and having already waited two good hours for matters to end, suddenly leaped on his saddle horse, and then, at a word and a crack, away dashed the team loaded with politics, very much to the amusement of the people, but much to the discomfiture of our candidate.
Nothing surpasses the munificent promises and at the same time the external and grovelling humility of a genuine rabble- rouser, just before an election. He shakes hands with every body, friend and foe; he has agents to treat at his expense at
5 New Purchase name for a demagogue.
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SECOND YEAR
every doggery ; " and in his own person he deals out whiskey and gingerbread, as we have seen, to a long line of independent voters marching past him with drum and fife to the polls; and he drinks out of any drunken vagabond's bottle, laughing at his beastly jokes, putting his arm around his filthy neck, and allows himself thus to be slobbered upon, while patting the brute on the back and being patted in turn !
Yet have we noble gentlemen who, when candidates, are cour- teous indeed, but who will not do base things, nor make absurd and wicked promises, and who when defeated back out with manly scorn of licentious opponents. One such high minded individual in order to show the folly of great promises, came out the year after a defeat, saying he had altered his purposes, and now was a candidate again, and would if elected exert his utmost efforts to force the legislature "to abolish the fever and ague, and to pass a bill to find a gold mine on every poor man's quarter section." I forget whether he was now elected; but he deserved to be.
Glenville, though full of tact, was independent; although we did give credit for kip and neats-leather, even where it was doubt- ful whether our political friends would pay, and bought raw hides at higher prices than we paid at Spiceburg and Woodville. And Glenville did submit to, or rather he could not prevent a party with him in a canoe from upsetting the boat in the middle of Shining River; and who thus gave the candidate what they called a-"political baptising:" but whilst this was no dry joke, our friend still, on swimming to land with the others, joined in the laugh. This too was a fair type of his immersion into the troubled waters of political life; and the way he endured the ducking so established his reputation above Jerry's, that at the ensuing election a few weeks after, Mr. G. was successful by a clean majority of 171 votes !
Politicians, even in here, I am informed, are also very frequently immersed and into puddles; from which they rarely ever do flounder out, and when they do, it is said, they look nasty and soiled, and have dirty ways, all the rest of their lives! But maybe the less said on this point the sooner mended; and there-
6 New Purchase term for a grog shop or low tavern.
18I
SECOND YEAR
fore, as Mr. Glenville is now the people's man, the world expects his history, and we proceed to treat of the same in three chapters.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,- "As full of peril, and advent'rous spirit, As to o'erwalk a current, roaring loud, On the unsteadfast footing of a spear."
Mr. Glenville was about my age, or rather I was about his age ; or to be as definite as a down east school book, we were both about the same age, and were born in A.D. 179 -; 1-and hence have already lived part of two centuries, being as old as the cur- rent added to the fraction of the other.
He was born, and educated for some years, in Philadelphia. His principal teacher was Mr. Moulder, who superintended an old-fashioned orthodox quaker school; in which morals were far better and more successfully cultivated than in modern quackery schools, where morals is made a separate matter. And in this primitive school John imbibed much of the Yea and Nay in his character, or his right-up-and-downedness; a compound conduc- ing greatly to his safety and happiness in the strifes, dangers and perplexities of the wilderness. He had been destined to the counting house, but the removal of his friends to the west, changed his destiny ; and hence, being a good elementary mathe- matician and well acquainted with theoretical surveying, he was invited by Gen. Duff Green, then of Kentucky, to accompany a party to the Upper Missouri as assistant surveyor; which in- vitation was accepted.
This suited our hero's love of adventure and gave an opportu- nity of seeing-the world. Not the world as seen by a trip to Paris or London, but the world natural and proper; the world in its native convexity, its own ravines and mountains, its virgin soil, its primitive wilds, its unworn prairies ! to float in birch-bark canoes on the swelling bosom of free waters !- waters never de-
1 1793. See Introduction.
.
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SECOND YEAR
graded with bearing loads of merchandise, or prostituted in a part diverted to turn mills, or fill canals, or in any way to be a slave, and then to be let go discoloured with coal, or saw dust, or flour, or dyestuffs, marks of bondage-that they may hurry away, sullen and indignant to hide their dishonoured waves in the ocean !
He went to see the world as the Omnipotent made it and the deluge left it! He went to hear the thunder-tramp of the wild congregations-the horse and the buffalo,-shaking the prairie- plains that heaved up proud to bear on their free heart the un- tamed, free, bounding, glorious herds! He went to look at the sun rising and setting on opposite sides of one and the same field ; and where the rain-bow spans half a continent and curves round the terrestrial semicircle! He went to see the smoke of a wig- wam where death flies on the wing of a stone-headed arrow, and the Indian is in the drapery of untouched forests and midst the fragrance of the ungardened, many coloured, ever-varied flowers !
What change from the smokes and smells of a city !- the out- cry, war, confusion of anxious, crowded, jostled, envious, jealous, rivalous population !- its contrasts of moneyed conse- quence and povertysmitten dependence !- its rolling vehicles of travelling ennui and hobbling crutch of rheumatic beggary !- and its saloons of boisterous mirth adjoining the sad enclosure of silent tombstones! Oh! the change from dark, damp, stifling pent holes of alleys and courts, where filth exhales its stench without the sun !- to walk abroad, run, leap, ride, hunt and shout, amid the unwrought, unsubdued, boundless world of primitive forest, flood, and prairie !
After a few weeks, Glenville was detached from the General's party, and sent with the principal surveyor and one hunter to complete a survey, with directions to rejoin the main body some two hundred miles down the Missouri, after the accomplishment of the work. The trio, therefore proceeded to the scene of their labour, which was more than fifty miles beyond the white settle- ments, and boarding on the hunting grounds of the Indians.
One morning, when preparing breakfast on the bank of a river tributary to the Missouri, a large party of Indians appeared on the opposite bank, who, on espying our surveyors, came over to visit their camp, warriors and warriors' squaws, all wading with
SECOND YEAR 183
red and bare legs ; and then, pleased with their reception and some small presents, they insisted that our friends should now go and take breakfast on the other side; a request that could not be de- clined without engendering distrust. Accordingly, our trio mounted their horses and followed their wading friends across the river.
Happy that the appetite is often strong! and yet strong as it was, it was almost too weak for the occasion. The breakfast be- gan with a drink of whiskey and complimentary smoking, after which came the principal viand, to wit: a soup, or hash, or swill, made of river water and deer-meat and deer-entrails all poured from a large iron kettle and smoking hot into-"an earthern dish?" No. "A calabash?" No: but into a sugar trough-a wooden trough !! and about as large as piggy uses in his early days, when fattening for a roast. Had the thing been as clean, our surveyors would never have flinched; but the trough was coated with oleaginous matter both within and without; and a portion of the interior coat, now melted by the absorption of free caloric, was contributing a yellow oily richness and flavour to the savoury mess! And on the crust more remote from the heat frolicked larvae2 with nice white bodies and uncouth dark heads, careless of comrades floating lifeless in the boiling gulf be- low! Had Uncle Tommy been now narrating, he would have improved the occasion to animadvert on the beastliness of a drunken riot, where some are torpid under the table, and others flourishing glasses above it ; nay, he would have gone on to insist that grubs and such like are to be found even in the most fash- ionable places : but we content ourselves with furnishing the text.
From this aboriginal mess both red and white men fished up pieces of vension, with sharp sticks, and with tin cups and greasy gourds they ladled out broth till all was exhausted, except some lifeless things in a little puddle of liquid matter at the bottom and a portion of entrail lodged on the side of the trough. Our folks, who had, indeed, seen "a thing or two" in cabin cookery, were nearly sickened now; for spite of clenching the teeth in sucking broth, they were confident more than once, that articles designed to be excluded, had wormed through the enclosure. It 2 Little elfs or hob-goblins.
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SECOND YEAR
required a pint of whiskey extra during the day, quids innumer- able, and countless cigars to do away with the odor and the taste : and Glenville used to say the memory of that Indian breakfast would serve him for ever! And yet why not apply de gustibus non, to this breakfast? The classic Romans delighted in snails ; the sacred Jews in grasshoppers. The Celestials eat rats and dogs, and the elastic Parisians devour frogs, and sometimes cats. And may not American Indians eat, without disparagement, en- trails, brown and yellow grease, and fly-blows! Depend on it, reader, this eating, is, after all, a mere matter of taste.
Not many days after this breakfast, our people met in a prairie a party of Osages, and mostly mounted on small, but very active horses. The chief ordered his troop to halt, and all dismounting, he made signs for the whites to advance; upon which he stepped up to Glenville-the Mercury of the three, and began an unintel- ligible gabble of English and Osage. At length he felt about Glenville's person, with his hands, and even into his bosom and pockets, till our friends became a little alarmed: when Glenville, remembering what he had heard, that nothing so quickly disarms and even makes a friend of a hostile Indian, as the show of cour- age, began to look angry, uttered words of indignation and even jerked away the chief's hand. Upon this the warrior stepping back, laughed long and loud, and with manifest contempt looked at the dwarf dimensions of the white but with approbation at his spunk; both natural feelings, when he beheld a little white man, five feet seven, and weighing nearly 120 lbs. avoirdupois boldly resisting and repelling a big red one, more than six feet three, and weighing about 235 lbs! In a few moments, however, the Indian again advanced, but with the greatest good-nature; and while he now patted Glenville with one hand on the back, with the other he felt in our hero's side pocket, whence he soon abstracted a small knife and immediately transferred the same to his own pouch. After that, going to his pony, he returned with a magnificent buffalo robe wrought with rude outlines of beasts and Indians; which, throwing down before Glenville as a fair exchange of presents, he once more went to his horse, and then leaping on the animal's back, the chieftain gave the sign, and away the free spirits of the brave were again galloping towards the hazy line of the horizon !
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SECOND YEAR
The robe, during my sojourn in Glenville, was in the winter the outer cover of our bed. And to that was owing, one of my curious dreams :- a vast buffalo bull stripped of his skin and charging with his horns upon a gigantic Indian in an open prairie, while the Indian kept the bull at bay with a sugar trough in one hand, and a great dirk knife in the other. Indeed, if, when in a young gentleman's debating society at the discussion of the original and novel question, whether the savage life be prefer- able to the civilized, if then, I am irresistibly impelled to vote in the affirmative, it is owing to my constitutional tendencies, hav- ing been strengthened by sleeping two entire winters under the buffalo robe. Only think! reader,-to sleep two winters, in a log cabin, in a bran New Purchase, near a chieftain and a war- rior's grave enclosed with logs and marked by a stake painted red; and under the hairy hide of an enormous prairie bull !- a bull killed by a gigantic Osage chief -a hide dressed by his squaw, the queen, of his papooses, the princesses ! a robe bestowed as a king's reward for my brother-in-law's courage !! Take care. I feel the effect even now-hurra-waw-aw for the savage life. It is carried in the affirmative by acclamation-let me go. I must go, and at least draw a bead on something with my rifle! flash! bang !
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