USA > Kansas > Emigrant life in Kansas > Part 6
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I was treated quite as one of the family, as is usual with farm "helps" over there. Miss Blake and I belonged to a singing-class conducted by Dick Utt, a neighbouring farmer, and we used to have a fine time riding about to spend the evening at the various houses where they met for practice. We used also to have spelling-bees and other entertainments at the school-house.
Occasionally, when the snow was deep on the ground, and we could not work well in the · woods, I would take a couple of dogs and go rabbit-hunting. I often caught a good many,
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as the dogs would run them into hollow trees, from which I could easily dislodge them by cutting a gap to insert a forked stick. This I twisted into their fur, and drew them out, and then settled them with a blow of the hand across the back of the neck.
I used to do a good deal of trapping also, catching quails, etc., besides martens and weasels, by the creek side in steel traps. Sometimes rabbits got into the quail traps, but after eating the bait they usually got out again, either by scratching away the earth, or by biting through the boards of which the trap was made, much to my disgust.
When out on my excursions I used some- times to meet a man who lived in a cave in the woods-a trapper. He was a nice-looking fellow, with long black hair, and was clad in buckskin. He was living entirely upon the produce of his traps and rifle, and went about the creeks from place to place as game became scarce in the district he was working. He was a morose sort of man, and although I saw him several times in the woods he never spoke.
As the spring grew on I heard nothing
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about returning to the prairie, and so I just continued on at work for the old man on the same terms. I guess he had a good bargain, for I did a man's work without a man's pay. Still I had not much cause to complain, for had I been up on the prairie, I should not have been any better off in that respect, and a good deal worse as regards comfort in living and clothing, for, of course, I had no cooking, or washing and mending, to do at Blake's, as was the case at home.
Miss Blake made me quite a fancy " boiled" shirt for Sundays, etc. It was a blue check calico or something, with three rows of white frills all down the front, and which, owing to the absence of a waistcoat, showed off to fine advantage. The old lady made me some " blue-jeans " pants, so that with a pair of knee boots with red tops I guess I rather took the shine out of my friends at home.
After ploughing the land and getting the crops planted, we had to overhaul the fences, which was no slight job. There was a ring fence enclosing about one hundred and twenty acres, and this had to be put in repair for the summer, and kept proof against the hogs
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and cattle that roamed about. It was a zig- zag or snake fence, as is usually built where wood is plentiful. Twelve-feet rails are laid on the ground in a series of wide V shapes, and piled one on another until about eight deep, then stakes are driven in. the ground, crossing at the top rail, and then a heavy log or "rider" is thrown into the V formed by the two stakes, which binds it all together. The rider is usually heavy enough to prevent cattle from lifting it off. This forms a good fence, but is dreadfully extravagant with wood. With all this, when the crops grew up we were often bothered by cattle, and more par- ticularly by mules, breaking in, when it was my job to mount a pony, take a big whip, and chase them out with the dogs. Two of the dogs were very useful; they would rush after the mules as they galloped away and bite their fetlocks, and then crouch so low that the mules kicked clean over them; or they would take a cow by the tail or ear, and hang on like grim Death.
After the crops were all planted, there was . little for me to do for a couple of months, . and so I was sent to school, which was two
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miles away. I guess I did not learn much, for I believe that I could have taught the "school-marm " more than she taught me, though I improved myself a bit in spelling, arithmetic, and United States geography.
By this time the Indian corn was pretty high, and had to be " cultivated."
One day, when at work in the fields driving a brush harrow, we had a smart shock of earthquake. It did no damage, however, only making everything tremble a bit, and rattling down some of the crockery in the house. Slight shocks are not infrequent, but I have not heard of any at all severe.
Thunderstorms and high winds are rather prevalent, sometimes accompanied with heavy rains, which cause the creeks to rise many feet above their normal height in a very short time. At all the fords to the creeks are marks cut .on the trees, showing the depth of the water, and when it is dangerous to cross. It often happens that a farmer will go to town in the morning crossing a creek perhaps three feet deep, and by evening the water may be twelve or fifteen feet, and he must wait a day or two to get home.
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One of our neighbours lost three children at one time in the creek. Four little ones had gone to school in the morning, crossing the stream by stepping-stones, but a heavy rain having fallen, the water rose so much that one of the boys was sent from home to carry them across in the waggon. He passed the creek safely going to them, but on re- turning the water had risen still further, and the current was so strong that the waggon was overturned, and three of the five children were drowned as well as the two horses. The other two children were washed against some trees, to which they clung until rescued.
As we were near the main road, sometimes we had to entertain travellers who were de- layed by the water for a few days, if the rain continued ; but the creeks not being very long, they go down as quickly as they rise.
Occasionally the people camped out in the woods, and came to the house for hay, etc. Now and then they stuck in the mud in crossing, and we were awakened in the night to go and lend them a hand with ropes and poles to get them out.
Ague was rather prevalent in the summer
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on the creeks, but I never had a fit of the " shakes " myself. It is confined pretty much to the creeks, though occasionally there was a case up on the prairie. I remember once that a neighbour's son was with us when we boys went swimming, and would not go in the water, as his father had told him he would get the ague. This did not deter us ; we swam, and did not get the "shakes," while he stopped out and did get them. None of our . party ever had them at all; in fact, we were . never ill. Occasionally we got a little out of order inside through errors in eating, but were never laid up for a day, and never saw a doctor.
I must except one occasion though, and that was when I was staying down at Blake's. I was troubled by my gums leaving my teeth during the winter. This the doctor told Miss Blake (who was affected in the same way) was caused by so much salt meat and so few vegetables, and was in reality a slight attack of scurvy. With the spring, however, it soon passed away, though it left some of my teeth rather loose.
Pork was our usual food, fresh or frozen in
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winter, and smoked or salted in summer, though varied occasionally by our poultry or wild fowl. Beef we did not often have,-we only killed once a year, -- and as for mutton- well, in six years I only tasted it twice, and that was off the same sheep, a pet one killed by a neighbour of old Blake's. Sheep are now, however, being raised in Kansas. In hot weather several neighbours sometimes agreed together to take part of a pig killed by one of them, so that there should be no danger of it not keeping.
We kept a bottle of ".Pain-killer" in the house, and we also had a demijohn of whisky for medicinal purposes. This was really got as a cure for snake bites, but we never had occasion to use it for that purpose. I knew a man who had been bitten twice by deadly snakes, one a rattlesnake, and the other a copperhead. One he put his hand upon while quarrying rock, and the other he sat upon. He drank lots of whisky and recovered, but it does not always act. My father was once . up at Salina, a town some thirty-five miles west of us, and saw a man attempt for a wager to carry a rattlesnake across the street and
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back in his bare hand. He succeeded in taking it across, but upon returning it to the box the snake bit him. Whisky was at once procured to any extent, but all in vain. The poison was too strong for him, and in an hour he was a dead man.
As we were never called upon to tap our demijohn for this purpose, we broached it one Christmas Day, and invited our neighbours to help drink it. On one occasion I was a little queer, and my father gave me about half a cupful, neat. It proved rather too strong for me, for shortly afterwards I lay down on my back on a bench, kicked up my heels, and laughed both loud and long, at nothing. I . eventually fell asleep, and was put to bed in my clothes. I awoke next morning knowing nothing about it, but I had a splitting headache. But I must return to Blake's.
There was a man living close to us named Maloy, a " squatter,"-that is, a man who had no land of his own, but had built a shanty on Government land. He was an emigrant from Tennessee, a "poor white," a man that the niggers looked down upon, almost too proud to work, but too poor to do without. He
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suffered a great deal from the " shakes," after a fit of which, in a sort of nigger dialect, he would describe himself as feeling "powerful weak." His speech was certainly peculiar ; little things were " mighty tiny " or " tremen- dous small." He lived by working about among the farmers.
On the 4th July we all went to celebrate Independence Day at Council Grove, where a grand. picnic was held in the woods. There were the usual oratorical flights, bands of music, parades through the town, and a general display of enthusiasm and Sunday clothes.
Council Grove is situated on the River Neosho, and is said to take its name from a patch of timber, where, before the land was settled, five men stopped on their travels, and held a council as to the advisability of going further west. Three decided to keep on through the Indian country, and were killed, while the other two returned in safety to the settlements. It is also said that the Indians held their councils in the same grove. It is now a large thriving town, with flour and saw mills, schools, newspapers, and churches.
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I used often to go fishing in the creek, which was well stocked with sun-fish, black bass, suckers, cat-fish, etc. There were also plenty of turtles, and some big gar-fish, a great ugly fish something like a pike, but not good for eating.
As all the creek land had been settled for several years, " varmint" was not so common as up on the prairie, but sometimes we came across snakes, etc. One day I was ploughing, and took the top off a hole where lay a big bull snake. I saw him just in time, and swung on the plough handles to lift my feet clear,' and was dragged by. Then I stopped the horses, and went back and killed the vile thing.
Another day Miss Blake and I were out in the woods gathering wild gooseberries, when she had a narrow escape of being bitten. A black snake was coiled up in a bush, and she only just saw it in time to jump back as it sprang. She called out to me, and I then rushed up and killed it.
We used to get a good deal of wild fruit here of various kinds, living near the woods. Blackberries and wild grapes abounded, in particular.
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Old Blake had some queer notions in his head, and one of these was, that to bring up dogs to be of any use, they must be severely treated and very sparingly fed to make them hardy. We had a couple of nice young pups, and the old man determined to put his theory into practice, so no one was allowed to feed
them but himself. They grew up by degrees very lean and thin, and at last got so ferocious that they began to kill and eat the chickens. The old man would not believe it when told, until at last one day, when he was chopping wood, he saw them run down a fowl and tear it to pieces, and this, despite all his cries to . them to stop.
This so enraged him, that he rushed after them and caught first one and then the other, and took them to the wood pile and cut off both their heads with his axe.
During my stay here we had a " camp-meet- ing" and religious revival up the creek. It was held in the woods beside the stream, and lasted for a week. All the people in the neighbourhood who were members of the Church flocked to the meeting, during which there were open-air sermons, baptisms, prayer-
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meetings, and psalm-singing, and a general reclamation of backsliders. The crusade was headed by the Methodists, and it is of periodical occurrence. At the different meetings there was a row of seats in front for " mourners,"- that is, those mourning for their sins and wishing to join the Church ; and here a.number of people got very excited, and there was a lot of weeping and shouting when a mourner " found glory."
Once or twice during each day, according to the number of converts, they waded into the creek, and amid shouts of "glory" were baptized. Lots of people went to the meetings who were not members of any Church, and the whole thing partook very much of the nature of a week's picnic. There was plenty to eat and drink, and considerable amusement was to be found by the not too serious part of the community.
It seems rather a peculiar notion for par- sons and elders of the . Church to spend their time travelling about the country in waggons and camping out in the woods for weeks together, but it is frequently done over here.
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When the revivalists had departed and the excitement had abated a bit, the new members slacked down to their former level, and but little effect remained in a short time of the enthusiastic revival.
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CHAPTER VII.
GRASSHOPPERS, ETC.
Arrival of the pest .- Attempted precautions .- Their fearless- ness .- How the corn vanished .- The orchard stripped .-- Down the well .- Their departure .- Their multitude .- The lost cow .- Indians .- The Indian's grave.
IT was during this year that Kansas was visited with the dreadful plague of grasshoppers, or, as they are perhaps more correctly called, locusts, for there is no doubt but that they were closely allied to the locust of the Bible. They are said to breed away up in the Rocky Mountains of the north-west, and when they have increased to such an extent that the grass is all eaten up, then they descend upon the fertile prairies, and clear everything away as they go. This has happened twice since the settlement of the country. They travel mostly in a south-easterly direction, and are supposed to perish in the Gulf of Mexico. They move
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but slowly, but in such myriads that the farmers are powerless against them.
About a fortnight before they arrived with us, we heard that they were at Junction City, so that it took them fourteen days to travel about thirty-five miles. It was at the beginning of August, and the small grains, such as wheat, etc., were carried and stacked, so that these were secure. The maize, however, was as yet far from ripe, though the ears were well formed. We cut a lot of it, and shocked it to make fodder for the cattle, but it was destroyed with the other, 'after the beastly things arrived. They came on gradually like a fall of snow. We first saw a glittering cloud high in the sky, and all sparkling in the sun, from which they fell one or two at a time. At first they came down so slowly that the fowls could clear them up, but presently they began to fall in . earnest, and then nothing could check them.
They alighted on houses, people, animals, fences, crops, covering everything, while the ground was strewn several inches thick, so that it was impossible to walk about without killing dozens at each step, while it was a hard job to keep them brushed off hands and face.
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They seemed to have no fear, but alighted on anything. They continued falling for several days, so that they did not decrease in any way. No matter how many were killed, there were hundreds to take the place of one.
They began on the green corn and garden crops, and made a clean sweep. In the morn- ing the corn was waving in all its beauty-and it is about the loveliest crop that grows-a splendid green, and so high and dense that a man riding through it on horseback would not be seen ; in the evening nothing remained but the bare, upright stalks, which were rapidly blackening under the influence of their bites, and through which one could see all over the field. Flowers, leaves, silk, ears, all had vanished down their rapacious maws. They cleared off all the apples, peaches, and grapes, of which fruits we had a splendid show; but not a single one of either escaped.
We could walk through the orchard and see perhaps twenty grasshoppers. at one apple, drilling right through and through. Presently it would fall to the ground, and amongst the struggling mass there it soon totally dis- appeared. They left a few things at first which
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did not quite taste apparently to their satisfac- tion. These were the haulm of the potato, the tomato, the sugar-cane or sorghum, and tobacco. But these were all eventually cleared up after every other green leaf had disappeared.
All the trees in the woods were divested of their leaves, and the whole place looked as though there had been a fire raging in every part. One of my daily jobs was to climb down the well to clear the hoppers out to keep them from polluting the water. The windlass was not strong enough to carry me, and so I had to go down without my boots on, and hang on with fingers and toes in the crevices of the stones with which the well was walled. I would then take a small dipper or gourd, and skim all the hoppers into the bucket, which was drawn up and emptied by some one at the top. It was perhaps a little dangerous, but the well was only forty-five feet deep, so that I could not fall farther than that, unless I knocked the bottom out. One of our neigh- bour's sons was suffocated while on a similar job, the well being full of foul gas. Ours was quite free from this, however. It was awfully cold down at the bottom on a hot summer's
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day; to feel the sudden change from hot to cold was very queer. I wonder somewhat that it did not give me a bad cold, but I think that this rough out-of-door life kept us very healthy and hardy.
I remember my brother Jack was once riding across a creek on the ice with a pair of horses, when it gave way, and all disappeared beneath the water. After a bit of a struggle Jack managed to get out, and also to save the horses. The latter were so cold and exhausted that they lay down on the ground unable to stir, and so we covered them up with straw for the night, after giving them a good feed; Jack's clothes were frozen as hard as boards, so that he could hardly walk, but his cold bath did not in the least interfere with his health; he did not catch even a slight cold.
After the grasshoppers had finished every green thing, including chewing the tobacco, they began to seek " fresh fields and pastures new," and gradually departed, having remained about a month ; during the latter part of which they had been on starvation fare, eating twigs and bark, and varying their diet with such of their number as were injured and could not
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defend themselves. When the main body went, however, they still left swarms behind, who were engaged in laying eggs in the earth ready to be hatched in the sun next spring, . so that we had trouble to look forward to, as well as to lament the present.
The fowls and ducks were quite bewildered by their bounteous provision, and thrived and fattened wonderfully-the only things that did during the hoppers' destructive visit. It was enough to make a man's heart ache to stand and see every bit of vegetation destroyed as it was, and at the same time to be utterly power- less to prevent it. All sorts of experiments were tried, but in vain. Fire, of course, destroyed them, but we could not have fire everywhere, among the trees and growing crops. There was nothing to be done but grin and bear it.
The bulk of the army, after leaving us, travelled on right across the State of Kansas, part of Missouri, and Arkansas, and even reached into Texas ; but by that time frost had set in, and I suppose that in search of a warmer climate they took a long flight, and they are said to have been lost-to sight, but not to
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memory dear-in the sea, in the Gulf of Mexico. Their numbers were something awful to contem- plate. Some little idea of them may be formed when I say that there was a band at least two hundred and fifty miles wide, extending quite across the State, and about twenty miles deep from vanguard to rear, an ever-shifting mass, gradually moving on ; and when I say that the majority of this belt of land-five thousand square miles-was so covered that each footstep killed dozens,-though of course they congre- gated mostly about the cultivated fields,- enough will have been said to show the utter impossibility of in any way destroying them.
After they had left us the weather kept remarkably warm, and all the trees, after having their leaves stripped by the hoppers, began to sprout again, and the apple and peach trees presented the peculiar sight of being covered with blossom in November. But of course they were soon stripped again by the frosts.
This winter was a hard one, for so many people had lost nearly everything by the hoppers, such as had very little land in small grain, and for prairie farmers who had no
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wood to cut and sell. I continued on with old Zedekiah, chopping wood nearly all winter, and looking after the cattle, a number of which he was again wintering. We were rather un- fortunate with the cattle, they used to get stuck in the mud so much. It was a fearful job to get them out sometimes, wading in mud and water up to one's waist to hitch a rope round their horns. Then when rescued they did not always recover, but were so perished with the cold and wet that they succumbed despite all our efforts to keep them alive with pails of warm bran mash, boiled potatoes, and boiled corn.
At one time we lost a cow for four days. She went out one morning with the others, but failed to turn up at night to be fed. They were not housed at all, but spent the night in the woods, where it was warmer than in the corral. Well, the next morning came, and as she was still missing, I got on a pony and started to hunt for her. It was almost a matter of certainty that she was stuck somewhere, but where ? That was the question. I rode care- fully up and down the creek for miles both sides to give no chance away, inspecting every
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branch of the creek, and travelling far beyond their usual feeding-ground, but all in vain.
The next day Miss Blake started off as well as myself in a different direction, and kept up the search all day, but evening came, and the cow was still gone. The third day the old man joined in the hunt, but we were again un- successful, though we found another cow that had got stuck that day. On the evening of the fourth day I was riding home rather dejected at our ill luck, and was in sight of the house, when, passing by a little bit of a pond in a hollow of the hills, I thought that I detected in the long grass something more solid than reeds or bushes. I rode up closer, and to my infinite surprise and joy found the lost cow. She was so deep in the mud that only her head remained exposed to view, and one might have passed within a few feet without seeing her.
I could scarce believe my eyes upon finding her actually within sight of the house after our most diligent search. Didn't I gallop home in a hurry for a team to pull her out ! It was a terrible job, and we almost expected to pull her horns off or break her neck, so deeply mired was she. But at last we got her
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out and fed her with a pail of hot mash, and rubbed her down with dry hay, and then covered her up for the night, for, of course, she was quite unable to stand. She lingered a few days, and then died, the cold and exposure having proved too much for her.
Old Zedekiah gave me a dollar for finding her, which he had offered before as a reward. That was all the money I ever received from him during my stay of fourteen months. But I think that cash was always rather a scarce article with him. He and I together did all the work of a one-hundred-and-sixty-acre farm, scarcely hiring a man for a day, except in har- vest time; and as old Zedekiah was over sixty and a little shrivelled-up man, you may guess that I had plenty of hard word to get through. I ran the mowing-machine and the horse-rake, during the haying season-besides loading and stacking all the hay while the old man pitched,-and the reaping-machine in harvest.
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