Landing in Bleeding Kansas—she still bleeds [1] —we fell at once into “Emigration Road,” a great thoroughfare, broad and well worn as a European turnpike or a Roman military route, and undoubtedly the best and the longest natural highway in the world. For five miles the line bisected a bottom formed by a bend in the river, with about a mile’s diameter at the neck. The scene was of a luxuriant vegetation. A deep tangled wood—rather a thicket or a jungle than a forest—of oaks and elms, hickory, basswood, and black walnut, poplar and hackberry (Celtis crassifolia), box elder, and the common willow (Salix longifolia), clad and festooned, bound and anchored by wild vines, creepers, and huge llianas, and sheltering an undergrowth of white alder and red sumach, whose pyramidal flowers were about to fall, rested upon a basis of deep black mire, strongly suggestive of chills—fever and ague. After an hour of burning sun and sickly damp, the effects of the late storms, we emerged from the waste of vegetation, passed through a straggling “neck o’ the woods,” whose yellow inmates reminded me of Mississippian descriptions in the days gone by, and after spanning some very rough ground we bade adieu to the valley of the Missouri, and emerged upon the region of the Grand Prairie,} which we will pronounce “perrairey.”
Differing from the card-table surfaces of the formation in IIlinois and the lands east of the Mississippi, the Western prairies are rarely flat ground. Their elevation above sea-level varies from 1000 to 2500 feet, and the plateau’s aspect impresses the eye with an exaggerated idea of elevation, there being no object of comparison—mountain, hill, or sometimes even a tree—to give a juster measure. Another peculiarity of the prairie is, in places, its seeming horizontality, whereas it is never level: on an open plain, apparently flat as a man’s palm, you cross a long groundswell which was not perceptible before, and on its farther incline you come upon a chasm wide and deep enough to contain a settlement. The aspect was by no means unprepossessing. Over the rolling surface, which, however, rarely breaks into hill and dale, lay a tapestry of thick grass already turning to a ruddy yellow under the influence of approaching autumn. The uniformity was relieved by streaks of livelier green in the rich soils of the slopes, hollows, and ravines, where the water gravitates, and, in the deeper “intervales” and bottom lands on the banks of streams and courses, by the graceful undulations and the waving lines of mottes or prairie islands, thick clumps and patches simulating orchards by the side of cultivated fields. The silvery cirri and cumuli of the upper air flecked the surface of earth with spots of dark cool shade, surrounded by a blaze of sunshine, and by their motion, as they trooped and chased one another, gave a peculiar liveliness to the scene; while here and there a bit of hazy blue distance, a swell of the sea-like land upon the far horizon, gladdened the sight—every view is fair from afar. Nothing, I may remark, is more monotonous, except perhaps the African and Indian jungle, than those prairie tracts, where the circle of which you are the centre has but about a mile of radius; it is an ocean in which one loses sight of land. You see, as it were, the ends of the earth, and look around in vain for some object upon which the eye may rest: it wants the sublimity of repose so suggestive in the sandy deserts, and the perpetual motion so pleasing in the aspect of the sea. No animals appeared in sight where, thirty years ago, a band of countless bisons dotted the plains; they will, however, like the wild aborigines, their congeners, soon be followed by beings higher in the scale of creation. These prairies are preparing to become the great grazing-grounds which shall supply the unpopulated East with herds of civilized kine, and perhaps with the yak of Tibet, the llama of South America, and the koodoo and other African antelopes.
As we sped onward we soon made acquaintance with a traditionally familiar feature, the "pitch-holes," or "chuck-holes" -- the ugly word is not inappropriate -- which render traveling over the prairies at times a sore task. They are gullies and gutters, not unlike the Canadian "cahues" of snow formation: varying from 10 to 50 feet in breadth, they are rivulets in spring and early summer, and -- few of them remain perennial -- they lie dry during the rest of the year. Their banks are slightly raised, upon the principle, in parvo , that causes mighty rivers, like the Po and the Indus, to run along the crests of ridges, and usually there is in the sole a dry or wet cunette, steep as a step, and not unfrequently stony; unless the break be attended to, it threatens destruction to wheel and axle tree, to hound and tongue. The pitch-hole is more frequent where the prairies break into low hills; the inclines along which the roads run then become a net work of these American nullahs.
Passing through a few wretched shanties[2] called Troy—last insult to the memory of hapless Pergamus—and Syracuse (here we are in the third, or classic stage of United States nomenclature), we made, at 3 P.M., Cold Springs, the junction of the Leavenworth route. Having taken the northern road to avoid rough ground and bad bridges, we arrived about two hours behind time. The aspect of things at Cold Springs, where we were allowed an hour's halt to dine and to change mules, somewhat dismayed our fine-weather prairie travelers. The scene was the rale “Far West.” The widow body to whom the shanty belonged lay sick with fever. The aspect of her family was a “caution to snakes:” the ill-conditioned sons dawdled about, listless as Indians, in skin tunics and pantaloons fringed with lengthy tags such as the redoubtable “Billy Bowlegs” wears on tobacco labels; and the daughters, tall young women, whose sole attire was apparently a calico morning-wrapper, color invisible, waited upon us in a protesting way. Squalor and misery were imprinted upon the wretched log hut, which ignored the duster and the broom, and myriads of flies disputed with us a dinner consisting of doughnuts, green and poisonous with saleratus, suspicious eggs in a massive greasy fritter, and rusty bacon, intolerably fat. It was our first sight of squatter life, and, except in two cases, it was our worst. We could not grudge 50 cents a head to these unhappies; at the same time, we thought it a dear price to pay—the sequel disabused us—for flies and bad bread, worse eggs and bacon.
The next settlement, Valley Home, was reached at 6 P.M. Here the long wave of the ocean land broke into shorter seas, and for the first time that day we saw stones, locally called rocks (a Western term embracing every thing between a pebble and a boulder), the produce of nullahs and ravines. A well 10 to 12 feet deep supplied excellent water. The ground was in places so far reclaimed as to be divided off by posts and rails; the scanty crops of corn (Indian corn), however, were wilted and withered by the drought, which this year had been unusually long. Without changing mules we advanced to Kennekuk, where we halted for an hour’s supper under the auspices of Major Baldwin, whilom Indian agent; the place was clean, and contained at least one charming face.
Kennekuk derives its name from a chief of the Kickapoos, in whose reservation we now are. This tribe, in the days of the Baron la Hontan (1689), a great traveler, but “aiblins,” as Sir Walter Scott said of his grandmither, “a prodigious story-teller,” then lived on the Riviére des Puants, or Fox River, upon the brink of a little lake supposed to be the Winnebago, near the Sakis (Osaki, Sawkis, Sauks, or Sacs),[3] and the Pouteoustamies (Potawotomies). They are still in the neighborhood of their dreaded foes, the Sacs and Foxes,[4] who are described as stalwart and handsome bands, and they have been accompanied in their southern migration from the waters westward of the Mississippl, through Illinois, to their present southern seats by other allies of the Winnebagoes,[5] the Iowas, Nez Percés, Ottoes, Omahas, Kansas, and Osages. Like the great nations of.the Indian Territory, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, they form intermediate social links in the chain of civilization between the outer white settlements and the wild nomadic tribes to the west, the Dakotahs and Arapahoes, the Snakes and Cheyennes. They cultivate the soil, and rarely spend the winter in hunting buffalo upon the plains. Their reservation is twelve miles by twenty-four; as usual with land set apart for the savages, it 1s well watered and timbered, rich and fertile; it lies across the path and in the vicinity of civilization; consequently, the people are ‘greatly demoralized. The men are addicted to intoxication, and the women to unchastity; both sexes and all ages are inveterate beggars, whose principal industry is horse-stealing. ‘Those Scottish clans were the most savage that vexed the Lowlands; it is the case here: the tribes nearest the settlers are best described by Colonel B ’s phrase, “great liars and dirty dogs.” They have well-nigh cast off the Indian attire, and rejoice in the splendors of boiled and ruffled shirts, after the fashion of the whites. According to our host, a stalwart son of that soil which for generations has sent out her best blood westward, Kain-tuk-ee, the Land of the Cane, the Kickapoos number about 300 souls, of whom one fifth are braves. .He quoted a specimen of their facetiousness: when they first saw a crinoline, they pointed to the wearer and cried, “There walks a wigwam.” Our “vertugardin” of the 19th century has run the gauntlet of the world’s jests, from the refined impertinence of Mr. Punch to the rude grumble of the American Indian and the Kaffir of the Cape.
Beyond Kennekuk we crossed the first Grasshopper Creek. Creek, I must warn the English reader, is pronounced “ crik,”and in these lands, as in the jargon of Australia, means not “an arm of the sea,”but a small stream of sweet water, a rivulet; the rivers of Europe, according to the Anglo-American of the West, are “criks.” On our line there are many grasshopper creeks; they anastomose with, or debouch into, the Kansas River, and they reach the sea viâ the Missouri and the Mississippi. This particular Grasshopper was dry and dusty up to the ankles; timber clothed the banks, and slabs of sandstone cumbered the sole. Our next obstacle was the Walnut Creek, which we found, however, provided with a corduroy bridge; formerly it was a dangerous ford, rolling down heavy streams of melted snow, and then crossed by means of the “bouco” or coracle, two hides sewed together, distended like a leather tub with willow rods, and poled or paddled. At this point the country is unusually well populated; a house appears after every mile. Beyond Walnut Creek a dense nimbus, rising ghost-like from the northern horizon, furnished us with a spectacle of those perilous prairie storms which make the prudent lay aside their revolvers and disembarrass themselves of their cartridges. Gusts of raw, cold, and violent wind from the west whizzed overhead, thunder crashed and rattled closer and closer, and vivid lightning, flashing out of the murky depths around, made earth and air one blaze of living fire. Then the rain began to patter ominously upon the carriages; the canvas, however, by swelling, did its duty in becoming water-tight, and we rode out the storm dry. ‘Those learned in the weather predicted a succession of such outbursts, but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The thermometer fell about 6° (F.), and a strong north wind set in, blowing dust or gravel, a fair specimen of “Kansas gales,” which are equally common in Nebraska, especially during the month of October. It subsided on the 9th of August.
Arriving about 1 A.M. at Locknan’s Station, a few log and timber huts near a creek well feathered with white oak and American elm, hickory and black walnut, we found beds and snatched an hourful of sleep.
[1] And no wonder !
“I advise you, one and all, to enter every election district in Kansas and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver. Neither give nor take quarter, as our case demands it.”
“I tell you, mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted with Freesoilism or Abolitionism, and exterminate him. Neither give nor take quarter from them.” .
(Extracts from Speeches of General Stringfellow—happy name!—in the Kansas Legislature.)
[2] American authors derive the word from the Canadian chienté, a dog-kennel. It is, however, I believe, originally Irish.
[3] In the days of Major Pike, who, in 1805-6-7, explored, by order of the government of the United States, the western territories of North America, the Sacs numbered 700 warriors and 750 women; they had four villages, and hunted on the Mississippi and its confluents from .the Illinois to the Iowa River, and on the western plains that bordered on the Missouri. They were at peace with the Sioux, Osages, Potawotomies, Menomenes or Folles Avoines, Iowas, and other Missourian tribes, and were almost consolidated with the Foxes, with whose aid they nearly exterminated the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorians. Their principal enemies were the Ojibwas. They raised a considerable quantity of maize, beans, and melons, and were celebrated for cunning in war rather than for courage.
[4] From the same source we learn that the Ottagamies, called by the French Les Renards, numbered 400 warriors and 500 women: they had three villages near the confluence of the Turkey River with the Mississippi, hunted on both sides of the Mississippi from the Iowa stream below the Prairie du Chien to a river of that name above the same village, and annually sold many hundred bushels of maize. Conjointly with the Sacs, the Foxes protected the Iowas, and the three people, since the first treaty of the two former with the United States, claimed the land from the entrance of the Jauflione on the western side of the Mississippi, up the latter river to the Iowa above the Prairie du Chien, and westward to the Missouri. In 1807 they had ceded their lands lying south of the Mississippi to the United States, reserving to themselves, however, the privileges of hunting and residing on them.
[5] The Winnebagoes, Winnipegs (turbid water), or Ochangras numbered, in 1807, 450 warriors and 500 women, and had seven villages on the Wisconsin, Rock, and Fox Rivers, and Green Bay: their proximity enabled the tribe to muster in force within four days, They then hunted on the Rock River, and the eastern side of the Mississippi, from Rock River to the Prairie du Chien, on Lake Michigan, on Black River, and in the countries between Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. Lieutenant Pike is convinced, “from a tradition among themselves, and their speaking the same language as the Ottoes of the Platte River,” that they are a tribe who about 150 years before his time had fled from the oppression of the Mexican Spaniards, and had become clients of the Sioux. They have ever been distinguished for ferocity and treachery.