The Prairie Flower: A Tale of the Indian Border. Gustave Aimard
Bright-eye took his seat against the trunk of a tree, and lit a pipe to soothe the weariness of his night watch. All at once, he bent his body forward, placed his ear to the ground, and seemed to be listening attentively. His practised ear had heard a sound at first imperceptible, but which seemed to be gradually drawing nearer.
The hunter silently cocked his rifle, and waited. At the expiration of about a quarter of an hour there was a slight rustling in the thicket, the branches parted, and a man made his appearance.
This man was Natah Otann, the sachem of the Piékanns.
CHAPTER III
THE EMIGRANTS
When he went out on the trail, the hunter's old experience did not deceive him; and the traces he had followed up were really those of an emigrant family. As it is destined to play a certain part in our story, we will introduce it to the reader, and explain, as briefly as possible, by what chain of events it was at this moment encamped on the prairies of the Upper Mississippi, or, to speak like the learned, on the banks of the Missouri.
The history of one emigrant is that of the mass. All are people who, burdened by a numerous family, find a difficulty in rendering their children independent, either through the bad quality of the land they cultivate, or because, in proportion as the population increases, the land, in the course of a few years, gains an excessive value.
The Mississippi has become during the last few years the highway of the world. Every vessel that enters on its waters brings the new establishments the means of supplying themselves, either by barter or for money, with the chief commodities of existence. Thus the explorers have spread along both banks of the river, which have become the highways of emigration, by the prospect they offer the pioneers of possessing fine estates, and holding them a number of years, without the troublesome process of paying rent.
The word "country," in the sense we attach to it in Europe, does not exist for the North American. He is not, like our rustics, attached, from father to son, to the soil which has been the cradle of his family. He is only attached to the land by what it may bring him in; but when it is exhausted by too large a crop, and the colonist has tried in vain to restore its primitive fertility, his mind is speedily made up. He disposes of things too troublesome or expensive to transport; only keeps what is absolutely necessary, as servants, horses, and domestic utensils; says good-bye to his neighbours, who press his hand as if the journey he is about to undertake is the simplest matter in the world, and at daybreak, on a fine spring morning, he gaily sets out, turning a parting and careless glance at that country where he and his family have lived so long. His thoughts are already directed forward; the past no longer exists for him, the future alone smiles on him and sustains his courage.
Nothing is so simple, primitive, and at the same time picturesque, as the departure of a family of pioneers. The horses are attached to the wagons, already laden with the bed furniture and the younger children, while on the other side are fastened the spinning wheels, and swaying behind, a skin filled with tallow and pitch. The axes are laid in the bottom of the cart, and cauldrons and pots roll about pell-mell in the horses' trough; the tents and provisions are securely fastened under the vehicle, suspended by ropes. Such is the moveable estate of the emigrant. The eldest son, or a servant, bestrides the first horse, the pioneer's wife sits on the other. The emigrant and his sons, with shouldered rifles, walk round the wagon, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, followed by their dogs, touching up the oxen and watching over the common safety.
Thus they set out, travelling by short stages through unexplored countries and along frightful roads, which they are generally compelled themselves to make: braving cold and heat, rain and snow, striving against Indians and wild beasts, seeing at each spot almost insurmountable difficulties rising before them: but nothing, stops the emigrants, no peril can check them, no impossibility discourage them. They march on thus for whole months, keeping intact in their hearts that faith in their luck which nothing shakes, until they at length reach a site which offers them those conditions of comfort which they have sought so long.
But, alas! how many families that have left the cities of America full of hope and courage have disappeared, leaving no other trace of their passage of the prairie than their whitened bones and scattered furniture. The Indians, ever on the watch at the entrance of the desert, attack the caravans, mercilessly massacre the pioneers, and carry off into slavery their wives and daughters, avenging themselves on the emigrants for the atrocities to which they have been victims during so many centuries, and continuing, to their own profit, that war of extermination which the white men inaugurated on their landing in America, and which, since that period, has gone on uninterruptedly.
John Black belonged to the class of emigrants we have just described. One day, about four months previously, he quitted his house, which was falling to ruins, and loading the little he possessed on a cart, he set out, followed by his family, consisting of his wife, his daughter, his son, and two menservants who had consented to follow his fortunes. Since that period they had not stopped. They had marched boldly forward, cutting their way by the help of their axes through the virgin forests, and determined on traversing the desert, until they found a spot favourable for the establishment of a new household.
At the period when our story takes place, emigration was much rarer than it is at present, when, owing to the recent discovery of auriferous strata in California and on the Fraser River, an emigration fever has seized on the masses with such intensity, that the old world is growing more and more depopulated, to the profit of the new. Gold is a magnet whose strength attracts, without distinction, young or old, men or women, by the hope, too often deceived, of acquiring in a little time, at the cost of some slight fatigue, a fortune; which, however, rarely compensates for the labour undergone in its collection.
It was, therefore, unusual boldness on the part of John Black thus to venture, without any possible aid, into a country hitherto utterly unexplored, and of which the Indians were masters. Mr. Black was born in Virginia: he was a man of about fifty, of middle height, but strongly built, and gifted with uncommon vigour; and, although his features were very ordinary, his face had a rare expression of firmness and resolution.
His wife, ten years younger than himself, was a gentle and holy creature, on whose brow fatigue and alarm had long before formed deep furrows, beneath which, however, a keen observer could have still detected traces of no ordinary beauty.
William Black, the emigrant's son, was a species of giant of more than six feet in height, aged two-and-twenty, of Herculean build, and whose jolly, plump face, surrounded by thick tufts of hair of a more than sandy hue, breathed frankness and joviality.
Diana, his sister, formed a complete contrast with him. She was a little creature, scarce sixteen years of age, with eyes of a deep blue like the sky, apparently frail and delicate, with a dreamy brow and laughing mouth, which belonged both to woman and angel; and whose strange beauty seduced at the first glance and subjugated at the first word that fell from her rosy lips. Diana was the idol of the family – the cherished idol, that everyone adored, and who, by a word or a glance, could command the obedience of the rude natures that surrounded her, and who only seemed to live that they might satisfy her slightest caprices.
Sam and James, the two labourers, were worthy Kentucky rustics, of extraordinary strength, and who concealed a great amount of cunning beneath their simple and even slightly silly aspect. These two young fellows, one of whom was twenty-six, the other hardly thirty, had grown up in John Black's house, and had vowed to him an unbounded devotion, of which they had furnished proofs several times since the journey began.
When John left his house to go in search of a more fertile country, he proposed to these two men to leave him, not wishing to expose them to the dangers of the precarious life which was about to begin for himself; but both shook their heads negatively, replying to all that was said to them, that it was their duty to follow their master, no matter whither he went, and they were ready to accompany him to the end of the world. The emigrant had been obliged to yield to a determination so clearly expressed, and replied, that as matters were so, they might follow him. Hence these two honest labourers were not regarded as servants, but as friends, and treated in accordance. In truth, there is nothing like a common danger to draw people together; and during the last four months John Black's family had been exposed to dangers innumerable.
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