The Minute Man On The Frontier - free ebook by William George Puddefoot

THE REV. W. G. PUDDEFOOT, A.M.

FIELD SECRETARY OF THE HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street THOMAS Y. CROWELL &amp; COMPANY BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street Copyright , 1895, By Thomas Y. Crowell &amp; Co. TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS &amp; SON, BOSTON....

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PREFACE.

In a very able review of Maspero's "Dawn of Civilization," the writer says "that for hundreds of years it was believed that history had two eyes; but now we know she has at least three, and that archæology is the third." This may account for the saying that "history is a lie agreed to;" for it needs to be argus-eyed to give us any adequate idea of the truth; and while the writer of the following sketches does not aspire to the rank of a historian, he has been induced to print them for two or thr

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THE FRONTIER IN RELATION TO THE WORLD.

The opening up of a new frontier is world-wide in its operations. Minnesota entered the Union as a State in 1858. The putting to practical use the Falls of St. Anthony was felt all over Europe. Thousands of little country mills, nestling amid the trees, and adding to the beauty of the English pastoral scenery, to-day stand idle, the great wheels covered with green moss; and Tennyson's "Miller" becomes a reminiscence. Iowa became a State in 1846, and now leads the world in the production of corn;

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EARLY REMINISCENCES.

It was in the spring of 1859 that I first saw the frontier. Our way was over the New York Central, very little of which had two tracks. I have a very vivid recollection of the worm fences, the log houses, and the great forests that we passed on our way to Upper Canada. I remember the hunters coming towards the train with their moccasons on and the bucks slung over their shoulders. I have since that time seen many men who were the first to cut a tree in this county or that town. There were about

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THE MINUTE-MAN ON THE FRONTIER.

The minute-men at the front are the nation's cheapest policemen; and strange as it may seem, these men stand in vital relations to all the great cities of the country from which they are so far removed. It is a well-known fact that every city owes its life and increase to the fresh infusion of country blood, and it depends largely on the purity of that blood as to what the moral condition of the city shall be. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that Zion's watchmen shall lift up their voic

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THE IMMIGRANT ON THE FRONTIER.

Whatever may be the effect of immigrants in cities, the immigrant on the frontier has sent the country ahead a quarter of a century. In the first place, the pioneer immigrants are in the prime of life. They generally bring enough money to make a start. They need houses, tools, horses, and all the things needful to start. They seldom fail. Used to privation at home, they make very hardy settlers. In some States they comprise seventy per cent of the voters; and the getting of a piece of land they

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THE ODDITIES OF THE FRONTIER.

As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling experience; so are some of the questions and assertions that one hears in a frontier Sunday-school. I remember one old man who was in class when we were stud

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LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

Perhaps no man gets such a vivid idea of the dark and bright sides of frontier life as the general missionary. One week among the rich, entertained sumptuously, and housed with all the luxuries of hot air and water and the best of cooking; and then, in less than twelve hours, he may find himself in a lumber-wagon, called a stagecoach, bumping along over the wretched roads of a new country, and lodged at night in a log house with the wind whistling through the chinks where the mud has fallen out,

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SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SOUTH.

The South has two kinds of frontier,—that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Saturday, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white. Never was such a motley company gathered in one place,—old men w

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ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN.

The frontier is the place to find all sorts of conditions and also of men. Monotony is not one of the troubles of the minute-man. He is frequently too poor to dress in a ministerial style, and quite often he is not known until he begins the services. This sometimes leads to the serio-comic, as witness the following:— Our man was looking over a portion of the country where he wished to locate, and in making the necessary inquiries he asked many questions about homesteads and timber claims. Notice

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THE SOUTH IN SPRINGTIME.

"You are going the wrong time of the year," was the reiterated warning of friends who heard that I was to make a Southern trip. Experience proved them to be as far astray as if they had warned one from going North in June; for the May of the South is the June of the North. Nature was revelling in her fullest dress, making a symphony in green,—all shades, from the pale tint of the chinquapin and persimmon, to the deep indigo of the long-leafed pine, and the tender purple green of the distant hill

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THE NORTH-WEST.

The first impression a man has of the North-west is like Pats in St. Patrick's Cathedral,—"Begorra, it's bigger inside than out." Take the map, and see what a little thin strip the upper peninsula of Michigan makes. Now start on the best train at St. Ignace in the morning, and it is eight at night before you reach the copper regions or the Gogebic Range. When I lived in St. Ignace, and the connections were poor, it took two days to travel from that port to Calumet. If we went by water we had to

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A BRAND NEW WOODS VILLAGE.

It does not take long to build a new village on the prairie,—the hardest work, the clearing of the ground, is already done; but here in the dense forest it is a different thing, even when the railway runs through it. First the men go in, and begin to clear the ground. It is virgin soil, and not an inch of ground but has something growing. Giant maples—some of them bird's-eye, some curly—are cut down and made into log heaps; black walnuts are burned up, that, made into veneer, would bring thousan

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OUT-OF-THE-WAY PLACES.

In making a visit to one Home Missionary, I found him living in a little board house, battened on the outside, but devoid of plaster. His study-table was a large dry-goods box, near the cook-stove, and on it, among other things, a typewriter. It looked somewhat incongruous; and on mentioning this, the good brother said, "Oh that is nothing; wait until it is dark and I will show you something else." And sure enough, soon after supper he hung up a sheet, and gave me quite an elaborate entertainmen

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COCKLE, CHESS, AND WHEAT.

Rather a strange heading! I know it; but I have lost an hour trying to think of a better; and is not society composed (figuratively speaking) of cockle, chess, and wheat? In old settled parts and in cities we see society like wheat in the bulk. The plump grain is on top, but there are cockle and chess at the bottom. On the frontier the wheat is spread on the barn floor, and the chess and cockle are more plainly seen. As the fanning-mill lets the wheat drop near it and the lighter grains fly off,

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CHIPS FROM OTHER LOGS.

In the Rev. Harvey Hyde's "Reminiscences of Early Days," occurs the following interesting notes:— "In the spring of 1842 I made a horseback journey across the State (Michigan), from Allegan to Saginaw, up the Grand River Valley, past where now Lansing boasts its glories, but where then in the dense forests not a human dwelling was to be seen for many miles, on to Fentonville. Coming on Saturday night to a lonely Massachusetts tavern-keeper, I found a hearty welcome to baked beans and brown bread

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A TRIP IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN.

I had been exploring nearly every part of the Upper Peninsula where there was any chance of an opening for Christian work; had visited thirteen churches, and held meetings with most of them; had a few conversions and two baptisms. I found the villages and towns on the Chicago and North-Western Railway nearly all supplied. There was one place with 1,500 people, and another with 2,000. The former had a Baptist church with about twenty members, and a Methodist Episcopal with about fifteen. The Bapt

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BLACK CLOUDS WITH SILVER LININGS.

In a former chapter I was just starting for the copper regions. Come with me, we will board the train bound for Marquette. For some miles our way ran through thick cedar forests; then we reached a hard-wood region where we found a small village and a number of charcoal kilns; a few miles farther on, another of like character. Then, with the exception of a way station or siding, we saw no more habitations of men until we reached the Vulcan iron furnace of Newberry, fifty-five miles from Point St.

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SAD EXPERIENCES.

Fourteen years ago I attended fifty-one funerals in twenty-one months. This large number was due to the fact that toward the south and west the nearest minister was ten miles off, north and east over twenty miles; and though there were only some 450 souls in White Cloud, we may safely put down 3,000 as the number who looked to this point for ministerial aid in time of trouble. The traveller by rail passes a few small places, and may think that between stations there is nothing but a wilderness,

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A SUNDAY ON SUGAR ISLAND.

Sugar Island is about twelve miles from Sault Ste. Marie. It is twenty-four miles long and from three to twelve wide. Its shape is somewhat like an irregularly formed pear. Seven-tenths of its people are Roman Catholic; quite a number of them came from Hudson's Bay, and what others call a terrible winter is to them quite mild. One Scotchman, who lived there thirty years, had never seen a locomotive or been on board of a steamboat, although numbers of the latter might be seen daily passing his ho

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THE NEEDS OF THE MINUTE-MAN.

The needs of the minute-man are as great as his field. If the army sent its minute-men to the front as poorly equipped for battle as our army of minute-men often are, it would be defeated. The man needs, besides a home, a library and good literature up to date. Religious papers a year or two old make good reading, and biographies of good men are very stimulating. A full set of Parkman's works would be of inestimable value in keeping up his courage and helping his faith. The smaller the field, th

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THE MINUTE-MAN IN THE MINER'S CAMP.

When the first minute-men went to the Pacific slope, they had a long and dangerous voyage by sea round Cape Horn; and on their arrival they had to live in a tent, pay a dollar a pound for hay, and a dollar apiece for potatoes and onions. To-day it is a very different thing to reach the mining-camps. No matter how high the mountains are, your train can climb them, doubling on itself, crossing or recrossing; or when the way is too steep, cogging its way up. Not long since I sat in a nicely furnish

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THE SABBATH ON THE FRONTIER.

We hear a good deal of talk about the American Sabbath, so that one would think it was first introduced here; and, indeed, the American Sabbath is our own patent. Not but what Scotland and rural England had one somewhat like it; but the American Sabbath par excellence is not the Jewish Sabbath, or the European Sabbath, but the Sunday of Puritan New England, which is generally meant when we hear of the American Sabbath. But the American Sabbath of the frontier can never become the European Sabbat

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THE FRONTIER OF THE SOUTH-WEST.

The South-west is different from all other parts of the country. The Anglo-Saxon is everywhere else in the ascendant. Here the Latin races are dominant. It is astonishing to find so many oldest churches all over the country. The superlative is a national trait. We have either the oldest or the youngest, the greatest or the smallest, or the only thing in the world. However, it is almost certain that the oldest church and house are to be found in Santa Fé. The Church of San Miguel was built sevent

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DARK PLACES OF THE INTERIOR.

I want to picture out in this chapter one of the hardest fields the minute-man has to labor in. I think there are greater inequalities to be found in our land than in any other, at least a greater variety of social conditions. Times have changed much in the last twenty-five years. The consolidating of great business concerns has made a wide gulf between the employer and employee such as never before existed outside of slavery. It is not true to say that the rich are growing richer, and the poor

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THE DANGEROUS NATIVE CLASSES.

We hear much about the dangerous foreigners that come to us, but little about the dangerous native. There is not a type, whether of poverty or ignorance, but what we can match it. Leaving out the negro, we have over ninety per cent Anglo-Saxon in the South. Here we find a strange lot of paradoxes,—the most American, the most ignorant, the most religious, the most superstitious, and the most lawless. Take the lowest class of Crackers, and we have the whole of the above combined, with millions of

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CHRISTIAN WORK IN A LUMBER-TOWN.

Until a few years ago I knew little or nothing of mill-towns or lumber-camps. I had seen a saw-mill that cut its thousand feet a day when running, and it was generally connected with some farm through which ran a stream. It was a very innocent affair. But in 1889 I saw for the first time the great forests of pine, and became acquainted with part of the immense army of lumbermen. Michigan alone had at that time some forty thousand; Wisconsin has as many; Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana are now en

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TWO KINDS OF FRONTIER.

Some years ago it is said that a man lost his pig, and in searching for it he found it by hearing its squealing. The pig had fallen in a hole; and in getting it out, the man saw the rich copper ore which led to the opening of the Calumet and Hecla mines, and more recently the Tamarack. More ore per ton goes into the lake from the washing than comes out of most mines. So rich is this ore that very few fine mineral specimens are found in the mines. Millions of money have been expended in developin

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BREAKING NEW GROUND.

A grand sight is the forest primeval when the birds fill all its arches with song, or we sweep through them to the music of sleigh-bells. A pleasant sight is the farmer, surrounded by his wife and children, with well-kept farm, ample barns, and well-fed stock. But what wild desolation once reigned where now these fine farms are seen! The great trees stretched on for hundreds of miles. The hardy settler came with axe and saw and slow-paced oxen, cleared a little space, and built a log hut. For a

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SOWING THE SEED.

The land is bound to grow its crop. The more the land has been enriched, the greater will be that crop, of useful grain or rank weeds. And the only way to keep the weeds from gaining the victory is by sowing good seed and pulling the weeds. A friend in Detroit once called my attention to the luxuriant weeds in a fenced lot we were walking by. In the vacant lot close by, the weeds were stunted. In the fenced lot a market gardener once lived. He had enriched the soil. Our country is to have a rank

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"HARVEST HOME."

After all the hopes and fears and toil of the summer, the farmer's most beautiful sight is to see the last great load safe in the barn, the stock fattening on the rich, sweet aftermath, the golden fruit in the orchard, and the big, red, harvest moon smiling over all. This is a frequent sight, despite poor crops and bad weather. The successful farmer does not rely on one, but a variety of crops. Then, if the season is bad for corn, it will be good for oats or wheat. Some crop will repay his labor

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INJEANNY VS. HEAVEN.

The title to this chapter bears about the same relation to its contents as the name of one sermon does to the other twenty in a given volume. I gave it this title because it must have some heading; everything has a heading. Graves have headstones. No greater variety of character exists on the frontier than elsewhere, but peculiar cases come to the surface oftener. Those women living in the woods, who belonged to the "Church of God," are good illustrations. They had some peculiar ideas about the

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THE LATEST FRONTIER—OKLAHOMA.

Collier, in his "Great Events of History," tells of a million warriors who, leaving their wives and children, crossed the Danube, and swore allegiance to Rome. Since that time a great many immigrations have taken place, but none on so large a scale. But, large or small, the settlements of the Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma, are the most unique. It would have been hard to have devised a worse way to open a new country. Thousands of people—strong, weak, the poor settler, the speculator, the

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THE PIONEER WEDDING.

As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes, as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,—our people are filled with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer. And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from the most thrifty of

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