The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas
Noah Brooks

Noah Brooks

The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

CHAPTER I.

THE SETTLERS, AND WHENCE THEY CAME

There were five of them, all told; three boys and two men. I have mentioned the boys first because there were more of them, and we shall hear most from them before we have got through with this truthful tale. They lived in the town of Dixon, on the Rock River, in Lee County, Illinois. Look on the map, and you will find this place at a point where the Illinois Central Railroad crosses the Rock; for this is a real town with real people. Nearly sixty years ago, when there were Indians all over that region of the country, and the red men were numerous where the flourishing States of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin are now, John Dixon kept a little ferry at the point of which I am now speaking, and it was known as Dixon’s Ferry. Even when he was not an old man, Dixon was noted for his long and flowing white hair, and the Indians called him Na-chu-sa, “the White-haired.” In 1832 the Sac tribe of Indians, with their chief Black Hawk, rose in rebellion against the Government, and then there happened what is now called the Black Hawk war.

In that war many men who afterwards became famous in the history of the United States were engaged in behalf of the government. One of these was Zachary Taylor, afterwards better known as “Rough and Ready,” who fought bravely in the Mexican war and subsequently became President of the United States. Another was Robert Anderson, who, at the beginning of the war of the Rebellion, in 1861, commanded the Union forces in Fort Sumter when it was first fired upon. Another was Jefferson Davis, who, in the course of human events, became President of the Southern Confederacy. A fourth man, destined to be more famous than any of the others, was Abraham Lincoln. The first three of these were officers in the army of the United States. Lincoln was at first a private soldier, but was afterwards elected captain of his company, with whom he had come to the rescue of the white settlers from the lower part of the State.

The war did not last long, and there was not much glory gained by anybody in it. Black Hawk was beaten, and that country had peace ever after. For many years, and even unto this day, I make no doubt, the early settlers of the Rock River country loved to tell stories of the Black Hawk war, of their own sufferings, exploits, hardships, and adventures. Father Dixon, as he was called, did not choose to talk much about himself, for he was a modest old gentleman, and was not given, as they used to say, to “blowing his own horn,” but his memory was a treasure-house of delightful anecdotes and reminiscences of those old times; and young and old would sit around the comfortable stove of a country store, during a dull winter evening, drinking in tales of Indian warfare and of the “old settlers” that had been handed down from generation to generation.

It is easy to see how boys brought up in an atmosphere like this, rich in traditions of the long-past in which the early settlement of the country figured, should become imbued with the same spirit of adventure that had brought their fathers from the older States to this new region of the West. Boys played at Indian warfare over the very ground on which they had learned to believe the Sacs and Foxes had skirmished years and years before. They loved to hear of Black Hawk and his brother, the Prophet, as he was called; and I cannot tell you with what reverence they regarded Father Dixon, the white-haired old man who had actually talked and traded with the famous Indians, and whose name had been given him as a title of respect by the great Black Hawk himself.

Among the boys who drank in this sort of lore were Charlie and Alexander Howell and their cousin Oscar Bryant. Charlie, when he had arrived at his eighteenth birthday, esteemed himself a man, ready to put away childish things; and yet, in his heart, he dearly loved the traditions of the Indian occupation of the country, and wished that he had been born earlier, so that he might have had a share in the settlement of the Rock River region, its reclamation from the wilderness, and the chase of the wild Indian. As for Alexander, commonly known as “Sandy,” he had worn out a thick volume of Cooper’s novels before he was fifteen years old, at which interesting point in his career I propose to introduce him to you. Oscar was almost exactly as many years and days old as his cousin. But two boys more unlike in appearance could not be found anywhere in a long summer day. Sandy was short, stubbed, and stocky in build. His face was florid and freckled, and his hair and complexion, like his name, were sandy. Oscar was tall, slim, wiry, with a long, oval face, black hair, and so lithe in his motions that he was invariably cast for the part of the leading Indian in all games that required an aboriginal character.

Mr. Howell carried on a transportation business, until the railroads came into the country and his occupation was gone. Then he began to consider seriously the notion of going further west with his boys to get for them the same chances of early forestalling the settlement of the country that he had had in Illinois. In the West, at least in those days, nearly everybody was continually looking for a yet further West to which they might emigrate. Charlie Howell was now a big and willing, good-natured boy; he ought to be striking out for himself and getting ready to earn his own living. At least, so his father thought.

Mr. Bryant was engaged in a profitable business, and he had no idea of going out into another West for himself or his boy. Oscar was likely to be a scholar, a lawyer, or a minister, perhaps. Even at the age of fifteen, he had written “a piece” which the editor of the Dixon Telegraph had thought worthy of the immortality of print in his columns.

But about this time, the Northern States were deeply stirred by the struggle in the new Territory of Kansas to decide whether freedom or slavery should be established therein. This was in 1854 and thereabout. The Territory had been left open and unoccupied for a long time. Now settlers were pouring into it from adjacent States, and the question whether freedom should be the rule, or whether slave-holding was to be tolerated, became a very important one. Missouri and Arkansas, being the States nearest to Kansas, and holding slavery to be a necessity, furnished the largest number of emigrants who went to vote in favor of bringing slavery into the new Territory; but others of the same way of thinking came from more distant States, even as far off as South Carolina, all bent on voting for slavery in the laws that were to be made. For the most part, these people from the slave States did not go prepared to make their homes in Kansas or Nebraska; for some went to the adjoining Territory of Nebraska, which was also ready to have slavery voted up or down. The newcomers intended to stay just long enough to vote and then return to their own homes.

The people of the free States of the North heard of all this with much indignation. They had always supposed that the new Territories were to be free from slavery. They saw that if slavery should be allowed there, by and by, when the two Territories would become States, they would be slave States, and then there would be more slave States than free States in the Union. So they held meetings, made speeches, and passed resolutions, denouncing this sort of immigration as wrong and wicked. Then immigrants from Iowa, Illinois, and other Northern States, even as far off as Massachusetts, sold their homes and household goods and started for the Promised Land, as many of them thought it to be. For the men in Kansas who were opposed to slavery wrote and sent far and wide papers and pamphlets, setting forth in glowing colors the advantages of the new and beautiful country beyond the Missouri River, open to the industry and enterprise of everybody. Soon the roads and highways of Iowa were dotted with white-topped wagons of immigrants journeying to Kansas, and long lines of caravans, with families and with small knots of men, stretched their way across the country nearest to the Territory.

Some of these passed through Dixon, and the boys gazed with wonder at the queer inscriptions that were painted on the canvas covers of the wagons; they longed to go with the immigrants, and taste the sweets of a land which was represented to be full of wild flowers, game in great abundance, and fine streams, and well-wooded hills not far away from the water. They had heard their elders talk of the beauties of Kansas, and of the great outrage that was to be committed on that fair land by carrying slavery into it; and although they did not know much about the politics of the case, they had a vague notion that they would like to have a hand in the exciting business that was going on in Kansas.

Both parties to this contest thought they were right. Men who had been brought up in the slave States believed that slavery was a good thing–good for the country, good for the slave-owner, and even good for the slave. They could not understand how anybody should think differently from them. But, on the other hand, those who had never owned slaves, and who had been born and brought up in the free States, could not be brought to look upon slavery as anything but a very wicked thing. For their part, they were willing (at least, some of them were) to fight rather than consent that the right of one man to own another man should be recognized in the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Some of these started at once for the debatable land; others helped their neighbors to go, and many others stayed at home and talked about it.

Mrs. Bryant, Oscar’s mother, said: “Dear me, I am tired and sick of hearing about ‘bleeding Kansas.’ I do wish, husband, you would find something else to talk about before Oscar. You have got him so worked up that I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he were to start off with some of those tired-looking immigrants that go traipsing through the town day by day.” Mrs. Bryant was growing anxious, now that her husband was so much excited about the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, as it was called, he could think of nothing else.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRE SPREADS

One fine morning in May, Mr. Bryant was standing at his front gate watching for his brother-in-law, Mr. Howell, to come down the street.

He held a newspaper in his hand, and with this, loosely rolled, he was impatiently tapping on the gate as Mr. Howell drew near. Evidently something had happened to disturb him.

“See here, Aleck,” he exclaimed, as soon as his brother-in-law was within the sound of his voice, “I can stand this sort of thing no longer. I’m bound to go to Kansas. I’ve been thinking it over, and I have about made up my mind to go. Brubaker will take my store and the good-will of the concern. Oscar is wild to go, and his mother is perfectly able to take care of the house while I am getting ready for her to come out. What d’ye say? Will you go too?”

“Well,” said Mr. Howell, slowly, “you nearly take my breath away! What’s happened to stir you up so?”

“Just listen to this!” cried the other, “just listen!” and, unfolding his newspaper, he read, with glowing cheeks and kindling eyes, an account of an attack made by some of the “pro-slavery men,” as they were named, on a party of free-State immigrants who had attempted to cross the river near Kansas City. His voice trembled with excitement, and when he had finished reading, he asked his companion what he thought of that.

Mr. Howell looked pensively down the street, now embowered with the foliage of early summer, noted the peaceful aspect of the village, and the tranquil picture which gardens, cottages, and sauntering groups of school-children presented, and then said slowly, “I never was much of a hand at shooting, Charles, leastways, shooting at folks; and I don’t know that I could take steady aim at a man, even if I knew he was a Border Ruffian out gunning for me. But I’m with you, Charles. Charlie and Sandy can do a heap sight better in Kansas, after things get settled, than they can here. This place is too old; there’s too much competition, and the boys will not have any show if they stay here. But what does Amanda say?”

Now, Amanda was Mr. Bryant’s wife, Mr. Aleck Howell’s sister. When Aleck asked this question, the two men looked at each other for a moment, queerly and without speaking.

“Well, she’ll hate to part with Oscar; he’s the apple of her eye, as it were. But I guess she will listen to reason. When I read this piece in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he’s so fired up about it that he is down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?” And Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over the news of the day.

At that moment Sandy came whooping around the corner, intent on overtaking a big yellow dog, his constant companion,–Bose by name,–who bounded along far in advance of the boy. “See here, Sandy,” said his uncle, “how would you like to go to Kansas with your father, Oscar, Charlie, and myself?”

“To Kansas? shooting buffaloes, deer, Indians, and all that? To Kansas? Oh, come, now, Uncle Charles, you don’t mean it.”

“But I do mean it, my laddie,” said the elder man, affectionately patting the freckled cheek of the lad. “I do mean it, and if you can persuade your father to go along and take you and Charlie with him, we’ll make up a party–just we five–that will scare the Border Ruffians ’way into the middle of next year.” Then, with a more serious air, he added, “This is a fight for freedom, my boy, and every man and every boy who believes in God and Liberty can find a chance to help. I’m sure we can.” This he said with a certain sparkle of his eye that may have meant mischief to any Border Ruffian that might have been there to see and hear.

As for Sandy, he turned two or three hand-springs by way of relieving his feelings; then, having once more assured himself that the two men had serious thoughts of migrating to Kansas, he rushed off to the wood-shed to carry the wonderful news to Oscar. Dropping his axe, the lad listened with widened eyes to the story that Sandy had to tell.

“Do you know, Sandy,” he said, with an air of great wisdom, “I thought there was something in the wind. Oh, I never saw father so roused as he was when he read that story in the Chicago Press and Tribune this morning. Why, I thought he’d just get up and howl when he had read it out to mother. Jimmini! Do you really suppose that he will go? And take us? And Uncle Aleck? Oh, wouldn’t that be too everlastingly bully for anything?” Oscar, as you will see, was given to the use of slang, especially when under great excitement. The two boys rushed back to the gate, where the brothers-in-law were still talking eagerly and in undertones.

“If your mother and Aunt Amanda will consent, I guess we will go,” said Mr. Bryant, with a smile on his face as he regarded the flushed cheeks and eager eyes of Sandy and Oscar. Sandy’s father added: “And I’ll answer for your mother, my son. She and I have talked this thing over many a time, more on your account and Charlie’s than for the sake of ‘bleeding Kansas,’ however. I’m bound to say that. Every man is in honor bound to do his duty by the country and by the good cause; but I have got to look after my boys first.” And the father lovingly laid his hand on Sandy’s sturdy shoulder. “Do you think you could fight, if the worst comes to the worst, Sandy, boy?”

Of course the lad protested confidently that he could fight; certainly he could protect his rights and his father’s rights, even with a gun, if that should be found necessary. But he admitted that, on the whole, he would rather shoot buffaloes and antelope, both of which species of large game he had already learned were tolerably plentiful in Kansas.

“Just think of it, Oscar, we might have some real Indian-fighting out there, like that Father Dixon and the rest of the old settlers had in the time of the Black Hawk war.”

His father assured him, however, that there was no longer any danger from the red man in Kansas. The wild Indians were now far out on the frontier, beyond the region to which emigrants would probably go in search of homestead lands for settlement. Sandy looked relieved at this explanation. He was not anxious for fighting with anybody. Fun was more to his liking.

The two mothers, when they were informed of the decision of the male members of the family, made very little opposition to the emigration scheme. In fact, Mrs. Howell had really felt for some time past that her boys would be better provided for in a new country. She had been one of the “old settlers” of Dixon, having been brought out from the interior of New York when she and her brother were small children. She had the same spirit of adventure that he had, and, although she remembered very well the privations and the discomforts of those early days, it was more with amusement than sorrow that she recalled them to mind, now that they were among the traditions of long-past years. The two young Howells were never weary of hearing their mother tell of the time when she killed a wildcat with her father’s rifle, or of her walking fifteen miles and back to buy herself a bonnet-ribbon to wear to her first ball in the court-house. Now her silent influence made it easier for the Kansas Exodus (as they already called their scheme) to be accepted all around.

The determination of the two families to migrate made some stir in the town. It was yet a small place, and everybody knew every other body’s business. The Bryants and Howells were among the “old families,” and their momentous step created a little ripple of excitement among their friends and acquaintances. The boys enjoyed the talk and the gossip that arose around them, and already considered themselves heroes in a small way. With envious eyes and eager faces, their comrades surrounded them, wherever they went, asking questions about their outfit, their plans, and their future movements. Every boy in Dixon looked on the three prospective boy settlers as the most fortunate of all their young playfellows.

“I wish my father would catch the ‘Kansas fever,’” said Hiram Fender, excitedly. “Don’t you suppose your father could give it to him, Charlie? Do you suppose your uncle would take me along if Dad would let me go? Oh, wouldn’t that be just gaudy, if I could go! Then there would be four of us boys. Try it on him.”

But the two families resolutely attended to their own business, asking help from nobody, and not even so much as hinting to anybody that it would be a good thing for others to go with them to the Promised Land. The three boys were speedily in the midst of preparations for their migration. It was now well along in the middle of May. If they were to take up land claims in Kansas and get in a crop, they had no time to spare. The delightful excitement of packing, of buying arms and ammunition, and of winding up all the small concerns of their life in Dixon made the days pass swiftly by. There were all the details of tents for camping-out, provisions for the march, and rough clothing and walking gear for the new life beyond to be looked after.

Some of the notions of the boys, in regard to what was needed and what was to be expected from the land beyond, were rather crude. And perhaps their fathers were not in all cases so wise as they thought themselves. The boys, however, cherished the idea that absolutely everything they should require in Kansas must be carried from Illinois. “Why,” said the practical Mr. Howell, “if we cannot buy ploughs, cattle, and seed, cheaper in Missouri than we can here, we can at least save the labor and cost of transportation. We don’t want to haul a year’s provisions, either. We expect to raise something to eat, don’t we?”

Charlie, to whom this remonstrance was addressed, replied, “Well, of course we can raise some garden truck, and I suppose we can buy bacon and flour cheaper in Missouri than here.”

“Then there’s the game,” interrupted Oscar and Sandy, both in one breath. “Governor Robinson’s book says that the country is swarming with game,” added Sandy, excitedly.

The boys had devoured a little book by Mr. Robinson, the free-State Governor of Kansas, in which the richness of the Promised Land was glowingly set forth.

“Much time we shall have to shoot buffaloes and antelope when we are breaking up the sod and planting corn,” Mr. Howell answered with a shade of sarcasm in his voice.

“And we may have to fire at bigger game than either of those,” added Mr. Bryant, grimly.

“Border Ruffians?” asked Sandy, with a feeble attempt at a grin. His mother shuddered and hastily went out of the room. The Kansas scheme seemed no longer pleasant to her, when she read the dreadful stories of violence and bloodshed with which some of the Western newspapers were teeming. But it was settled that most of the tools needed for farming could be bought better in Missouri than in Illinois; the long haul would be saved, and the horses with which they were to start could be exchanged for oxen to good advantage when they reached “the river.” They had already adopted the common phrase, “the river,” for the Missouri River, then generally used by people emigrating westward.

“But perhaps the Missourians will not sell you anything when they know that you are free-State men,” suggested Mrs. Bryant, timidly, for this was a family council.

“Oh, well,” answered Mr. Howell, sturdily, “I’ll risk that. I never saw a man yet with anything to sell who wouldn’t sell it when the money was shaken in his face. The newspapers paint those border men pretty black, I know; but if they stop to ask a man’s politics before they make a bargain with him, they must be queer cattle. They are more than human or less than human, not Americans at all, if they do business in that way.” In the end they found that Mr. Howell was entirely right.

All was settled at last, and that, too, in some haste, for the season was rapidly advancing when planting must be attended to, if they were to plant that year for the fall harvest. From the West they heard reports of hosts of people pouring into the new Territory, of land being in great demand, and of the best claims near the Missouri being taken by early emigrants. They must be in a hurry if they were to get a fair chance with the rest and a fair start on their farm,–a farm yet existing only in their imagination.