394
THE WEST SHORE.
These virtues do not exist by chance, but, like the fron
tier vices, are the direct result of social conditions. In
a new country, where the people are strangers to each
other, and where it is necessary to trust men before
they nave proven their worthiness of trust, fidelity to
the obligations of professed friendship is of exceptional
importance, and the lack of it is, naturally, dittoouraguJ
by a social odium exceptionally severe.
Not loss naturally does generosity spring up among a
people subject to frequent changes of fortune. The man
who is, in the frontier slang, "well heeled" to-day, may be
" strapped " to-morrow. When poor he needs help and
when rich be readily sympathizes with misfortunes he
has shared, and holds his suddouly acquired gains on an
open palm. Courage is, of course, possessed by fron
tiersmen, for brave muHt be the men, and braver still
the women, who voluntarily incur the perils and priva
tions of pioneer life, and who are daily schooled in that
familiarity with danger which broods ooutompt for it
Among the peril of frontier life was to be reckoned, at
one timo, the danger of being scalped by the "poor In
dian," whose "untutored mind" is much less esteemed
by frontiersmen than by those who are unfamiliar with
its savage vagaries. It is very seldom now that Indians
are a terror, but what to do with them continues to be
one of our unsolved national problems. Their number
in the United States, including the civilized tribes in
the Indiau Territory, is estimated at only two hundred
and fifty-nine thousand two hundred and forty-four.
But this small nuraler holds by treaty, patents or acts
of Congress, one hundred and thirty-sovon million sev
en hundred aud twenty-four thousand five hundred and
seventy acres of land, or an average of five thousand
three hundred and sixteen acres per individual. There
are seventy-nine thousand in the Indian Territory, which
has an arm of forty-one million acres sufficient for the
suport of three million whites. But the recklessness
of the government in dovoting its domain to barbarism
reached a climax in the treaty with the Utes, framed in
ISM, which guaranteed them four thousand acres for
each man, woman and child in the tribe. In contrast
with this, it should bo noted that the laud surface in the
United 8Ut4s, exclusive of Alaska and the Indian Ter
ritory, gave only thirty-sovon and nine-tenths acres per
individual at the last census, and that this amount con
stantly decreases, owing to the increase of the white
population, while the allotment to each Indian constant
ly increases, for a converse roason, unless disturbed by
some now apMirtionmenL The excess of land in most
of the reservations does the Indians no gxxL On the
contrary, it encourages them to lease their surplus ter
ritory to cattle men, with the result that, by stealth or
mistake, their small bauds of cattlo are alworbed in the
great horda of the cattle kings, and bad blood, with
bluod-sbod, ensues. With the exception of these cattle
kings, frontiersmen are opposed to the vast extent of
reservations. They believe that the earth is for man,
and should be for the best of Uie race, and they recognize
no principle of equity which excludes millions of civil
ized white men from some of the garden spots of this
continent in order to keep them as game preserves for
the occasional wanderings of a few thousand savages.
They believe that it should be the aim of the govern
ment to break up as completely and qnickly as possible
the tribal relation, so that the red man may learn that,
like white and black and yellow men, if he wonld eat ho
must work; that if he will not work he must starve; and
that if he prefers murder and marauding to starvation,
he will be subject to the same laws that punish those
crimes among the whites. They point to the admitted
fact that Indians have made the most rapid progress in
civilization on small reservations, and that there they
are best prepared for that allotment of lands in sev
eralty which is indispensable to their further progress.
The desperado is often taken as the typical frontier
character, but it is as true now as when Brackenridge
wrote of Daniel Boone, that while the frontier "is cer
tainly the refuge of many worthless and abandoned char
acters, it is also the choice of many of the noblest souls.
It seems widely ordered that where
the force of law is scarcely feU, there should be found
the greatest amount of real courage and disinterested
virtue." In Emerson's striking phrase, " Wild liberty
develops iron conscience," and of the frontiersman it
may be said, as of the child in the nursery ballad,
that "when he is good he is very, .very good," though
" when he is bad he is horrid." " The world," says an
Arabian proverb, " is sustained by four things only
the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the
prayers of the good and the valor of the brave." On
the frontier one sees, not many learned, not many prayer
ful, not many whom the world calls great, but there, if
anywhere, one sees the brave.
To make a country, as the phrase is, oat of the wil
derness, to build roads, open mines and break the virgin
soil, iB a task which prematurely ages its performers.
But when, at night, the toil-worn pioneer returns to his
lonely cabin and lights the open pine-wood fire, which
is his only luxury, hope whispers in his ear " her flat
tering tale." He draws, in fancy, the highest prize in
the mining lottery of the golden hills. The sooty walls,
of his cabin disappear beneath the mogio of his dreams,
and, in a palatial home, he beholds himself blessed by
the love of some good and beautiful woman, whose ten
der babes are smiling upon his knee. On the morrow
he rosumes his life of work, worry and weariness; whole
years roll on, in which he works and is worn. The
goldon vision still allures, and still it disappoints him,
until, at last, he sinks into an unremembered grave,
while the pampered sons of civilization, the " wise men
from the East," and those not so wise, enter the coun
try which he has opened for them, and reap the harvest
which his brave hands have sown.
Sue Habby Clagett.
Binoa Um abort wu ariUnt Concrm baa pwaed i bill lot tha allot,
wot of Uixla in amwaltr to Indiana, and it ia hoped that Una nwamra wiU
nnll ia tha ultimata opaninf to aaUlamant ot oar larga ratar.atiana.-Ko