
WOMAN ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER.

A Valuable and Authentic History

OF THE HEROISM, ADVENTURES, PRIVATIONS, CAPTIVITIES, TRIALS, AND NOBLE
LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE "PIONEER MOTHERS OF THE REPUBLIC."

By WILLIAM W. FOWLER, M.A.

ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.




PREFACE.


The history of our race is the record mainly of men's achievements, in war,
in statecraft and diplomacy. If mention is made of woman it is of queens
and intriguing beauties who ruled and schemed for power and riches, and
often worked mischief and ruin by their wiles.

The story of woman's work in great migrations has been told only in lines
and passages where it ought instead to fill volumes. Here and there
incidents and anecdotes scattered through a thousand tomes give us glimpses
of the wife, the mother, or the daughter as a heroine or as an angel of
kindness and goodness, but most of her story is a blank which never will be
filled up. And yet it is precisely in her position as a pioneer and
colonizer that her influence is the most potent and her life story most
interesting.

The glory of a nation consists in its migrations and the colonies it plants
as well as in its wars of conquest. The warrior who wins a battle deserves
a laurel no more rightfully than the pioneer who leads his race into the
wilderness and builds there a new empire.

The movement which has carried our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific
Ocean and in the short space of two centuries and a half has founded the
greatest republic which the world ever saw, has already taken its place in
history as one of the grandest achievements of humanity since the world
began. It is a moral as well as a physical triumph, and forms an epoch in
the advance of civilization. In this grand achievement, in this triumph of
physical and moral endurance, woman must be allowed her share of the honor.

It would be a truism, if we were to say that our Republic would not have
been founded without her aid. We need not enlarge on the necessary position
which she fills in human society every where. We are to speak of her now as
a soldier and laborer, a heroine and comforter in a peculiar set of dangers
and difficulties such as are met with in our American wilderness. The
crossing of a stormy ocean, the reclamation of the soil from nature, the
fighting with savage men are mere generalities wherein some vague idea may
be gained of true pioneer life. But it is only by following woman in her
wanderings and standing beside her in the forest or in the cabin and by
marking in detail the thousand trials and perils which surround her in such
a position that we can obtain the true picture of the heroine in so many
unmentioned battles.

The recorded sum total of an observation like this would be a noble
history of human effort. It would show us the latent causes from which
have come extraordinary effects. It would teach us how much this republic
owes to its pioneer mothers, and would fill us with gratitude and
self-congratulation--gratitude for their inestimable services to our
country and to mankind, self-congratulation in that we are the lawful
inheritors of their work, and as Americans are partakers in their glory.

In the preparation of this work particular pains have been taken to avoid
what was trite and hackneyed, and at the same time preserve historic truth
and accuracy. Use has been made to a limited extent of the ancient border
books, selecting the most note-worthy incidents which never grow old
because they illustrate a heroism, that like "renown and grace cannot die."
Thanks are due to Mrs. Ellet, from whose interesting book entitled "Women
of the Revolution," a few passages have been culled. The stories of Mrs.
Van Alstine, of Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. McCalla, and Dicey Langston, and of
Deborah Samson, are condensed from her accounts of those heroines.

A large portion of the work is, however, composed of incidents which will
be new to the reader. The eye-witnesses of scenes which have been lately
enacted upon the border have furnished the writer with materials for many
of the most thrilling stories of frontier life, and which it has been his
aim to spread before the reader in this work.




ILLUSTRATIONS.


A VIRGINIA MATRON ENCOURAGING THE PATRIOTISM OF HER SONS AT THE DEATH-BED
OF THEIR FATHER,

LOST IN A SNOW STORM,

THE HUNTRESS OF THE LAKES SURPRISED BY INDIANS,

A HEROIC EXPLOIT IN SUPPLYING WITH POWDER A BLOCK-HOUSE BESIEGED BY
INDIANS,

DARING EXPLOIT OF MISS VAN ALSTINE,

FOOD AND CLOTHING SUPPLIED TO THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY BY PATRIOTIC WOMEN,

PERILOUS CROSSING OF THE ALLEGHANY RIVER,

WAGON TRAIN ON THE PRAIRIE,

STRATAGEM OF MRS. DAVIESS IN CAPTURING A KENTUCKY ROBBER,

TWO KENTUCKY GIRLS CAPTURED BY INDIANS,

PARTED FOR EVER,

AN EQUESTRIAN FEAT,

TREED BY A BEAR,

RESCUING A HUSBAND FROM WOLVES,

DEFEAT OF GUERILLAS,

MASTERING BANDITS,




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.

WOMAN AS A PIONEER,
 America's Unnamed Heroines.
 Maids and Matrons of the "<i>Mayflower</i>."
 Woman's Work in Early Days.
 Devotion and Self-sacrifice.
 Strange Story of Mrs. Hendee.
 Face to Face with the Indians.
 A Mother's Love Triumphant
 Woman among the Savages.
 The Massacre of Wyoming.
 Sufferings of a Forsaken Household.
 The Patriot Matron and her Children.
 The Acmé of Heroism.
 Adventures of an English Traveler.
 Woman in the Rocky Mountains.
 A Story of a Lonely Life.
 Nocturnal Visitors and their Reception.
 Life in the Far West.
 Mrs. Manning's Home in Montana,
 Female Emigrants on the Plains.
 A True Heroine.


CHAPTER II.

WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS,
 The Frontier two Centuries ago.
 The Pioneer Army.
 The Pilgrim "Mothers."
 Story of Margaret Winthrop.
 Danger in the Wilderness.
 A Reckless Husband and a Watchful Wife.
 Lost in a Snow-storm.
 The Beacon-fire at Midnight.
 Saved by a Woman.
 Mrs. Noble's Terrible Story.
 Alone with Famine and Death.
 A Legend of the Connecticut.
 What befel the Nash Family.
 Three Heroic Women.
 In Flood and Storm.
 A Tale of the Prairies.
 A Western Settler and her Fate.
 Battling with an Unseen Enemy.
 Emerging from the Valley of the Shadow.
 Heartbroken and Alone.


CHAPTER III.

EARLY PIONEERS.--WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM,
 In the Maine Wilderness.
 Voyaging up the Kennebec.
 The Huntress of the Lakes.
 Extraordinary Story of Mrs. Trevor.
 Two Hundred Miles from Civilization.
 Sleeping in a Birch-bark Canoe.
 A Fight with Five Savages.
 A Victorious Heroine.
 The Trail of a Lost Husband.
 Only just in Time.
 A Narrow Escape,
 Voyaging in an Ice-boat.
 Snow-bound in a Cave.
 Fighting for Food.
 Grappling with a Forest Monster.
 Mrs. Storey, the Forester.
 Alida Johnson's Thrilling Narrative.
 Caught in a Death-trap.
 A Desperate Measure and its Result.
 The Connecticut Settlers.
 Their Courage and Heroism.


CHAPTER IV.

ON THE INDIAN TRAIL
 A Block-house Attacked.
 Wild Pictures of Indian Warfare.
 Exploits of Mrs. Howe.
 A Pioneer Woman's Record.
 Holding the Fort alone.
 Treacherous "Lo."
 Witnessing a Husband's Tortures.
 The Beautiful Victim.
 Forced to Carry a Mother's Scalp.
 The Fate of the Glendennings.
 A Feast and a Massacre.
 Led into Captivity.
 Elizabeth Lane's Adventures.
 In Ambush.
 Siege of Bryant's Station.
 Outwitting the Savages.
 Mrs. Porter's Combat with the Indians.
 Ghastly Trophies of her Prowess.
 "Long Knife Squaw."
 Smoking out Redskins.
 The Widows of Innis Station.
 A Daring Achievement.
 The Amazon of the Stockade.


CHAPTER V.

CAPTIVE SCOUTS--HEROINES OF THE MOHAWK VALLEY,
 The Poetry of Border Life.
 Mrs. Mack in her Forest Fort.
 The Ambush in the Cornfield.
 The Night-watch at the Port-hole.
 A Shot in the Dark.
 The Hiding Place of her Little Ones.
 A Sad Discovery.
 An Avenger on the Track.
 Massy Herbeson's Strange Story.
 On the Trail.
 Miss Washburn and the Scouts.
 An Extraordinary <i>Rencontre</i>.
 A Wild Fight with the Savages.
 Mysterious Aid.
 Passing through an Indian Village.
 Hairbreadth Escapes.
 Courageous Conduct of Mrs. Van Alstine.
 Settlements on the Mohawk.
 Circumventing a Robber Band.
 How she Saved him.
 The Pioneer Woman at Home.


CHAPTER VI.

PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
 Times that Tried Men's Souls.
 The Women of Wyoming.
 Silas Deane's Sister.
 Mrs. Corbin, the Cannoneer.
 A Heroine on the Gun-deck.
 The Schoharie Girl.
 Women of the Mohawk Wars.
 Concerning a Curious Siege.
 The Patriot Daughter and the Bloody Scouts.
 What she Dared him to do.
 Brave Deeds of Mary Ledyard.
 Ministering Angels.
 Heroism of "Mother Bailey."
 Petticoats and Cartridges.
 A Thrilling Incident of Valley Forge.
 Ready-witted Ladies.
 Miss Geiger, the Courier.
 How Miss Darrah Saved the Army.
 Adventures of McCalla's Wife.
 Love and Constancy.
 A Clergyman's Story of his Mother.


CHAPTER VII.

GOING WEST.--PERILS BY THE WAY,
 After the Revolution.
 Starting for the Mississippi.
 Curious Methods of Migration.
 A Modern Exodus.
 Incidents on the Route.
 Wonderful Story of Mrs. Jameson.
 Forsaking all for Love.
 A Woman with One Idea.
 That Fatal Stream.
 Alone in the Wilderness.
 A Glimpse of the Enemy.
 Strength of a Mother's Love,
 Saved from a Rattlesnake.
 Individual Enterprise.
 Migrating in a Flat-boat.
 A Night of Peril on the Ohio River.
 Terrifying Sounds and Sights.
 A Fiery Scene of Savage Orgies.
 Coolness and Daring of a Mother.
 An Extraordinary Line of Mothers and Daughters.
 A Pioneer Pedigree and its Heroines.


CHAPTER VIII.

HOME LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS,
 The Nomads of the West.
 Romance of a Pioneer's March.
 How the Cabin was Built.
 Where Mrs. Graves Concealed her Babes.
 Husband and Wife at Home.
 Rather Rough Furniture.
 Forest Fortresses.
 Fighting for her Children.
 Mrs. Fulsom and the Ambushed Savage.
 Domestic Life on the Border.
 From a Wedding to a Funeral.
 Among the Beasts and Savages.
 Little Ones in the Wilds.
 Woman takes Care of Herself.
 Ann Bush's Sorrows.
 The Bright Side of the Picture.
 Western Hospitality.
 A Traveler's Story.
 "Evangeline" on the Frontier.
 An Eden of the Wilderness and its Eve.


CHAPTER IX.

SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN,
 Diary of a Heroine.
 The Border Maid, Wife, Mother, and Widow.
 Strange Vicissitudes in the Life of Mrs. W.
 Adopted by an Indian Tribe.
 Shrewd Plan of Escape.
 The Hiding-place in the Glen.
 Surprised and Surrounded, but Safe.
 Successful Issue of her Enterprise.
 Mrs. Marliss and her Strategy.
 Combing the Wool over a Savage's Eyes.
 Marking the Trail.
 A Captive's Cunning Devices.
 A Pursuit and a Rescue.
 Extraordinary Presence of Mind.
 A Robber captured by a Woman.
 A Brave, Good Girl.
 Helping "the Lord's People."
 A Home of Love in the Wilderness.
 A Singular Courtship.
 The Benevolent Matron and her Errand.
 Story of the Pioneer Quakeress.


CHAPTER X.

A ROMANCE OF THE BORDER,
 The Honeymoon in the Mountains.
 United in Life and in Death.
 A Devoted Lover.
 Capture of Two Young Ladies.
 Discovery and Rescue.
 The Captain and the Maid at the Mill.
 The Chase Family in Trouble.
 The Romance of a Young Girl's Life.
 Danger in the Wind.
 Hunter and Lover.
 Treacherous Savages.
 Old Chase Knocked Over.
 The Fight on the Plains.
 An Unexpected Meeting.
 Heroism of La Bonte.
 The Guard of Love.
 The Marriage of Mary.
 Miss Rouse and her Lover.
 A Bridal and a Massacre.
 Brought back to Life but not to Joy.
 A Fruitless Search for a Lost Bride.
 Mrs. Philbrick's Singular Experience.


CHAPTER XI

PATHETIC SCENES OF PIONEER LIFE,
 Grief in the Pioneer's Home.
 Graves in the Wilderness.
 The Returned Captive and the Nursery Song.
 The Lost Child of Wyoming
 Little Frances and her Indian Captors.
 Parted For Ever.
 Discovery of the Lost One.
 An Affecting Interview.
 Striking Story of the Kansas War.
 The Prairie on Fire.
 Mother and Children Alone.
 Homeless and Helpless.
 Solitude, Famine, and Cold.
 Three Fearful Days.
 The Burning Cabin.
 A Gathering Storm.
 A Dream of Home and Happiness.
 Return of Father and Son.
 A Love Stronger than Death.
 The Last Embrace.
 A Desolate Household.


CHAPTER XII.

THE HEROINES OF THE SOUTH WEST,
 Texas and the South West.
 Across the "Staked Plain."
 Mrs. Drayton and Mrs. Benham.
 A Perilous Journey.
 Sunstrokes and Reptiles.
 Death From Thirst
 Mexican Bandits.
 A Night Gallop to the Rendezvous.
 Escape of our Heroines.
 A Ride for Life.
 Saving Husband and Children.
 Surrounded by Brigands on the Pecos.
 Heroism of Mrs. Benham.
 The Treacherous Envoy.
 The Gold Hunters of Arizona.
 Mrs. D. and her Dearly Bought Treasure.
 Battling for Life in the California Desert.
 The Last Survivor of a Perilous Journey.
 Mrs. L., the Widow of the Colorado.
 Among the Camanches.
 A Prodigious Equestrian Feat.


CHAPTER XIII.

WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE ON THE NORTHERN BORDER,
 March of the "Grand Army"
 Peculiar Perils of the Northern Border.
 Mrs. Dalton's Record.
 A Dangerous Expedition.
 Her Husband's Fate.
 A Trance of Grief.
 Between Frost and Fire.
 A Choice of Deaths.
 Rescued from the Flames.
 One Sunny Hour.
 The Storm-Fiend.
 Terrific Spectacle.
 In the Whirlwind's Track.
 The Only Refuge.
 Locked in a Dungeon.
 A Fight for Deliverance.
 Arrival of Friends.
 Another Peril.
 Walled in by Flames.
 Passing Through a Fiery Lane.
 Closing Days of Mrs. Dalton.
 A Story of Minnesota.
 What the Hunters Saw.
 A Mother's Deathless Love.


CHAPTER XIV.

ENCOUNTERS WITH WILD BEASTS--COURAGE AND DARING,
 Personal Combat with a Bear.
 The Huntress of the Northwest.
 An Intrepid Wife and her Assailant.
 Combat with an Enraged Moose.
 A Bloody Circus in the Snow.
 Trapping Wolves--a Georgia Girl's Pluck.
 A Kentucky Girl's Adventure.
 A Wild Pack in Pursuit.
 The Snapping of a Black Wolf's Jaws.
 Female Strategy and its Success.
 A Cabin Full of Wolves.
 Comical Denouement.
 A Young Lady Treed by a Bear.
 Some of Mrs. Dagget's Exploits.
 Up the Platte, and After the Grizzlies.
 Catching a Bear with a Lasso.
 What a Brave Woman Can Do.
 Facing Death in the Desert.
 A Woman's Home in Wyoming.
 A Night with a Mountain Lion.


CHAPTER XV.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT.--ON THE PLAINS,
 Voyaging in a Prairie Schooner.
 A Cavalry Officer's Story.
 The Homeless Wanderer of the Plains.
 Mrs. N. Battling alone with Death.
 A Fatherless and Childless Home.
 The Plagues of Egypt.
 Murrain, Grasshoppers, and Famine.
 Following a Forlorn Hope.
 A Bridal Tour and its Ending.
 On the Borders of the Great Desert.
 An Extraordinary Experience.
 Women Living in Caves.
 A Waterspout and its Consequences.
 Drowning in a Drought.
 Fleeing from Death.
 A Woman's Partnership in a Herd of Buffaloes.
 The Huntress of the Foot-hills.
 A Charge by Ten Thousand Bison.
 Hiding in a Sink-hole.
 A Terrible Danger and a Miraculous Escape.
 A Prairie Home and its Mistress.


CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS,
 The Heroine and Martyr among the Heathen.
 Mrs. Eliot and her Tawny Protegés.
 Five Thousand Praying Indians.
 Mrs. Kirkland among the Oneidas.
 Prayer-meetings in Wigwams.
 The Psalm-singing Squaws.
 A Revolutionary Matron and her Story.
 A Pioneer Sunday-school and its Teacher.
 The Last of the Mohegans and their Benefactors.
 Heroism of the Moravian Sisters.
 The Guardians of the Pennsylvania Frontier.
 A Gathering Storm.
 Prayer-meetings and Massacres.
 Surrounded by Flame and Carnage.
 An Unexpected Assault.
 The Fate of the Defenders.
 A Fiery Martyrdom.
 Last Scene in a Noble Life.
 Closing Days of Gnadenhutten.
 Massacre of Indian Converts.
 The Death Hymn and Parting Prayer.


CHAPTER XVII.

WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS, (CONTINUED),
 Missionary Wives Crossing the Rocky Mountains.
 Buried Alive in the Snow.
 Shooting the Rapids in a Birch Canoe.
 Sucked Down by a Whirlpool.
 A Fearful Situation and its Issue.
 A Brace of Heroines and their Expedition.
 Women Doubling Cape Horn.
 A Parting Hymn and Long Farewell.
 A Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon.
 All Alone with the Wolves.
 A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger.
 Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution.
 A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree.
 A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences.
 A Heartrending Catastrophe.
 A Mother's Lost Treasure.
 A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger.
 Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding.
 A Murderous Suspicion.
 The Benefactress and the Martyr.


CHAPTER XVIII.

WOMAN IN THE ARMY,
 The Daughter of the Regiment.
 A Loving Wife and a True Patriot.
 Mrs. Warner in the Canadian Campaign.
 The Disguised Couriers.
 Deborah Samson in Buff and Blue.
 A Woman in Love with a Woman.
 A Wound in Front and what it Led to.
 Mrs. Coolidge's Campaign in New Mexico.
 Bearing Dispatches Across the Plains.
 A Fight with Guerillas.
 A Race for Life.
 Two against Five.
 Frontier Women in our Last Great War.
 Their Exploits and Devotion.
 Miss Wellman as Soldier and Nurse.
 The Secret Revealed.
 A Noble Life.
 A Devoted Wife.
 Life in a Confederate Fort.
 The Little Soldier and her Story.
 A Sister's Love.
 The Last Sacrifice.


CHAPTER XIX.

ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS,
 A Woman's Adventures on the Platte River.
 On a False Trail, and What it Led To.
 Over a Precipice, and Down a Thousand Feet.
 All Alone on the Face of the Mountain.
 Mrs. Hinman's Extraordinary Situation.
 Swinging Between Heaven and Earth.
 What a Loving Wife Will Do.
 Living or Dying Beside her Husband.
 A Night on the Edge of a Precipice.
 Out of the Jaws of Death.
 The Two Fugitive Women of the Chapparel.
 A Secret Too Dreadful to be Told.
 The Specters of the Mountain Camp.
 Maternal Sacrifice and Filial Love.
 The Cannibals of the Canon.
 The Insane Hunter and his Victims.
 A Woman's Only Alternative.
 Female Endurance <i>vs</i>. Male Courage.
 Mrs. Donner's Sublime Devotion.
 Dying at her Post of Duty.


CHAPTER XX.

THE COMFORTER AND THE GUARDIAN,
 The Ruined Home and its Heroine.
 The Angel of the Sierra Nevada.
 Mrs. Maurice and the Dying Miners.
 The Music of a Woman's Word.
 The Young Gold Hunter and his Nurse.
 Starving Camp in Idaho.
 The Song in the Ears of the Dying.
 The Seven Miners and their Golden Gift.
 A Graveyard of Pioneer Women.
 Mrs. R. and her Wounded Husband.
 The Guardian Mother of the Island.
 The Female Navigator and the Pirate.
 A Life-boat Manned by a Girl.
 A Night of Peril.
 A Den of Murderers and an Unsullied Maiden.
 The Freezing Soldiers of Montana.
 A Despairing Cry and its Echo.
 The Storm-Angel's Visit.


CHAPTER XXI.

WOMAN AS AN EDUCATOR ON THE FRONTIER,
 A Mother of Soldiers and Statesmen.
 A Home-school on the Border.
 The Prairie Mother and her Four Children.
 A Garden for Human Plants and Flowers.
 The First Lesson of the Boy and Girl on the Frontier.
 The Wife's School in the Heart of the Rocky Mountains.
 A Leaf from the Life of Washington.
 The Hero-Mothers of the Republic.
 A Patriot Woman and a Martyr.
 A Mother's Influence on the Life of Andrew Jackson.
 Woman's Discernment of a Boy's Genius.
 West, the Painter, and Webster, the Statesman.
 The Place where our Great Men Learned A. B. C.
 Miss M. and her Labors in Illinois.
 A Martyrdom in the Cause of Education.
 Woman as an Educator of Human Society.
 Incident in the Life of a Millionaire.
 What a Mother's Portrait Did.
 A Woman's Visit to "Pandemonium Camp."
 An Angel of Civilization.




CHAPTER I.

WOMAN AS A PIONEER


Every battle has its unnamed heroes. The common soldier enters the stormed
fortress and, falling in the breach which his valor has made, sleeps in a
nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the
roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is
hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final charge, is
forgotten in the "earthquake shout" of the victory which he has helped to
win. The victory may be due as much, or more, to the patriot courage of him
who is content to do his duty in the rank and file, as to the dashing
colonel who heads the regiment, or even to the general who plans the
campaign: and yet unobserved, unknown, and unrewarded the former passes
into oblivion while the leader's name is on every tongue, and perhaps goes
down in history as that of one who deserved well of his country.

Our comparison is a familiar one. There are other battles and armies
besides those where thousands of disciplined men move over the ground to
the sounds of the drum and fife. Life itself is a battle, and no grander
army has ever been set in motion since the world began than that which for
more than two centuries and a half has been moving across our continent
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fighting its way through countless
hardships and dangers, bearing the banner of civilization, and building a
new republic in the wilderness.

In this army WOMAN HAS BEEN TOO OFTEN THE UNNAMED HEROINE.

Let us not forget her now. Her patience, her courage, her fortitude, her
tact, her presence of mind in trying hours; these are the shining virtues
which we have to record. Woman <i>as a pioneer</i> standing beside her
rougher, stronger companion--man; first on the voyage across a stormy
ocean, from England to America; then at Plymouth, and Jamestown, and all
the settlements first planted by Europeans on our Coast; then through the
trackless wilderness, onward across the continent, till every river has
been forded, and every chain of mountains has been scaled, the Peaceful
Ocean has been reached, and fifty thousand cities, towns, and hamlets all
over the land have been formed from those aggregations of household life
where woman's work has been wrought out to its fullness.

Among all the characteristics of woman there is none more marked than the
self-devotion which she displays in what she believes is a righteous cause,
or where for her loved ones she sacrifices herself. In India we see her
wrapped in flames and burned to ashes with the corpse of her husband. Under
the Moslem her highest condition is a life-long incarceration. She
patiently places her shoulders under the burden which the aboriginal lord
of the American forest lays upon them. Calmly and in silence she submits to
the onerous duties imposed upon her by social and religious laws.
Throughout the whole heathen world she remained, in the words of an elegant
French writer, "anonymous, indifferent to herself, and leaving no trace of
her passage upon earth."

The benign spirit of Christianity has lifted woman from the position she
held under other religious systems and elevated her to a higher sphere. She
is brought forward as a teacher; she displays a martyr's courage in the
presence of pestilence, or ascends the deck of the mission-ship to take her
part in "perils among the heathen." She endures the hardships and faces the
dangers of colonial life with a new sense of her responsibility as a wife
and mother. In all these capacities, whether teaching, ministering to the
sick, or carrying the Gospel to the heathen, she shows the same
self-devotion as in "the brave days of old;" it is this quality which
peculiarly fits her to be the pioneer's companion in the new world, and by
her works in that capacity she must be judged.

If all true greatness should be estimated by the good it performs, it is
peculiarly desirable that woman's claims to distinction should thus be
estimated and awarded. In America her presence has been acknowledged, and
her aid faithfully rendered from the beginning. In the era of colonial
life; in the cruel wars with the aborigines; in the struggle of the
Revolution; in the western march of the army of exploration and settlement,
a grateful people must now recognize her services.

There is a beautiful tradition, that the first foot which pressed the
snow-clad rock of Plymouth was that of Mary Chilton, a fair young maiden,
and that the last survivor of those heroic pioneers was Mary Allerton, who
lived to see the planting of twelve out of the thirteen colonies, which
formed the nucleus of these United States.

In the <i>Mayflower</i>, nineteen wives accompanied their husbands to a
waste land and uninhabited, save by the wily and vengeful savage. On the
unfloored hut, she who had been nurtured amid the rich carpets and curtains
of the mother-land, rocked her new-born babe, and complained not. She, who
in the home of her youth had arranged the gorgeous shades of embroidery,
or, perchance, had compounded the rich venison pasty, as her share in the
housekeeping, now pounded the coarse Indian corn for her children's bread,
and bade them ask God's blessing, ere they took their scanty portion. When
the snows sifted through the miserable roof-tree upon her little ones, she
gathered them closer to her bosom; she taught them the Bible, and the
catechism, and the holy hymn, though the war-whoop of the Indian rang
through the wild. Amid the untold hardships of colonial life she infused
new strength into her husband by her firmness, and solaced his weary hours
by her love. She was to him,

  "----an undergoing spirit, to bear up
  Against whate'er ensued."

The names of these nineteen pioneer-matrons should be engraved in letters
of gold on the pillars of American history:

The Wives of the Pilgrims.

  Mrs. Catharine Carver.
  Mrs. Dorothy Bradford.
  Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow.
  Mrs. Mary Brewster.
  Mrs. Mary Allerton.
  Mrs. Elizabeth Hopkins.
  Mrs. ------ Tilley.
  Mrs. ------ Tilley.
  Mrs. ------ Ticker.
  Mrs. ------ Ridgdale.
  Mrs. Rose Standish.
  Mrs. ------ Martin.
  Mrs. ------ Mullins.
  Mrs. Susanna White.
  Mrs. ------ Eaton.
  Mrs. ------ Chilton.
  Mrs. ------ Fuller.
  Mrs. Helen Billington.
  Mrs. Lucretia Brewster.

Nor should the names of the daughters of these heroic women be forgotten,
who, with their mothers and fathers shared the perils of that winter's
voyage, and bore, with their parents, the toils, and hardships, and changes
of the infant colony.

The Daughters of the Pilgrim Mothers.

  Elizabeth Carver.
  Remember Allerton.
  Mary Allerton.
  Sarah Allerton.
  Constance Hopkins.
  Mary Chilton.
  Priscilla Mullins.

The voyage of the <i>Mayflower</i>; the landing upon a desolate coast in
the dead of winter; the building of those ten small houses, with oiled
paper for windows; the suffering of that first winter and spring, in which
woman bore her whole share; these were the first steps in the grand
movement which has carried the Anglo-Saxon race across the American
continent. The next steps were the penetration of the wilderness westward
from the sea, by the emigrant pioneers and their wives. Fighting their way
through dense forests, building cabins, block-houses, and churches in the
clearings which they had made; warred against by cruel savages; woman was
ever present to guard, to comfort, to work. The annals of colonial history
teem with her deeds of love and heroism, and what are those recorded
instances to those which had no chronicler? She loaded the flint-lock in
the block-house while it was surrounded by yelling savages; she exposed
herself to the scalping-knife to save her babe; in her forest-home she
worked and watched, far from the loved ones in Old England; and by
discharging a thousand duties in the household and the field, did her share
in a silent way towards building up the young Republic of the West.

Sometimes she ranged herself in battle beside her husband or brother, and
fought with the steadiness and bravery of a veteran. But her heroism never
shone so brightly as in undergoing danger in defense of her children.

In the early days of the settlement of Royalton, Vermont, a sudden attack
was made upon it by the Indians. Mrs. Hendee, the wife of one of the
settlers, was working alone in the field, her husband being absent on
military duty, when the Indians entered her house and capturing her
children carried them across the White river, at that place a hundred yards
wide and quite deep for fording, and placed them under keepers who had some
other persons, thirty or forty in number, in charge.

Returning from the field Mrs. Hendee discovered the fate of her children.
Her first outburst of grief was heart-rending to behold, but this was only
transient; she ceased her lamentations, and like the lioness who has been
robbed of her litter, she bounded on the trail of her plunderers.
Resolutely dashing into the river, she stemmed the current, planting her
feet firmly on the bottom and pushed across. With pallid face, flashing
eyes, and lips compressed, maternal love dominating every fear, she strode
into the Indian camp, regardless of the tomahawks menacingly flourished
round her head, boldly demanded the release of her little ones, and
persevered in her alternate upbraidings and supplications, till her request
was granted. She then carried her children back through the river and
landed them in safety on the other bank.

Not content with what she had done, like a patriot as she was, she
immediately returned, begged for the release of the children of others,
again was rewarded with success, and brought two or three more away; again
returned, and again succeeded, till she had rescued the whole fifteen of
her neighbors' children who had been thus snatched away from their
distracted parents. On her last visit to the camp of the enemy, the Indians
were so struck with her conduct that one of them declared that so brave a
squaw deserved to be carried across the river, and offered to take her on
his back and carry her over. She, in the same spirit, accepted the offer,
mounted the back of the gallant savage, was carried to the opposite bank,
where she collected her rescued troop of children, and hastened away to
restore them to their overjoyed parents.

During the memorable Wyoming massacre, Mrs. Mary Gould, wife of James
Gould, with the other women remaining in the village of Wyoming, sought
safety in the fort. In the haste and confusion attending this act, she left
her boy, about four years old, behind. Obeying the instincts of a mother,
and turning a deaf ear to the admonitions of friends, she started off on a
perilous search for the missing one. It was dark; she was alone; and the
foe was lurking around; but the agonies of death could not exceed her
agonies of suspense; so she hastened on. She traversed the fields which,
but a few hours before,

  "Were trampled by the hurrying crowd,"

where--

  "----fiery hearts and armed hands,
  Encountered in the battle cloud,"

and where unarmed hands were now resting on cold and motionless hearts.
After a search of between one and two hours, she found her child on the
bank of the river, sporting with a little band of playmates. Clasping her
treasure in her arms, she hurried back and reached the fort in safety.

During the struggles of the Revolution, the privations sustained, and the
efforts made, by women, were neither few nor of short duration. Many of
them are delineated in the present volume. Yet innumerable instances of
faithful toil, and patient endurance, must have been covered with oblivion.
In how many a lone home, from which the father was long sundered by a
soldier's destiny, did the mother labor to perform to their little ones
both his duties and her own, having no witness of the extent of her heavy
burdens and sleepless anxieties, save the Hearer of prayer.

A good and hoary-headed man, who had passed the limits of fourscore, once
said to me, "My father was in the army during the whole eight years of the
Revolutionary War, at first as a common soldier, afterwards as an officer.
My mother had the sole charge of us four little ones. Our house was a poor
one, and far from neighbors. I have a keen remembrance of the terrible cold
of some of those winters. The snow lay so deep and long, that it was
difficult to cut or draw fuel from the woods, or to get our corn to the
mill, when we had any. My mother was the possessor of a coffee-mill. In
that she ground wheat, and made coarse bread, which we ate, and were
thankful. It was not always we could be allowed as much, even of this, as
our keen appetites craved. Many is the time that we have gone to bed, with
only a drink of water for our supper, in which a little molasses had been
mingled. We patiently received it, for we knew our mother did as well for
us as she could; and we hoped to have something better in the morning. She
was never heard to repine; and young as we were, we tried to make her
loving spirit and heavenly trust, our example.

"When my father was permitted to come home, his stay was short, and he had
not much to leave us, for the pay of those who achieved our liberties was
slight, and irregularly given. Yet when he went, my mother ever bade him
farewell with a cheerful face, and told him not to be anxious about his
children, for she would watch over them night and day, and God would take
care of the families of those who went forth to defend the righteous cause
of their country. Sometimes we wondered that she did not mention the cold
weather, or our short meals, or her hard work, that we little ones might be
clothed, and fed, and taught. But she would not weaken his hands, or sadden
his heart, for she said a soldier's life was harder than all. We saw that
she never complained, but always kept in her heart a sweet hope, like a
well of water. Every night ere we slept, and every morning when we arose,
we lifted our little hands for God's blessing on our absent father, and our
endangered country.

"How deeply the prayers from such solitary homes and faithful hearts were
mingled with the infant liberties of our dear native land, we may not know
until we enter where we see no more 'through a glass darkly, but face to
face.'

"Incidents repeatedly occurred during this contest of eight years, between
the feeble colonies and the strong mother-land, of a courage that ancient
Sparta would have applauded.

"In a thinly settled part of Virginia, the quiet of the Sabbath eve was
once broken by the loud, hurried roll of the drum. Volunteers were invoked
to go forth and prevent the British troops, under the pitiless Tarleton,
from forcing their way through an important mountain pass. In an old fort
resided a family, all of whose elder sons were absent with our army, which
at the north opposed the foe. The father lay enfeebled and sick. By his
bedside the mother called their three sons, of the ages of thirteen,
fifteen, and seventeen.

"Go forth, children," said she, "to the defence of your native clime. Go,
each and all of you; I spare not my youngest, my fair-haired boy, the light
of my declining years.

"Go forth, my sons! Repel the foot of the invader, or see my face no more."

[Illustration: A VIRGINIA MATRON ENCOURAGING THE PATRIOTISM OF HER SONS AT
THE DEATH BED OF THEIR FATHER]

In order to get a proper estimate of the greatness of the part which woman
has acted in the mighty onward-moving drama of civilization on this
continent, we must remember too her peculiar physical constitution. Her
highly strung nervous organization and her softness of fiber make labor
more severe and suffering keener. It is an instinct with her to tremble at
danger; her training from girlhood unfits her to cope with the difficulties
of outdoor life. "Men," says the poet, "must work, and women must weep."
But the pioneer women must both work and weep. The toils and hardships of
frontier life write early wrinkles upon her brow and bow her delicate frame
with care. We do not expect to subject our little ones to the toils or
dangers that belong to adults. Labor is pain to the soft fibers and unknit
limbs of childhood, and to the impressible minds of the young, danger
conveys a thousand fears not felt by the firmer natures of older persons.
Hence it is that all mankind admire youthful heroism. The story of
Casabianca on the deck of the burning ship, or of the little wounded
drummer, borne on the shoulders of a musketeer and still beating the
<i>rappel</i>--while the bullets are flying around him--thrill the heart of
man because these were great and heroic deeds performed by striplings. It
is the bravery and firmness of the weak that challenges the highest
admiration. This is woman's case: and when we see her matching her strength
and courage against those of man in the same cause, with equal results,
what can we do but applaud?

A European traveler lately visited the Territory of Montana--abandoning the
beaten trail, in company only with an Indian guide, for he was a bold and
fearless explorer. He struck across the mountains, traveling for two days
without seeing the sign of a human being. Just at dusk, on the evening of
the second day, he drew rein on the summit of one of those lofty hills
which form the spurs of the Rocky Mountains. The solitude was awful. As far
as the eye could see stretched an unbroken succession of mountain peaks,
bare of forest--a wilderness of rocks with stunted trees at their base, and
deep ravines where no streams were running. In all this desolate scene
there was no sign of a living thing. While they were tethering their horses
and preparing for the night, the sharp eyes of the Indian guide caught
sight of a gleam of light at the bottom of a deep gorge beneath them.

Descending the declivity, they reached a cabin rudely built of dead wood,
which seemed to have been brought down by the spring rains from the
hill-sides to the west. Knocking at the door, it was opened by a woman,
holding in her arms a child of six months. The woman appeared to be fifty
years of age, but she was in reality only thirty. Casting a searching look
upon the traveler and his companion, she asked them to enter.

The cabin was divided into two apartments, a kitchen, which also served for
a store-room, dining-room, and sitting-room; the other was the chamber, or
rather bunk-room, where the family slept. Five children came tumbling out
from this latter apartment as the traveler entered, and greeted him with a
stare of childlike curiosity. The woman asked them to be seated on blocks
of wood, which served for chairs, and soon threw off her reserve and told
them her story, while they awaited the return of her husband from the
nearest village, some thirty miles distant, whither he had gone the day
before to dispose of the gold-dust which he had "panned out" from a gulch
near by. He was a miner. Four years before he had come with his family from
the East, and pushing on in advance of the main movement of emigration in
the territory, had discovered a rich gold placer in this lonely gorge.
While he had been working in this placer, his wife had with her own hands
turned up the soil in the valley below and raised all the corn and potatoes
required for the support of the family; she had done the housework, and had
made all the clothes for the family. Once when her husband was sick, she
had ridden thirty miles for medicine. It was a dreary ride, she said, for
the road, or rather trail, was very rough, and her husband was in a burning
fever. She left him in charge of her oldest child, a girl of eleven years,
but she was a bright, helpful little creature, able to wait upon the sick
man and feed the other children during the two days' absence of her mother.

Next summer they were to build a house lower down the valley and would be
joined by three other families of their kindred from the East. "Have you
never been attacked by the Indians?" inquired the traveler.

"Only three times," she replied. "Once three prowling red-skins came to the
door, in the night, and asked for food. My husband handed them a loaf of
bread through the window, but they refused to go away and lurked in the
bushes all night; they were stragglers from a war-party, and wanted more
scalps. I saw them in the moonlight, armed with rifles and tomahawks, and
frightfully painted. They kindled a fire a hundred yards below our cabin
and stayed there all night, as if they were watching for us to come out,
but early in the morning they disappeared, and we saw them no more.

"Another time, a large war-party of Indians encamped a mile below us, and a
dozen of them came up and surrounded the house. Then we thought we were
lost: they amused themselves aiming at marks in the logs, or at the chimney
and windows; we could hear their bullets rattle against the rafters, and
you can see the holes they made in the doors. One big brave took a large
stone and was about to dash it against the door, when my husband pointed
his rifle at him through the window, and he turned and ran away. We should
have all been killed and scalped if a company of soldiers had not come up
the valley that day with an exploring party and driven the red-skins away.

"One afternoon as my husband was at work in the diggings, two red-skins
came up to him and wounded him with arrows, but he caught up his rifle and
soon made an end of them.

"When we first came there was no end of bears and wolves, and we could hear
them howling all night long. Winter nights the wolves would come and drum
on the door with their paws and whine as if they wanted to eat up the
children. Husband shot ten and I shot six, and after that we were troubled
no more with them.

"We have no schools here, as you see," continued she; "but I have taught my
three oldest children to read since we came here, and every Sunday we have
family prayers. Husband reads a verse in the Bible, and then I and the
children read a verse in turn, till we finish a whole chapter. Then I make
the children, all but baby, repeat a verse over and over till they have it
by heart; the Scripture promises do comfort us all, even the littlest one
who can only lisp them.

"Sometimes on Sunday morning I take all the children to the top of that
hill yonder and look at the sun as it comes up over the mountains, and I
think of the old folks at home and all our friends in the East. The hardest
thing to bear is the solitude. We are awful lonesome. Once, for eighteen
months, I never saw the face of a white person except those of my husband
and children. It makes me laugh and cry too when I see a strange face. But
I am too busy to think much about it daytimes. I must wash, and boil, and
bake, or look after the cows which wander off in search of pasture; or go
into the valley and hoe the corn and potatoes, or cut the wood; for husband
makes his ten or fifteen dollars a day panning out dust up the mountain,
and I know that whenever I want him I have only to blow the horn and he
will come down to me. So I tend to business here and let him get gold. In
five or six years we shall have a nice house farther down and shall want
for nothing. We shall have a saw-mill next spring started on the run below,
and folks are going to join us from the States."

The woman who told this story of dangers and hardships amid the Rocky
Mountains was of a slight, frail figure. She had evidently been once
possessed of more than ordinary attractions; but the cares of maternity and
the toils of frontier life had bowed her delicate frame and engraved
premature wrinkles upon her face: she was old before her time, but her
spirit was as dauntless and her will to do and dare for her loved ones was
as firm as that of any of the heroines whom history has made so famous. She
had been reared in luxury in one of the towns of central New York, and till
she was eighteen years old had never known what toil and trouble were.

Her husband was a true type of the American explorer and possessed in his
wife a fit companion; and when he determined to push his fortune among the
Western wilds she accompanied him cheerfully; already they had accumulated
five thousand dollars, which was safely deposited in the bank; they were
rearing a band of sturdy little pioneers; they had planted an outpost in a
region teeming with mineral wealth, and around them is now growing up a
thriving village of which this heroic couple are soon to be the patriarchs.
All honor to the names of Mr. and Mrs. James Manning, the pioneers of
Montana.

The traveler and his guide, declining the hospitality which this brave
matron tendered them, soon returned to their camp on the hill-top; but the
Englishman made notes of the pioneer woman's story, and pondered over it,
for he saw in it an epitome of frontier life.

If a tourist were to pass to-day beyond the Mississippi River, and journey
over the wagon-roads which lead Westward towards the Rocky Mountains, he
would see moving towards the setting sun innumerable caravans of emigrants'
canvas-covered wagons, bound for the frontier. In each of these wagons is a
man, one or two women with children, agricultural tools, and household
gear. At night the horses or oxen are tethered or turned loose on the
prairie; a fire is kindled with buffalo chips, or such fuel as can be had,
and supper is prepared. A bed of prairie grass suffices for the man, while
the women and children rest in the covered wagon. When the morning dawns
they resume their Westward journey. Weeks, months, sometimes, roll by
before the wagon reaches its destination; but it reaches it at last. Then
begin the struggle, and pains, the labors, and dangers of border life, in
all of which woman bears her part. While the primeval forest falls before
the stroke of the man-pioneer, his companion does the duty of both man and
woman at home. The hearthstone is laid, and the rude cabin rises. The
virgin soil is vexed by the ploughshare driven by the man; the garden and
house, the dairy and barns are tended by the woman, who clasps her babe
while she milks, and fodders, and weeds. Danger comes when the man is away;
the woman must meet it alone. Famine comes, and the woman must eke out the
slender store, scrimping and pinching for the little ones; sickness comes,
and the woman must nurse and watch alone, and without the sympathy of any
of her sex. Fifty miles from a doctor or a friend, except her weary and
perhaps morose husband, she must keep strong under labor, and be patient
under suffering, till death. And thus the household, the hamlet, the
village, the town, the city, the state, rise out of her "homely toils, and
destiny obscure." Truly she is one of the founders of the Republic.




CHAPTER II.

THE FRONTIER-LINE--WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS


The American Frontier has for more than two centuries been a vague and
variable term. In 1620-21 it was a line of forest which bounded the infant
colony at Plymouth, a few scattered settlements on the James River, in
Virginia, and the stockade on Manhattan Island, where Holland had
established a trading-post destined to become one day the great commercial
city of the continent.

Seventy years later, in 1690, the frontier-line had become greatly
extended. In New England it was the forest which still hemmed in the coast
and river settlements: far to the north stretched the wilderness covering
that tract of country which now comprises the states of Maine, New
Hampshire, and Vermont. In New York the frontier was just beyond the posts
on the Hudson River; and in Virginia life outside of the oldest settlements
was strictly "<i>life on the border</i>." The James, the Rappahannock, and
the Potomac Rivers made the Virginia frontier a series of long lines
approaching to a parallel. But the European settlements were still sparse,
as compared with the area of uninhabited country. The villages, hamlets,
and single homesteads were like little islands in a wild green waste: mere
specks in a vast expanse of wilderness. Every line beyond musket shot was a
frontier-line. Every settlement, small or large, was surrounded by a dark
circle, outside of which lurked starvation, fear, and danger. The sea and
the great rivers were perilous avenues of escape for those who dwelt
thereby, but the interior settlements were almost completely isolated and
girt around as if with a wall built by hostile forces to forbid access or
egress.

The grand exodus of European emigrants from their native land to these
shores, had vastly diminished by the year 1690, but the westward movement
from the sea and the rivers in America still went forward with scarcely
diminished impetus: and as the pioneers advanced and established their
outposts farther and farther to the west, woman was, as she had been from
the landing, their companion on the march, their ally in the presence of
danger, and their efficient co-worker in establishing homes in the
wilderness.

The heroic enterprises recorded in the history of man have generally been
remarkable in proportion to their apparent original weakness. This is true
in an eminent degree of the settlement of European colonies on the western
continent. The sway which woman's influence exercised in these colonial
enterprises is all the more wonderful when we contemplate them from this
point of view. Three feeble bands of men and women;--the first at
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1609-1612; the second at Plymouth, in 1620; the
third on the Island of Manhattan, in 1624;--these were the dim nuclei from
which radiated those long lines of light which stretch to-day across a
continent and strike the Pacific ocean. This is a simile borrowed from
astronomy. To adopt the language of the naturalist, those three little
colonies were the puny germs which bore within themselves a vital force
vastly more potent and wonderful than that which dwells in the heart of the
gourd seed, and the acorn whose nascent swelling energies will lift huge
boulders and split the living rock asunder: vastly more potent because it
was not the blind motions of nature merely, but a force at once physical,
moral, and intellectual.

These feeble bands of men and women took foothold and held themselves
firmly like a hard-pressed garrison waiting for re-enforcements.
Re-enforcements came, and then they went out from their works, and setting
their faces westward moved slowly forward. The vanguard were men with pikes
and musketoons and axes; the rearguard were women who kept watch and ward
over the household treasures. Sometimes in trying hours the rearguard
ranged itself and fought in the front ranks, falling back to its old
position when the crisis was past.

In order to appreciate the actual value of woman as a component part of
that mighty impulse which set in motion, and still impels the pioneers of
our country, we must remember that she is really the cohesive power which
cements society together; that when the outward pressure is greatest, the
cohesive power is strongest; that in times of sore trial woman's native
traits of character are intensified; that she has greater tact, quicker
perceptions, more enduring patience, and greater capacity for suffering
than man; that motherly, and wifely, and sisterly love are strongest and
brightest when trials, labors, and dangers impend over the loved ones.

We must bear in mind too, that woman and man were possessed of the same
convictions and impulses in their heroic enterprise--the sense of duty, the
spirit of liberty, the desire to worship God after their own ideas of
truth, the desire to possess, though in a wilderness, homes where no one
could intrude or call them vassals; and deep down below all this, the
instincts, the gifts, and motive power of the most energetic race the world
has ever seen--the Anglo-Saxon; thus we come to see how in each band of
pioneers and in each household were centered that solid and constant moving
force which made each man a hero and each woman a heroine in the struggle
with hostile nature, with savage man more cruel than the storm or the wild
beasts, with solitude which makes a desert in the soul; with famine, with
pestilence, that "wasteth at noon-day,"--a struggle which has finally been
victorious over all antagonisms, and has made us what we are in this
centennial year of our existence as an independent republic.

Another powerful influence exercised by woman as a pioneer was the
influence of religion. The whole nature certainly of the Puritan woman was
transfused with a deep, glowing, unwavering religious faith. We picture
those wives, mothers, and daughters of the New England pioneers as the
saints described by the poet,

  "Their eyes are homes of silent prayer."

How the prayers of these good and honorable women were answered events have
proved.

Hardly had the Plymouth Colony landed before they were called upon to
battle with their first foes--the cold, the wind, and the storms on the
bleak New England coast. Famine came next, and finally pestilence. The
blast from the sea shook their frail cabins; the frost sealed the earth,
and the snow drifted on the pillow of the sick and dying. Five kernels of
corn a day were doled out to such as were in health, by those appointed to
this duty. Woman's heart was full then, but it kept strong though it
swelled to bursting.

Within five months from the landing on the Rock, forty-six men, women, and
children, or nearly one-half of the <i>Mayflower's</i> passengers had
perished of disease and hardships, and the survivors saw the vessel that
brought them sail away to the land of their birth. To the surviving women
of that devoted Pilgrim band this departure of the <i>Mayflower</i> must
have added a new pang to the grief that was already rending their hearts
after the loss of so many dear ones during that fearful winter. As the
vessel dropped down Plymouth harbor, they watched it with tearful eyes, and
when they could see it no more, they turned calmly back to their heroic
labors.

Mrs. Bradford, Rose Standish, and their companions were the original types
of women on our American frontier. Nobly, too, were they seconded by the
matrons and daughters in the other infant colonies. Who can read the
letters of Margaret Winthrop, of the Massachusetts Colony, without
recognizing the loving, devoted woman sharing with her noble husband the
toils and privations of the wilderness, in order that God's promise might
be justified and an empire built on this Western Continent.

In her we have a noble type of the Puritan woman of the seventeenth
century, representing, as she did, a numerous class of her sex in the same
condition. Reared in luxury, and surrounded by the allurements of the
superior social circle in which she moved in her native England, she
nevertheless preferred a life of self-denial with her husband on the bleak
shores where the Puritans were struggling for existence. She had fully
prepared her mind for the heroic undertaking. She did not overlook the
trials, discouragements, and difficulties of the course she was about to
take. For years she had been habituated to look forward to it as one of the
eventualities of her life. She was now beyond the age of romance, and
cherished no golden dreams of earthly happiness to be realized in that
far-off western clime.

Two traits are most prominent in her letters: her religious faith, and her
love for and trust in her husband. She placed a high estimate on the
wisdom, the energy, and the talents of her husband, and felt that he could
best serve God and man by helping to lay broad and deep the foundations of
a new State, and to secure the present and future prosperity, both temporal
and spiritual, of the colony. With admiration and esteem she blended the
ardent but balanced fondness of the loving wife and the sedate matron. In
no less degree do her letters show the power and attractiveness of genuine
religion. The sanctity of conjugal affection tallies with and is hallowed
by the Spirit of Grace. The sense of duty is harmoniously mingled with the
impulses of the heart. That religion was the dominant principle of thought
and action with Margaret Winthrop, no one can doubt who reflects how
severely it was tested in the trying enterprise of her life. A sincere,
deep, and healthful piety formed in her a spring of energy to great and
noble actions.

There are glimpses in the correspondence between her and her husband of a
kind of prophetic vision, that the planting of that colony was the laying
of one of the foundation-stones of a great empire. May we not suppose that
by the contemplation of such a vision she was buoyed up and soothed amid
the many trials and privations, perils and uncertainties that surrounded
her in that rugged colonial life.

The influence of Puritanism to inspire with unconquerable principle, to
infuse public spirit, to purify the character from frivolity and
feebleness, to lift the soul to an all-enduring heroism and to exalt it to
a lofty standard of Christian excellence, is grandly illustrated by the
life of Margaret Winthrop, one of the pioneer-matrons of the Massachusetts
colony.

The narrations which we set forth in this book must of course be largely
concerning families and individuals. The outposts of the advancing army of
settlement were most exposed to the dangers and hardships of frontier life.
Every town or village, as soon as it was settled, became a garrison against
attack and a mutual Benefit-Aid-Society, leagued together against every
enemy that threatened the infant settlement; it was also a place of refuge
for the bolder pioneers who had pushed farther out into the forest.

But as time rolled on many of these more adventurous settlers found
themselves isolated from the villages and stockades. Every hostile
influence they had to meet alone and unaided. Cold and storm, fire and
flood, hunger and sickness, savage man and savage beast, these were the
foes with which they had to contend. The battle was going on all the time
while the pioneer and his wife were subjugating the forest, breaking the
soil, and gaining shelter and food for themselves and their children.

It is easy to see what were the added pains, privations, and hardships of
such a situation to the mind and heart of woman, craving, as she does,
companionship and sympathy from her own sex. It is a consoling reflection
to us who are reaping the fruits of her self-sacrifice that the very
multiplicity of her toils and cares gave her less time for brooding over
her hard and lonely lot, and that she found in her religious faith and hope
a constant fountain of comfort and joy.

One of the greatest hardships endured by the first settlers in New England
was the rigorous and changeable climate, which bore most severely, of
course, on the weaker sex. This makes the fortitude of Mrs. Shute all the
more admirable. Her story is only one of innumerable instances in early
colonial life where wives were the preservers of their husbands.

In the spring of 1676, James Shute, with his wife and two small children,
set out from Dorchester for the purpose of settling themselves on a tract
of land in the southern part of what is now New Hampshire, but which then
was an unbroken forest. The tract where they purposed making their home was
a meadow on a small affluent of the Connecticut.

Taking their household goods and farming tools in an ox-cart drawn by four
oxen and driving two cows before them, they reached their destination after
a toilsome journey of ten days. The summer was spent in building their
cabin, and outhouses, planting and tending the crop of Indian corn which
was to be their winter's food, and in cutting the coarse meadow-grass for
hay.

Late in October they found themselves destitute of many articles which even
in those days of primitive housewifery and husbandry, were considered of
prime necessity. Accordingly, the husband started on foot for a small
trading-post on the Connecticut River, about ten miles distant, at which
point he expected to find some trading shallop or skiff to take him to
Springfield, thirty-eight miles further south. The weather was fine and at
nightfall Shute had reached the river, and before sunrise the next morning
was floating down the stream on an Indian trader's skiff.

Within two days he made his purchases, and hiring a skiff rowed slowly up
the river against the sluggish current on his return. In twelve hours he
reached the trading-post. It was now late in the evening. The sky had been
lowering all day, and by dusk it began to snow. Disregarding the
admonitions of the traders, he left his goods under their care and struck
out boldly through the forest over the trail by which he came, trusting to
be able to find his way, as the moon had risen, and the clouds seemed to be
breaking. The trail lay along the stream on which his farm was situated,
and four hours at an easy gait would, he thought, bring him home.

The snow when he started from the river was already nearly a foot deep, and
before he had proceeded a mile on his way the storm redoubled in violence,
and the snow fell faster and faster. At midnight he had only made five
miles, and the snow was two feet deep. After trying in vain to kindle a
fire by the aid of flint and steel, he prayed fervently to God, and
resuming his journey struggled slowly on through the storm. It had been
agreed between his wife and himself that on the evening of this day on
which he told her he should return, he would kindle a fire on a knoll about
two miles from his cabin as a beacon to assure his wife of his safety and
announce his approach.

Suddenly he saw a glare in the sky.

During his absence his wife had tended the cattle, milked the cows, cut the
firewood, and fed the children. When night came she barricaded the door,
and saying a prayer, folded her little ones in her arms and lay down to
rest. Three suns had risen and set since she saw her husband with gun on
his shoulder disappear through the clearing into the dense undergrowth
which fringed the bank of the stream, and when the appointed evening came,
she seated herself at the narrow window, or, more properly, opening in the
logs of which the cabin was built, and watched for the beacon which her
husband was to kindle. She looked through the falling snow but could see no
light. Little drifts sifted through the chinks in the roof upon the bed
where her children lay asleep; the night grew darker, and now and then the
howling of the wolves could be heard from the woods to the north.

Seven o'clock struck--eight--nine--by the old Dutch clock which ticked in
the corner. Then her woman's instinct told her that her husband must have
started and been overtaken by the storm. If she could reach the knoll and
kindle the fire it would light him on his way. She quickly collected a
small bundle of dry wood in her apron and taking flint, steel, and tinder,
started for the knoll. In an hour, after a toilsome march, floundering
through the snow, she reached the spot. A large pile of dry wood had
already been collected by her husband and was ready for lighting, and in a
few moments the heroic woman was warming her shivering limbs before a fire
which blazed far up through the crackling branches and lighted the forest
around it.

For more than two hours the devoted woman watched beside the fire,
straining her eyes into the gloom and catching every sound. Wading through
the snow she brought branches and logs to replenish the flames. At last her
patience was rewarded: she heard a cry, to which she responded. It was the
voice of her husband which she heard, shouting. In a few moments he came up
staggering through the drifts, and fell exhausted before the fire. The snow
soon ceased to fall, and after resting till morning, the rescued pioneer
and his brave wife returned in safety to their cabin.

[Illustration: LOST IN A SNOW STORM]

Mrs. Frank Noble, in 1664, proved herself worthy of her surname. She and
her husband, with four small children, had established themselves in a
log-cabin eight miles from a settlement in New Hampshire, and now known as
the town of Dover.

Their crops having turned out poorly that autumn, they were constrained to
put themselves on short allowance, owing to the depth of the snow and the
distance from the settlement. As long as Mr. Noble was well, he was able to
procure game and kept their larder tolerably well stocked. But in
mid-winter, being naturally of a delicate habit of body, he sickened, and
in two weeks, in spite of the nursing and tireless care of his devoted
wife, he died. The snow was six feet deep, and only a peck of musty corn
and a bushel of potatoes were left as their winter supply. The fuel also
was short, and most of the time Mrs. Noble could only keep herself and her
children warm by huddling in the bedclothes on bundles of straw, in the
loft which served them for a sleeping room. Below lay the corpse of Mr.
Noble, frozen stiff. Famine and death stared them in the face. Two weeks
passed and the supply of provisions was half gone. The heroic woman had
tried to eke out her slender store, but the cries of her children were so
piteous with hunger that while she denied herself, she gave her own portion
to her babes, lulled them to sleep, and then sent up her petitions to Him
who keeps the widow and the fatherless. She prayed, we may suppose, from
her heart, for deliverance from her sore straits for food, for warmth, for
the spring to come and the snow to melt, so that she might lay away the
remains of her husband beneath the sod of the little clearing.

Every morning when she awoke, she looked out from the window of the loft.
Nothing was to be seen but the white surface of the snow stretching away
into the forest. One day the sun shone down warmly on the snow and melted
its surface, and the next morning there was a crust which would bear her
weight. She stepped out upon it and looked around her. She would then have
walked eight miles to the settlement but she was worn out with anxiety and
watching, and was weak from want of food. As she gazed wistfully toward the
east, her ears caught the sound of a crashing among the boughs of the
forest. She looked toward the spot from which it came and saw a dark object
floundering in the snow. Looking more closely she saw it was a moose, with
its horns entangled in the branches of a hemlock and buried to its flanks
in the snow.

Hastening back to the cabin she seized her husband's gun, and loading it
with buckshot, hurried out and killed the monstrous brute. Skilled in
woodcraft, like most pioneer women, she skinned the animal and cutting it
up bore the pieces to the cabin. Her first thought then was of her
children, and after she had given them a hearty meal of the tender
moose-flesh she partook of it herself, and then, refreshed and
strengthened, she took the axe and cut a fresh supply of fuel. During the
day a party came out from the settlement and supplied the wants of the
stricken household. The body of the dead husband was borne to the
settlement and laid in the graveyard beneath the snow.

Nothing daunted by this terrible experience, this heroic woman kept her
frontier cabin and, with friendly aid from the settlers, continued to till
her farm. In ten years, when her oldest boy had become a man, he and his
brothers tilled two hundred acres of meadow land, most of it redeemed from
the wilderness by the skill, strength, and industry of their noble mother.

The spring season must have been to the early settlers, particularly to the
women, even more trying than the winter. In the latter season, except after
extraordinary falls of snow, transit from place to place was made by means
of sledges over the snow or on ox-carts over the frozen ground. Traveling
could also be done across or up and down rivers on the ice, and as bridges
were rare in those days the crossing of rivers on the ice was much to be
preferred to fording them in other seasons of the year. Fuel too was more
easily obtained in the winter than in the spring, and as roads were
generally little more than passage-ways or cow-paths through the meadows or
the woods, the depth of the mud was often such as to form a barrier to the
locomotion of the heavy vehicles of the period or even to prevent travel on
horseback or on foot.

Other dangers and hardships in the spring of the year were the freshets and
floods to which the river dwellers were exposed. Woman, be it remembered,
is naturally as alien to water as a mountain-fowl, which flies over a
stream for fear of wetting its feet. We can imagine the discomfort to which
a family of women and children were exposed who lived, for example, on the
banks of the Connecticut in the olden time. In some seasons families were,
as they now are, driven to the upper stories of their houses by the
overflow of the river. But it should be remembered that the houses of those
days were not the firm, well-built structures of modern times. Sometimes
the settler found himself and family floating slowly down stream, cabin and
all, borne along by the freshet caused by a sudden thaw: as long as his
cabin held together, the family had always hopes of grounding as the flood
subsided and saving their lives though with much loss of property, besides
the discomfort if not positive danger to which they had been exposed.

But sometimes the flood was so sudden and violent that the cabin would be
submerged or break to pieces, and float away, drowning some or all of the
family. It might be supposed that the married portion of the pioneers would
select other sites than on the borders of a large river subject every year
to overflow, but the richness of the alluvial soil on the banks of the
Connecticut was so tempting that other considerations were overlooked, and
to no part of New England was the tide of emigration turned so strongly as
to the Connecticut Valley.

In the year 1643, an adventurous family of eight persons embarked on a
shallop from Hartford (to which place they had come shortly before from
Watertown, Mass), and sailing or rowing up the river made a landing on a
beautiful meadow near the modern town of Hatfield.

The family consisted of Peter Nash and Hannah his wife, David, their son, a
youth of seventeen, Deborah and Mehitabel, their two daughters, aged
respectively nineteen and fourteen, Mrs. Elizabeth Nash, the mother of
Peter, aged sixty-four, and Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Nash. They found the land
all ready for ploughing, and after building a spacious cabin and barns,
they had nothing to do but to plant and harvest their crops and stock their
farm with cattle which they brought from Springfield, driving them up along
the river. For four years everything went on prosperously. They harvested
large crops, added to their barns, and had a great increase in stock.
Although the wolves and wild cats had made an occasional foray in their
stock and poultry yard and the spring freshets had made inroads into their
finest meadow, their general course had been only one of prosperity.

Their house and barns were built upon a tongue of land where the river made
a bend, and were on higher ground than the surrounding meadow, which every
spring was submerged by the freshets. Year after year the force of the
waters had washed an angle into this tongue of land and threatened some
time to break through and leave the houses and barns of the pioneers upon
an island. But the inroads of the waters were gradual, and the Nashes
flattered themselves that it would be at least two generations before the
river would break through.

Mrs. Peter Nash and her daughter were women of almost masculine courage and
firmness. They all handled axe and gun as skillfully as the men of the
household; they could row a boat, ride horseback, swim, and drag a seine
for shad; and Mehitabel, the younger daughter, though only fourteen years
old, was already a woman of more than ordinary size and strength. These
three women accompanied the men on their hunting and fishing excursions and
assisted them in hoeing corn, in felling trees, and dragging home fuel and
timber.

The winter of 1647-8 was memorable for the amount of snow that fell, and
the spring for its lateness. The sun made some impression on the snow in
March, but it was not till early in April that a decided change came in the
temperature. One morning the wind shifted to the southwest, the sun was as
hot as in June; before night it came on to rain, and, before the following
night, nearly the whole vast body of snow had been dissolved into water
which had swelled all the streams to an unprecedented height. The streams
poured down into the great river, which rose with fearful rapidity,
converting all the alluvial meadows into a vast lake.

All this took place so suddenly that the Nash family had scarcely a warning
till they found themselves in the midst of perils. When the rain ceased, on
the evening of the second day, the water had flooded the surrounding
meadows and risen high up into the first story of the house. The force of
the current had already torn a channel across the tongue of land on which
the house stood and had washed away the barns and live-stock. One of their
two boats had been floated off but had struck broadside against a clump of
bushes and was kept in its place by the force of the current. The other
boat had been fastened by a short rope to a stout sapling, but this latter
boat was ten feet under water, held down by the rope.

The water had now risen to the upper story, and the family were driven to
the roof. If the house would stand they might yet be saved. It was firmly
built but it shook with the force and weight of the waters. If either of
the boats could be secured they might reach dry land by rowing out of the
current and over the meadows where the water was stiller. The oars of the
submerged boat had been floated away, but in the other boat they could be
seen from the roof of the house lying safely on the bottom.

It was decided that Jacob Nash should swim out and row the boat up to the
house. He was a strong swimmer, and though the water was icy cold it was
thought the swift current would soon enable him to reach the skiff which
lay only a few rods below the house. Accordingly, he struck boldly out, and
in a moment had reached the boat, when he suddenly threw up his hands and
sank, the current whirling him out of sight in an instant, amid the shrieks
of his young wife, who was then a nursing mother and holding her babe in
her arms as her husband went down. Mrs. Nash, the elder, gazed for a moment
speechless at the spot where her son had sunk, and then fell upon her
knees, the whole family following her example, and prayed fervently to
Almighty God for deliverance from their awful danger. Then rising from her
kneeling posture, she bade her other son make one more trial to reach the
boat.

Peter Nash and his son Daniel then plunged into the water, reached the
boat, and took the oars, but the force of the current was such that they
could make, by rowing, but little headway against it. The two daughters
then leaped into the flood, and in a few strokes reached and entered the
boat. By their united force it was brought up and safely moored to the
chimney of the cabin. In two trips the family were conveyed to the
hillside. Then the brave girls returned and brought away a boat-load of
household gear. Not content with that they rowed to the submerged boat, and
diving down, cut the rope, baled out the water, and in company with their
mother, father, and brother, brought away all the moveables in the upper
stories of the house. Their courage appeared to have been rewarded in
another way, since the house stood through the flood, and in ten days they
were assisting to tear down the house and build another on a hill where the
floods never came.

As soldiers fall in battle, so in the struggles and hardships of border
life, the delicate frame of woman often succumbs, leaving the partner of
her toils to mourn her loss and meet the onset of life alone. Such a loss
necessarily implies more than when it occurs in the comfortable homes of
refined life, since it removes at once a loving wife, a companion in
solitude, and an efficient co-worker in the severe tasks incident to life
in frontier settlements. Sometimes the husband's career is broken off when
he loses his wife under such circumstances, and he gives up both hope and
effort.

About sixty years since, and while the rich prairies of Indiana began to be
viewed as the promised land of the adventurous pioneer, among the emigrants
who were attracted thither by the golden dreams of happiness and fortune,
was a Mr. H., a young man from an eastern city, who came accompanied by his
newly married wife, a dark-eyed girl of nineteen. Leaving his bride at one
of the westernmost frontier-settlements, he pushed on in search of a
favorable location for their new home. Near the present town of LaFayette
he found a tract which pleased his eye and promised abundant harvests, and
after his wife had been brought to view it and expressed her satisfaction
and delight at the happy choice he had made, the site was selected and the
house was built.

They moved into their prairie-home in the first flush of summer. Their
cabin was built upon a knoll and faced the south. Sitting at the door at
eventide they contemplated a prospect of unrivaled beauty. The sun-bright
soil remained still in its primeval greatness and magnificence, unchecked
by human hands, covered with flowers, protected and watched by the eye of
the sun. The days were glorious; the sky of the brightest blue, the sun of
the purest gold, and the air full of vitality, but calm; and there, in that
brilliant light, stretched itself far, far out into the infinite, as far as
the eye could discern, an ocean-like extent, the waves of which were
sunflowers, asters, and gentians, nodding and beckoning in the wind, as if
inviting millions of beings to the festival set out on the rich table of
the earth. Mrs. H. was an impressible woman with poetic tastes, and a
strong admiration for the beautiful in nature; and as she gazed upon the
glorious expanse her whole face lighted up and glowed with pleasure. Here
she thought was the paradise of which she had long dreamed.

As the summer advanced a plenteous harvest promised to reward the labors of
her husband. Nature was bounteous and smiling in all her aspects, and the
young wife toiled faithfully and patiently to make her rough house a
pleasant home for her husband. She had been reared like him amid the
luxuries of an eastern city, and her hands had never been trained to work.
But the influences of nature around her, and the almost idolatrous love
which she cherished for her husband, cheered and sweetened the homely toils
of her prairie life.

Eight months sped happily and prosperously away; the winter had been mild,
and open, and spring had come with its temperate breezes, telling of
another summer of brightness and beauty.

Soon after the middle of April in that year, commenced an extraordinary
series of storms. They occurred daily, and sometimes twice a day,
accompanied by the most vivid lightning, and awful peals of thunder; the
rain poured down in a deluge until it seemed as if another flood was coming
to purify the earth. For more than sixty days those terrible scenes
recurred, and blighted the whole face of the country for miles around the
lonely cabin. The prairies, saturated with moisture, refused any longer to
drink up the showers. Every hollow and even the slightest depression became
a stagnant pool, and when the rains ceased and the sun came out with the
heat of the summer solstice, it engendered pestilence, which rose from the
green plain that smiled beneath him, and stalked resistless among the
dwellers throughout that vast expanse.

Of all the widely isolated and remote cabins which sent their smoke curling
into the dank morning air of the region thereabouts, there was not one in
which disease was not already raging with fearful malignity. Doctors or
hired nurses there were none; each stricken household was forced to battle
single-handed with the destroyer who dealt his blows stealthily, suddenly,
and alas! too often, effectually. The news of the dreadful visitation soon
reached the family of Mr. H.--and for a period they were in a fearful
suspense. They were surrounded by the same malarial influences that had
made such havoc among their neighbors, and why should they escape? They
were living directly over a noisome cess-pool; their cellar was filled with
water which could not be drained away, nor would the saturated earth drink
it up. Centuries of vegetable accumulations forming the rich mould in which
the cellar was dug, gave out their emanations to the water, and the fiery
rays of the sun made the mixture a decoction whose steams were laden with
death.

There was no escape unless they abandoned their house, and this they were
reluctant to do, hoping that the disease would pass by them. But this was a
vain hope; in a few days Mr. H. was prostrated by the fever. Mrs. H. had
preserved her courage and energy till now, but her impressible nature began
to yield before the onset of this new danger. Her life had been sunny and
care-free from a child; her new home had till recently been the realization
of her dreams of happiness; but the loss of her husband would destroy at
once every fair prospect for the future. All that a loving wife could do as
a nurse or watcher or doctress, was done by her, but long before her
husband had turned the sharp corner between death and life, Mrs. H. was
attacked and both lay helpless, dependent upon the care of their only hired
man. Neighbors whose hearts had been made tender and sympathetic by their
own bereavements, came from their far-off cabins and for several weeks
watched beside their bedside. The attack of the wife commenced with a fever
which continued till after the birth of her child. For three days longer
she lingered in pain, sinking slowly till the last great change came, and
Mr. H., now convalescent, saw her eyes closed for ever.

The first time he left the house was to follow the remains of his wife and
child to their last resting place, beneath an arbor of boughs which her own
hands had tended. We cannot describe the grief of that bereaved husband.
His very appearance was that of one who had emerged from the tomb. Sickness
had blanched his dark face to a ghastly hue, and drawn great furrows in his
cheeks, which were immovable, and as if chiseled in granite. During his
sickness he had seen little of her before she was stricken down, for his
mind was clouded. When the light of reason dawned he was faintly conscious
that she lay near him suffering, first from the fever, and then from
woman's greatest pain and trial, but that he was unable to soothe and
comfort her; and finally that her last hours were hours of intense agony,
which he could not alleviate. He was as one in a trance; a confused
consciousness of his terrible loss slowly took possession of him. When at
length his weakened intellect comprehended the truth with all its sad
surrounding, a great cloud of desolation settled down over his whole life.

That cloud, sad to say, never lifted. As he stood by the open grave, he
lifted the lid, gazed long and intently on that sweet pale face, bent and
kissed the marble brow, and as the mother and child were lowered into the
grave, he turned away a broken-hearted man.




CHAPTER III.

EARLY PIONEERS--WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.


For nearly one hundred years after the settlement of Plymouth, the whole of
the territory now known as the State of Maine was, with the exception of a
few settlements on the coast and rivers, a howling wilderness. From the sea
to Canada extended a vast forest, intersected with rapid streams and dotted
with numerous lakes. While the larger number of settlers were disinclined
to attempt to penetrate this trackless waste, some few hardy pioneers dared
to advance far into the unknown land, tempted by the abundance of fish in
the streams and lakes or by the variety of game which was to be found in
the forests. It was the land for hunters rather than for tillers of the
soil, and most of its early explorers were men who were skillful marksmen,
and versed in forest lore. But occasionally women joined these predatory
expeditions against the denizens of the woods and waters.

In the history of American settlements too little credit has been given to
the hunter. He is often the first to penetrate the wilderness; he notes the
general features of the country as he passes on his swift course; he
ascertains the fertility of the soil and the capabilities of different
regions; he <i>reconnoiters</i> the Indian tribes, and learns their habits
and how they are affected towards the white man. When he returns to the
settlements he makes his report concerning the region which he has
explored, and by means of the knowledge thus obtained the permanent
settlers were and are enabled to push forward and establish themselves in
the wilderness. In the glory and usefulness of these discoveries woman not
unfrequently shared. Some of the most interesting narratives are those in
which she was the companion and coadjutor of the hunter in his explorations
of the trackless mazes of our American forests.

In the year 1672 a small party of hunters arrived at the mouth of the
Kennebec in two canoes. The larger one of the canoes was paddled up stream
by three men, the other was propelled swiftly forward by a man and a woman.
Both were dressed in hunters' costume; the woman in a close-fitting tunic
of deerskin reaching to the knees, with leggins to match, and the man in
hunting-shirt and trowsers of the same material. Edward Pentry, for this
was the name of the man, was a stalwart Cornishman who had spent ten years
in hunting and exploring the American wilderness. Mrs. Pentry, his wife,
was of French extraction, and had passed most of her life in the
settlements in Canada, where she had met her adventurous husband on one of
his hunting expeditions. She was of manly stature and strength, and like
her husband, was a splendid shot and skillful fisher. Both were
passionately fond of forest life, and perfectly fearless of its dangers,
whether from savage man or beast.

It was their purpose to explore thoroughly the region watered by the upper
Kennebec, and to establish a trading-post which would serve as the
headquarters of fur-traders, and ultimately open the country for
settlement. Their outfit was extremely simple: guns, traps, axes,
fishing-gear, powder, and bullets, &c., with an assorted cargo of such
trinkets and other articles as the Indians desired in return for peltry.

In three weeks they reached the head-waters of the Kennebec, at Moosehead
Lake. There they built a large cabin, divided into two compartments, one of
which was occupied by three of the men, the other by Mr. and Mrs. Pentry.
All of the party were versed in the Indian dialect of the region, and as
Mrs. Pentry could speak French, no trouble was anticipated from the
Indians, who in that part of the country were generally friendly to the
French.

The labors of the men in felling trees and shaping logs for the cabin, as
well as in framing the structure, were shared in by Mrs. Pentry, who in
addition did all the necessary cooking and other culinary offices. They
decided to explore the surrounding country for the purpose of discovering
the lay of the land and the haunts of game. No signs of any Indians had yet
been seen, and it was thought best that the four men should start, each in
a different direction, and having explored the neighboring region return to
the cabin at night, Mrs. Pentry meanwhile being left alone--a situation
which she did not in the least dread. Accordingly, early in the morning,
after eating a hunter's breakfast of salt pork, fried fish, and parched
corn, the quartette selected their several routes, and started, taking good
care to mark their trail as they went, that they could the more readily
find the way back.

It was agreed that they should return by sunset, which would give them
twelve good hours for exploration, as it was the month of July, and the
days were long. After their departure Mrs. P. put things to rights about
the house, and barring the door against intruders, whether biped or
quadruped, took her gun and fishing-tackle and went out for a little sport
in the woods.

The cabin stood on the border of Moosehead Lake. Unloosing the canoes, she
embarked in one, and towing the other behind her, rowed across a part of
the lake which jutted in shore to the southwest; she soon reached a dense
piece of woods which skirted the lake, and there mooring her canoe, watched
for the deer which came down to that place to drink. A fat buck before long
made his appearance, and as he bent down his head to quaff the water, a
brace of buck-shot planted behind his left foreleg laid him low, and his
carcase was speedily deposited in the canoe.

The sun was now well up, and as Mrs. P. had provided for the wants of the
party by her lucky shot, and no more deer made their appearance, she lay
down in the bottom of the boat, and soon fell fast asleep. Hunters and
soldiers should be light sleepers, as was Mrs. Pentry upon this occasion.

How long she slept she never exactly knew, but she was awakened by a
splash; lifting her head above the edge of the boat, she saw nothing but a
muddy spot on the water some thirty feet away, near the shore. This was a
suspicious sign. Looking more closely, she saw a slight motion beneath the
lily-pads, which covered closely, like a broad green carpet, the surface of
the lake. Her hand was on her gun, and as she leveled the barrel towards
the turbid spot, she saw a head suddenly lifted, and at the same moment a
huge Indian sprang from the water and struggled up through the dense
undergrowth that lined the edge of the lake.

It was a sudden impulse rather than a thought, which made Mrs. P. level the
gun at his broad back and pull the trigger. The Indian leaped into the air,
and fell back in the water dead, with half a dozen buck-shot through his
heart. At the same moment she felt a strong grasp on her shoulder, and
heard a deep guttural "ugh!" Turning her head she saw the malignant face of
another Indian standing waist-deep in the water, with one hand on the boat
which he was dragging towards the shore.

A swift side-blow from the gun-barrel, and he tumbled into the water;
before he could recover, the brave woman had snatched the paddle, and sent
the canoe spinning out into the lake. Then dropping the paddle and seizing
her gun she dashed in a heavy charge of powder, dropped a dozen buck-shot
down the muzzle, rammed in some dry grass, primed the pan, and leveled it
again at the savage, who having recovered from the blow, was floundering
towards the shore, turning and shaking his tomahawk at her, meanwhile, with
a ferocious grin. Again the report of her gun awakened the forest echoes,
and before the echoes had died away, the savage's corpse was floating on
the water.

[Illustration: THE HUNTRESS OF THE LAKES SURPRISED BY INDIANS]

She dared not immediately approach the shore, fearing that other savages
might be lying in ambush; but after closely scrutinizing the bushes, she
saw no signs of others, besides the two whom she had shot. She then cut
long strips of raw hide from the dead buck, and towing the bodies of the
Indians far out into the lake sunk them with the stones that served to
anchor the canoes. Returning to the shore, she took their guns which lay
upon the shelving bank, and rapidly paddled the canoe homeward.

It was now high noon. She reached the cabin, entered, and sat down to rest.
She supposed that the savages she had just, killed were stragglers from a
war-party who had lagged behind their comrades, and attracted by the sound
made by her gun when she shot the buck, had come to see what it was. The
thought that a larger body might be in the vicinity, and that they would
capture and perhaps kill her beloved husband and his companions, was a
torture to her. She sat a few moments to collect her thoughts and resolve
what course to pursue.

Her resolution was soon taken. She could not sit longer there, while her
husband and friends were exposed to danger or death. Again she entered the
canoe and paddled across the arm of the lake to the spot where the waters
were still stained with the blood of the Indians. Hastily effacing this
bloody trace, she moored the canoes and followed the trail of the savages
for four miles to the northwest. There she found in a ravine the embers of
a fire, where, from appearances as many as twenty redskins had spent the
preceding night. Their trail led to the northwest, and by certain signs
known to hunters, she inferred that they had started at day-break and were
now far on their way northward.

When her four male associates selected their respective routes in the
morning, her husband had, she now remembered, selected one which led
directly in the trail of the Indian war-party, and by good calculation he
would have been about six miles in their rear. Not being joined by the two
savages whose bodies lay at the bottom of the lake, what was more likely
than that they would send back a detachment to look after the safety of
their missing comrades?

The first thing to be done was to strike her husband's trail and then
follow it till she overtook him or met him returning. Swiftly, and yet
cautiously, she struck out into the forest in a direction at right angles
with the Indian camp. Being clad in trowsers of deer skin and a short tunic
and moccasins of the same material, she made her way through the woods as
easily as a man, and fortunately in a few moments discovered a trail which
she concluded was that of her husband. Her opinion was soon verified by
finding a piece of leather which she recognized as part of his
accoutrements. For two hours she strode swiftly on through the forest,
treading literally in her husband's tracks.

The sun was now three hours above the western horizon; so taking her seat
upon a fallen tree, she waited, expecting to see him soon returning on his
trail, when she heard faintly in the distance the report of a gun; a moment
after, another and still another report followed in quick succession.
Guided by the sound she hurried through the tangled thicket from which she
soon emerged into a grove of tall pine trees, and in the distance saw two
Indians with their backs turned toward her and shielding themselves from
some one in front by standing behind large trees. Without being seen by
them she stole up and sheltered herself in a similar manner, while her eye
ranged the forest in search of her husband who she feared was under the
fire of the red-skins.

At length she descried the object of their hostility behind the trunk of a
fallen tree. It was clearly a white man who crouched there, and he seemed
to be wounded. She immediately took aim at the nearest Indian and sent two
bullets through his lungs. The other Indian at the same instant had fired
at the white man and then sprang forward to finish him with his tomahawk.
Mrs. Pentry flew to the rescue and just as the savage lifted his arm to
brain his foe, she drove her hunting knife to the haft into his spine.

Her husband lay prostrate before her and senseless with loss of blood from
a bullet-wound in the right shoulder. Staunching the flow of blood with
styptics which she gathered among the forest shrubs, she brought water and
the wounded man soon revived. After a slow and weary march she brought him
back to the cabin, carrying him part of the way upon her shoulders. Under
her careful nursing he at length recovered his strength though he always
carried the bullet in his shoulder. It appears he had met three Indians who
told him they were in search of their two missing companions. One of them
afterwards treacherously shot him from behind through the shoulder, and in
return Pentry sent a ball through his heart. Then becoming weak from loss
of blood he could only point his gun-barrel at the remaining Indians, and
this was his situation when his wife came up and saved his life.

After receiving such an admonition it is natural to suppose the whole party
were content to remain near their forest home for a season, extending their
rambles only far enough to enable them to procure game and fish for their
table; and this was not far, for the lake was alive with fish; and wild
turkeys, deer, and other game could be shot sometimes even from the cabin
door.

The party were also deterred by this experience from attempting to drive
any trade with the Indians until the following spring, when they expected
to be joined by a large party of hunters.

The summer soon passed away, and the cold nights of September and October
admonished our hardy pioneers that they must prepare for a rigorous winter.
Mrs. Pentry made winter clothing for the men and for herself out of the
skins of animals which they had shot, and snow-shoes from the sinews of
deer stretched on a frame composed of strips of hard wood. She also felled
trees for fuel and lined the walls of the cabin with deer and bear skins;
she was the most skilful mechanic of the party, and having fitted runners
of hickory to one of the boats she rigged a sail of soft skins sewed
together, and once in November, after the river was frozen, and when the
wind blew strongly from the northwest, the whole party undertook to reach
the mouth of the river by sailing down in their boat upon the ice. A boat
of this kind, when the ice is smooth and the wind strong, will make fifteen
miles an hour.

They were interrupted frequently in their course by the falls and rapids,
making portages necessary; nevertheless in three days and two nights they
reached the mouth of the river.

Here they bartered their peltry for powder, bullets, and various other
articles most needed by frontiersmen, and catching a southeast wind started
on their return. In a few hours they had made seventy miles, and at night,
as the sky threatened snow, they prepared a shelter in a hollow in the bank
of the river. Before morning a snow-storm had covered the river-ice and
blocked their passage. For three days, the snow fell continuously. They
were therefore forced to abandon all hopes of reaching their cabin at the
head-waters of the Kennebec. The hollow or cave in the bank where they were
sheltered they covered with saplings and branches cut from the bluff, and
banked up the snow round it. Their supply of food was soon exhausted, but
by cutting holes in the ice they caught fish for their subsistence.

The depth of the snow prevented them from going far from their place of
shelter, and the nights were bitter cold. The ice on the river was two feet
in thickness; and one day, in cutting through it to fish, their only axe
was broken. No worse calamity could have befallen them, since they were now
unable to cut fuel or to procure fish. Mr. Pentry, who was still suffering
from the effects of his wound, contracted a cold which settled in his lame
shoulder, and he was obliged to stay in doors, carefully nursed and tended
by his devoted wife. The privations endured by these unfortunates are
scarcely to be paralleled. Short of food, ill-supplied with clothing, and
exposed to the howling severity of the climate, the escape of any one of
the number appears almost a miracle.

A number of bear-skins, removed from the boat to the cave, served them for
bedding. Some days, when there was nothing to eat and no means of making a
fire, they passed the whole time huddled up in the skins. Daily they became
weaker and less capable of exertion. Wading through the snow up to the
waist, they were able now and then to shoot enough small game to barely
keep them alive.

After the lapse of a fortnight there came a thaw, succeeded by a cold rain,
which froze as it fell. The snow became crusted over, to the depth of two
inches, with ice that was strong enough to bear their weight. They
extricated their ice-boat and prepared for departure. One of the party had
gone out that morning on the crust, hoping to secure some larger game to
stock their larder before starting; the rest awaited his return for two
hours, and then, fearing some casualty had happened to him, followed his
trail for half a mile from the river and found him engaged in a desperate
struggle with a large black she-bear which he had wounded.

The ferocious animal immediately left its prey and rushed at Mrs. Pentry
with open mouth, seizing her left arm in its jaws, crunched it, and then,
rising on its hind legs, gave her a terrible hug. The rest of the party
dared not fire, for fear of hitting the woman. Twice she drove her hunting
knife into the beast's vitals and it fell on the crust, breaking through
into the snow beneath, where the two rolled over in a death-struggle. The
heroic woman at length arose victorious, and the carcase of the bear was
dragged forth, skinned, and cut up. A fire was speedily kindled, Mrs.
Pentry's wounds were dressed, and after refreshing themselves with a hearty
meal of bearsteak, the remainder of the meat was packed in the boat.

The party then embarked, and by the aid of a stiff easterly breeze, were
enabled, in three days, to reach their cabin on the head-waters of the
Kennebec. The explorations made along the Kennebec by Mrs. Pentry and her
companions attracted thither an adventurous class of settlers, and
ultimately led to the important settlements on the line of that river.

The remainder of Mrs. Pentry's life was spent mainly on the northern
frontier. She literally lived and died in the woods, reaching the advanced
age of ninety-six years, and seeing three generation of her descendants
grow up around her. Possessing the strength and courage of a man, she had
also all a woman's kindness, and appears to have been an estimable person
in all the relations of life--a good wife and mother, a warm friend, and a
generous neighbor. In fact, she was a representative woman of the times in
which she lived.

The toils of a severer nature, such as properly belong to man, often fall
upon woman from the necessities of life in remote and isolated settlements;
she is seen plying strange vocations and undertaking tasks that bear hardly
on the soft and gentle sex. Sometimes a hunter and trapper; and again a
mariner; now we see her performing the rugged work of a farm, and again a
fighter, stoutly defending her home. The fact that habit and necessity
accustom her, in frontier life, to those employments which in older and
more conventional communities are deemed unfitting and ungraceful for woman
to engage in, makes it none the less striking and admirable, because in
doing so she serves a great and useful purpose; she is thereby doing her
part in forming new communities in the places that are uninhabited and
waste.

Vermont was largely settled by the soldiers who had served in the army of
the Revolution. The settlers, both men and women, were hardy and intrepid,
and seem to have been peculiarly adapted to subjugate that rugged region in
our New England wilderness. The women were especially noted for the
strength and courage with which they shared the labors of the men and
encountered the hardships and dangers of frontier life.

When sickness or death visited the men of the family, the mothers, wives,
or widows filled their places in the woods, or on the farm, or among the
cattle. Often, side by side with the men, women could be seen emulating
their husbands in the severe task of felling timber and making a clearing
in the forest.

In the words of Daniel P. Thompson, author of "The Green Mountain Boys":--

"The women of the Green Mountains deserve as much credit for their various
displays of courage, endurance, and patriotism, in the early settlement of
their State, as was ever awarded to their sex for similar exhibitions in
any part of the world. In the controversy with New York and New Hampshire,
which took the form of war in many instances; in the predatory Indian
incursions, and in the War of the Revolution, they often displayed a
capacity for labor and endurance, a spirit and firmness in the hour of
danger, a resolution and hardihood in defending their families and their
threatened land against all enemies, whether domestic or foreign, that
would have done honor to the dames of Sparta."

The first man who commenced a settlement in the town of Salisbury, Vermont,
on the Otter Creek, was Amos Storey, who, in making an opening in the heart
of the wilderness on the right of land to which the first settler was
entitled, was killed by the fall of a tree. His widow, who had been left in
Connecticut, immediately resolved to push into the wilderness with her ten
small children, to take his place and preserve and clear up his farm. This
bold resolution she carried out to the letter, in spite of every
difficulty, hardship, and danger, which for years constantly beset her in
her solitary location in the woods. Acre after acre of the dense and dark
forest melted away before her axe, which she handled with the dexterity of
the most experienced chopper. The logs and bushes were piled and burnt by
her own strong and untiring hand; crops were raised, by which, with the
fruits of her fishing and unerring rifle, she supported herself and her
hardy brood of children. As a place of refuge from the assaults of Indians
or dangerous wild beasts, she dug out an underground room, into which,
through a small entrance made to open under an overhanging thicket on the
bank of the stream, she nightly retreated with her children.

Frequently during the dreary winter nights she was kept awake by the
howling of the wolves, and sometimes, looking through the chinks in the
logs, she could see them loping in circles around the cabin, whining and
snuffing the air as if they yearned for human blood. They were gaunt,
fierce-looking creatures, and in the winter-time their hunger made them so
bold that they would come up to the door and scratch against it. The
barking of her mastiff would soon drive the cowardly beasts away but only a
few rods, to the edge of the clearing where, sitting on their haunches,
they frequently watched the house all night, galloping away into the woods
when day broke.

Here she continued to reside, thus living, thus laboring, unassisted, till,
by her own hand and the help which her boys soon began to afford her, she
cleared up a valuable farm and placed herself in independent circumstances.

Miss Hannah Fox tells the following thrilling story of an adventure that
befel her while engaged in felling trees in her mother's woods in Rhode
Island, in the early colonial days.

We were making fine progress with our clearing and getting ready to build a
house in the spring. My brother and I worked early and late, often going
without our dinner, when the bread and meat which we brought with us was
frozen so hard that our teeth could make no impression upon it, without
taking too much of our time. My brother plied his axe on the largest trees,
while I worked at the smaller ones or trimmed the boughs from the trunks of
such as had been felled.

The last day of our chopping was colder than ever. The ground was covered
by a deep snow which had crusted over hard enough to bear our weight, which
was a great convenience in moving from spot to spot in the forest, as well
as in walking to and from our cabin, which was a mile away. My brother had
gone to the nearest settlement that day, leaving me to do my work alone.

As a storm was threatening, I toiled as long as I could see, and after
twilight felled a sizeable tree which in its descent lodged against
another. Not liking to leave the job half finished, I mounted the almost
prostrate trunk to cut away a limb and let it down. The bole of the tree
was forked about twenty feet from the ground, and one of the divisions of
the fork would have to be cut asunder. A few blows of my axe and the tree
began to settle, but as I was about to descend, the fork split and the
first joints of my left-hand fingers slid into the crack so that for the
moment I could not extricate them. The pressure was not severe, and as I
believed I could soon relieve myself by cutting away the remaining portion,
I felt no alarm. But at the first blow of the axe which I held in my right
hand, the trunk changed its position, rolling over and closing the split,
with the whole force of its tough oaken fibers crushing my fingers like
pipe-stems; at the same time my body was dislodged from the trunk and I
slid slowly down till I hung suspended with the points of my feet just
brushing the snow. The air was freezing and every moment growing colder; no
prospect of any relief that night; the nearest house a mile away; no
friends to feel alarmed at my absence, for my mother would suppose that I
was safe with my brother, while the latter would suppose I was by this time
at home.

The first thought was of my mother. "It will kill her to know that I died
in this death-trap so near home, almost within hearing of her voice! There
must be some escape! but how?" My axe had fallen below me and my feet could
almost touch it. It was impossible to imagine how I could cut myself loose
unless I could reach it. My only hope of life rested on that keen blade
which lay glittering on the snow.

Within reach of my hand was a dead bush which towered some eight feet above
me, and by a great exertion of strength I managed to break it. Holding it
between my teeth I stripped it of its twigs, leaving two projecting a few
inches at the lower end to form a hook. With this I managed to draw towards
me the head of the axe until my fingers touched it, when it slipped from
the hook and fell again upon the snow, breaking through the crust and
burying itself so that only the upper end of the helve could be seen.

Up to that moment the recollection of my mother and the first excitement
engendered by hope had almost made me unconscious of the excruciating pain
in my crushed fingers, and the sharp thrills that shot through my nerves,
as my body swung and twisted in my efforts to reach the axe. But now, as
the axe fell beyond my reach, the reaction came, hope fled, and I shuddered
with the thought that I must die there alone like some wild thing caught in
a snare. I thought of my widowed mother, my brother, the home which we had
toiled to make comfortable and happy. I prayed earnestly to God for
forgiveness of my sins, and then calmly resigned myself to death, which I
now believed to be inevitable. For a time, which I afterwards found to be
only five minutes, but which then seemed to me like hours, I hung
motionless. The pain had ceased, for the intense cold blunted my sense of
feeling. A numbness, stole over me, and I seemed to be falling into a
trance, from which I was roused by a sound of bells borne to me as if from
a great distance. Hope again awoke, and I screamed loud and long; the woods
echoed my cries, but no voice replied. The bells grew fainter and fainter,
and at last died away. But the sound of my voice had broken the spell which
cold and despair were fast throwing over me. A hundred devices ran swiftly
through my mind, and each device was dismissed as impracticable. The helve
of the axe caught my eye, and in an instant by an association of ideas it
flashed across me that in the pocket of my dress there was a small
knife--another sharp instrument by which I could extricate myself. With
some difficulty I contrived to open the blade, and then withdrawing the
knife from my pocket and gripping it as one who clings to the last hope of
life, I strove to cut away the wood that held my fingers in its terrible
vise. In vain! the wood was like iron. The motion of my arm and body
brought back the pain which the cold had lulled, and I feared that I should
faint.

After a moment's pause I adopted a last expedient. Nerving myself to the
dreadful necessity, I disjointed my fingers and fell exhausted to the
ground. My life was saved, but my left hand was a bleeding stump. The
intensity of the cold stopped the flow of blood. I tore off a piece of my
dress, bound up my fingers, and started for home. My complete exhaustion
and the bitter cold made that the longest mile I had ever traveled. By nine
o'clock that evening I had managed to drag myself, more dead than alive, to
my mother's door, but it was more than a week before I could again leave
the house.

The difficulties encountered by the first emigrant-bands from
Massachusetts, on their journey to Connecticut, may be understood best when
we consider the face of the country between Massachusetts Bay and Hartford.
It was a succession of ridges and deep valleys with swamps and rapid
streams, and covered with forests and thickets where bears, wolves, and
catamounts prowled. The journey, which occupies now but a few hours, then
generally required two weeks to perform. The early settlers, men, women,
and children, pursued their toilsome march over this rough country, picking
their way through morasses, wading through rivers and streams, and climbing
mountains; driving their cattle, sheep, and swine before them. Some came,
on horseback; the older and feebler in ox-carts, but most of them traveled
on foot. At night aged and delicate women slept under trees in the forest,
with no covering but the foliage and the cope of heaven.

The winter was near at hand, and the nights were already cold and frosty.
Many of the women had been delicately reared, and yet were obliged to
travel on foot for the whole distance, reaching their destination in a
condition of exhaustion that ill prepared them for the hardships of the
ensuing winter. Some were nursing mothers, who sheltered themselves and
their babes in rude huts where the wind, rain, and snow drove in through
yawning fissures which there were no means to close. Others were aged
women, who in sore distress sent up their prayers and rolled their
quavering hymns to the wintry skies, their only canopy. The story of these
hapless families is told in the simple but effective language of the old
historian.

"On the 15th of October [1632] about sixty men, women, and children, with
their horses, cattle, and swine, commenced their journey from
Massachusetts, through the wilderness, to Connecticut River. After a
tedious and difficult journey through swamps and rivers, over mountains and
rough grounds, which were passed with great difficulty and fatigue, they
arrived safely at their respective destinations. They were so long on their
journey, and so much time and pains were spent in passing the river, and in
getting over their cattle, that after all their exertions, winter came upon
them before they were prepared. This was an occasion of great distress and
damage to the plantation. The same autumn several other parties came from
the east--including a large number of women and children--by different
routes, and settled on the banks of the Connecticut river.

"The winter set in this year much sooner than usual, and the weather was
stormy and severe. By the 15th of November, the Connecticut river was
frozen over, and the snow was so deep, and the season so tempestuous, that
a considerable number of the cattle which had been driven on from the
Massachusetts, could not be brought across the river. The people had so
little time to prepare their huts and houses, and to erect sheds and
shelter for their cattle, that the sufferings of man and beast were
extreme. Indeed the hardships and distresses of the first planters of
Connecticut scarcely admit of a description. To carry much provision or
furniture through a pathless wilderness was impracticable. Their principal
provisions and household furniture were therefore put on several small
vessels, which, by reason of delays and the tempestuousness of the season,
were cast away. Several vessels were wrecked on the coast of New England,
by the violence of the storms. Two shallops laden with goods from Boston to
Connecticut, were cast away in October, on Brown's Island, near the
Gurnet's Nose; and the men with every thing on board were lost. A vessel
with six of the Connecticut people on board, which sailed from the river
for Boston, early in November, was, about the middle of the month, cast
away in Manamet Bay. The men and women got on shore, and after wandering
ten days in deep snow and a severe season, without meeting any human being,
arrived, nearly spent with cold and fatigue, at New Plymouth.

"By the last of November, or beginning of December, provisions generally
failed in the settlements on the river, and famine and death looked the
inhabitants sternly in the face. Some of them driven by hunger attempted
their way, in that severe season, through the wilderness, from Connecticut
to Massachusetts. Of thirteen, in one company, who made this attempt, one
in passing the river fell through the ice and was drowned. The other twelve
were ten days on their journey, and would all have perished, had it not
been for the assistance of the Indians.

"Indeed, such was the distress in general, that by the 3d and 4th of
December, a considerable part of the new settlers were obliged to abandon
their habitations. Seventy persons, men, women, and children, were
compelled, in the extremity of winter, to go down to the mouth of the river
to meet their provisions, as the only expedient to preserve their lives.
Not meeting with the vessels which they expected, they all went on board
the Rebecca, a vessel of about sixty tons. This, two days before, was
frozen in, twenty miles up the river; but by the falling of a small rain,
and the influence of the tide, the ice became so broken and was so far
removed, that she made a shift to get out. She ran, however, upon the bar,
and the people were forced to unlade her to get off. She was released, and
in five days reached Boston. Had it not been for these providential
circumstances, the people must have perished with famine.

"The people who kept their stations on the river suffered in an extreme
degree. After all the help they were able to obtain, by hunting, and from
the Indians, they were obliged to subsist on acorns, malt, and grains.

"Numbers of the cattle which could not be got over the river before winter,
lived through without anything but what they found in the woods and
meadows. They wintered as well, or better than those which were brought
over, and for which all the provision was made and pains taken of which the
owners were capable. However, a great number of cattle perished. The
Dorchester or Windsor people, lost in this way alone about two hundred
pounds sterling. Their other losses were very considerable."

It is difficult to describe, or even to conceive, the apprehensions or
distresses of a people in the circumstances of our venerable ancestors,
during this doleful winter. All the horrors of a dreary wilderness spread
themselves around them. They were compassed with numerous fierce and cruel
tribes of wild and savage men who could have swallowed up parents and
children at pleasure, in their feeble and distressed condition. They had
neither bread for themselves nor children; neither habitation nor clothing
convenient for them. Whatever emergency might happen, they were cut off,
both by land and water, from any succor or retreat. What self-denial,
firmness, and magnanimity are necessary for such enterprises! How
distressing, in the beginning, was the condition of those now fair and
opulent towns on Connecticut River!

Under the most favorable circumstances, the lives of the pioneer-women must
have been one long ordeal of hardship and suffering. The fertile valleys
were the scenes of the bloodiest Indian raids, while the remote and sterile
hill country, if it escaped the attention of the hostile savage, was liable
to be visited by other ills. Famine in such regions was always imminent,
and the remoteness and isolation of those frontier-cabins often made relief
impossible. A failure in the little crop of corn, which the thin soil of
the hillside scantily furnished, and the family were driven to the front
for game and to the streams for fish, to supply their wants. Then came the
winter, and the cabin was often blockaded with snow for weeks. The fuel and
food consumed, nothing seemed left to the doomed household but to struggle
on for a season, and then lie down and die. Fortunately the last sad
catastrophe was of rare occurrence, owing to the extraordinary resolution
and hardihood of the settlers.

It is a striking fact that in all the records, chronicles, and letters of
the early settlers that have come down to us, there are scarcely to be
found any complaining word from woman. She simply stated her sufferings,
the dangers she encountered, the hardships she endured, and that was all.
No querulous or peevish complaints, no meanings over her hard lot. She bore
her pains and sorrows and privations in silence, looking forward to her
reward, and knowing that she was making homes in the wilderness, and that
future generations would rise up and call her blessed.




CHAPTER IV.

THE BLOCK HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.


The axe and the gun, the one to conquer the forces of wild nature, the
other to battle against savage man and beast--these were the twin weapons
that the pioneer always kept beside him, whether on the march or during a
halt. In defensive warfare the axe was scarcely less potent than the gun,
for with its keen edge the great logs were hewed which formed the
block-house, and the tall saplings shaped, which were driven into the earth
to make the stockade. We know too that woman could handle the gun and ply
the axe when required so to do.

In one of our historical galleries there was exhibited not long since a
painting representing a party of Indians attacking a block-house in a New
England settlement. The house is a structure framed, and built of enormous
logs, hexagonal in shape, the upper stories over-hanging those beneath, and
pierced with loopholes. There is a thick parapet on the roof, behind which
are collected the children of the settlement guarded by women, old and
young, some of whom are firing over the parapet at the yelling fiends who
have just emerged from their forest-ambush. A glimpse of the interior of
the block-house shows us women engaged in casting bullets and loading
fire-arms which they are handing to the men. In the background a brave girl
is returning swiftly to the garrison, with buckets of water which she has
drawn from the spring, a few rods away from the house. A crouching savage
has leveled his gun at her, and she evidently knows the danger she is in,
but moves steadily forward without spilling a drop of her precious burden.

The block-house is surrounded by the primeval forest, which is alive with
savages. Some are shaking at the defenders of the block-house fresh scalps,
evidently just torn from the heads of men and women who have been overtaken
and tomahawked before they could reach their forest-citadel: others have
fired the stack of corn. A large fire has been kindled in the woods and a
score of savages are wrapping dry grass around the ends of long poles, with
which to fire the wooden walls of the block-house.

Thirty or forty men women and children in a wooden fort, a hundred miles,
perhaps, from any settlement, and surrounded by five times their number of
Pequots or Wampanoags thirsting for their blood! This is indeed a faithful
picture of one of the frequent episodes of colonial life in New England!

Every new settlement was brought face to face with such dangers as we have
described. The red-man and the white man were next door neighbors. The
smokes of the wigwam and the cabin mingled as they rose to the sky. From
the first there was more or less antagonism. Life among the white settlers
was a kind of picket-service in which woman shared.

At times, as for example in the wars with the Pequots and King Philip,
there was safety nowhere. Men went armed to the field, to meeting, and to
bring home their brides from their father's house where they had married
them. Women with muskets at their side lulled their babes to sleep. Like
the tiger of the jungles, the savage lay in ambush for the women and
children: he knew he could strike the infant colony best by thus desolating
the homes.

The captivities of Mrs. Williams and her children, of Mrs. Shute, of Mrs.
Johnson, of Mrs. Howe, and of many other matrons; as well as of unmarried
women, are well-conned incidents of New England colonial history. The story
of Mrs. Dustin's exploit and escape reads like a romance. "At night," to
use the concise language of Mr. Bancroft, "while the household slumbers,
the captives, each with a tomahawk, strike vigorously, and fleetly, and
with division of labor,--and of the twelve sleepers, ten lie dead; of one
squaw the wound was not mortal; one child was spared from design. The love
of glory next asserted its power; and the gun and tomahawk of the murderer
of her infant, and a bag heaped full of scalps were choicely kept as
trophies of the heroine. The streams are the guides which God has set for
the stranger in the wilderness: in a bark canoe the three descend the
Merrimac to the English settlement, astonishing their friends by their
escape and filling the land with wonder at their successful daring."

The details of Mrs. Rowlandson's sufferings after her capture at Lancaster,
Mass., in 1676, are almost too painful to dwell upon. When the Indians
began their march the day after the destruction of that place, Mrs.
Rowlandson carried her infant till her strength failed and she fell. Toward
night it began to snow; and gathering a few sticks, she made a fire.
Sitting beside it on the snow, she held her child in her arms, through the
long and dismal night. For three or four days she had no sustenance but
water; nor did her child share any better for nine days. During this time
it was constantly in her arms or lap. At the end of that period, the frost
of death crept into its eyes, and she was forced to relinquish it to be
disposed of by the unfeeling sextons of the forest.

She went through almost every suffering but death. She was beaten, kicked,
turned out of doors, refused food, insulted in the grossest manner, and at
times almost starved. Nothing but experience can enable us to conceive what
must be the hunger of a person by whom the discovery of six acorns and two
chestnuts was regarded as a rich prize. At times, in order to make her
miserable, they announced to her the death of her husband and her children.

On various occasions they threatened to kill her. Occasionally, but for
short intervals only, she was permitted to see her children, and suffered
her own anguish over again in their miseries. She was obliged, while hardly
able to walk, to carry a heavy burden, over hills, and through rivers,
swamps, and marshes; and in the most inclement seasons. These evils were
repeated daily; and, to crown them all, she was daily saluted with the most
barbarous and insolent accounts of the burning and slaughter, the tortures
and agonies, inflicted by them upon her countrymen. It is to be remembered
that Mrs. Rowlandson was tenderly and delicately educated, and ill fitted
to encounter such distresses; and yet she bore them all with a fortitude
truly wonderful.

Instances too there were, where a single woman infused her own dauntless
spirit into a whole garrison, and prevented them from abandoning their
post. Mrs. Heard, "a widow of good estate a mother of many children, and a
daughter of Mr. Hull, a revered minister formerly settled in Piscataqua,"
having escaped from captivity among the Indians, about 1689, returned to
one of the garrisons on the extreme frontier of New Hampshire. By her
presence and courage this out-post was maintained for ten years and during
the whole war, though frequently assaulted by savages. It is stated that if
she had left the garrison and retired to Portsmouth, as she was solicited
to do by her friends, the out-post would have been abandoned, greatly to
the damage of the surrounding country.

Long after the New England colonies rested in comparative security from the
attacks of the aboriginal tribes, the warfare was continued in the Middle,
Southern, and Western States, and even at this hour, sitting in our
peaceful homes we read in the journals of the day reports of Indian
atrocities perpetrated against the families of the pioneers on our extreme
western frontier.

Our whole history from the earliest times to the present, is full of
instances of woman's noble achievements. East, west, north, south, wherever
we wander, we tread the soil which has been wearily trodden by her feet as
a pioneer, moistened by her tears as a captive, or by her blood as a martyr
in the cause of civilization on this western continent.

The sorrows of maidens, wives, and mothers in the border wars of our
colonial times, have furnished themes for the poet, the artist, and the
novelist, but the reality of these scenes as described in the simple words
of the local historians, often exceeds the most vivid dress in which
imagination can clothe it.

One of the most deeply rooted traits of woman's nature is sympat