The Prairie

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Etext prepared by Grant Macandrew (herne@orcon.net.nz)
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THE PRAIRIE
BY J Fenimore Cooper

THE PRAIRIE

BY

J FENIMORE COOPER

INTRODUCTION

"The Prairie" was the third in order of Fenimore Cooper's
Leatherstocking Tales. Its first appearance was in the year 1827. The
idea of the story had suggested itself to him, we are told, before he
had finished its immediate forerunner, "The Last of the Mohicans." He
chose entirely new scenes for it, "resolved to cross the Mississippi
and wander over the desolate wastes of the remote Western prairies."
He had been taking every chance that came of making a personal
acquaintance with the Indian chiefs of the western tribes who were to
be encountered about this period on their way in the frequent Indian
embassies to Washington. "He saw much to command his admiration,"
says Mrs. Cooper, "in these wild braves . . . It was a matter of
course that in drawing Indian character he should dwell on the better
traits of the picture, rather than on the coarser and more revolting
though more common points. Like West, he could see the Apollo in the
young Mohawk."

When in July, 1826, Cooper landed in England with his wife and family,
he carried his Indian memories and associations with him. They crossed
to France, and ascended the Seine by steamboat, and then settled for a
time in Paris. Of their quarters there in the Rue St. Maur, Sarah
Fenimore Cooper writes:

"It was thoroughly French in character. There was a short, narrow,
gloomy lane or street, shut in between lofty dwelling houses, the lane
often dark, always filthy, without sidewalks, a gutter running through
the centre, over which, suspended from a rope, hung a dim oil lamp or
two--such was the Rue St. Maur, in the Faubourg St. Germain. It was a
gloomy approach certainly. But a tall porte cochere opened, and
suddenly the whole scene changed. Within those high walls, so
forbidding in aspect, there lay charming gardens, gay with parterres
of flowers, and shaded by noble trees, not only those belonging to the
house itself, but those of other adjoining dwellings of the same
character--one looked over park-like grounds covering some acres. The
hotel itself, standing on the street, was old, and built on a grand
scale; it had been the home of a French ducal family in the time of
Louis XIV. The rooms on the two lower floors were imposing and
spacious; with ceilings of great height, gilded wainscoting and
various quaint little medallion pictures of shepherds and
shepherdesses, and other fancies of the time of Madame de Sevigne.
Those little shepherds were supposed to have looked down upon /la mere
beaute/, and upon /la plus jolie fille de France/ as she danced her
incomparable minuets. Those grand saloons were now devoted to the
humble service of a school for young ladies. But on the third floor,
to which one ascended by a fine stone stairway, broad and easy, with
elaborate iron railings, there was a more simple set of rooms,
comfortably furnished, where the American family were pleasantly
provided for, in a home of their own. Unwilling to separate from his
children, who were placed at the school, the traveller adopted this
plan that he might be near them. One of the rooms, overlooking the
garden, and opening on a small terrace, became his study. He was soon
at work. In his writing-desk lay some chapters of a new novel. The MS.
had crossed the ocean with him, though but little had been added to
its pages during the wanderings of the English and French journeys."

When, some months later, the story appeared, its effect was immediate
on both sides the Atlantic. It is worth note that during his French
visit Cooper met Sir Walter Scott. Cooper was born at Burlington, New
Jersey, 15th Sept., 1789, and died at Cooperstown, New York (which
took its name from his father), 14th Sept., 1851.

The following is his literary record:

Precaution, 1820; The Spy, 1821; The Pioneers, 1823; The Pilot, 1823;
Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston, 1825; The Last of the
Mohicans, 1826; The Prairie, 1827; The Red Rover, 1828; Notions of the
Americans, 1828; The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, 1829; The Water-witch,
1830; The Bravo, 1831; The Heidenmauer, or the Benedictines, 1832; The
Headsman, 1833; A Letter to his Countrymen, 1834; The Monikins, 1835;
Sketches of Switzerland, 1836; Gleanings in Europe: 1837; (England)
1837; (Italy) 1838; The American Democrat, 1838; Homeward Bound, 1838;
The Chronicles of Cooperstown, 1838; Home as Found (Eve Effingham),
1839; History of the U. S. Navy, 1839; The Pathfinder, or the Inland
Sea, 1840; Mercedes of Castile, 1841; The Deerslayer, or the First
Warpath, 1841; The Two Admirals, 1842; The Wing-and-Wing (Jack o
Lantern), 1842; The Battle of Lake Erie, or Answers to Messrs. Burges,
Duer and Mackenzie, 1843; The French Governess; or, The Embroidered
Handkerchief, 1843; Richard Dale, 1843; Wyandotte, 1843; Ned Myers, or
Life before the Mast, 1843; Afloat and Ashore (Miles Wallingford, Lucy
Hardinge), two series, 1844; Proceedings of the Naval Court-Martial in
the Case of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, etc., 1844; Santanstoe, 1845;
The Chainbearer, 1846; Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers,
1846; The Red Skins, 1846; The Crater (Marks Reef), 1847; Captain
Spike, or the Islets of the Gulf, 1848; Jack Tier, or the Florida
Reefs, 1848; The Oak Openings, or the Bee-Hunter, 1848; The Sea Lions,
1849; The Ways of the Hour, 1850.

Ernest Rhys 1907

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

The geological formation of that portion of the American Union, which
lies between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, has given rise
to many ingenious theories. Virtually, the whole of this immense
region is a plain. For a distance extending nearly 1500 miles east and
west, and 600 north and south, there is scarcely an elevation worthy
to be called a mountain. Even hills are not common; though a good deal
of the face of the country has more or less of that "rolling"
character, which is described in the opening pages of this work.

There is much reason to believe, that the territory which now composes
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and a large portion of the country
west of the Mississippi, lay formerly under water. The soil of all the
former states has the appearance of an alluvial deposit; and isolated
rocks have been found, of a nature and in situations which render it
difficult to refute the opinion that they have been transferred to
their present beds by floating ice. This theory assumes that the Great
Lakes were the deep pools of one immense body of fresh water, which
lay too low to be drained by the irruption that laid bare the land.

It will be remembered that the French, when masters of the Canadas and
Louisiana, claimed the whole of the territory in question. Their
hunters and advanced troops held the first communications with the
savage occupants, and the earliest written accounts we possess of
these vast regions, are from the pens of their missionaries. Many
French words have, consequently, become of local use in this quarter
of America, and not a few names given in that language have been
perpetuated. When the adventurers, who first penetrated these wilds,
met, in the centre of the forests, immense plains, covered with rich
verdure or rank grasses, they naturally gave them the appellation of
meadows. As the English succeeded the French, and found a peculiarity
of nature, differing from all they had yet seen on the continent,
already distinguished by a word that did not express any thing in
their own language, they left these natural meadows in possession of
their title of convention. In this manner has the word "Prairie" been
adopted into the English tongue.

The American prairies are of two kinds. Those which lie east of the
Mississippi are comparatively small, are exceedingly fertile, and are
always surrounded by forests. They are susceptible of high
cultivation, and are fast becoming settled. They abound in Ohio,
Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. They labour under the disadvantages
of a scarcity of wood and water,--evils of a serious character, until
art has had time to supply the deficiencies of nature. As coal is said
to abound in all that region, and wells are generally successful, the
enterprise of the emigrants is gradually prevailing against these
difficulties.

The second description of these natural meadows lies west of the
Mississippi, at a distance of a few hundred miles from that river, and
is called the Great Prairies. They resemble the steppes of Tartary
more than any other known portion of Christendom; being, in fact, a
vast country, incapable of sustaining a dense population, in the
absence of the two great necessaries already named. Rivers abound, it
is true; but this region is nearly destitute of brooks and the smaller
water courses, which tend so much to comfort and fertility.

The origin and date of the Great American Prairies form one of natures
most majestic mysteries. The general character of the United States,
of the Canadas, and of Mexico, is that of luxuriant fertility. It
would be difficult to find another portion of the world, of the same
extent, which has so little useless land as the inhabited parts of the
American Union. Most of the mountains are arable, and even the
prairies, in this section of the republic, are of deep alluvion. The
same is true between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Between the
two lies the broad belt, of comparative desert, which is the scene of
this tale, appearing to interpose a barrier to the progress of the
American people westward.

The Great Prairies appear to be the final gathering place of the red
men. The remnants of the Mohicans, and the Delawares, of the Creeks,
Choctaws, and Cherokees, are destined to fulfil their time on these
vast plains. The entire number of the Indians, within the Union, is
differently computed, at between one and three hundred thousand souls.
Most of them inhabit the country west of the Mississippi. At the
period of the tale, they dwelt in open hostility; national feuds
passing from generation to generation. The power of the republic has
done much to restore peace to these wild scenes, and it is now
possible to travel in security, where civilised man did not dare to
pass unprotected five-and-twenty years ago.

The reader, who has perused the two former works, of which this is the
natural successor, will recognise an old acquaintance in the principal
character of the story. We have here brought him to his end, and we
trust he will be permitted to slumber in the peace of the just.

J F Cooper
Paris June 1832

THE PRAIRIE

CHAPTER I.

I pray thee, shepherd, if that love or gold,
Can in this desert place buy entertainment,
Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.
--As you like it.

Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of
adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense and but
half-tenanted territories of the United States. As the warmth of
controversy however subsided, and party considerations gave place to
more liberal views, the wisdom of the measure began to be generally
conceded. It soon became apparent to the meanest capacity, that, while
nature had placed a barrier of desert to the extension of our
population in the west, the measure had made us the masters of a belt
of fertile country, which, in the revolutions of the day, might have
become the property of a rival nation. It gave us the sole command of
the great thoroughfare of the interior, and placed the countless
tribes of savages, who lay along our borders, entirely within our
control; it reconciled conflicting rights, and quieted national
distrusts; it opened a thousand avenues to the inland trade, and to
the waters of the Pacific; and, if ever time or necessity shall
require a peaceful division of this vast empire, it assures us of a
neighbour that will possess our language, our religion, our
institutions, and it is also to be hoped, our sense of political
justice.

Although the purchase was made in 1803, the spring of the succeeding
year was permitted to open, before the official prudence of the
Spaniard, who held the province for his European master, admitted the
authority, or even of the entrance of its new proprietors. But the
forms of the transfer were no sooner completed, and the new government
acknowledged, than swarms of that restless people, which is ever found
hovering on the skirts of American society, plunged into the thickets
that fringed the right bank of the Mississippi, with the same careless
hardihood, as had already sustained so many of them in their toilsome
progress from the Atlantic states, to the eastern shores of the
"father of rivers."[*]

[*] The Mississippi is thus termed in several of the Indian languages.
The reader will gain a more just idea of the importance of this
stream, if he recalls to mind the fact, that the Missouri and the
Mississippi are properly the same river. Their united lengths
cannot be greatly short of four thousand miles.

Time was necessary to blend the numerous and affluent colonists of the
lower province with their new compatriots; but the thinner and more
humble population above, was almost immediately swallowed in the
vortex which attended the tide of instant emigration. The inroad from
the east was a new and sudden out-breaking of a people, who had
endured a momentary restraint, after having been rendered nearly
resistless by success. The toils and hazards of former undertakings
were forgotten, as these endless and unexplored regions, with all
their fancied as well as real advantages, were laid open to their
enterprise. The consequences were such as might easily have been
anticipated, from so tempting an offering, placed, as it was, before
the eyes of a race long trained in adventure and nurtured in
difficulties.

Thousands of the elders, of what were then called the New States[*],
broke up from the enjoyment of their hard-earned indulgences, and were
to be seen leading long files of descendants, born and reared in the
forests of Ohio and Kentucky, deeper into the land, in quest of that
which might be termed, without the aid of poetry, their natural and
more congenial atmosphere. The distinguished and resolute forester who
first penetrated the wilds of the latter state, was of the number.
This adventurous and venerable patriarch was now seen making his last
remove; placing the "endless river" between him and the multitude his
own success had drawn around him, and seeking for the renewal of
enjoyments which were rendered worthless in his eyes, when trammelled
by the forms of human institutions.[+]

[*] All the states admitted to the American Union, since the
revolution, are called New States, with the exception of Vermont:
that had claims before the war; which were not, however, admitted
until a later day.

[+] Colonel Boon, the patriarch of Kentucky. This venerable and hardy
pioneer of civilisation emigrated to an estate three hundred miles
west of the Mississippi, in his ninety-second year, because he
found a population of ten to the square mile, inconveniently
crowded!

In the pursuit of adventures such as these, men are ordinarily
governed by their habits or deluded by their wishes. A few, led by the
phantoms of hope, and ambitious of sudden affluence, sought the mines
of the virgin territory; but by far the greater portion of the
emigrants were satisfied to establish themselves along the margins of
the larger water-courses, content with the rich returns that the
generous, alluvial, bottoms of the rivers never fail to bestow on the
most desultory industry. In this manner were communities formed with
magical rapidity; and most of those who witnessed the purchase of the
empty empire, have lived to see already a populous and sovereign
state, parcelled from its inhabitants, and received into the bosom of
the national Union, on terms of political equality.

The incidents and scenes which are connected with this legend,
occurred in the earliest periods of the enterprises which have led to
so great and so speedy a result.

The harvest of the first year of our possession had long been passed,
and the fading foliage of a few scattered trees was already beginning
to exhibit the hues and tints of autumn, when a train of wagons issued
from the bed of a dry rivulet, to pursue its course across the
undulating surface, of what, in the language of the country of which
we write, is called a "rolling prairie." The vehicles, loaded with
household goods and implements of husbandry, the few straggling sheep
and cattle that were herded in the rear, and the rugged appearance and
careless mien of the sturdy men who loitered at the sides of the
lingering teams, united to announce a band of emigrants seeking for
the Elderado of the West. Contrary to the usual practice of the men of
their caste, this party had left the fertile bottoms of the low
country, and had found its way, by means only known to such
adventurers, across glen and torrent, over deep morasses and arid
wastes, to a point far beyond the usual limits of civilised
habitations. In their front were stretched those broad plains, which
extend, with so little diversity of character, to the bases of the
Rocky Mountains; and many long and dreary miles in their rear, foamed
the swift and turbid waters of La Platte.

The appearance of such a train, in that bleak and solitary place, was
rendered the more remarkable by the fact, that the surrounding country
offered so little, that was tempting to the cupidity of speculation,
and, if possible, still less that was flattering to the hopes of an
ordinary settler of new lands.

The meagre herbage of the prairie, promised nothing, in favour of a
hard and unyielding soil, over which the wheels of the vehicles
rattled as lightly as if they travelled on a beaten road; neither
wagons nor beasts making any deeper impression, than to mark that
bruised and withered grass, which the cattle plucked, from time to
time, and as often rejected, as food too sour, for even hunger to
render palatable.

Whatever might be the final destination of these adventurers, or the
secret causes of their apparent security in so remote and unprotected
a situation, there was no visible sign of uneasiness, uncertainty, or
alarm, among them. Including both sexes, and every age, the number of
the party exceeded twenty.

At some little distance in front of the whole, marched the individual,
who, by his position and air, appeared to be the leader of the band.
He was a tall, sun-burnt, man, past the middle age, of a dull
countenance and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and
flexible; but it was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was,
only at moments, however, as some slight impediment opposed itself to
his loitering progress, that his person, which, in its ordinary gait
seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies,
which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but
terrible, strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his
countenance were coarse, extended and vacant; while the superior, or
those nobler parts which are thought to affect the intellectual being,
were low, receding and mean.

The dress of this individual was a mixture of the coarsest vestments
of a husbandman with the leathern garments, that fashion as well as
use, had in some degree rendered necessary to one engaged in his
present pursuits. There was, however, a singular and wild display of
prodigal and ill judged ornaments, blended with his motley attire. In
place of the usual deer-skin belt, he wore around his body a tarnished
silken sash of the most gaudy colours; the buck-horn haft of his knife
was profusely decorated with plates of silver; the marten's fur of his
cap was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the
buttons of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering
coinage of Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of beautiful mahogany,
riveted and banded with the same precious metal, and the trinkets of
no less than three worthless watches dangled from different parts of
his person. In addition to the pack and the rifle which were slung at
his back, together with the well filled, and carefully guarded pouch
and horn, he had carelessly cast a keen and bright wood-axe across his
shoulder, sustaining the weight of the whole with as much apparent
ease, as if he moved, unfettered in limb, and free from incumbrance.

A short distance in the rear of this man, came a group of youths very
similarly attired, and bearing sufficient resemblance to each other,
and to their leader, to distinguish them as the children of one
family. Though the youngest of their number could not much have passed
the period, that, in the nicer judgment of the law, is called the age
of discretion, he had proved himself so far worthy of his progenitors
as to have reared already his aspiring person to the standard height
of his race. There were one or two others, of different mould, whose
descriptions must however be referred to the regular course of the
narrative.

Of the females, there were but two who had arrived at womanhood;
though several white-headed, olive-skinned faces were peering out of
the foremost wagon of the train, with eyes of lively curiosity and
characteristic animation. The elder of the two adults, was the sallow
and wrinkled mother of most of the party, and the younger was a
sprightly, active, girl, of eighteen, who in figure, dress, and mien,
seemed to belong to a station in society several gradations above that
of any one of her visible associates. The second vehicle was covered
with a top of cloth so tightly drawn, as to conceal its contents, with
the nicest care. The remaining wagons were loaded with such rude
furniture and other personal effects, as might be supposed to belong
to one, ready at any moment to change his abode, without reference to
season or distance.

Perhaps there was little in this train, or in the appearance of its
proprietors, that is not daily to be encountered on the highways of
this changeable and moving country. But the solitary and peculiar
scenery, in which it was so unexpectedly exhibited, gave to the party
a marked character of wildness and adventure.

In the little valleys, which, in the regular formation of the land,
occurred at every mile of their progress, the view was bounded, on two
of the sides, by the gradual and low elevations, which gave name to
the description of prairie we have mentioned; while on the others, the
meagre prospect ran off in long, narrow, barren perspectives, but
slightly relieved by a pitiful show of coarse, though somewhat
luxuriant vegetation. From the summits of the swells, the eye became
fatigued with the sameness and chilling dreariness of the landscape.
The earth was not unlike the Ocean, when its restless waters are
heaving heavily, after the agitation and fury of the tempest have
begun to lessen. There was the same waving and regular surface, the
same absence of foreign objects, and the same boundless extent to the
view. Indeed so very striking was the resemblance between the water
and the land, that, however much the geologist might sneer at so
simple a theory, it would have been difficult for a poet not to have
felt, that the formation of the one had been produced by the subsiding
dominion of the other. Here and there a tall tree rose out of the
bottoms, stretching its naked branches abroad, like some solitary
vessel; and, to strengthen the delusion, far in the distance, appeared
two or three rounded thickets, looming in the misty horizon like
islands resting on the waters. It is unnecessary to warn the practised
reader, that the sameness of the surface, and the low stands of the
spectators, exaggerated the distances; but, as swell appeared after
swell, and island succeeded island, there was a disheartening
assurance that long, and seemingly interminable, tracts of territory
must be passed, before the wishes of the humblest agriculturist could
be realised.

Still, the leader of the emigrants steadily pursued his way, with no
other guide than the sun, turning his back resolutely on the abodes of
civilisation, and plunging, at each step, more deeply if not
irretrievably, into the haunts of the barbarous and savage occupants
of the country. As the day drew nigher to a close, however, his mind,
which was, perhaps, incapable of maturing any connected system of
forethought, beyond that which related to the interests of the present
moment, became, in some slight degree, troubled with the care of
providing for the wants of the hours of darkness.

On reaching the crest of a swell that was a little higher than the
usual elevations, he lingered a minute, and cast a half curious eye,
on either hand, in quest of those well known signs, which might
indicate a place, where the three grand requisites of water, fuel and
fodder were to be obtained in conjunction.

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