came to a reach where " the water is
brackish ; after advancing on we discover-
ed an open sea, so that on April 9, with
all due solemnity, we performed the cere-
mony of phanting the cross and raising
the arms of France." La Salle did not
think he was preparing an empire for his
country's greatest rival, to be occupied by
the children of the Englishman.
Throughout colonial history romance and
adventure still hung about the great river
and its tributaries. In 1699 came the first
French settlers on the coast, and a few
283
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL
years la+er they founded a city known
throughout the world, and named after
their own beloved town of Orleans.
Fifty years later a wave of English
settlement eame rolling up above the crest
of the Alleghanies, and began to flow
into the country of the " Belle Riviere,"
the Ohio River, still beautiful where fac-
tories, mines, and coal-dust permit.
Pioneer, surveyor, commander, and popu-
lar leader, came the young George Wash-
ington across the water-shed into the Mis-
sissippi Valley, the first English officer to
be captured by the enemy in 1754, the last
to leave the field after Braddock's defeat in
1755; and the brave and canny Virginian
fo much admired what he saw of the coun-
try that he acquired 40,000 acres upon the
Little Kanawha and the Ohio. " What
inducement have men to explore unin-
habited wilds," said he, " but the prospect
of getting good land ?" Into the valley
penetrated also Daniel Boone in 1769.
farthest wall of the Rocky Mountains,
passed Lewis and Clark, first of white men
to find the road from the waters of the
Mississippi to the waters of the Colum-
bia. On Aug. 12, 1805, they reached the
point where one of the party bestrode the
Missouri River, up which they had labor-
ed so many months, and just beyond was
the long-sought western rim of the valley.
From the year 1715, when France and
England went mad over a Mississippi
bubble, down to the present time, the
Mississippi has been a household word
throughout the civilized world. Ships
of Marseilles, ships of Bordeaux, ships of
Bremen, ships of Liverpool, set their course
for the mouth of the Mississippi, that
they may bring eager immigrants into
the promised land; and the stolid peasant
in Bohemia or Hungary lays down his
guldens for a slip of pasteboard upon
which are printed the talismanic words
" New York — St. Louis — Kansas City —
s
$£
3swsii«?Upvtq|oft^— â–
U1SCOVEKHR
" My wife and daughter," said he, " be- Helena." Into a land which a century
ing the first white women that ever stood ago had not 100,000 people has converged
on the banks of the Kentucke River." In a stream of settlers from East, South, and
1803 to 180G, across the Mississippi Val- North, heaping up activity and prosperity
ley, all the way from Washington to the as the meteors are said to sustain the heat
284
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL
of the sun into which they fall. Moun-
tains have been no barrier, and a civil
war could not tear apart the northern and
the southern halves of the great valley.
When in 1790 Congress was discussing
the question of a permanent seat of gov-
ernment, Mr. Vining, of Delaware, favored
the lower Potomac:
" From thence, it appears to me, the
rays of government will most naturally
diverge to the extremities of the Union. I
declare that I look on the Western terri-
tory in an awful and striking point of
view. To that region the unpolished sons
of earth are flowing from all quarters —
men to whom the protection of the laws
and the controlling force of the govern-
ment are equally necessary. From this
great consideration I conclude that the
banks of the Potomac are the proper
station."
Mr. Vining was justified in looking upon
the colonization of the West with un-
easiness; for few parts of the earth have
so heterogeneous a population; when he
spoke, there were already within those
territories the then numerous, fierce, and
warlike Indians, numerous settlements of
French people in the Illinois country and
in the Mississippi, and Spanish garrisons
and colonists on the lower Mississippi;
men of English race had already brought
Kentucky and Tennessee almost to the
point of statehood; and negro slaves were
to be found in most of the settlements,
by their presence slowly preparing for
the great catastrophe of the Civil
War.
In 1787 began the never-ceasing cur-
rent of immigrants into the Mississippi
Valley from the Eastern States; through
the Mohawk Valley to the Western Re-
serve; through southern Pennsylvania to
the Ohio; through Virginia to Kentucky
and Tennessee — a steady procession of
stalwart men and stout-hearted women;
and still the same procession is in motion.
About 1830 began the great western move-
ment of foreign immigrants, which has
grown till in 1890 there were 280,000 Ger-
mans in Wisconsin, 150,000 Irish in Illi-
nois, 220,000 Scandinavians in Minnesota,
140,000 English-born in Michigan, and
more than 400,000 Slavs in the Northwest-
ern States together. In the State of
Minnesota only one-fourth of the people
in 1890 were born even of American par-
ents. The foreign passer-by in the streets
of Cincinnati, or St. Louis, or Kansas
City, may well say with the Jews of old
time : " And how hear we every man in
our own tongue, wherein we were born?
ParthiaHS, and Medes, and Elamites, and
the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Ju-
dea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,
Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and
in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and
strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,
Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them
speak in our tongues."
These inflowing streams of immigration
have combined with the rapid rate of nat-
ural increase to raise the population more
rapidly than in any similar area in the
world. In 1810 the dwellers in the Mis-
sissippi Valley numbered about 1,000,000,
in 1850 they were 8,000,000, in 1890 about
28,000,000; to-day they are probably 35,-
000,000. Cincinnati was in 1830 already
a flourishing town with some pretence to
refined civilization; and fifty years ago
the railway from the East had almost
reached Chicago. Now half the population
of the Union lives in the Mississippi basin,
and of this half about one-fourth lives in
cities.
The population has not only been dis-
tributed, it has been redistributed. From
the earliest settlement to the present day
there is to be found a race of men the
birthplaces of whose children mark their
temporary resting-places as they moved
from State to State. Thus flowing back
and forth, northward and southward,
westward and eastward, pass the units of
population, exchanging experiences, knock-
ing off prejudices, and coming to a com-
mon understanding and a sympathy of
man with man, which may ignore State
boundaries, but kneads the people into a
homogeneous nation.
The word " wealth " seems to carry with
it a rattling of silver dollars and the
crisp crackle of fresh coupon bonds; or,
at least, it suggests the dark facades of
towering buildings, and train-loads and
steamer-cargoes of valuable goods. All
these the Mississippi Valley has in plenty,
and it had them all potentially before ever
a bank opened its doors in the West or
a locomotive whistle shrieked; for the ac-
cumulations have all come from the face
HART, ALBERT BXJSHNELL
of the land and the depths of the earth
beneath. The first gift of the Almighty
to this favored land was its soil — the rich
lower slopes of the Alleghanies, the great
timbered regions of the eastern and south-
ern valley, and the inestimable prairie
soil of the broad Western States. No-
where in the world is there a better water-
ed land; little streams everywhere abound
and there is a copious rainfall up to the
foot-hills of the Rockies. In all the
region crinkled by the North American
ice-sheets, lovely lakes abound. As the
Kentuckian poor white reverently said of
his own neighborhood: " Natur' has made
ponds up on the mounting." Even on
the long and desolate eastern slopes of the
Rockies some few places are made to blos-
som by irrigating canals.
Next in value comes the timber. Birk-
beck saw in southern Ohio walnut-trees
" almost 7 feet in diameter, green
and straight as an arrow," and thousands
of white-oak trees " measuring 14 or 15
feet in circumference; every tree stands
upright without a branch to the height
of 70 or 80 feet." Most of these trees
were burned where they were felled or were
rolled into the streams to be rid of
them; but they furnished comfortable
homes for three generations of men, and
some of the largest fortunes in the West
have been sawed out of the forests on
the upper Mississippi.
Below the surface of the ground lies
the coal, which takes its revenge for its
displacement by fouling the homes of the
men who exploit it; the limestone, which
PIONBBRS FARMING.
HART, ALBERT BTJSHNELL
HIGH WATER, MISSISSIPPI.
tears from the ore that earthy part which ever known; and the cities, however un-
prevents it from becoming iron; and kempt and grimy, give more comfort for
much of the iron ore from which comes the artisan and his family than can any-
the universal steel tree, yielding branch- where else be found.
es in every shape and for every pur- Prairie soil, coal, bridges, and great
pose. Far to the west, in the heart of the buildings crammed with dry goods, are
Rockies, the mountains cover gold, silver, wealth, but they may not be civilization,
and the copper slave of the electric lamp. Among a certain class of Americans
The wealth that comes from above the there is a habit of wagging the head at
ground is vastly greater than the min- the broad West, of accusing it of more
eral. A large part of the valley abounds devotion to hog and hominy than to the
in grazing regions and raises an immense development and culture of the race. Un-
bay crop. The great staple, corn, nourish- til a few years ago this gibe had some
es on almost every square mile of the foundation, for the first element in the un-
valley. The wheat belt follows the line tiring contest with nature was the tam-
of the North American ice-sheet; and far- ing of the wilderness, the housing of
ther south is the best and the largest the settler, the clothing of children, and
cotton-field in the world, every year ex- the preparation of a stock of food that
panding in area and importance; while might last until the next year. Rough-
the Louisiana sugar - planter, when the hewn and often forbidding was the West
sound of the grinding is low, ruminates of three-quarters of a century ago, and
upon the tariff. In the single year 1895 still more the Southwest. Can it be only
the corn product of the United States sixty-four years ago that Featherstone-
( mostly raised in the Mississippi Valley) haugh, upon an Arkansas stream, saw
was more than 2,000,000,000 bushels; the his steamer boarded by a gang of passen-
wheat crop was 467,000,000 bushels; and gers, including two officers of the regular
the total value of the cereal crop was over army? "The effect produced on us was
$1,000,000,000. something like that which would be made
To move these fruits of the earth and upon passengers in a peaceful vessel for-
sky, the country is gridironed with rail- cibly boarded by pirates of the most des-
roads; and the rivers, which once were perate character, whose manners seemed
the usual highways, have now ceased even to be what they aspired to imitate. Rush-
to be impediments to travel, for they are ing into the cabin, all but red-hot with
everywhere spanned with strong and ex- whiskey, they crowded round the stove,
pensive bridges. The farm buildings and excluded all the old passengers from
throughout the northern valley are, with- it as much as if they had no right what-
out doubt, the best houses for an agri- ever to be in the cabin. Putting on a de-
cultural population that the world has termined, bullying air of doing what they
287
HAET, ALBERT BUSHNELL
pleased because they were in the majority,
and armed with pistols and knives ex-
pressly made for cutting and stabbing,
8 inches long and iy 2 inches broad, noise,
confusion, spitting, smoking, cursing, and
swearing, drawn from the most remorse-
less pages of blasphemy, commenced and
prevailed from the moment of this in-
vasion." In 1830 Flint, a keen observer,
was struck by the multiplicity of " float-
ing river monsters," keel-boats, slow boats,
sleds, mackinaw skiffs, common skiffs, ca-
noes, dug-outs, horse-boats, broad-horns,
and Kentucky flats, that he predicted that
" the inhabitants will ultimately become
celebrated as the Chinese for having
their habitancy in boats." Until the rail-
roads penetrated far into the West the
Mississippi Valley was simply a broad
frontier, with all the frontier tumult,
coarseness, uproar, and also with all the
alertness and vigor and self - confidence
of an infant commonwealth.
Crude were the conditions of the West-
ern settler. Take, as an example, an In-
diana hunter in 1818: " The cabin in which
he entertained us is the third building he
has built within the last twelve months,
and a very slender motive would place
him in a fourth before the ensuing win-
ter; he is incarcerated, shut 'from the
common air,' buried in the depths of the
boundless forest; the breeze of health
never reaches these poor wanderers; the
broad prospect of distant hills having
faded away, the semblance of clouds nev-
er cheered their sight; they are tall and
pale, like vegetables that grow in a vault
pining for light."
Even the religious life half a century
ago was crude and emotional. Peter Cart-
Avright, the political rival of Abraham
Lincoln, and a real intellectual and moral
force, gives us a vivid picture of the home
missionary's life at a time when all the
clergy were practically home missionaries.
Starting in 1S16 as a travelling preach-
er, on a nominal allowance of " eighty
dollars a year, and a few dollars over
made as marriage fees"; preaching four
hundred times a year, and receiving con-
verts who " jumped from bench to bench,
knocking the people against one another
on the right and left, front and rear."
Even to this day the " Old-Two-Seed-in-the
Spirit Predestinarian Baptists " have thou-
sands of members in the Mississippi
States.
Education was long a crude affair, and
a boy like Abraham Lincoln found " some
schools, so-called, but no qualification was
ever required of a teacher beyond ' read-
in', writin', and cipherin' ' to the rule of
three. If a straggler supposed to under-
stand Latin happened to sojourn in the
neighborhood, he was looked upon as a
wizard. There was absolutely nothing to
stimulate ambition for education." Thp
LOW WATER, MISSISSIPPI.
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL
earliest university, Western Reserve,
founded at Hudson, Ohio, to be a Western
Yale, was for many years a small school,
and in the class of 1840 there were but
five graduates. But just as great and
beautiful cities have sprung from the
prairies and in the midst of the forests,
so out of these troublesome and ignorant
conditions came a master of English style
like Abraham Lincoln.
So far as intellectual appliances were
concerned, the great West
grew very slowly and
from small beginnings.
James Hall, in 1835, at-
tempted to gather some
of the traditions of the
past into his Sketches of
the West, and edited a
magazine — The Western
Souvenir — and about the
same time Timothy Flint
began to publish his
Western Monthly Review.
Newspapers there were
in plenty. About 1830, in
the little city of Cincin-
nati, regularly appeared
the semi-weekly Liberty
Ball and the Cincinnati
Gazette, the National
Republican and Cincin-
nati Advertiser, the week-
ly Emporium and Inde-
pendent Press, and one
daily, the Commercial
Advertiser. To this day
many parts of remote re-
gions like Arkansas and
the Mississippi lowlands
are less civilized than the
Ohio of seventy years
ago. In reformatory and
charitable institutions
the Mississippi Valley
has learned slowly. Our frontier great-
grandfathers were frankly cruel — cruel
to their children, cruel to their ap-
prentices, cruel to the insane, cruel
to the paupers, cruel to convicts, and
cruel to slaves. The border fights and
gougings of the West shocked foreign
and Eastern travellers, and Fearon has
preserved a handbill of 1818 describing
an " extraordinary fight of furious ani-
mals " in New Orleans :
IV. — T 2
"1st Fight — A strong Attakapas Bull, at-
tacked and subdued by 6ix of the strongest
dogs iu the country
"2d Fight— Six Bulldogs against a Canadiau
Bear.
"3d Fight — A beautiful Tiger against a black
Bear.
"4th Fight — Twelve dogs against a strong
and furious Opelousas Bull."
The political effect of the Mississippi
Valley upon the Union and its policy is
a story yet to be written. The great
A BIT OP OLD NEW ORLEANS.
slavery contest set North against South,
and this obscured the normal coherence
and weight of the central Western States.
Perhaps the first evidence of the political
influence of the valley was the intense
desire of the people of the United States
to occupy it; Rogers Clark in 1778 was a
herald of national interest in the West.
The earliest settlers on the head-waters
of the Tennessee and the Cumberland in-
stinctively saw that their highway was the
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL
Mississippi and their gateway was New States, as well as of manufacturing corn-
Orleans; and the annexation of Louisiana munities like Ohio and Illinois,
was from the first as inevitable as the If there be one distinct American prin-
plunge of the waters over Niagara. It ciple, it is that of political equality; and
was not in human power to keep the east- political equality is distinctly a Western
era and the western banks of the Mis- and not an Eastern or a Southern idea,
sissippi apart from each other; and in In none of the colonies was there man-
the cession of west Florida and Texas hood suffrage; in none of the early States
the edge of the great valley was rounded was there an expectation that numbers
out and became a part of the Unit- would rule. It was on the frontier, the
ed States. Thus the Mississippi Valley, ever-advancing frontier, for many years
from 17S3 to 1845, was well accustom- identical with the West, that the princi-
ed to schemes of annexation; and perhaps pie became practical. That influence has
for that reason the influence of Western spread eastward and modified the coast
sentiment has been in favor of the communities; but it is a Western concep-
increase of the Union by taking terri- tion; it affects France and makes headway
tory on the Pacific and in outlying isl- in England; but it is even now stronger
ands. in the Mississippi Valley than in the di-
Several other great lines of public poli- rect offshoots of England — Canada and
cy have been dominated, if not created, by Australia.
the West. The first and second United This brief sketch of the historical con-
States Banks were Eastern concerns ditions of the Mississippi Valley is neces-
founded by Eastern and foreign capital, sary if we are to avoid mere guess and
and the West instinctively disliked them speculation in pointing out the probable
both; hence Jackson, in his war upon the future of the region. What is the like-
bank, was in a way a champion of the lihood that the population of the Missis-
Mississippi Valley against the Atlantic sippi Valley will continue to increase?
coast, and to this day there is a feeling The problem is chiefly one of making the
of rivalry, or rather of injury, in the land available; for there is little danger
minds of the people of the West against of the calamity of rapine, familiar pas-
what they believe to be an undue times which have depopulated like areas
advantage of Eastern capital, a feeling in Europe and Asia. Nowhere in the
which is as yet too little understood or world are the conditions of subsistence
heeded by the older sections of the more favorable, for the fertility of the soil
Union. and the variety of climate make possible
Internal improvements are a Western an unequalled food-supply, which so far
necessity, and the expenditure of national has sufficed not only for the people of the
money upon roads and canals has always valley, but for their brethren on the sea-
commended itself to the West. That the coast and for millions of Europeans. For
system of river and harbor improvement, many years to come this food-supply can
neglected by Jefferson, disliked by Madi- be steadily increased, both by opening up
son, vetoed by Monroe, frowned upon by hitherto unfilled lands and by more in-
Jackson, set back by Polk and Pierce and tensive culture. Although the best arable
Buchanan, should nevertheless have be- government lands have long since passed
ccme a permanent part of the national into the hands of settlers, there are still
activities is a striking proof of the im- immense tracts of railroad lands not yet
mense political force of the West. The occupied; and, especially in the South,
protective tariff has also for many years quantities of excellent land have never
owed its strength in the country to the been cleared and submitted to the plough.
Western vote; the attitude of Kentucky There i-s, of course, a limit to the number
and Ohio made possible the tariffs of of people whom the soil will actually sup-
1816, 1828, and 1832; and the revival of port. In the similar Yang-tse-Kiang and
the protective system at the beginning of Hoan? - Ho valleys in China about 300,-
the Civil War, and its continuance at the 000,000 people live from an area about as
present day, have depended upon the votes large as the Mississippi Valley. When we
of the great Northwestern agricultural compare means of transportation in China
290
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL
with those in the Mississippi Valley, when ulation, the immigrants are already be-
we see how easy it is in America to send coming fewer every year; and a generation
a surplus from one district to supply a hence, when the children of the Pole and
deficiency in another, when we consider Hungarian, the Italian, the Dane, the
the enormous credit facilities which en- Greek, and the Armenian, have been fused
able the community to endure one or two, in the crucible of the public schools, and
or even three, years of bad crops without shaped by the mutual hammering of play-
starvation anywhere, there seems to be no mates and friends, the population of the
reason why the Mississippi Valley may not valley will be more distinctly American —
some time contain a population of 350,000,- not the old American descended almost
000 comfortable people, or ten times its wholly from English ancestors, but a vig-
piesent number. The difficult problem is orous, active, and probably open-minded
not to raise sufficient crops, but to keep composite American. The negro problem
upon the land a sufficient number of per- is serious in only half a dozen of the val-
sons to till it; but the Mississippi Valley ley States, and does not hem in the future
is the home of a most skilful system of of the Mississippi basin as it does that of
machinery, which amplifies the labor of the South Atlantic States.
the farmer twentyfold. The greatest checks to the rapid in-
Certainly the West will always be able crease of the population of nations in the
to clothe itself. Its immense cotton- history of the world have been famine,
fields already furnish hundreds of millions disease, and war. The days have passed
of yards of " fabric for men and women ; when a Texan could curiously inquire :
its cattle - ranges prepare for everybody " What do these people in New York mean
a leathern carpet between the foot and by talking about people starving to death ?
the too-adherent soil; and if its sheep Doesn't any darned fool know enough to
still shyly hold back from the encourage- take his rifle and shoot a beef critter when
ment of the wool schedules in the tariff, he's hungry?" So far as we can look into
the West has always a surplus of food the future, there will be bread and to
products and manufactured goods, with spare for the children of this great house-
which it may buy its woollen clothing hold. Epidemics and disease may sweep
from other lands. through the country; since the days of La
The problem of immigration is different. Salle fever and ague has been the bane
The free land which drew hundreds of of every community in the Mississippi
thousands of Scandinavians, Germans, and Valley, except the one in which you hap-