Edmund Flagg

“ To obtain the power, in the absence of their warriors, to massacre all the women and children of the Pawnees! And in effect they carried off the scalps of ninety victims, and made prisoners of all whom they did not think proper to kill. In their eyes, revenge, far from being a horrible vice, is the first of virtues, the distinctive mark of great souls, and a complete vindication of the most atrocious cruelty. It would be time lost to attempt to persuade them that there can be neither merit, nor glory, in the murder of a disarmed and helpless foe. ”

“ We often met in the neighborhood of the several encampments of the tribe, majestic torrents, forests with trees that have been growing for ages, 46 and pastures covered with the traveller's tea, which, although trampled by numberless horses, embalms the air with its delightful fragrance. [125] We continually beheld a grand succession of lofty mountains; some delighted the sight by their blooming verdure and the imposing appearance of the woods that crowned their summits, while others, as red as brick, bore the impressions of some great convulsion of nature. ”

“ It is in the heart of the Rocky Mountains that the Missouri takes its rise, together with many other magnificent streams; such as "the Father of Waters," into whose bosom it flows, after having fertilised its own borders to a vast extent,—the Arkansas, and the Red river, both, like itself, majestic tributaries; the Columbia, which becomes the reservoir of all the waters of the Oregon territory, and the Rio Colorado which after winding its course through a gloomy and rocky desert, invigorates the most beautiful part of California. ”

“ What a solitude, with its horrors and dangers! but it possesses one real advantage: with death constantly before our eyes, we irresistibly feel, without the possibility of illusion, that we are entirely in the hands of God, without any support but Him, without any other refuge than his paternal providence; it is then easy to make to Him the sacrifice of a life which belongs less to us than to the first savage who wishes to take it, and to form the most generous resolutions of which man is capable. ”

“ I will here observe, that in these immense solitudes, although the howling of wolves, the hissing of venomous serpents, the roaring of the tiger and the bear be calculated to affright, yet this terror is nothing in comparison with the dread excited in the traveller's soul, upon seeing the fresh tracks of men and horses, or columns of smoke rising in the neighborhood. At such a sight, the escort at once assembles and deliberates; each one examines his fire-arms, sharpens his knife and the point of his arrow, and makes, in a word, every preparation for a resistance, even to death ”

“ The pictures of the way of the Cross, in red frames; the lights, the silence of night, the approach of the important day, the calm after the hurricane, which had burst on them only a few moments before—all these circumstances united, had, with the grace of God, so well disposed the minds and hearts of our Indians, that it would have been scarcely possible to find on earth an assembly of savages more resembling a company of saints. This was the beautiful bouquet which the Fathers were permitted to present to Saint Francis Xavier. ”

“ We had scarcely alighted, when all on a sudden a tremendous yell alarmed us, and from the top of the hill under which we were, the Black-feet darted upon us like lightning. "Why do you hide yourselves?" asked the Chief, in a stern voice. "Are you afraid of us?" Dressed in my cassock with a crucifix on my breast,—a costume I always wear in the Indian country,—it appeared to me that I was the subject of his particular enquiry. He asked the Canadian what kind of a man I was. The Frenchman said I was a Chief, a Black-gown, the man who spoke to the Great Spirit. ”

“ I imagined, in my first terror, that the Pawnees, conspiring to dispute with us the passage over their lands, had assembled around our camp, and that these lugubrious cries were their signal of attack.—"Where are we," said I, abruptly, to my guide. "Hark ye!—Rest easy," he replied, laying down again in his bed; "we have nothing to fear; it is the wolves that are howling with joy, after their long winter's hunger: they are making a great meal to-night on the carcasses of the buffalos, which our huntsmen have left after them on the plain." ”

“ When the blood had ceased to flow, the greater sacrificator approached the expiring victim, and to crown so many atrocious acts, tore out her heart with his own hands, and after uttering the most frightful imprecations against the Scioux nation, devoured the bleeding flesh, amid the acclamations of his whole tribe. The mangled remains were then left to be preyed upon by wild beasts, and when the blood had been sprinkled on the seed, to render it fertile, all retired to their cabins, cheered with the hope of obtaining a copious harvest. ”

“ If arrested for a moment, its accumulated waters proudly swell and mount as though instinct with life, and the next moment dash triumphantly on, enveloping the half smothered waves that preceded them as if impatient of their sluggish course, and wild to speed them on their way. Along the shore, on every projecting point, the Indian fisherman takes his stand, spreading in the eddies his ingeniously worked net, and in a short time procures for himself an abundant supply of fine fish. ”

“ From Chester, in a direction not far from north, a narrow pathway winds along beneath the bluffs, among the tall cane-brakes of the bottom. Leaving the Mississippi at the mouth of the Kaskaskia, it runs along the low banks of the latter stream, and begins to assume an aspect truly delightful. Upon either side rise the shafts of enormous sycamores to the altitude of an hundred feet, and then, flinging abroad and interlacing their long branches, form a living arch of exquisite beauty, stretching away in unbroken luxuriance for miles. ”

“ Many of these Indian nations actually thirst after the waters of life—sigh for the day when the real "Long Gown" is to appear among them, and even send messengers thousands of miles to hasten his coming. Such longing after God's holy truth, while it shames our colder piety, should also enflame every heart to pray fervently that laborers may be found for this vast vineyard—and open every hand to aid the holy, self-devoted men, who, leaving home and friends and country, have buried themselves in these wilds with their beloved Indians, to live for them and God. ”

“ We had need of provisions, fire-arms, implements of every kind, waggons, guides, a good hunter, an experienced captain,—in a word, whatever becomes necessary when one has to traverse a desert of eight hundred leagues, and expects nothing but formidable obstacles to surmount, and thieving, and sometimes murderous, enemies to combat,—and swamps, ravines and rivers to cross, and mountains to climb, whose craggy and precipitous sides suddenly arrest our progress, compelling us to drag our beasts of burden up their steep ascents. ”

“ Upon all this vast Valley of the West the terrible impress of Almighty power seems planted in characters too deep to be swept away by the effacing finger of time. We trace them not more palpably in these fearful results of the convulsions of Nature, agonized by the tread of Deity, than in the eternal flow of those gigantic rivers which roll their floods over this wreck of elements, or in those ocean-plains which, upon either side, in billowy grandeur heave away, wave after wave, till lost in the magnificence of 223 boundless extent. ”

“ Finding every where such good dispositions, I resolved, notwithstanding the approach of winter and frequent attacks of fever, in order to second the visible designs of the divine mercy in favor of so many souls, to commence my journey across the immense ocean of mountains and prairies. I have travelled without any other guide than a compass, without any protection from nations hostile to the whites, but a veteran from Ghent, formerly a grenadier of the Empire, any other provisions in an arid desert, than what powder and ball and a strong confidence in God might procure us. ”

“ That this region should be subject to disease and death is a circumstance by no means singular. Indeed, it seems only unaccountable to the traveller that it may be inhabited at all. A soil of such astonishing depth and fertility, veiled from the purifying influences of the sun by the rank luxuriance of its vegetation, in the stifling sultriness of midsummer sends forth vast quantities of mephitic vapour fatal to life; while the decay of the enormous vegetables poisons the atmosphere with putrid exhalations. ”

“ We have seldom met any thing more entertaining. Its simple, manly eloquence enchants the attention. The facts it makes known to us of the "far, far West," the dispositions and habits of the Indian Tribes who roam over the vast region of the Oregon, their present state and future prospects, are such as cannot fail to awaken lively interest in all who love to look around them beyond the narrow horizon of every-day scenes, and learn what the holy servants of God are doing for His sake and in His name in distant parts of the world. ”

“ All is NEW. The very soil on which he treads, fertile beyond comparison, and festering beneath the undisturbed vegetation of centuries; the rolling forests, bright, luxuriant, gorgeous as on the dawn of creation; the endless streams pouring onward in their fresh magnificence to the ocean, all seem new. The inhabitants are emigrants late from other lands, and every operation of human skill on which the eye may rest betrays a recent origin. ”

“ In our way from Ramee, the sojourn of the Sheyennes, to the Green River, where the Flat Heads were waiting for me, we successively passed the Black Hills, which owe this name not to the color of the soil and rocks that form them, but to the sombre verdure of the cedars and pines that shadow their sides; the Red Bute, [113] a central point by which the savages are continually crossing, when emigrating to the West, or going up towards the North; and the famous rock, Independence, which is detached, like an outwork, from the immense chain of mountains that divide North America. ”

“ In the expressive language of an eloquent writer, who has made the place the scene of an Indian tale, the soil is fertilized by the blood of a murdered tribe. Here, one hundred years ago, stood the village of the Norridgewocks, a tribe of the powerful Abnaquis, who then held undisputed domination over the extensive wilds of the far East. Though possessing not the fierce valour of the Pequods, the sinewy vigour of the Delawares, the serpent-like subtlety of the Penobscots, the bell-toned idiom of the Iroquois, we are yet told they were a powerful tribe for their intelligence and their numbers. ”

“ On Sundays, the exercises of devotion are longer and more numerous, and yet they are never fatigued with the pious duty. They feel that the happiness of the little and of the humble is to speak with their Heavenly Father, and that no house presents so many attractions as the house of the Lord. Indeed, so religiously is the Sunday observed here, that on this day of rest, even before our coming, the most timorous deer might wander unmolested in the midst of the tribe, even though they were reduced by want of provisions to the most rigorous fast. ”

“ It was a monument raised by superstition, for the Pawnees never undertake an expedition against the savages who may be hostile to their tribe, or against the wild beasts of the forest, without commencing the chase, or war, by some religious ceremony, performed amidst these heaps of bones. At the sight of them our huntsmen raised a cry of joy; they well knew that the plain of the buffaloes was not far off, and they expressed by these shouts the anticipated pleasure of spreading havoc among the peaceful herds. ”

“ Like an aged man, its head is bleached with [Pg 21] years, while the strength and verdure of ripened maturity yet girdle its trunk. But the worm is at the root: rottenness at the heart is doing its work. Its day and its hour are appointed, and their bounds it may not pass. That hour, that moment is come! and in the deep, pulseless stillness of the night-time, when slumber falleth upon man and Nature pauses in her working, the offspring of centuries is laid low, and bows himself along the earth. ”

“ There were but few farms along my route, and the tenants of those with whom I chanced to meet betrayed too plainly, by their ghastly visages, and their withered, ague-racked limbs, the deadly influences of the atmosphere they inhaled. As I wandered through this region, where vegetation, towering in all its rank 202 and monstrous forms, gave evidence of a soil too unnaturally fertile for culture by man, whose bread must be bought by "the sweat of his brow," I thought I could perceive a deadly nausea stealing over my frame, and that every respiration was a draught of the floating pestilence. ”

“ It was, as you can easily imagine, a great consolation for me to hear prayers addressed to the great God, and his praises sung in a desert of about three hundred miles extent, where a Catholic priest had never been before. They were overjoyed when they heard that I hoped before long to be able to leave a Missionary amongst them. I cannot pass over in silence, a beautiful custom that is observed by these good people: Every evening, after prayers, the chief instructs his people, or gives them some salutary advice, to which they all listen with most profound attention, respect and modesty. ”