F 351 .P23 Copy 1 THE AMERICAN PIONEER AND HIS STORY AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT IOWA CITY IOWA ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OP THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BY GEORGE F. PARKER PUBLISHED AT IOWA CITY IOWA IN 1922 BY THE STATE HISTOEICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA F3 5I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS \ RECEIVED JUL191922 DOCUMENTS DJViSlO: THE AMERICAN PIONEER AND HIS STORY I DEFINE the American Pioneer as the man who after the defeat of Braddock, crossed the moun- tains from the thin line of Atlantic settlements and found his way into Kentucky and Tennessee, halting in his march only when he turned in his tracks and crossed the Ohio River into the great wilderness to the North. I mean the man who, fronting more perils than Ulysses and his followers ever thought of, swept on through the passes that led to the Ten- nessee, the Holston, the Big Kanawha, and the Ohio, reinforced by the few spirits, remote but courageous, who, in course of time, were led to the same destination up the narrow strip of water knowTi as the Mohawk. This man steadily solidified his settlements in their order of suc- cession, until he had brought into the Federal ITnion the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illlinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. To me, this man reflects the character of the most effective single himian movement in history. Voluntarily and without a single act by gov- ernment to drive, or coax, or cajole him, with no persecution from which he must flee in order 4 THE AMERICAN PIONEER to be and remain a man, with no neglect, no grievance against those left behind, with no thought of gold, and Avithout the remotest idea of war and conquest, this man set forth without compass, with no path more distinct than that made by his natural enemy, the Indian, obeying those laws of God and man in which he and his forebears had been trained, all the while follow- ing the dictates of his own desire for freedom, adventure, the extension of his language and religion, and the betterment of his race. II To me, not much of the philosophy of this man's life and achievements is revealed in the story of movements and stopping-places. Though always interesting and important, the mere mention of the thousands of new communi- ties — of the villages and toT\Tas actually made, of those dreamed of or even of the unnmnbered places born and named only to die as soon as the surveyor and the town-site proprietor had driven stakes into the boundless prairies — does not go very far. In number they resemble the sands of the seashore and each emphasizes the gregarious qualities in himian nature. The Pioneer's real story is much larger, more far-reaching, more pervasive, more creative, THE AMERICAN PIONEER 5 fuller of the imaginative and the spiritual, alive with the thought that peered into the future and waited patiently for the new birth which should give it power. It included the creative and the positive; it foresaw the time when, with new and larger outlook, mankind in this fertile Val- ley might indeed produce in abundance, as of necessity, those kindly fruits of the earth which, enlarging the margin between populations and need, would draw into the world untold thou- sands and bring greater comfort and increased knowledge to the masses already here. The story I have wanted to hear includes the incidents of an increased area and a bettered culture of the soil ; a broadened field of peaceful, w^holesome conquest for the mind; a decline of superstition and intolerance; a growth in com- mon understanding; the gradual elimination of the quack from medicine, the parasite or the wilful idler from industry, the sloven from the household, the pettifogger from the judicial bench, and the bigot from the pulpit. I have hoped that it might herald the advent of the poet, the creative novelist, the critic, the musi- cian, and the artist, and insure their dominating influence upon the people who were destined to spring up in the vast territory entered by Boone in 1769, visited by Washington in 1770, and 6 THE AMERICAN PIONEER sanctified by the wholesome labors and the thought of the unsung millions who trod within its limits until the general advent of new condi- tions at the close of the Civil War, which indi- cated that this Pioneer might be said fairly to have finished his most urgent task. Ill Looking back at the history of such a people — slowly gathering recruits from nearly every quarter of the compass, without any gift for telling their own story and with, no realization that they had one, with little conception of what they were doing or trying to do, and only an aggregation because as adventurous individuals they had common ideas — it is surprising that more of a literature should not have grown out of a movement of such magnitude. The earlier great Indian wars, however, which had kept before the outside w^orld the struggling colonies with their narrow limits, had given way to petty struggles for clearing the wilderness alike of human obstacles and of trees, and the later ma- neuvers of small bodies of armed men and the achievements of their leaders no longer had the dramatic interest which from the earliest days tended to limit the thing sometimes called historv. THE AMERICAN PIONEER 7 No other event so important as this settlement has been more distinctly the triumph of peace. Section after section of forest was surveyed and conquered ; township after township was named and added to the map ; county after county was settled and organized until within the scant cen- tury from 1769 to 1865 many millions of people of a single race and religion and moved by a common purpose were living on the vast area defined by the Alleghenies and the Great Plains and between the Tennessee and the Great Lakes. They kept almost no records, they wrote few letters and fewer memoirs; but, to maintain an ideal, they w^ere able at the end of this time to set more than a million soldiers in the field — four times the number that England had sent out from her shores to save herself and to defeat what was called the Corsican ogre. But the story of this movement should be written: in the main, it awaits the telling. Looked at from the point of view of the great epics which somehow seem to lie ready-made at the foundations of human endeavor, the details of such a hegira seem dull and monotonous. The settlement of one township, or county, or State; the going up this stream or that; the building, in a crude way and under severe difficulties, of this or that road; the develop- 8 THE AMERICAN PIONEER ment of am^liing that would facilitate the transportation of men or products — always the prime necessity in human movement — these do not lend themselves to exciting narrative. In all this half million square miles, the at- tractions of raw nature nowhere lent themselves to description. It was a monotonous succession of flatnesses where there were no lofty moun- tains, no great waterfalls, and no seas or inland gulfs to I'elate it to the outside world. It had no strange fauna, no marvellous flora, and no overwhelming natural wonders. It had neither silver, gold, nor precious stones, nor any of the artiflcial attractions that in the jDast had pro- duced the excitements that give romance to nature. lY What remains to be told is the story of men who, coming from the outside, had both to de- stroy and to create as they went, while mov- ing on to adjust themselves to themselves and their enviromiient. They had left a settled life filled with the material comforts of their time. There did not lie before them a single prospect that contributed to selfish indulgence, to luxury, or even to the enlargement of that liberty and toleration which, wherever they were, was fully THE AMERICAN PIONEER 9 assured and fairlv the same. What remains for the historian, the poet, the romancer, is to take the dull story that these men began to make, surround it with human elements alone, invest with enduring interest their great region with its resulting myriads of people varied in origin, and finally as an entity, both real and imagina- tive, to dovetail them into the times and condi- tions into which the whole area has come. This greatest of valleys lies here, not more in- teresting in itself than for what has been done in it, within a short space of a hundred and fifty years, by live, real men. It is their work, their motives, their struggles, their joys and sorrows, and their conquest of a place in the world's regard that must be the theme of the story which we and our successors shall tell. We can not go on, as we might easily be tempted to do, playing the game of brag, glorifying a bigness in which we have no part, otherwise than as revealing what man can do. Now, what has been done by way of telling this story? How well have we recognized the real things that will bring back to the gener- ations that are passing, and those that are com- ing, the memories of what they and their fathers did ? What material have we furnished to their successors upon the same physical scene in order 10 THE AMERICAN PIONEER that they may know what the foundations were, in order that all may have in them and their builders that pride without which we can not become and remain a united force? If our people can not learn how their heritage has been created they will not have either the interest or the intelligence to know and under- stand the larger things in the world about them. If they can not find out about the men who made their country they are likely to be indifferent to the State, the nation, and the world. If we can not be interested and absorbed in the men who laid the foundations and made possible the su- perstructure, we are little likely to care for the finished community, great or small. They may have their houses in Main Street ; but what will they know about that larger thing, the Main Country, and the Main World, that lie ever behind it? y Eliminating, then, as incidental or unimpor- tant the physical features common to thousands of communities, how is this human element to be so presented that it shall interest and in- struct ? It seems to me that the problem reduces itself to a few simple elements. At their foun- dation, as in all history, lies biography. How THE AMERICAN PIONEER 11 persistently and intelligently have our people been taught that they are the product of indi- vidual as opposed to or contrasted with collective effort ? The processes of settlement grew out of what men did as men. Whether with creative, or ordinary, or only poor white minds, they came and went as individuals, not as they were led or drawn in colonies or in some other mobilized capacity, and they can not be understood from any treatment other than as what they actually were. This biographical treatment must be worked out by the historian. Neither here nor anywhere else does the auto- biography, or other voluntary ready-made ma- terial, play an important part. If the annals are to be sought of a county — in western settle- ment always the central geographical fact — somebod}^ must dig them up from the minds of the men and women who made or knew of this life for w^hat it was. Certain materials lie hid- den away in letters, but the people who have them do not see their value. This must be left to the trained mind, keen and ambitious to know about beginnings. My own experience early showed me that the most interesting facts, vital to reveal and inter- pret this life in one of these minor areas, could be found only by prospecting in the minds of 12 THE AMERICAN PIONEER settlers. Until experience j^roves it, few stu- dents see how far back into the past hmnan memories go or how little we realize that they had in them the materials from which real his- tory must be written. I myself have known keen-minded, intelligent forebears who, born a hundred and fifty years ago, had a broad per- sonal knowledge which they never thought of as historical ; and they were the beneficiaries of like traditions still older. It will be recalled that M. Jourdain found out only late in life that he had always been talking prose ; while Harriet Martineau, after long deal- ing with industrial questions, did not know that she had been writing Political Economy until this fact was l)orne in upon her after she began the long series of researches that resulted in her illustrations of that science, in many resjoects — after the ''Wealth of Nations" — the most in- fluential production in its line known to our language. So it is with our Valley story. These custo- dians of it who carried its facts in their minds never thought of themselves as knowing any- tiring that had a relation to the history of the race; and yet it is just this process which, from Herodotus down, has created the writings that have made known Egypt, Greece, Rome, Eng- THE AMERICAN PIONEER 13 land , and every other society in the world. Somebody came along, delved into these mem- ories, wherever found, wrote down what they had stored up, collated one with another, and made them into enduring material by burning them in clay or writing them on papyrus or on the skins of animals. Whatever literary materials we already have in our Great Valley, or shall hereafter gather, whatever we may know or think we know, either has come or will come in this way. We welcome the result and can only obtain perfection by this process. This is true, too, in spite of the fact that of late years much reliance has been placed upon the newspaper, most of whose records must be verified, by the means indicated, before they can be used with safety. VI Much has been done in every one of our cen- tral or grouped communities, know^n as States, to commemorate the men who have really domi- nated the series of events that make them what they are. Owing to the exaggerated attention given to the thing known as politics — though it now has almost less than nothing to do with the science of government — we have cluttered up our historical barnyards with great heaps of 14 THE AMERICAN PIONEER chaff. Happily, the winds scatter them, year by year, and they are no more ; after which process we have to start anew and take stock of what is left. When we have done this, we find a large measure of neglect of the real builders, of the outstanding creative minds left to us. We see an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Samuel F. Miller, whom even oversight can not hide although no adequate record has been made of his training, character, and achievements. We see another, Thomas M. Cooley, who with- out much stored knowledge of his career, still lives as a man of high judicial attainments, the creator of the modern method of railroad regu- lation — one who never let the power conferred upon him run away with common sense and cool judgment. We see Hugh McCulloch, growing out of an unpromising soil into a real genius of finance, whose name must be summoned, when to use the three fingers of one hand it becomes necessary to complete the enumeration of great Secretaries of the Treasury; and yet he still stands with little more biographic recognition than the scant record made in his own meagre memoirs. Practically every State in our Valley, from North to South, and from the encircling moun- tains to the great rivers, can furnish examples THE AMERICAN PIONEER 15 of sucli neglect. Even outside our limits a figure of such titanic proportions as John Marshall, has only been fairly revealed by the patient labors, recently completed, of one of our Valley historians. When it comes to works of the imagination, the fact that we can not lay claim to the epic poet or the dramatist may indicate that not enough time has elapsed or that the forms of literary expression have changed. We shall not belittle ourselves and our achievements in prose fiction while Edward Eggleston's "Hoosier Schoolmas- ter," and Mark Twain's *'Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" remain as parts of our literary heritage, and the late James Whitcomb Riley — not yet wholly overshadowed by the lau- rels heaped upon him by the weak and the senti- mental who have little comprehension of him — still remains a high interpreter of the simple life that so distinguished the American Pioneer. VII We have still to travel a long and weary road ; but the start has been auspicious and creditable and we have many workers who bid fair not to tire on the journey that lies before them. The story of beginnings always unfolds itself slowly and with an amoimt of crudeness that is inevita- 16 THE AMERICAN PIONEER ble. It is only within a hundred years that we have come fairly to know the origins, the influ- ence, the weakness, the strength, and the beauties of our religion. It was two hundred and thirty years after the Pilgrims came before there was found a writer to show that the story of Hester Prynne was more interesting and permanent than the records of the blustering bigotries of John Endicott; while a still longer time passed before the early economic history of Virginia was written once and for all. We waited a long time to get some fair idea of the Winning of the West ; but when it came, Theodore Roosevelt had done something more important than all the acts that made up his career as President of the United States. The former was the calculated product of mind, study, and training ; the latter had in it man}^ of the elements of the fortuitous. We have, therefore, a right to take heart; to go on with energy and method ; to learn that we must cultivate patience and practice persistence, and master not only the dry facts, so often ac- counted to us as a reproach, but study those beauties of expression without which we can not presmne to carry our appeal to the higher courts of literature. LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 014 497 339 2