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THE 
 
 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
 BULLETIN 
 
 Volume XXVI September 30. 1921 Number 3 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS IN ENGLISH NUMBER 2 
 
 A Study of the Local Literature 
 of the Upper Ohio Valley 
 
 WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EARLY. ^ 
 PIONEER AND INDIAN TALES 
 
 1820-1840 
 
 By 
 
 Mary Meek Atkeson 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY AT COLUMBUS 
 
 ^tered as seeond'-blaaa matter November 17, 1906; at the postoffiee at ColiUQbas, 
 
 '.•■-■ '■."'■ Ohio, under Act of GongreSs, July. 16, 1894 ' 
 
The Ohio State University Bulletin 
 
 I Volume XXVI September 30, 1921 Number 3 
 
 •i 
 
 ' CONTRIBUTIONS IN ENGLISH NUMBER 2 
 
 A Study of the Local Literature 
 of the Upper Ohio Valley 
 
 WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EARLY 
 PIONEER AND INDIAN TALES 
 
 1820-1840 
 
 By 
 Maey Meek Atkeson 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY AT COLUMBUS 
 
 Entered as second-class matter November 17, 1906, at the postoffice nt Columbus, 
 Ohio, under Act of Congress, July 16. 1894 
 
I\^2cc.7 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The present study of early literature in the Ohio Valley has 
 grown out of the writer's interest in theigeneral problems of local 
 literature. It follows, and is in part a development of, an earlier 
 study of "West Virginia Literature," written as a thesis for the 
 degree of Master of Arts at West Virginia University in 1913. The 
 interest shown by many readers in the earlier work has been a great 
 encouragement to the writer to make further investigations in the 
 same field. 
 
 To one who heard in childhood at some Ohio Valley fireside 
 these old stories of pioneer and Indian days, and who later labori- 
 ously spelled through the hair-raising accountsi of Doddridge and 
 (Vithers, there is a perennial appeal in the story of our pioneers — 
 their ideas and accomplishments and all their manner of life. In 
 reading great numbers of these early tales the writer has ob- 
 served a noticeable development in both the spirit and form of these 
 local writings of the Valley, particularly in the expression of a 
 new and progressive Americanism and a tendency toward a matter- 
 of-fact or realistic view of frontier life, unknown in the earlier 
 American writers. If this be true, then this local literature — crude 
 and uncouth as it is in many respects — is also of interest in a gen- 
 eral view of the development of American literature. 
 
 During the preparation of the present study the writer has 
 been greatly assisted by general suggestions from Dean J. V. Den- 
 ney and from Dr. George H. McKnight of the Ohio State University, 
 and also by some special help in the study of the works of Chateau- 
 briand from Dr. Madison Stathers of West Virginia University. 
 The footnotes and bibliographical section will show to what extent 
 the writer is indebted to earlier works on local literature. 
 
A STUDY OF THE LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER 
 
 OHIO VALLEY. WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
 
 THE PIONEER AND INDIAN TALES. 1820-1840 
 
 PARTI 
 
 I. The Importance of the Ohio Valley Region in 
 American History 
 
 In the past few years many historians have pointed out that 
 the section of the country known as the upper Ohio Valley region — 
 including parts of the present states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West 
 Virginia, and Kentucky — is of great significance in the development 
 of the American commonwealth. It is true that the tidewater col- 
 onies asserted their political independence from England and 
 formed the Union, but there was still a great predominance of Eng- 
 lish influence in their thought, their traditions, and customs, and 
 a lack of a unifying national spirit. As Mr. Lounsbury has said,^ 
 "Political supremacy had been cast off, but the supremacy of opin- 
 ion had remained absolutely unshaken Out of the intellectual 
 
 character of many of those who at that day pretended to be the 
 representatives of the highest education in the country, it almost 
 seemed that the element of manliness had been wholly eliminated ; 
 and that along with its sturdy democracy, whom no obstacles 
 thwarted and no dangers daunted, the New World was also to give 
 birth to a race of literary cowards and parasites." Frederick J. 
 Turner has pointed out that,^ "The tidewater part of the South rep- 
 resented typical Englishmen, modified by a warm climate and ser- 
 vile labor, and living in baronial fashion on great plantations; 
 New England stood for a special English movement — Puritanism." 
 
 It was not until the great tide of immigration began to flow 
 to the West that the real spirit of Americanism was born. For 
 though that stream was composed largely of the same people who 
 had been looking across the ocean for their inspiration in intellec- 
 tual matters, the very crossing of the mountains, or the embarka- 
 tion upon the waters of the Ohio brought a new spirit of freedom, 
 
 1 James Fenimore Cooperj ATnerican Men of Letters Series, p. 18-19. 
 
 2 The Frontier in American History, American Historical Association Report, 1893. 
 
6 LOCAL LITEEATUEE OF THE UPPEE OHIO VALLEY 
 
 unlike that of any tidewater district. It was more than a matter 
 of mere distance or of geographical barriers. Many of the early 
 writers noticed the difference in feeling as soon as their faces 
 turned toward the West. As Timothy Flint's hero, Francis Berrian, 
 sayS; "Until I began to ascend the Allegheny hills, I did not feel all 
 the ties of kindred and country completely severed. I could con- 
 nect, by the chain of association, points that were distant, indeed, 
 but not sundered by mountains, and which were washed in their 
 whole extent by the same sea, and inhabited by men substantially 
 of the same character and pursuits. But when the Ohio Valley 
 opened upon my view from the summits of these mountains ; when 
 such a wide barrier, and so difficult as it then was to be passed, 
 was interposed between me and 'faderland'; when I began to de- 
 scend among a people of a different character and foreign pursuits, 
 connected with New England's element by an almost interminable 
 river, then I began to experience misgivings of mind, and the dis- 
 mal feeling of homesickness." ^ 
 
 The very fact that the pioneers had had the courage to take 
 their lives into their hands for that perilous journey gave them a 
 sudden new knowledge of themselves, and of their potentialities. 
 The old life, under the established order of the colonies had often 
 been one of convention; the new life in the wilderness was merci- 
 less in its requirement of initiative and personal prowess. The 
 man who had no natural ability for taking care of himself under 
 difficult circumstances was usually soon eliminated by the ruthless 
 natural forces, if not by the Indians. Hence, since he must work 
 out his own salvation for his physical needs, with his axe and his 
 gun, he soon began to feel that independence of mind which bows 
 to no man-made law or traditional dictum. There was little need 
 of laws in a land where a man could always move on to another 
 neighborhood when he chose, and a tax was an impertinence 
 scarcely to be considered at all. 
 
 The pioneer was essentially a man of action and progress. He 
 was intent upon "getting along" and pushing farther and farther 
 into the wilderness. It was his pride that he "could not abide" close 
 neighbors or well-marked roads. "A greyhound," he said, "loves 
 range, and an owl deep woods and hollow trees, and a truebom 
 Yankee loves nature and independence." He enjoyed his stirring 
 life with its sharp contrasts and its constant tang of danger. Life 
 
 ' Francis Berrian, 1826, p. 29. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 itself was a continual romance — a quick series of interesting 
 events — a continual anticipation of what might happen next, and 
 a continual hope for a glorious ending. Beside such a reality it is 
 no wonder that the old days in the East seemed tame and dull to 
 him and that he looked to the West — forward and not backward — 
 for his ideal of Americanism. 
 
 In religion he often turned away with dissatisfaction from 
 the old dogmatic creeds, to listen to any wild orator who might pos- 
 sibly be voicing a new faith worthy of the great West. His spirit 
 was as intense, as earnest, in religion as in other things. Open- 
 minded as he was, and untrained intellectually, it is little wonder 
 that he should follow any freakish sect, or self-appointed prophet. 
 The older order was giving place to new in government, then why 
 not in religion? 
 
 This extreme individualism naturally led the pioneer to ques- 
 tion also the rules and laws by which his mental life had been gov- 
 erned. With this questioning came a new intellectual attitude to- 
 ward all life. As has been remarked,* "The result is that to the 
 frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. 
 That coarseness and strength, combined with acuteness and in- 
 quisitiveness ; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find 
 expedients ; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the 
 artistic, but powerful to effect great ends ; that restless nervous en- 
 ergy ; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, 
 and, withal, that buoyancy and exuberance which come with free- 
 dom, — ^these are the traits of the frontier, or traits called out else- 
 where because of the existence of the frontier." 
 
 Hence, it came about that on this first frontier beyond the 
 mountains — the upper Ohio Valley region — ^what we think of to- 
 day as the modem American spirit was born. It was the outcome 
 of wilderness conditions, of the onward call of the western plains, 
 and of the feeling of separation from the old established life. Even 
 as early as 1769, the pioneers, it has been said,^ "had lost all re- 
 membrance of Europe and sympathy with things European; they 
 had become as emphatically products native to the soil as were the 
 tough and supple hickories out of which they fashioned the han- 
 dles of their long light axes." 
 
 * Frederick J. Turner, The Frontier in American History. Amer, Hist. Assn, Report, 1893. 
 5 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. 1, p. 108. 
 
8 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 II. Literary Influences in the Backwoods 
 
 The pioneers, in breaking away from former influences, did 
 not by any means despise books, even though they were not a read- 
 ing people and good books were few and far between. A book was 
 considered a sacred thing, and the few volumes in a backwoods 
 station were read and re-read and quoted from with great effect 
 on important occasions. Anything "writ in a book" was felt to 
 have almost miraculous power, and anyone who could read and 
 write easily was looked up to by the whole community. 
 
 As to the books known and read in the early days we have few 
 records. We know, however, that they knew from books or from 
 oral transmission the stories of Jack and the giant, of the Cyclops 
 and Ulysses, and tales of knight errantry. They also had many 
 songs of Robin Hood, and tragical love — "love songs about mur- 
 der" as they were called.* The following account of the reading of 
 Gulliver's Travels, in part told in Daniel Boone's own words, is 
 quoted from Roosevelt:' On an exploring excursion in 1770 a 
 group of hunters read "for their amusement 'the history of Samuel 
 Gulliver's Travels, wherein he gave an account of his young mas- 
 ter, Glumdelick, caring him on a market day for a show to a town 
 called Lulbegrud.' One of the men of the party was named Alexan- 
 der Neely. One night he came into camp with two Indian scalps, 
 taken from a Shawnee village he had found on a creek. He an- 
 nounced 'he had been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two 
 Brobdignags in their capital.' To this day the creek is called Lulbe- 
 grud creek." 
 
 The pioneer cabin might boast of volumes of the Bible, Pil- 
 grim's Progress, and Fox's Book of Martyrs. Another private li- 
 brary might contain — ^like that of the father of Daniel Drake* — ^the 
 Bible, Aesop's Fables and the Life of Franklin. 
 
 Soon community libraries began to be formed, and from their 
 lists of books we can learn what was read by the people of the 
 Valley. The first library in the Northwest Territory was formed at 
 Belpre, near Marietta, Ohio, in 1796. Some of the books known to 
 be in this collection are Tales of Jonathan Carver, Locke's On the 
 Understanding, The Practical Farmer, Robertson's History of 
 Scotland, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, History of Vermont, History 
 of England, and Goldsmith's Animated Nature. The Coonskin Li- 
 
 • Doddridge, Notes, p. 124-126. 
 
 ' Winnirig of the West, VoL 1, p. 143. 
 
 ' Beginning of Literary Culture in the Ohio VaUey, p. 300. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 brary of Ames township, Ohio, formed in 1803, contained, besides 
 works of history and philosophy, Evelina, Children of the Abbey, 
 George Barnwell, Camilla, and The Beggar Girl. Later purchases 
 included Don Quixote, Scottish Chiefs, the Spectator, and Arabian 
 Nights. Later libraries had similar collections. In general the li- 
 braries seemed to provide chiefly, history, biography, philosophy, 
 and works of general reference, and in addition the sentimental 
 novels and plays by popular English authors of the day. There 
 was a prejudice against "fictitious stories" for young people, and 
 with reason, for many of the books listed are of the most banal 
 sentimentality. They became increasingly popular, however, and 
 after a time had a decided effect upon the general attitude of the 
 people toward life and literature. 
 
 Byron and Scott were well known, and to some extent also 
 Wordsworth and Keats, but Byron was the great favorite. William 
 B. Cairns has noted,^ "As might be expected, Byron found eager 
 readers, perhaps his most eager readers, in the West. The Pioneers 
 saw nature as he saw it, and they regarded the rights of man much 
 as he regarded them. Still they could not commend, or even excuse 
 his morals. The backwoodsmen were not Puritans, who took pleas- 
 ure in repressing passions and desires, but rather men whose pas- 
 sions and desires were so natural and whose habits of life were by 
 necessity so restricted, that they could scarcely understand a life 
 given over to cynical vice." In spite of this, however, Byron was 
 much read, even by the younger people. We are told of a back- 
 woods young lady,^" "She had taste enough to enjoy the writings of 
 Scott, but not so much as to enable her to dream over the rhap- 
 sodies of Byron." The Byronic Spenserian stanza was much af- 
 fected by the local writers, and also the rhymed tetrameter verse of 
 Scott's poems. Other forms frequently used were the stanza form 
 of Gray's Elegy (evidently a very popular poem) and the couplet 
 of Pope. 
 
 As the river towns began to grow in population they began to 
 vie with one another as to which should have the most libraries 
 and book shops, and some early volumes began to be published. 
 Timothy Flint says of Cincinnati in his Recollections of the Last 
 Ten Years (1826) : "Efforts to promote polite literature have al- 
 ready been made in this town. If its only rival, Lexington, be, as 
 
 ® Ajnerican Literature from, 1815 to 18SS. p. 15. 
 >°HaU, Legends of the Went, 1863. 
 
10 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 she contends, the Athens of the West, this place is struggling to 
 become its Corinth. There were, eleven years since, two gazettes, 
 and two booksellers' shops, although unhappily novels were the 
 most salable article. The rudiments of general taste, were, how- 
 ever, as yet crude and unformed. The prevalent models of gran- 
 deur, beauty and taste, in composition and style, were those that 
 characterized fourth of July orations in the first years of our inde- 
 pendence." And again, he deplores the lack of interest in literature. 
 The people are too busy, too much occupied in making farms and 
 speculations, to think of literature." 
 
 Yet general reading must have become common by 1830, for 
 Mrs. TroUope ^^ was often surprised at the learning of the people 
 around her in Cincinnati. She even met one astounding gentleman 
 who had read — or at least pretended to have read — everything, with 
 a real "terrestial superiority." He disliked Byron. Pope was "so 
 entirely gone by, that in our country it is considered quite fustian 
 to speak of him." Dryden, also, was out of date, and Shakespeare 
 lacked sufficient refinement for "the age in which we live." 
 
 This gentleman, so afflicted with superiority, was merely a 
 forerunner of the succeeding age in Ohio Valley life and literature. 
 Infinenced by the sentimental novels of the day, and by the visitors 
 from eastern cities, the young men and women — ^particularly In 
 the years from 1840 to 1860 — were eagerly modeling themselves 
 upon the heroes and heroines of their favorite stories. Probably 
 it grew out of a consciousness of their backwoods crudeness — 
 for the West was beginning to be self-conscious and to aspire to 
 leadership in social affairs. Immediately "the social graces" be- 
 came an important study. 
 
 It is rather amusing to note the sudden change, especially in 
 the women of the Valley. But a generation or two before they 
 had lived the wild free life of the forest, fought side by side with 
 the men against the Indians, and, as Doddridge tells us, seemed 
 even to enjoy the prospect of an Indian attack. Now, however, the 
 young ladies became as limp and colorless as the heroine of a 
 Cooper novel. "Sensibility" became the highest feminine virtue. 
 They probably would have fainted at the sight of an Indian, they 
 lost their appetites entirely, and spent their time in nothing more 
 
 11 Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1828-31. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 onerous than sketching or embroidery. If disappointed in love, they 
 pined away in a beautiful and interesting manner and were laid 
 to rest in flower-decked graves amid the most romantic surround- 
 ings. Indeed the mortality among beautiful young females — 
 judging from the stories — seems to have been so heavy that one 
 wonders that any of them lived to maturity. 
 
 Nor did the young men fare any better. They, too, must con- 
 form their conduct strictly to the "cultured" ideal, and learn the 
 perfection of dress and "polite conversation." That it was not 
 always easy for the backwoods people who aspired to society to 
 come up — or down — to such standards, is shown by various refer- 
 ences to early types of the fashionable folk in several of the early 
 tales. In George Mason, The Young Backwoodsman,^^ we are told 
 how the young backwoods heroine managed a difficult situation. 
 "To prove in fact, a priori, as they say, that Eliza Mason knew 
 a thing or two, in the way of management, it is only necessary to 
 relate one fact, that anticipating that her three young brothers, 
 brought with devouring appetites from the simple diet of their 
 cabin to such a sumptuous dinner, might create unpleasant notice 
 by their voraciousness, she had given them their fill of sweetcake 
 
 and raisins three times in the forenoon After all, Eliza cast 
 
 an anxious eye upon them as they sat below her at table, and saw 
 with infinite satisfaction, that their total want of appetite gave 
 their sylvan rusticity an air of well-bred indifference and fas- 
 tidiousness." 
 
 Such a conception of manners probably came from the read- 
 ing of such books as The Children of the Abbey, Evelina, Camilla, 
 and Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, for various references show that these 
 stories were known and generally much admired. Timothy Flint 
 says of an old maid on an outing trip, "Miss Letitia found it in 
 keeping to be romantic, and she talked over all she could remember 
 of all the trumpery novels, that she had read, and found this one 
 to be 'the most delightfuUest, and that the most genteelest, and the 
 other the most sentimentalist novel,' that she had ever read." In 
 these earlier stories, however, such references are usually made for 
 a humorous purpose and for contrast with the real manliness and 
 womanliness of the backwoods characters. The fashion, though be- 
 ginning, was not yet general enough to be accepted seriously. 
 
 12 Timothy Flint, 1829. 
 
12 LOCAL LITERATUEE OP THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 In the period succeeding 1840, because of the increase in west- 
 tern magazines, literature became much greater in volume. Indian 
 stories became increasingly common — but the Indian was now 
 chiefly used to induce showers of sentimental — and becoming — 
 tears. Even the pioneer began to be sentimentalized, and the wil- 
 derness scenery described was always that romantic enough to be 
 suitable for "sensitive females." In fact, the literature of the Val- 
 ley lost much of its earlier vigor and interest and the pioneer and 
 development era was at an end. 
 
 III. Materials of the Present Study 
 
 The materials used in the present study of Ohio Valley litera- 
 ture have been gathered from many sources, including both public 
 and private libraries, in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Penn- 
 sylvania, and the Congressional Library at Washington, D. C. As 
 far as possible poems and stories published in book form have been 
 used, though occasionally reference is made to interesting articles 
 in the western magazines. The body of material, even in the frag- 
 mentary state in which it is now available, is considerable, as is 
 shown by the bibliographical list in the appendix. Altogether some 
 hundreds of books have been examined by the writer, including all 
 available histories and reference works which might have any bear- 
 ing on the matter in hand. From such a mass of material, definite 
 conclusions are difficult to draw, and yet there are certain well- 
 marked tendencies, apparent after a careful inductive study of all 
 the literature of the period. Wherever a variation has seemed to 
 occur, it has been studied carefully and placed with reference to the 
 general problems. 
 
 The dates set for the boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, for 
 there is, of course, no definite break between one period and the 
 next. The first date chosen represents about the time that Joseph 
 Doddridge, the earliest writer, began to write, using the wilderness 
 material. The closing date marks in general the rise of the full 
 stream of sentimentalism which marks the succeeding age, and at 
 the same time the loss of the earlier realistic tendencies. 
 
 The dates of books as given, are the dates of publication, and 
 in general also place the time of writing. Such dates, however, are 
 only approximate, for the material printed in book form was often 
 gathered from previous work in the magazines, hence the stories 
 might be of varying dates. Often, too, books were written some 
 time before the author found a publisher for the volume — or had 
 
INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 money enough to have it published at his own expense. However, 
 the exact time of writing, except for the order in a series of books, 
 is not of great importance. 
 
 IV. Chief Difficulties of the Study 
 
 The chief difficulty of the present study lies in the elusive char- 
 acter of what the writer is trying to express. That quality which 
 we call Americanism is easy enough to recognize in the large — but 
 very difficult to prove in specific instances. It is as apparent in 
 general as it is indefinable. Just as the foreign investigators, who 
 visit our country for the purpose of studying the American spirit 
 seldom please us by the specific cases they cite, so we ourselves find 
 ourselves at a loss for definite illustrations of that particular prin- 
 ciple which pervades our daily life. 
 
 In the present study the growth of the spirit of Americanism 
 and of realism in the literature, although very apparent to the 
 reader of numbers of these old tales, with their quaint expression 
 of the new and the old together, must be shown chiefly by copious 
 quotations. So, also, for literary influences it is difficult to point 
 out, "Here the writer was influenced by Cooper," "Here is an echo 
 of Byron," etc. Yet it is to be hoped that in the course of the study, 
 through the careful details and the multiplicity of illustrations — 
 chosen in each case for their literary bearing as well as for their 
 content — ^the reader can come to a clear conception of the develop- 
 ment which took place in this first twenty years of literary effort in 
 the upper Ohio Valley, 
 
 V. Conclusion 
 
 The value of this study, the writer thinks, lies chiefly in its 
 calling the reader's attention to the literature produced by the 
 backwoodsmen themselves or by their immediate successors. It may 
 also help to an understanding of the great debt that that elusive 
 thing which we call the spirit of America owes to the pioneer — ^that 
 spirit well typified both by the beloved Lincoln and the grim but 
 kindly frontiersman, Uncle Sam, — for it was on the frontier, in the 
 struggles with Indians and forest dangers, even more than at Con- 
 cord and Bunker Hill, that modem progressive Americanism was 
 bom. If the present study can also prove the specific points at issue 
 i. e., that a new tendency toward realism arose in the literature, 
 and that this led to a greater freedom of literary expression, it will 
 have accomplished all that the writer hoped for. 
 
PAETII 
 
 I. The Change to Western Material and Ideals op Life 
 
 With so great a change in the character of life as came about 
 in the settling of the Ohio Valley, a change in the literature was 
 inevitable. If there was to be a literature at all it must in some 
 measure be different from the old. Whether or not the local writers 
 knew it, they must voice — however crudely — a spirit unknown be- 
 fore. The pioneer's delight in the life about him and his knowledge 
 that it was but a passing phase of history, made him feel that every 
 moment was precious in the rapidly changing story. There was a 
 great impulse to write. No doubt many another pioneer, like James 
 Hall,^ "Launched upon the stream of literature and on the bewitch- 
 ing Ohio river at the same time." Each man felt that his own life 
 was an epitome of great affairs. As Doddridge says of himself,'' 
 "One advantage, at least, results from having lived in a state of 
 society ever on the change, and always for the better, it doubles 
 
 the retrospect of life Did not the definite number of my years 
 
 teach me the contrary, I should think myself at least one hundred 
 years old, instead of fifty." And he goes on to say that he has 
 never heard a pioneer on his deathbed express regret for his life; 
 he invariably felt that he had lived and experienced fully — ^beyond 
 the power of common men. 
 
 The writers were usually men of long experience with the 
 frontier, and each asserts as his chief claim to being heard the 
 fact that he is setting down life just as it is. For instance, Joseph 
 Doddridge says,' "As it respects the Backwoodsmen, I cannot be 
 wrong, for I was brought up among them, and, I trust, that I have 
 done justice to the customs and phraseology of the native sons of 
 our forests." And James Hall explains in the preface of the Le- 
 gends of the West (1853) . "More than thirty years ago the author 
 went to the valley. . . . The panther and the wolf still 
 lurked in the forests, the marshes and the pools were alive with 
 water fowl, and the broad plains, covered with unbroken carpets 
 
 * Begmmnga of Literature in the Ohio Valley, Venable, p. 66. 
 ^ Notes on the Settlement and Indian Ware, p. 20. 
 
 * Preface to Logan, 1823. 
 
 14 
 
CHANGE TO WESTERN MATERIAL AND IDEALS OP LIFE 15 
 
 of verdure and wild flowers, were tenanted by myriads of wild 
 fowl." And Timothy Flint justifies his views of Indian character 
 by the following,* "Thus I have inspected the northern, middle and 
 southern Indians for the length of ten years ; and I mention it only 
 to prove that my opportunities of observation have been consider- 
 able, and that I do not undertake to form judgment of their char- 
 acter, without at least having seen much of it." 
 
 Many of the writers also express their desire to set down the 
 swiftly passing events. Andrew Coffinberry,' in a "Parting Word 
 to the Reader," says, "The interesting incidents connected with the 
 border strife of the West, and more especially those attending the 
 campaign and brilliant conquest of General Wayne, over the de- 
 luded aborigines, are fast fading from the memories of the human 
 race. And even the wild and untameable natives of these now 
 flourishing climes, are rapidly vanishing from among the things 
 that be ! From these considerations I felt an ardent desire to con- 
 tribute my mite toward the temporary preservation of their 
 memories." 
 
 As to material, these early writers were fortunate — the woods 
 were full of it. If the writer could but adequately set down what 
 he heard and saw, he felt sure that he woulfl have the most interest- 
 ing story in the world. The vigorous, picturesque race, the hills and 
 mountains and rivers all cried aloud to be immortalized in litera- 
 ture. Each writer, as was said of Timothy Flint,° but "Painted on 
 the glowing page the peerless valley of the West." He had no desire 
 for better material.^. "I cannot judge of the recollections of castles 
 and towers that I have not seen. But I have seen all the grandeur 
 which our cities can display. I have seen, too, these lonely tombs of 
 the desert, — seen them rise from these boundless and unpeopled 
 plains. My imagination has been filled and my heart has been full." 
 So absorbed were they all with immediate and local matters, that 
 in 1830 Mrs. TroUope, an Englishwoman, was astonished to find 
 that in the backwoods, "Our classic literature, our princely digni- 
 ties, our noble institutions, are all gone-by relics of the dark ages."* 
 
 Writer after writer attests the interestingness of the life about 
 him and his sincere desire to write it down just as it is. James 
 Hall says in the Legends of the West (1853) , "The sole intention of 
 
 * Recollections of the Last Ten Years, p. 136. 
 ^ The Forest Rangers, 1842. 
 
 * Quoted Venable. Literary History of the Ohio Valley, p. 323. 
 ' Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years, 1826. 
 
 ' Domestic Manners of the Americans, p. 140. 
 
16 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 the tales comprised in the following pages is to convey accurate de- 
 scriptions of the scenery and population of the country in which the 
 author resides." And again, speaking of Harpe's Head, he says, 
 "Two of the characters are historical. Their deeds are still freshly 
 remembered by many of the early settlers of Kentucky, and their 
 names will be instantly recognized by all who are conversant with 
 
 the traditions of that state He has invented but little ; but 
 
 professes simply to connect together the traditions of a region in 
 which he has long resided." William T. Coggeshall says of his 
 Stories of Frontier Adventure, that they are "designed to illustrate 
 frontier life and character." And Timothy Flint says of Francis 
 Berrian, "No inconsiderable portion of these adventures is anji;hing 
 rather than fiction," and indeed many descriptions and incidents 
 are transcribed almost exactly from his earlier Recollections of the 
 Last Ten Years. 
 
 It was a great day for oral story-telling and every fireside in 
 the pioneer region had its fund of local material ready to the 
 writer's hand. When the family drew about the fire in the evening, 
 the father or elder brother was always ready with a tale of ad- 
 venture. 
 
 "Then ■would the fearless forester disclose 
 Most strange adventures with his sylvan foes, 
 Of how his arts did over theirs prevail 
 And how he followed far upon their bloody trail."* 
 
 As Daniel Drake says of his childhood in Kentucky,^" "I well 
 remember that Indian wars, midnight butcheries, captivities, and 
 horse-stealings, were the daily topics of conversation." And he says 
 that his childish dreams were often troubled with those two chief 
 dangers of the forest, the copper-colored Indian and the copper- 
 head snake. That these frontier tales have preserved the full ef- 
 fect of the oral accounts, is attested by Mrs. Trollope, in her ac- 
 count of her first experience with frontier literature at a time when 
 she was ill of fever at Cincinnati." "By the time these American 
 studies were completed, I never closed my eyes without seeing myri- 
 ads of bloody scalps floating round me ; long slender figures of red 
 Indians crept through my dreams with noiseless tread; panthers 
 glared; forests blazed; and whichever way I fled, a light foot, a 
 keen eye, and a long rifle were sure to be on my trail. An addi- 
 tional ounce of calomel hardly sufficed to neutralize the effect of 
 
 • The Emiarant, or Reflections while Descending the Ohio, Frederick W. Thomas, 1830. 
 
 1° Pioneer Life in Kentucky, 1870, p. 23. 
 
 1^ Doviestic Manners of the Americans, p. 156, 
 
CHANGE TO WESTERN MATERIAL AND IDEALS OP LIFE 17 
 
 these raw head and bloody-bones adventures. I was advised to 
 plunge immediately into a course of fashionable novels." 
 
 Though the tales were varying in form, there were many re- 
 current incidents which seemed especially to capture the imagina- 
 tion of the pioneer. Each story teller vied with the others in his 
 desire to make an interesting story. As James Hall says/^ "To 
 while away the tedium of a dull day's ride, or a long winter even- 
 ing, they recite their adventures, or communicate their observa- 
 tions on subjects familiar to them, but strange and curious to 
 others. Scraps of history, reminiscences of noted men, incidents of 
 the chase and of border violence, the deeds of their fathers in bat- 
 tle, the traditions of the wilderness and the lone path, form the 
 staple of these discussions ; and it was from such sources that the 
 writer derived the lore which he has presented to the public." Many 
 of the most popular story elements are well shown in a typical In- 
 dian adventure story by Timothy Flint. ^= — Note, too, the heroic size 
 of the characters. "The narrations of a frontier circle, as they 
 draw around their evening fire, often turn upon the exploits of the 
 old race of men, the heroes of past days, who wore hunting shirts, 
 and settled the country. Instances of undaunted heroism, of des- 
 perate daring, and seemingly of more than mortal endurance, are 
 recorded of these people. In a boundless forest full of panthers 
 and bears, and more dreadful Indians, with not a white within a 
 hundred miles, a solitary adventurer penetrates the deepest wilder- 
 ness, and begins to make the strokes of his axe resound among the 
 trees. The Indians find him out, ambush, and imprison him. A 
 more acute and desperate warrior than themselves, they wish to 
 adopt him, and add his strength to their tribe. He feigns content- 
 ment, uses the savage's insinuations, outruns him in the use of his 
 own ways of management, but watches his opportunity, and when 
 their suspicion is lulled, and they fall asleep, he springs upon them, 
 kills his keepers, and bounds away into unknown forests, pursued 
 by them and their dogs. He leaves them all at fault, subsists many 
 days upon berries and roots, and finally arrives at his little clearing, 
 and resumes his axe. In a little palisade, three or four resolute men 
 stand a siege of hundreds of assailants, kill many of them and 
 mount calmly on the roof of their shelter, to pour water upon the 
 fire, which burning arrows have kindled there, and achieve the 
 work amidst a shower of balls." 
 
 12 Legends of the West, 1853. 
 
 i» Recollections of the Last Ten Years, p. 161. 
 
18 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 As he suggests, it was only natural that the stories grew 
 somewhat in the telling, and took on a more than human character. 
 There was also a tendency of the incidents to cluster about some 
 well-known name, like that of Daniel Boone, or Lewis Wetzel. Often 
 the incidents were woven together into real romances or extensive 
 biographies, more or less true to facts, by the fireside story-tellers, 
 long before they were ever used as literary material. 
 
 II. Evidences of the American Spirit 
 
 In these early stories there is something more than the mere 
 use of the new wilderness material. There is a new spirit, so like 
 what we think of as modern Americanism that it is almost start- 
 ling. William B. Cairns has already noted this in the early western 
 magazines." 
 
 There is a breaking away from old ideals in literature as well 
 as in life, and an insistence on the importance of the great and 
 growing western country that is expansively American. All previ- 
 ous literary efforts, along with the conventions of the East, are 
 but curious relics of a past age. The only age worth while is the fu- 
 ture — in the West. No character in fiction is half so interesting as 
 is one's nearest neighbor, and the other great men, the makers of 
 the West. This attitude leads naturally to a decided realism of 
 tone. 
 
 Timothy Flint, in George Mason, the Young Backwoodsman 
 (p. 76) , takes issue with the fashionable novels of the day on this 
 very question. "I know not how the reader feels, but I feel as much 
 interest in the march of these barefoot boys along the deep forest, 
 as I do in reading about the adventures and ridiculous distresses 
 of fine dressed lords and ladies. Of all stupid things in the world, 
 it is the most stupid, as we have before remarked, that the great 
 mass of readers should have thought, that there was no dignity 
 nor interest in any adventures, but those of men that have fine 
 houses and coaches." And he proceeds with a tale of pioneer life 
 and conditions in the new democratic world of the West. It is the 
 story of a young backwoods boy, left when he is fourteen years old 
 to care for his mother and the younger children. We hear of his 
 struggle with the forest conditions, until finally, by his pluck and 
 perseverance and other manly qualities, he becomes a pilot on one 
 of the big river steamers, draws a big salary, makes the whole 
 
 1* Atnerican Literature from 1815-183S. 
 
CHANGE TO WESTERN MATERIAL AND IDEALS OF LIFE 19 
 
 family comfortable and happy, and marries the girl of his dreams. 
 As a "success" story, except for a certain quaintness of style, it 
 is so modern as almost to suggest the pages of the Saturday Even- 
 ing Post or of The American. It closes with a parting word of good 
 American advice : 
 
 "My dear youthful reader, whenever you are in any way 
 tempted to discouragement, remember the old maxim, that 'the 
 darkest time in the night is just before day.' Exert yourself in 
 hope. Be industrious, and while innocent and diligent, respect 
 yourself, and hold yourself inferior to no one. Trust in God. Never 
 despond, and assume the genuine American motto, 'Don't give up 
 the ship'." 
 
 Timothy Flint's attitude toward the politician and the law- 
 maker also seems very modern.^^ The following picture of the pio- 
 neer candidate is not yet seriously out of date: "He squeezed the 
 good farmers' hands, and praised their chubby sons and daughters 
 as far as he dared, without betraying his motive, and inquired how 
 their cattle thrived, and how they managed their crops, and lis- 
 tened to the details of their affairs, apparently with great interest, 
 at the same time that all his thoughts were a hundred miles from 
 the matter. Economy was the burden of all his conversations with 
 them, which were spiced with accounts of the extravagance and 
 court affairs of Washington. He took care occasionally to intimate, 
 that though everything was going on wrong now, it would be the 
 easiest thing in the world to have affairs straight, if they would 
 have the discretion to send a certain person there." 
 
 And again he shows the usual American impatience with the 
 red tape of law-making.^^ Arthur Clenning has just been to Wash- 
 ington on a visit, but is not impressed by the law-makers. "On his 
 return he told his wife, that it was an everlasting and long-winded 
 establishment, that, as he was never strong at the lungs, it actu- 
 ally made him short breathed, to hear a famous speaker spout. He 
 heard the moving speeches, that move all the audience, but toad- 
 eaters and persons directly interested, from the house. Jle saw, too, 
 with what a philosophic air of patience and resignation the mem- 
 bers drew themselves up, to endure, with proper unction and profit, 
 the penance of hearing a heavy speaker gleaning the shreds and gilt 
 paper out of forty preceding speeches, and talking three hours on 
 
 1" Arthur Clenning, 1828, p. 166. 
 ^"Arthur Clenning, 1828, p. 172. 
 
20 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 a tack about nothing. He admitted, that it was a striking exhibi- 
 tion of a seventy horse power talking and legislation, and that 
 there was something imposing in the puflBng of the steam and the 
 whirling of the wheels, and that was all there was in the sight." 
 
 It is quite noticeable, too, that in these passages there is a de- 
 cided change, both in the general style and in the diction. They 
 seem almost quoted verbatim from some western farmer's speech — 
 quite unlike the correctness and dignity of Flint's usual style. In 
 fact, he seems to be using western material from real life and just 
 as he found it — so good (it must have seemed to him) that even 
 though he had been trained in the principles of rhetoric at Harvard 
 University he did not lay impious hands upon it. It was, indeed, not 
 only the West expressed, but the West as the West expressed itself, 
 and hence truly realistic and American. 
 
 There was generally evidenced a disregard of former stand- 
 ards and models in the literature of the Valley, with a free spirit 
 unknown before. This was simply an evidence of the new western 
 spirit. William B. Cairns has said," "This feeling of literary inde- 
 pendence was especially marked in the West, where it was nourished 
 by the free spirit of the pioneer and by persistent traditions of 
 earlier conflicts." 
 
 Many of the early writers also noticed this difference in spirit 
 and often protested against it. Edward Deering Mansfield, recently 
 from Princeton, after many ineffectual attempts to impress the 
 classic proprieties on the backwoods writers of his acquaintance, 
 says despairingly in Flint's Review of March, 1830: "There is a 
 strong tendency in the West to prefer the unassisted energies of 
 nature in literary efforts to the refinements of culture and the re- 
 strictions of rule. Learning is frequently thought idle and criticism 
 little. This feeling springs from a principle of independent action, 
 noble and just in the abstract, but inapplicable to the pursuit of 
 literature." 
 
 Daniel Drake, in his Discourse on the History, Character, and 
 Prospects of the West (1834), observes the new spirit in the read- 
 ers as well as in the writers : "Many of our writers have received 
 but little education, and are far more anxious about results than 
 the polish of the machinery by which they are to be effected. They 
 write for a people whose literary attainments are limited and im- 
 perfect ; whose taste is for the strong rather than the elegant, and 
 
 1' American Literature from ISIS-SS, p. 82. 
 
CHANGE TO WESTERN MATERIAL AND IDEALS OP LIFE 21 
 
 who are not disposed or prepared to criticise any mode of expres- 
 sion which is striking or original, whatever may be the deformi- 
 ties of the drapery — consequently but little solicitude is felt by our 
 authors about classic propriety." Then he proceeds to give a char- 
 acteristic river man's explanation of the cause. Literature in the 
 West, he thinks, must go "full steam ahead," sweeping before it all 
 obstacles, as the big steamers overcome the obstructions in the 
 western rivers. "In this region low-pressures are found not to 
 answer — high steam succeeds much better ; and although an orator 
 may now and then explode and go off in vapor, the majority make 
 more productive voyages than could be performed under the influ- 
 ence of a temperate heat." 
 
 Such writing was naturally much better in spirit than in form. 
 Another influence which tended toward dash and carelessness was 
 that of the English writers most popular in that day. Scott and 
 Byron especially were imitated. "The example of these, if not in 
 favor of quantity rather than quality, was certainly not in favor 
 
 of careful revision Cooper wrote as profusely as did Scott, 
 
 and had a dazzling popularity."^^ There were current stories of 
 how much Scott wrote in a day, and that Byron often wrote many 
 pages in one burst of inspiration. Such an attitude would naturally 
 lead to a large number of carelessly written stories from less gifted 
 writers. 
 
 Besides that, the pioneer had a natural dislike for fine, pains- 
 taking work. He was used to hewing things out roughly, not pol- 
 ishing them — of beginning things greatly, not finishing them — it 
 was a day of big things, and his methods were always extensive 
 rather than intensive. Another reason for lack of finish was the 
 actual lack of time for literary matters. Writing was not a profes- 
 sion, it was always done in scanty leisure time — perhaps after a 
 long day of exacting physical work — and it was usually published 
 without much revision. As William T. Coggeshall said in the pref- 
 ace to Poets and Poetry of the West (1861) , "The poets of the West 
 are, or have been, lawyers, doctors, teachers, preachers, mechanics, 
 farmers, editors, printers, and housekeepers. They have written 
 at intervals of leisure, snatched from engrossing cares and exacting 
 duties. Their literary labors, consequently desultory, have rarely 
 been given to elaborate performances, but rather to the emotion. 
 
 IS William B. Cairns^ Americain Literature from 1815-18SS. 
 
22 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 the impulse, or the passion of the hour .... exhibiting in a greater 
 degree the feeling than the art of poetry." 
 
 When the writer had a natural wit, probably — as William 
 Gallagher said of Timothy Flint — "He writes as he talks — rapidly, 
 eloquently, poetically, carelessly." Moreover there was, of course, 
 an actual lack of elementary education in many of the early writers 
 of the Valley. 
 
 Yet the average backwoodsman was not daunted by his lack of 
 knowledge. He braved the dangers of literature (though he real^ 
 ized they were many) as he had formerly braved the dangers of the 
 forest — confident that somehow his quick native wit would see him 
 through. Why, indeed, should one who had no fear of Indians quail 
 before the difficulties of composition ? Composition, the pioneer be- 
 lieved, is done in a sudden flash of inspiration. If this were true, 
 then the heavenly fire might strike anywhere — and what place more 
 likely than the beautiful and progressive valley of the Ohio ? 
 
 This new democracy of letters was as revolutionary, in its 
 way., as the political democracy ^had been. Doddridge asserts the 
 doctrine of equal rights in one of his prefaces : "For attempting the 
 task of doing justice to the character of Logan, I have no apology 
 to make. My right to the use of the pen, and press is equal to that 
 of any other man." The Western Souvenir of 1829, devoting its 
 pages "exclusively to domestik literature," also makes the declara- 
 tion of independence : 
 
 "We've long seen your volumes o'erspreading the land, 
 While the West country people strolled rifle in hand ; 
 And now we have come, "with these hard palms of ours. 
 To rival your poets in parlors and bowers. 
 There are maids in the West, bright, witty and fair. 
 Who will gladly accept of our new Souvenir. 
 
 One hand to the paper, one touch to the pen. 
 We have rallied around us the best of our men: — 
 We have song, picture, silk and gold-leaf at command — 
 'Tis done ; — Here we go with the fleet foot of deer — 
 They'll have keen pens that battle our new Souvenir." 
 
 The writing, so far as it could be said to have literary form at 
 all, seemed to be struggling toward a new method of expression, as if 
 seeking a new style suitable for the expression of western ideas. It 
 may be objected that a part of this apparent change might have 
 come about more from an actual lack of knowledge of previous 
 models, than from any tendency away from them. The fact seems 
 to be, however, that the better educated writers were most inclined 
 
CHANGE TO WESTERN MATERIAL AND IDEALS OF LIFE 23 
 
 to break away from the influence of conventional models. The really 
 illiterate were usually little more than slavish copyists of Scott or 
 Byron. Many times a writer, after using a conventional form for 
 a time, changed to a freer style when he began to make use of local 
 material, as if he realized that the stiff form was inadequate. Mr. 
 Cairns has noticed, ^^ "The couplet of Pope was affected at first, but 
 when an author escaped from it he rarely used it again." This was 
 also true of other set stanza forms, like that of Gray's Elegy or 
 Byron's Childe Harold. 
 
 In a more general way, there was in the works of each writer 
 an apparent advance toward modern American ideas. For instance, 
 Timothy Flint — always a typical writer — advances from Francis 
 Berrian in 1826, a story in which the chief interest is in far-off 
 Meicxo — ^through the story of Arthur Clenning, laid chiefly on a 
 desert island but with some genuine local interest at the end — to 
 such purely American and pioneer studies as George Mason, the 
 Young Backwoodsman, and The Shoshonee Valley, an Indian Story. 
 
 Doddridge tries in vain to make the backwoods material follow 
 the conventional models. Logan, Chief of the Cayuga Nation, is writ- 
 ten in a stiffly classic dramatic form, with Captain Furioso and 
 Captain Pacificus in the Dramatis Personae. Even the backwoods 
 characters speak a rigidly correct language. In The Backwoodsman 
 and the Dandy, however, he uses a much freer style. Even his 
 apology to his readers has in it a note of stalwart western inde- 
 pendence. If his play is like the West he will bow to no criticism 
 from prudish eastern readers. He says, "Some expressions in the 
 dialogue may appear rough and uncouth, and a few of them ob- 
 jectionable on another ground. Let the blame, if any, rest where 
 it ought ; it is not the fault of the author, more than it was that of 
 Shakespeare that 'the age in which he lived was not an age of deli- 
 cacy.' If some expressions in the dialogue should excite the blush 
 
 and blame of prudery, no matter Its language is that which 
 
 was in current use among our first settlers." 
 
 This tendency is clearly defined in all the writers whose work 
 extended over a considerable period. They advance not only toward 
 the expression of American ideas and ideals, but also to the expres- 
 sion of them in the American way, and, however crude these first 
 attempts may be, they show the beginning of a new era that was 
 to develop the American literature of the future. 
 
 ^^ ATnerican Literature from 1815-18SS, p. 67. 
 
PART m 
 
 I. The Indian in Literature 
 
 (1) Chateaubriand 
 
 Previous to the year 1820 the Indian had been known as a 
 literary type in the novels of Chateaubriand. Uiider the influence 
 of Rousseau, Chateaubriand had been led to believe that man in 
 his natural state is happiest and best. With this idea in mind he 
 determined to make a trip to America for observation of the abo- 
 rigines. He reached Baltimore in April, 1791, journeyed north to 
 New York and Canada, and then south to Pittsburgh, and down the 
 Ohio and Mississippi. Thence he went, by an indefinite route, to 
 Florida for a time, then returned to Philadelphia, from which place 
 he set sail in December, 1791. It is evident that, under the trans- 
 portation conditions of that day, on this brief trip, he must have 
 spent much of his time going from one place to another, and that 
 he could not have sojourned for any great length of time with any 
 one of the Indian tribes he describes so vividly. The natural beauty 
 of Kentucky especially pleased him, and many of his most careful 
 paintings of scenery have been identified as Kentucky scenes.^ 
 
 After Chateaubriand's return to France he wrote several 
 novels and other works featuring the American Indian. The novels 
 most interesting to the American reader are: Les Natchez, Atala 
 and Rene. Among his characters he draws many types of Indians, 
 many of whom are without counterpart in any American Indian 
 story. Chactas in Les Natchez, the Indian philosopher, has some 
 points of likeness with the famous Logan. Adario is the perfect 
 warrior. Even in his old age he had the straight form, the piercing 
 eye, the cunning, and the proud and noble air of a youth. He was 
 so devoted to freedom, that he preferred to kill his grandson rather 
 than see him live in slavery. Onduree, the villain, is far more like 
 some border ruflSian than like an Indian. The women, Celuta and 
 Atala, are apparently much like Europeans. 
 
 Chateaubriand deserves much credit for being the first to pre- 
 sent the Indian in literature, and for showing him as a real human 
 being, but to an American his portraits are far from satisfactory. 
 
 ^ Chateaubriand et L'Amerique, Stathers, 1905, 
 
 24 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 25 
 
 To him the Indian was a somewhat child-like demigod — inhabiting 
 the forests of America by divine right. Before the white man ar- 
 rived he was perfect — living a free, natural, woodland life, beside 
 which the Golden Age and the days of Arcady are commonplace. 
 Any faults he may have at present have come from his association 
 with the whites, who by their unbelievable cruelty have taught him 
 to hate and to fight and introduced him to all the vices of civiliza- 
 tion. The following brief quotation from Rene suggests this French 
 point of view : 
 
 "Happy savages! Oh! that I could enjoy the peace which you 
 always possess! While with so little satisfaction I ran through so 
 many lands, you, seated quietly under your oaks, you let the days 
 unnumbered flow along. Your thought was only for your wants, 
 and you arrived, better than I, at the result of wisdom, like a child 
 between sports and sleep." 
 
 The world is also indebted to Chateaubriand for some charm- 
 ing, if rather elaborate and sentimental, forest scenes. He called 
 the attention even of the Americans to the real beauty of the wilder- 
 ness, as well as to its possibilities for literary material. There is 
 no doubt that he had a great influence upon Cooper, both with his 
 Indian portraits and his descriptions of scenery. As the French 
 Sainte-Beuve has said." 
 
 "Rousseau avait decouvert et peint la nature alpestre, le jardin 
 du Pays de Vaud et les belles forets de nos climats; Bemardin de 
 Saint-Pierre nous revela le ciel et la vegetation des lies de I'lnde ; 
 mais a Chateaubriand, le premier, echut le vaste du Desert ameri- 
 cain, de la foret transatlantique. Ce fut sa grande conquete." 
 
 His difficulty was that he came to this country to prove certain 
 preconceived theories, and he found what he came for — but little 
 else. In fact, it is often difficult for an American, in reading a 
 Chateaubriand novel, to remember that the character's skin was 
 red or that his life did not have a European background, for Cha- 
 teaubriand's experience with cultivated life, and the brevity of his 
 acquaintance with the Indians often prevented him from giving 
 them true Indian characteristics. 
 
 Just how well the stories of Chateaubriand were known to the 
 writers of the Valley is doubtful. Certainly some of them were 
 known to the early college-trained writers. For instance Timothy 
 Flint in 1826 makes his hero, Francis Berrian, say, (p. 105) "I 
 
 " Chateaubriand et son groupe, VoL 8, p. 130. 
 
26 LOCAL LITERATURE OP THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 have heard your daughter quote Chateaubriand. Some passages in 
 his travels are to me of the highest order of poetry, and abundant 
 aliment for day-dreams. Nothing can be more delightful than 
 some of those periods, where he relates his impressions in the midst 
 of the magnificence and boundlessness of the savage nature of our 
 forests, when the moon rises upon them, and diifuses over them 
 the great secret of melancholy. I might instance that passage, that 
 even the hypocrites have admitted was so beautiful, in the Genie 
 du Christianisme, 'Description d'une belle Nuit, dans les Forets du 
 Nouveau Monde,' and many others in the romance of Atala." 
 
 And in a later preface, R. M. Bird, author of Nick of the 
 Woods (1830?) explains: "At the period when Nick of the Woods 
 was written the genius of Chateaubriand and of our own Cooper 
 (not to speak of Marmontel before them) had thrown a poetical 
 illusion over the Indian character; and the red men were presented 
 — ^almost stereotyped in the popular mind — as the embodiments of 
 grand and tender sentiments — a new style of the heau ideal — ^brave, 
 gentle, loving, refined, romantic personages — nature's nobles, the 
 chivalry of the forest." 
 
 A general knowledge of the Chateaubriand point of view is 
 credited to a common soldier of 1794 by Andrew Coffinberry.' 
 While it is quite likely that the author cared little for the historical 
 accuracy of his character's views, at least this would indicate that 
 the Chateaubriand stories were fairly well known before 1842. 
 Somewhat later, translations of several of the Chateaubriand 
 stories appeared in the western magazines,* and later writers show 
 more strongly the effect of this influence. 
 
 (2) Cooper 
 
 In American literature the decade from 1820-1830 is especially 
 noteworthy for the work of James Fenimore Cooper, and it also 
 includes the dates of some of the early work of the Ohio Valley 
 writers. In 1822 Cooper wrote his first romance of early Ameri- 
 can days. The Pioneers, although it was not published until the 
 next year. This work, written only to "please himself" as he said, 
 shows very clearly the influence of Scott, who was then in the height 
 of his popularity. Though rather awkwardly managed as to plot, 
 it showed the possibilities of pioneer types of character in fiction 
 
 » The Forest Rangers, 1842. 
 
 * Rene', translated by I. W. Taylor, Esq., in Western Journal and Civilian, 1854, etc. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 27 
 
 and created a great deal of interest. In 1826 appeared The Last 
 of the Mohicians, also somewhat after the manner of Scott, and 
 probably indebted to Chateaubriand to some extent for its delinea- 
 tion of Indian character. 
 
 Yet Cooper's Indians, though not by any means ethnological 
 studies, were at least nearer the real aborigines than were those of 
 Chateaubriand. He showed some of their bad qualities as well as 
 their good ones, and under their high romantic coloring, real Indian 
 traits are usually traceable. If they do not seem very real, at 
 least in their nobility of character, stateliness of form, and elo- 
 quence of speech they are picturesque figures — fit creatures for 
 the grandeur and sublimity of their forest background. 
 
 With the immediate popularity of The Last of the Mohicans, 
 the Indian in American literature, so far as the North and East 
 were concerned, became a fixed tjrpe. In almost every story with 
 the Indian as central figure, it was not difficult to trace in him the 
 lineaments of Uncas or Chingachgook or some other of the red 
 heroes of the Cooper novels. Like these prototypes, he crept his 
 way through the story with soundless tread against a romantic and 
 picturesque forest background. This resemblance was but natural, 
 for the Indian had been almost unknown in American literature 
 before the days of Cooper, and the popularity and real power of his 
 tales set firmly in the minds of the reading public this particular 
 type of Indian character. Indeed, whether true or false, it will 
 probably always remain to the great majority of readers, in our 
 own and other countries, as the only important Indian type. 
 
 Later (1855) Longfellow elaborated a similar Indian character 
 in Hiawatha — a romantic figure, rather a development of the Cooper 
 Indian than as that of Chateaubriand. 
 
 There were many reasons why this type was easily accepted in 
 spite of its fanciful nature.- By the time the Cooper novels were 
 written, the horrors of Indian warfare had become little more than 
 a memory to the people of the East and North. There was not 
 much opportunity for Uncas or Chingachgook to be compared with 
 real Indians in actual and only too realistic warfare, and few 
 remembered the days of the bloody struggle. The picturesque In- 
 dian figure, with its glamour of romance and its sounding oratory, 
 seemed somehow akin to the American's idea of his own great 
 country. By these striking stories of the aboriginals, America 
 gained a new importance to the European reader and a recognition 
 
28 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 that was very pleasing to the American heart. The stories were 
 highly romantic, and in his breathless interest in the outcome, the 
 reader seldom paused to inquire as to the realism of the characters, 
 so that any failure in the drawing was easily overlooked and the 
 Cooper Indian was accepted by both the American and the Euro- 
 pean reading public. 
 
 (3) The Ohio Valley View of the Indian 
 
 Most of the early writers of the Ohio Valley, if they knew the 
 stories of Chateaubriand, certainly had little sympathy with his 
 view of the Indian, nor would they have been much more in accord 
 with Cooper's presentation. To them the Indian was neither a mere 
 poetical figure nor an academic curiosity. Indeed, he was all too 
 real — a fiendish enemy to be overcome at all hazards and by almost 
 any method. If the writers themselves had not suffered at his hands 
 — if they had not seen, 
 
 "The fiush of dying agony 
 Yet fresh upon each well-known face/' 
 
 at least they knew many people who had lost their loved ones and 
 had themselves endured torture and captivity. They were writing 
 for. a people "whose remembrance still bleeds at the recollection of 
 the loss of their relatives, who have perished under the tomahawk 
 and scalping knife of the savages." The Indian seemed to them, 
 even yet, a serious and an ever-present menace, and the immediate 
 contact did not tend to improve their opinion of the race.^ 
 
 Naturally such writers, and such readers, could not well accept 
 the conventionalized Indian either of Cooper or Chateaubriand. The 
 attitude of the backwoodsmen generally is well expressed by an old 
 soldier in Coffinberry's The Forest Rangers (1842). 
 
 " 'Tis true that often I have read. 
 An Indian in his native grandeur. 
 High-minded, tall, erect and slender. 
 Maintains his honor towards his friend. 
 Whatever loss or risks attend — 
 That in fierce combat, knife to knife. 
 He will, to save him, lose his life ; — 
 That he is worthy imitation 
 By any scientific nation I 
 But, though 1 say it with regret. 
 Such speciTnens I have not met. 
 But found them still a treacherous race. 
 Whose cruelties mankind disgrace." 
 
 ^ Narrative of Charles Johnston, 1827, p. 249. Even as late as 1822 there were thousands 
 of Indians in Ohio. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 29 
 
 And R. M. Bird in his preface to Nick of the Woods (1830?) 
 says, "Such conceptions as Atala and Uncas are beautiful unrealities 
 and fictions merely, as imaginary and contrary to nature as the 
 shepherd swains of the old pastoral school of rhyme and romance — 
 at all events, that one does not find beings of that class, or anything 
 in the slightest degree resembling them, among the tribes now 
 known to travellers and legislators. The Indian is doubtless a gen- 
 tleman; but he is a gentleman who wears a very dirty shirt, and 
 lives a very miserable life." 
 
 It is true that some of the Ohio Valley writers mention at 
 times in their stories certain Indian tribes that live a somewhat 
 idyllic life in the great forest, — particularly James Hall, in The 
 Black Steed of the Prairies,'^ and Timothy Flint, in The Shoshonee 
 Valley (1830) . — Probably it was the early Chateaubriand influence 
 which caused their minds to turn in this direction — in fact, that in- 
 fluence is noticeable throughout in Flint's story. However, it is 
 noticeable, too, that in both instances the writers place these happy 
 tribes well beyond the bounds of their own, or their readers', actual 
 knowledge — at the Rocky Mountains and beyond — and that both 
 are careful to leave the impression that such tribes are very differ- 
 ent from any Indians known in the Ohio or Mississippi Valley. 
 Timothy Flint even makes them nearly white. "Vague accounts 
 of them by wandering savages, hunters, and coureurs du hois, have 
 been the sources, most probably, whence have been formed the 
 western fables, touching the existence of a nation in this region, 
 descended from the Welsh." 
 
 Since the pioneer writer could not often use the convention- 
 alized Indian of literature in his tales, he was forced to a more or 
 less realistic study of the Indian as he knew him in the Valley. 
 It is interesting to note what are the lineaments of the race as he 
 saw them in the local tribes, for he certainly had a better oppor- 
 tunity for first-hand study than did either Cooper or Chateaubriand. 
 Hence his picture of the Indian is probably nearer the real truth 
 than that of any of the earlier writers. 
 
 (a) The Indian of an Inferior Race. 
 
 One thing of which the pioneer writer, as well as the average 
 pioneer, was most certain, was that the Indian was actually inferior 
 
 ' The Wilderness and the Warpath, 1846. 
 
30 LOCAL LITERATURE OP THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 to the white man. The Indians showed themselves inferior by their 
 barbarous warfare. Surely no race capable of such atrocious 
 cruelty was worthy of existence. It is often to justify the pioneer 
 in this attitude that the writer spreads his page with the loathsome 
 details of savage warfare. "Should my countrymen be still 
 charged with barbarism in the prosecution of the Indian war, let 
 him who harbors this unfavorable impression concerning them, 
 portray in imagination the horrid scenes of slaughter which fre- 
 quently met their view in the course of the Indian war. Let him, 
 if he can bear the reflection, look at helpless infancy, virgin beauty 
 and hoary age, dishonored by the ghastly wounds of the tomahawk 
 and scalping knife of the savage. Let him hear the shrieks of the 
 victims of the Indian tortured by fire, and smell the surrounding 
 air, rendered sickening by the effluvia of the burning flesh and blood. 
 Let him hear the yells and view the hellish features of the surround- 
 ing circle of savage warriors rioting in all the luxuriance of ven- 
 geance, while applying the flaming torches to the parched limbs of 
 the sufferers, and then suppose those murdered infants, matrons, 
 virgins, and victims of torture, were his friends and relations, the 
 wife, sister, or brother ; what would be his feelings ?" ^ 
 
 And such scenes were not merely chance incidents of the In- 
 dians' revenge upon the whites for some real or fancied injury, but 
 they were the natural and usual outcome of the Indians' real char- 
 acter. As James Hall says,^ "Those who are unacquainted with the 
 Indian character — could scarcely understand how the mere lust of 
 carnage, whetted by continual indulgence, becomes a master pas- 
 sion of the soul, irrespective of any desire for plunder or conquest, 
 or of any present or prospective advantage. Neither infancy, nor 
 imbecility, nor sex, affords any protection ; as man bruises the head 
 of the serpent, so does the Indian crush the offspring of his enemy ; 
 and the absence of the warrior only entices the brutal destroyer to 
 seek his prey with redoubled diligence." 
 
 Did the Indians not war among themselves with bloody vio- 
 lence before the wliite man came? Did they not, even then, destroy 
 innocent women and children and torture their captives? Then 
 why should they be spared, who themselves spared no one? How 
 could one be inhumane to a race of such horrible inhumanity? In 
 Joseph Doddridge's play, Logan, the Last of the Race of ShikeU 
 
 '' Doddridge, Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars, 1824, p. 161. 
 ^ Wilderness and the Warpath, 1846. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 31 
 
 lirmis (1823), the First Lieutenant expresses this view: "If the 
 
 Indians have not already done mischief, they will soon do it 
 
 An Indian ought to be killed, he is naturally a murderer, and if not 
 at war, it is only because he is chained down by fear." And Cap- 
 tain Furioso, as usual, goes even further, "He is a wolf or a bear, 
 that lives upon the destruction of everything about him. He is a 
 beast of prey." 
 
 The Indians also showed their inferiority in that they did not 
 appreciate or use the beautiful country they inhabited. The pioneer 
 was quite sure that,^ "Nature did not make these clear waters and 
 beautiful woods merely for the use of treacherous Indians." Land, 
 reasoned the pioneer, is for use — and as the Indians made no use 
 of it, according to the pioneer's ideas at least, they should give way 
 to their betters. When someone says, in Doddridge's play," that 
 the Indians have the first right to the land, the First Lieutenant 
 indignantly replies, "On their own ground! What ground can an 
 Indian have ? I would as soon apply to a buffalo, for a right to the 
 land over the river, as to the Indian. I could prove that he marked 
 the earth with his feet, had eaten the weeds and brushed the bushes 
 with his tafl, and made paths to the salt licks, and what has the 
 Indian done more?" 
 
 Neither had the Indians developed any "improvements" to 
 make life more comfortable, even in the villages they had lived in 
 for generations. Certainly they could have no kinship with the su- 
 perior white race. As Blair, a veteran soldier, says,^^ 
 
 "Still nothing has e'en yet been done 
 To 'meliorate their hard condition — 
 Surely the race must lack ambition. 
 No wigwam boasts a clapboard roof. 
 Or any covering waterproof. 
 With ours their blood was never blended 
 From common stock we ne'er descended." 
 
 With such a race the pioneer felt little common human feeling. 
 They were not only not civilized, but would never accept civiliza- 
 tion.^2 "The young white prisoners, adopted into Indian families, 
 often become complete Indians, but in how few instances did ever 
 an Indian become civilized?" Hence they must be driven back, 
 peaceably if possible, but always driven back, to make way for the 
 mightier race and the march of civilization. 
 
 B James Hall, Legends of the West. 1863, p. f56. 
 '^<' Logan, 1823. 
 
 11 Cofflnberry, The Forest Bangers, 1842. 
 
 12 Doddridge, Notes, 1824. 
 
32 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 In war the Indian had invented nothing more deadly than the 
 arrow and the tomahawk, and himself acknowledged his inferiority 
 by using the white man's rifle and keen-edged knife. Since it was 
 a matter of war between the races, the pioneer felt that he had 
 won the wilderness by right of arms. Was he not a conqueror, often 
 over many times his number of Indians? Then the fertile valleys 
 were the spoils. Why should there be treaties of peace, and talk 
 of paying for the land which he had already won ? The Indian must 
 accept the decision, and was in the wrong in any attempt to recon- 
 quer the territory for himself. 
 
 (b) The Indian Marked by Fate for Destruction 
 
 Another thing of which the pioneer writer seemed sure was 
 that the Indian was somehow fated for destruction, and that he, 
 the pioneer, was only the chance agent of that inexorable fate. The 
 races, he reasoned, have always followed each other in successive 
 waves ; it is the natural law of earth. 
 
 " 'Tis just, though stern, 
 Thaf~race o'erwhelmed by race, in turn 
 Should pass away." ^^ 
 
 And later poets have often taken the same attitude. 
 
 "O what a wonder man ! He lives his time. 
 His little hour, in passion's, glory's strife : — ■ 
 Bards come and spin the melancholy rhyme 
 Over his noteless bones.*' i* 
 
 As for the Indian, he is simply passing as the ages have de- 
 creed, before the coming of a better man. Micah P. Flint says in 
 The Hunter (1826) : 
 
 'It hath been his bitter doom. 
 To fall before that happier race, 
 Which now hath fixed its dwelling place. 
 On these wide plains, once all his own." 
 
 And Captain Furioso even finds a Biblical reason for destroying the 
 Indians, when he says, "They are Canaanites, whom Providence has 
 doomed to utter extermination." No doubi; many of the pioneers 
 felt themselves thus upheld by their God and providence, even in 
 the worst of their outrages against the redmen. 
 
 1' Micah P. Flint, Hunter and Other Poems, 1826. 
 
 " Coates Kinney, Keuka and Other Poems. 1865, p. 161. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 33 
 
 The following stanza from an early poem leaves the reader in 
 doubt. Is it as grimly cynical as it sounds, or is it, by chance, in- 
 tended to be humorous ?^^ 
 
 "The forest primeval has gone from us now, — 
 The trails are all turned by the white man's plow. 
 While our Liberty Bell was ringing their knell. 
 It proclaimed to Progress, that 'AH is well.' " 
 
 This is the "It's-too-bad-but-it-can't-be-helped" attitude, which 
 no doubt did much to ease the consciences of the hardy pioneers 
 over many a white man's brutality. The Indians could not, in the 
 very nature of things, hold this beautiful country forever. They 
 would not give it up without a ferocious struggle. Those who took 
 part in this struggle were the forerunners of civilization — pushed 
 on from behind, like persons in a crowd — and so not really responsi- 
 ble for theif aggressive acts. At least if they had not led the way 
 someone else would have done so, they were merely the agents of 
 manifest destiny. 
 
 (c) The Indian's Rights Lost by His Treatment 
 of the Whites 
 
 Such ideas as the pioneers may have had originally concerning 
 the claim of the Indians to the land were often overcome by a 
 knowledge of their revolting cruelty toward the whites. Indian out- 
 rages, especially upon women and children, redden the pages of 
 many an early tale and the diabolical yell of the savage in revenge, 
 
 "Wielding the tom'hawk and the scalping knife 
 With fiend-like fury and terrific form." 
 
 curdles the reader's blood, as the story pauses with hideous detail 
 over the destruction of some settler's forest home. As Withers 
 says.^'' "Such scenes .... will not soon be eifaced from the mem- 
 ory ; and the lively interest excited in the bosoms of many, for the 
 fate of those who there treacherously perished, unabated by time, 
 still gleams in the countenance, when tradition recounts the tale 
 of theii" unhappy lot." 
 
 Even the kindest-hearted and most easy-going of the pioneers, 
 willing to grant the Indians all their good qualities, willing to grant 
 that any cruelty to a combatant is fair in war, recoils in horror 
 from their bloody attacks on women and children. Such a hunter 
 
 1^ The Shawnees of Wapakoneta, Poeitis on Ohio, p. 59. 
 1" Chronicles of Border Warfare, 1831. 
 
34 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 says,^' "They have no more bowels of compassion than a wolf. But, 
 after all, the Indiians have some good qualities. They are prime 
 hunters, I will say that for them, and they are true to one another. 
 I don't blame them a grain for their hatred of the Long Knives. 
 That game is fair, for two can play it. But their thirst for human 
 blood, and their cruelty to women and children is ridiculous." 
 
 We are told again," "The tomahawk flies with unpitying and 
 unsparing fury. The writhing of their victims inspires a horrible 
 joy. Nor need we wonder at the enmity that exists between them 
 and the frontier people, when we know how often such enemies 
 have been let loose upon their women and children." 
 
 Such an attitude of antagonism to the Indian was not the 
 growth of a short time, it had often been taught the pioneer from 
 his babyhood. The Indian "had to do with men who had long been 
 taught to consider the savage a natural enemy, as hateful as the 
 serpent and as irreconcilable as the wolf ; men whose ears had been 
 accustomed from infancy to legends of border warfare, in which 
 the savage was always represented as the aggressor, and as a fiend 
 stimulated by hellish passions, and continually plotting some de- 
 testable outrage or horrible revenge They had grown up in a 
 
 hatred of the perpetrators of such enormities, which the philan- 
 thropists could hardly condemn, as it originated in generous feel- 
 ings, and was kept alive by the repeated violation of the most 
 sacred rights and the best affections."^" 
 
 It was such an attitude which led to many outrages upon the 
 Indians, even upon Indian women and children. As Captain Furi- 
 oso said,^'' "I would kill all, nits will be lice." It was also such an 
 attitude which led even the better pioneers to excuse, to some ex- 
 tent, at least, not only the murders of the Indian Hater — always a 
 recognized type of backwoodsman — but also such slaughter as that 
 of the Conestoga Indians at Lancaster and the Christian Indians at 
 Gnadenhutten. 
 
 Yet the Indian's right had defenders even in these early days. 
 It was usually the strong man, who could most nearly hold his own 
 with the Indian — or even beat him at his own game — ^who gave 
 him justice. As usual, this view is expressed in Doddridge's Logan, 
 this time by the Second Lieutenant : "They have at least the right 
 
 " James Hall, Legends of the West, 1853, p. 266. 
 
 18 Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years, 1826, p. 139. 
 
 i» Hall, Legends of the West, 1853. 
 
 20 Doddridge, Logan, 1823. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 35 
 
 of possession to the country. Providence placed them here, long 
 before the white man knew anything of this quarter of the earth." 
 And Captain Pacificus does not believe in the general butchery : "To 
 tell the honest truth, I think but little of the bravery of any man 
 who can ever harbor a thought of committing murder in cold blood. 
 At all events, the man who can kill a woman or child, must be a 
 coward." 
 
 (d) Observation of Indian Life and Types of Character 
 
 There is, however, in these stories, a real appreciation of cer- 
 tain types of Indian character and much excellent observation of 
 Indian life. Timothy Flint gives a pileture of an Indian supper.^^ 
 "It would be difficult to imagine a happier assemblage of human be- 
 ings, than those young and hungry red men, now exulting around 
 their bright fires, feasting high upon salmon, a ration of corn 
 cakes, distributed on this joyous occasibn, roasted prairie potatoes, 
 and a reasonable allowance of spirits. When they paused for the 
 merry tale, or shouts of laughter, in the intervals, the pleasant 
 sound was heard of their horses, advancing step by step upon the 
 grass, and greedily biting it off to the roots." 
 
 And what could be more realistically drawn than the follow- 
 ing picture ?22 "There is a peculiar excitement operating upon the 
 red men in cases of burning, which renders the beholders as inac- 
 cessible to feeling, and as inexorable to pity, as the sufferer seems 
 to be incapable of pain. The preparations were all executed under 
 his eye. He saw the warriors eagerly adding faggot to faggot, and 
 mixing green billets with dry. He heard them carelessly discuss- 
 ing all the circumstances of torment, they were preparing. The 
 medicine men, hideously painted, stood apart, beating their drums, 
 and at intervals starting the death song, in which the rest joined 
 in those horrible strains, which had so rung In their ears at the 
 tent in the morning. He saw these warriors, so peaceful in their 
 repose, so shepherdlike, when reclining in the shade of their camp 
 in the slumber of their passions, apparently transformed by this 
 scene and singing to the rage and fury of demons. They yelled, 
 leapt aloft in the air, and danced; and when they paused for a 
 moment, it was to resume the fearful chaunt of their death song. 
 An insatiably delight in the groans and agony of the victim had 
 been created by the spectacle. He made his last effort to operate 
 
 2iTfce Shoahonee Valley, Vol. 2, p. 103, 1830. 
 22 Shoahonee Valley, Vol. 2, pp. 186.— 
 
36 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 upon their obdurate natures, in thrilling entreaties, uttered in 
 screams of terror, that they should not fire the pile, until they had 
 a return to his message to his friends. He struggled with his 
 pinions, till his unheeded cries to the young chief for mercy sunk 
 away from exhaustion. The serious and calm indifference of the 
 chief might have been taken for the result of deafness. Not so the 
 rest. Their shouts of laughter, and the energy of their dancing 
 were increased to tenfold vehemence. 'The fair pale face cries, like 
 an old woman,' they shouted amidst their peals of merriment. The 
 medicine men, meanwhile, beat their drums with a seriousness as 
 inflexible, and an industry as uninterrupted, as though the cere- 
 mony could not proceed, if they were for a moment to remit their 
 beating. They occasionally chaunted, 'We hear their spirits cry for 
 vengeance. Wait till the sun casts no shadow, and the debt shall 
 be paid.' 
 
 "The stake was a sapling shaft, stripped of its bark, fifty feet 
 in height, and planted perpendicularly. The moment to fire the pile 
 was when that stake should cast no shadow ; and the fearful short- 
 ening of that shadow was noted by the quailing eye of the victim, 
 who was bound fast to it. A human hand might now have spanned 
 the shadow. The whooping and the 'Cheowanna-ha ! ha!' at that 
 moment could only have been aptly imaged by that impressive fig- 
 ure, the sound of many waters. The young chief raised his hand. 
 'The eye of the Master of Life is now directly upon us,' he said; 
 and as his hand fell, a few low notes upon the drums, and the death 
 song sinking almost under the breath of the warriors, and an imi- 
 tation of the cry of one in the last struggles of dissolution, was the 
 signal to fire the pile. The oldest warrior of the expedition seized 
 a flaming brand from a fire in the centre of the camp, kindled on 
 purpose. He fiourished it swiftly three times above his head. He 
 then calmly applied it to the pile, amidst shrieks from the victim, 
 which none but a redman's heart could have endured. 
 
 "As the fire streamed aloft, 'I saw,' said Pentanona, 'big drops 
 rise on the forehead of the base squaw. You know that Pentanona 
 cannot say the thing that is not. I saw the hairs on his head become 
 white, before they kindled in the blaze. After all, our warriors, who 
 suspended their dancing, and their songs, to feast on the groans of 
 the squaw, were robbed of their joy. The green wood hissed with 
 the steam of a hot, but slow fire ; and we intended to have danced, 
 and sung to his cries, till the setting sun. But as the fire began to 
 scorch his locks, we saw him fall lifeless and motionless.' " 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 37 
 
 Naturally a popular figure was that of the kind-hearted Indian 
 brave who sometimes saved the white captives from, torture, and 
 refused to kill women and children. Tecumseh was often mentioned 
 as having these characteristics. The following description is from 
 Coffinberry's The Forest Rangers (1842) : 
 
 "Young Muh-qua was a chieftain brave, 
 Who oft had risked his life to save 
 A female's or an infant's life, 
 From tomahawk or scalping knife ; 
 Oft had he stayed base Girty's hand. . . . 
 His soul disdained to butcher those 
 That he deemed not his nation's foes ; 
 In his lone camp did scalps abound, 
 Yet none but soldiers' there were found." 
 
 Another popular figure was the defiant warrior. Whether 
 right or wrong in his warfare, he never failed to elicit praise for his 
 stoicism at death. Certain writers, like Withers, in the Chronicles 
 of Border Warfare, tried to minimize this appreciation by saying 
 that the Indian did not actually feel the torture as a white man 
 would, i.e., that his nervous system was not so highly organized. 
 This was certainly not generally believed, however, and this type 
 of Indian is celebrated in many poems and stories. The following 
 is a vigorous specimen of such writing : 
 
 "Amid the flames, proud to the last, 
 His warrior-spirit rose, 
 And looks of scorn unblenchingr, cast 
 Upon his circling: foes. 
 Think ye I feel these harmless fires 
 No — by the spirit of my sires 
 I, that have made your wigwams red, 
 Your women captive borne, 
 And from your bravest chieftain's head 
 The badge of triumph torn ; 
 Think ye I feel these harmless fires? 
 No — by the spirits of my sires I" ^^ 
 
 Another popular poem, written by Wm. R. Schenck, was pub- 
 lished in Coggeshall's Poetry of the West: 
 
 *'Then higher build my funeral throne. 
 Then higher raise the raging flame. 
 And not one murmur, not one groan 
 Shall sully Orvan's deathless fame .... 
 Remember how before me sank 
 Your bravest friends, your failing ranks : 
 Remember how my hatchet drank 
 Your warmest, choicest blood, 
 I scorn your power ; I scorn your wrath ; 
 I curse you with my latest breath." 
 
 23 M. P. Flint. Hunter and Other Poems 1826. 
 
38 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 And another warrior, Senatchmine, is celebrated by John H. 
 Bryant in the same collection : 
 
 'Tor he was of unblenchine eye. 
 Honored in youth, revered in agre. 
 Of princely port' and bearing high. 
 And brave, and eloquent, and sage." 
 
 Even the "white hater," the opposite type from the backwoods 
 Indian hater, has his place in the stories. The following is from 
 Timothy Flint's story of Oolemba in the Western Souvenir (1829) : 
 "Wansimmet ran to the spot where the blood of the wounded pale- 
 face stained the black mould. He kissed it. A gloomy joy marked 
 his countenance, and we saw, that between him and that race an 
 everlasting war was proclaimed." 
 
 Indian eloquence was much appreciated. The Logan speech 
 was widely known, and other examples of oratory were often 
 quoted in the western magazines. In many of the stories and poems 
 careful imitations of the Indian style were worked out, often with 
 considerable success. The following description of an eloquent war- 
 rior is from Francis Berrian "* : 
 
 "I entered into this speech with intense interest for I had 
 heard much of Indian eloquence. The gesture was vehement. An 
 arm, which had once been muscular and brawny, waved with grace- 
 ful motion from under a buffalo robe, thrown half across the 
 shoulder. To give emphasis to the close of every sentence, the 
 speaker raised himself, and poised the weight of his body on his 
 toes. It was garnished with the usual figures of the clouds, the 
 winds, thunder, and generally images drawn from the most strik- 
 ing phenomena of nature." 
 
 This example of Indian eloquence was published in the West- 
 ern Souvenir in 1829. It was said to have been delivered at a 
 council near Detroit in 1788 : "Fathers ! — ^What has happened this 
 day has sunk deep into my heart, and will never be forgotten. I 
 foretell, that the sunshine of this day's peace will warm and protect 
 us and our children. To confirm it — I here present my right hand; 
 — the hand that never yet was given in deceit; — and which never 
 raised the tomahawk in peace, or spared an enemy in war. And I 
 assure you of my friendship with a tongue which has never 
 mocked at the truth." 
 
 '* Timothy FUnt, 1826, p. 45. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 39 
 
 Sometimes the Indian character, especially that of the squaws, 
 was used in a humorous way. In Francis Berrian " the hero is pro- 
 posed to by the squaw. "In fact she let me know, without circum- 
 locution, that the honor she intended me was no other, than to offer 
 me all her wealth, consisting in; a large quantity of vermillion, a 
 complete assortment of Indian finery, a rifle, a yager, dogs, mules, 
 horses, cows, and that, upon which she seemed to have afiixed the 
 least value, some ingots of silver; and all this only with the in- 
 cumbrance of a fine athletic squaw, six feet and an inch in height, 
 and with broad copper-colored cheeks, painted as red as vermillion 
 could make them." Her actual proposal was as follows : "You silly. 
 You weak. You baby-hands. No catch horse. No kill buffalo. No 
 good, but for sit still — read book. Never mind. Me like. Me make 
 rich. Me make big man. Me your squaw." 
 
 All this appreciation of the Indian, however, is very different 
 from the sentimental attitude of Chateaubriand or the heroics of 
 Cooper. It always shows a knowledge of real Indians and of their 
 actual characteristics, and a genuine desire to express that truth 
 upon the pages of their stories. 
 
 2. The Pioneer in Ohio Valley Literature 
 
 But if the pioneer writer failed to see many high heroic quali- 
 ties in the Indian he was just as matter-of-fact in his attitude to- 
 ward himself. Not only is he not a blood-thirsty villain — ^the Cha- 
 teaubriand spoiler of the red man's paradise — but also he is not even 
 a romantic Leather Stocking. 
 
 First of all, pioneers, he thinks, are not all alike by any means. 
 Their tjrpes are almost as numerous as the trees in their own forests. 
 Half the charm of the life along the Ohio River was the constant 
 succession of clearly marked personalities. Life had not a conven- 
 tional, typical quality — it was all new and stirring with odd char- 
 acters and odd possibilities. As Daniel Drake said of his childhood,^^ 
 "I had not only variety of character, but variety of topics, presented 
 to me . . . and the very apprehension of them served to en- 
 large the horizon of my childhood ; while the diversities of character 
 greatly augmented the area of my social sympathies, especially in 
 the humbler walks of life." 
 
 2= Timothy Flint, 1826. Vol. 1, p. 57. 
 '» Pioneer Life in Kentucky, 1870, p. 211. 
 
40 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 a. The Hunter 
 
 Two very distinct classes of backwoodsmen, to the backwoods- 
 man himself, were the hunters and the settlers. The first white men 
 in the wilderness were usually the hunters. These were solitary 
 men who loved the wild life of the forest for itself and preferred 
 its dangers to the conventions even of the pioneer settlements. It 
 was their frequent remark that they "could not abide'" towns or 
 even scattered settlements, and they loved to tell how they would 
 lose their way in some frontier village when the trackless forest 
 was like an open book to them. As Withers says in the Chronicles 
 of Border Warfare (1831)^^ "There were also in every settlement, 
 individuals, who had been drawn to them solely by their love of 
 hunting, and an attachment to the wild, unshackled scenes of a 
 wilderness life. These were, perhaps, totally regardless of all the 
 inconveniences, resulting from their new situation except that of 
 being continually pent up in the forts; and thus debarred the en- 
 joyment of their favorite pastime." Free lances in the forest as 
 they were, by their keen observation and knowledge of the Indians 
 they often saved the settlements by warning them of an attack or 
 by joining their garrison at the critical moment. 
 
 The hunter tjrpe of backwoodsman seldom cared much for the 
 other pioneers. He felt that the wilderness belonged rightfully to 
 himself. "Nature did not make these clear waters and beautiful 
 woods merely for the use of treacherous Indians, — no — nor for 
 land speculators and pedlars. . . . There are settlements al- 
 ready where a woodsman cannot find his way for the roads and the 
 farms." '^ 
 
 Daniel Boone was often mentioned as the supreme type of the 
 backwoods hunter, and many of the hunter incidents have clustered 
 about his name. Wm. Ross Wallace, in an early poem (1840?), 
 makes him say,^' 
 
 **Ha I how the woods sfive way before the step 
 Of these newcomers I What a sickening smell 
 Clings round my cabin, wafted from their town 
 Ten miles away 1" 
 
 By the hunter the Indians were regarded chiefly as a nuisance, 
 interfering with what would otherwise be the perfect joy of the 
 
 " p. 131. 
 
 '8 Hall, Legends of the West, 1863, p. 257 
 
 " Coegesball's Poetry of the West. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 41 
 
 wilderness life. Speaking of Indian raiding one of them says,'" "It 
 does no good to nobody, and is ruinous to the pleasant business of 
 hunting ; for a man cannot take a little hunt of a month or two, with- 
 out the danger of having his cabin burnt, and his family murdered 
 in his absence." 
 
 b. The Settler 
 
 After the hunter came the settler, practical and busy, develop- 
 ing a home for his family in the wilderness. The settler, as he saw 
 himself, was merely a practical man. He was there for business. 
 His chief concern was to open up a clearing, to shelter and feed 
 his family, and to protect them, if he could, from the perils of the 
 forest, whatever they might be. The Indian was but an incident — 
 though often a most distressing one — in his busy life. If the Indian 
 would let him alone, the pioneer argued, he would let the Indian 
 alone and call it quits. But when the tribes persisted in their out- 
 rages, the settler was compelled to try to remove the trouble. 
 
 "With veteran arms, the forest they subdued. 
 With veteran hearts, subdued the savage foe." si 
 
 His hardness of heart toward even their women and children was 
 often not at all from the lust for blood, but from a hard practical 
 sense of necessity. He set about removing the Indians as the south- 
 erner often sets about the lynching of a negro — ^not from any liking 
 for the bloody business — but because he considers it a stem neces- 
 sity for the safety of his family and of the community. As Withers 
 says in his Chronicles of Border Warfare (1831), in speaking of 
 Indian barbarities: "They gave birth to a vindictive feeling in 
 many, which led to the perpetration of similar enormities and sunk 
 civilized man to the degraded level of the barbarian. They served, 
 too, to arouse them to greater exertion, to subdue the savage foe 
 in justifiable warfare, and thus prevent their unpleasant recur- 
 rence." 
 
 That such destruction was often done with thoroughness, 
 numerous references in these early stories indicate. For instance 
 in Nick of the Woods (1830?)' we are told, "But the triumph was 
 not completed until the village, with its fields of standing com, had 
 been entirely destroyed — a work of cruel vengeance, yet not so 
 
 "> Legends of the West, 1853, p. 266. 
 
 »i Doddridge, Elegy on His Family Vavlt, 1823. P. 300. 
 
42 LOCAL LITERATURE OP THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 much of vengeance as of policy; since the destruction of their crops, 
 by driving the savages to seek a winter's subsistence for their fam- 
 ilies in the forest, necessarily prevented their making warlike in- 
 roads upon their white neighbors during that time." And Micah 
 P. Flint tells of the destruction of an Indian village.^^ 
 
 "The village wrapped in sheets of flame. 
 The piercing shriek of wild despair. 
 That fainter still, and fainter came; 
 Till woman's voice was silent there." 
 
 The settler did not think of himself as being inhumane — he 
 simply did not consider the Indians as being quite human. They 
 were like the wolves and the panthers and other forest dangers — 
 all "varmin" so far as he was concerned. 
 
 Toward a white man, even of the worst type, the settler was 
 seldom cruel. Between the races a very distinct line was drawn. 
 Even the fierce Indian hater of The Forest Rangers, ^^ who has just 
 boasted of having killed and scalped no less than fifty Indians, has 
 compunctions of conscience about such a renegade as Simon Girty. 
 He remarks, 
 
 "What we can do 
 
 With this vile critter, I don't know ; 
 I wish he'd just got killed at fust. 
 For, stranger, now if I be cust, 
 I cannot kill the tory villain; 
 Acaze the very thoughts of killin 
 A white man — though I know its nonsense. 
 Looks mean and goes agin my conscience." 
 
 Toward his fellow backwoodsmen the settler was usually 
 both kind and helpful. He was the 
 
 "Son of the trackless forest, large and wild. 
 Of manners stern, of understanding strong. 
 As nature rude ; but yet in feeling mild." »* 
 
 Many references attest this same quality. "It is a matter of 
 reliable history, that many of the early Western Pioneers — ^the men 
 who drove back the wild beast and the skulking Indian, and turned 
 the wilderness into cultivated fields, were men of the kindest nature, 
 and most benevolent impulses." ^' 
 
 "Simple, honest and inoffensive in their manners, kind and just 
 to each other, they were intrepid, fierce and vindictive in war. Under 
 
 *^ Hunter and Other Poems, 1826. 
 
 " Coffinberry, 1842. 
 
 »* Doddridge, Elegy on Hie Family Vault. 1828. 
 
 ■" Coggeshall, Stories of Frontier Adventure, 1862, p. 129. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 43 
 
 an appearance of apathy, with a gait of apparent indolence, and 
 with careless habits, they were muscular and hardy, patient of 
 fatigue, ardent in their temperment, warm-hearted and hospita- 
 ble."»« 
 
 The backwoodsmen, according to Timothy Flint, are "a hardy, 
 adventurous, hospitable, rough, but sincere and upright race of peo- 
 ple. . . . They are averse to all, even the most necessary re- 
 straints. They are destitute of the forms and observances of so- 
 ciety and religion; but they are sincere and kind without profes- 
 sions, and have a coarse, but substantial morality." " And he has 
 also characterized them in verse,'* 
 
 "And those rude foresters, who lead the van, 
 Who throii«:h untrodden wilds the highway pave. 
 On which the march of civilized man 
 Rolls steady onward to the western wave. 
 Reckless of law, but generous and brave. 
 They ever met with welcome kind. 
 Which I received as freely as they gave. 
 And oft beneath their cabins rude did find 
 That noblest guest, a happy, independent mind." 
 
 And Joseph Doddridge makes the backwoodsman analyze his 
 own character very thoroughly,^' "Why, we was not very fine to be 
 sure, but we was civil enough ; for the war which placed our night 
 caps in danger every day, made us very lovin to one another; one 
 man then was worth as much as twenty is now. ... A back- 
 woodsman is a queer sort of fellow ; he never gives an affront, and 
 he never takes one ; if you call him a rogue, a liar, or a simple bar- 
 barian, he will be sure to knock you down, or try for it. If he's 
 not a man of lamin, he has plain good sense. If his dress is not 
 fine, his inside works are good and his heart is sound." 
 
 One never finds these early writers expressing that view which 
 grew common somewhat later, that the pioneer was working "that 
 his children might reap," that "he suffered that we might be com- 
 fortable." Such an attitude is that of a soft race looking backward, 
 and though it is intended for appreciation, it is probable it would 
 not altogether have pleased the hardy pioneer. It was true, of 
 course, that the pioneer was working for posterity. He no doubt 
 hoped that his children, and others not his children, might profit 
 
 ao Hall, Legends of the WeaU 1854. 
 
 »' Flint, BecoUeetione of the Last Ten Years, 1826, p. 173. 
 
 "Ibid, 1826, p. 360. 
 
 " The Backwoodsman and the Dandy, 1823, p. 44. 
 
44 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 by his labors. He liked to think in a broad way that he was work- 
 ing for the advancement of civilization. But for himself he invented 
 no heroics. He was in the wilderness because he liked it, because 
 he preferred it to the hard, circumscribed life of the country he 
 had left. There were disadvantages, it was true ; but the advantages 
 were most important in the settler's eyes. He liked the freedom of 
 the woods, the power to do what he pleased. He was usually 
 vigorous physically so that what would seem hardship to his 
 posterity was really his chief joy. Again and again this idea of 
 pleasure is expressed in the early works. 
 
 "Danger was but excitement; and when came 
 The tide of emigration, life grew tame ; 
 Then would they seek some unknown wild anew. 
 And soon above the trees the smoke was curling blue." *** 
 
 "My palace built by God*s own hand. 
 The world's fresh prime has seen ; 
 Wide stretch its living halls away. 
 Pillared and roofed with green, 
 My music is the wind that now 
 Pours loud its swelling bars. 
 Now lulls in dying cadences — 
 My festal lamps are stars." *i 
 
 "The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase. 
 The captured elk or deer ; 
 The camp, the big bright fire and there 
 The rich and wholesome cheer : — 
 The sweet, sound sleep at dead of night 
 By our campfire blazing high — 
 Unbroken by the wolf's long howl 
 And the panther springing by." *2 
 
 Joseph D. Canning, Esq., writes of the hunter, ^^ 
 
 '"Though far to the sunrise the wanderer's home. 
 He loved in the gardens of nature to roam ; 
 By her melodies charmed, by her varying tale. 
 He followed through forest and prairie her trail." 
 
 And often we are told how the old pioneer looks longingly 
 backward from the "civilized" life that he has won." 
 
 " *Txs mine no longer to indulge in what 
 Gave life its bliss, jeweled the day with joys. 
 And made my slumbers through the night as sweet 
 As infants dreaming on its mother's breast 
 The blood is sluggish in each limb, and I 
 No longer chase the startled deer or track 
 The wily fox or climb the mountain side." 
 
 *" Frederick W. Thomas, The Emigrant, 1880, p. 74. 
 
 *i Ephraim Peabody, Poems on Ohio, p. 80. 
 
 «2 William D. Gallegher, Poeme on Ohio, p. 100. 
 
 *' William's American Pioneer, Vol. 1, 116. 
 
 " Thos. H. Shreve. Reflections of an Aged Pioneer, 1830, Poems on Ohio, p. 103. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 45 
 
 Many times the early writer delights in a realistic picture of 
 the family life, like this from the pen of Timothy Flint.*^ "A bril- 
 liant blaze, kindled with dry wood, enlightened the whole interior 
 structure of this fresh-looking, rough-cast, timbered apartment. 
 The faithful dog, that had followed them all the way from their late 
 home, and now doubly dear to them, as associated with their fond 
 remembrances of that country, sat beside the table, looking earnestly 
 upon its contents, apparently as hungry, and as happy, as the 
 children, wagging his tail and occasionally interpolating a yelp of 
 joy, as an interjection in the pauses of the gay conversation. The 
 prolonged and distant howl of the wolves, the ludicrous and almost 
 terrific noises of a hundred owls, the scream of other nocturnal 
 animals, the measured creaking of the crickets and catadeds, and 
 the gathering roar of autumnal winds along the forest, only sweet- 
 ened a sense of present protection to the children, and rendered the 
 brightness and shelter of the scene within more delightful, by con- 
 trast with the boundless and savage forest without." 
 
 Such were the joys of the pioneer. Perhaps at times he missed 
 the comforts of civilization, but not often, if we are to believe his 
 own account of himself. It was only the homesick wife and chil- 
 dren who looked longingly toward the great mountains which shut 
 them from their former home. The pioneer himself had only ridi- 
 cule for the "weak-kneed" fellow who wanted to go "back East." 
 When such a character appears in the stories he, like the Dandy, is 
 only as a foil to the true backwoodsman who is the hero of the 
 tale. The true backwoodsman was in his element, and knew it. He 
 bowed to no man and almost to no circumstances, and he felt that 
 a certain honor was due him on this account. As Doddridge says,*^ 
 "If he is not rich or great, he knows that he is a father of his 
 country." 
 
 c. The Indian Hater 
 
 By far the most clearly marked type in the early stories is that 
 of the Indian hater. He was a product of frontier life and condi- 
 tions and might be of any race or nationality. Usually he was a 
 man who had seen all he held dear in the world destroyed with 
 horrible brutality by the Indians. In his agony of soul he vowed to 
 spend the rest of his life in securing revenge for that destruction — 
 
 " George Mason, The Young Backwoodsman, 1829, p. 11. 
 *' Backwoodsman and the Dandy, 1823, p. 60. 
 
46 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 and he kept that vow religiously. We are told by Micah P. Flint, in 
 The Hunter (1826) , of such a man who looked upon his ruined home, 
 
 "And vowed by every murdered shade* 
 To wreak the vengeance, yet unpaid. 
 To seek the serpent in his nest; 
 And sweep from earth this common pest." 
 
 And he gives his later history : 
 
 "Love and Hope forever fled ; 
 And in their place Bevenge arose; 
 For that I fought; for that I bled. 
 Exulting o'er my fallen foes 
 "With all a tiger's wildness." 
 
 This species of insanity, for such it seems to have been, was 
 usually accompanied by other indications of a deranged mind, 
 though sometimes the victim seemed sane upon every other sub- 
 ject. Such a man usually lived alone in the forect, hunting and 
 trapping, in the intervals of his pursuit of the main bsuiness of his 
 life. In his killing of Indians he made no fine distinctions — warriors 
 after an attack on a settlement, women at their tasks, little dusky 
 children sailing boats in the river, Indians who had been friendly 
 to the whites, all fell before his deadly knife or gun. He had, as the 
 pioneers said, "no jedgement" in his work. 
 
 Some of the pioneers were inclined to wink at the Indian hater's 
 faults,*^ "It would seem hard to break with him for the matter of a 
 few Indians. People don't think the Indians of much account, no- 
 how." But most of all because of their sympathy with his sorrows. 
 For, "Few of us could lay our hands upon our hearts and say we 
 would not do the same in his situation." 
 
 They appreciated his assistance, too, when he struck down In- 
 dians making for the settlement, warned them of an Indian attack, 
 or assisted in the recovery of captured relatives. Yet he was, they 
 said, "a little too keen on the track of a moccasin." They knew he 
 was in general, a menace, rather than a protection, for his ruth- 
 less destruction of the redmen sometimes drew upon the innocent 
 settlers a particularly bitter attack, which they would otherwise 
 have escaped. And long after peace would have come to the frontier 
 the Indian hater, with his insane animosity to the race as a whole, 
 kept the Indians stirred to the point of vengeance and did much to 
 nullify the peace treaties drawn up by the wiser backwoodsmen. 
 
 " Hall, Wilderness and the Warpath. 1846, p. 138. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 47 
 
 In the early stories the Indian hater often speaks for himself, 
 in a vigorous backwoods style. The Indian hater of The Forest 
 Rangers says,** 
 
 ". . . . I mean to spend my life. 
 In gittin vengeance for my wife. 
 Sence then, about these woods I've bin, 
 A-killin Injins when I kin." 
 
 In Coee^sh&Ws Stories of Frontier Adventure (1863) a pioneer 
 says to an Indian hater, "You don't shoot Injins jist because they 
 ain't white"? To which he replies, "I'd shoot 'em anyhow, but you 
 know I've got a big spite agin 'em, an' I shan't give up 'till every 
 moccasin's druv out o' this country." And again, "We'd chase 'em 
 if they hadn't no women !" 
 
 There are also numerous descriptions of the Indian hater in 
 action. James Hall particularly liked to study this strange char- 
 acter as he saw him in the West.*^ "The veteran seemed to be 
 animated with a supernatural strength and activity, and to be 
 actuated by an inhuman ferocity. Wherever his blow fell, it 
 crushed ; but his fury was unabated. Blood seemed to whet his ap- 
 petite for blood. As he struck down the last enemy within his 
 reach, he halted, and his eye seemed to gloat upon the victims of 
 his revenge. His cheek was flushed, his nostrils distended, and his 
 muscles full of action — ^like those of a pawing war horse. In a mo- 
 ment his excitement began to subside, and he exclaimed, 'God for- 
 give my soul the sin of bloodguiltiness.' " Again he described Mon- 
 son, an Indian hater, when he sees an Indian.'" "His eyes rolled 
 wildly, as if he had been suddenly stung to madness, gleaming with 
 a strange fierceness — an intense luster, like that which flashes from 
 the eyeballs of a panther, when crouched in a dark covert ready to 
 dart upon hSs prey." 
 
 Yet at times, apparently, the Indian hater had some slight feel- 
 ing of pity for his innocent victims. In Micah P. Flint's The Hunter 
 (1826), he returns to look at the ruins of an Indian village which he 
 has destroyed, where, 
 
 "Full many a human skull, and bone 
 Was bleaching in the nightly dew. . . . 
 I passed along that desert glade 
 And sated Vengeance almost wept 
 To see the wreck itself had made." 
 
 *' Coffinberry, Forest Rangers, 1842, p. 164. 
 
 *" Hall, Legends of the West. 1853. 
 
 »» Hall, Wilderness and the War Path, 1846, p. 138. 
 
48 LOCAL LITERATURE OP THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 There is no evidence, however, that a man who became an 
 Indian hater ever reformed. The few who lived to be old, stayed 
 on in the growing settlements, pathetic wrecks of pioneer con- 
 ditions. 
 
 The fact that the Indian hater had often been a man of sensi- 
 tive nature and gentle impulses, until changed by the Indian out- 
 rages, rendered his case all the more pitiable. Probably the num- 
 ber of actual Indian haters was not great — ^he was the exception, 
 not the rule — ^but his lonely, vindictive, picturesque figure, and his 
 sorrowful history, appealed very strongly to pioneer hearts and ren- 
 dered him the most outstanding character in all their literature. 
 
 (d) The Desperado 
 
 Another type of backwoodsman was the desperado or outlaw. 
 The frontier of the country has always drawn to itself from the 
 older settlements, not only those who wanted freedom but also 
 those who wanted license. Along the Ohio River in the early days 
 were gre^t numbers of men who found in the laxness of frontier 
 life the opportunity to commit all those crimes interdicted by the 
 laws of the older communities. When once apprehended by the set- 
 tlers these criminals were vigorously dealt with, and their bodies 
 often mutilated and exposed to view at the cross roads. Yet in the 
 free forest life such bands of men often operated almost unsus- 
 pected for several years. These early stories are full of ref ierences 
 to counterfeiters, robbers, bandits, and murderers, — only less to be 
 feared than the Indians themselves. Scarcely a backwoods com- 
 munity but had its robbers' cave somewhere in the vicinity to cur- 
 dle the blood of the chance wayfarer out after* dark. James Hall 
 made a careful study of these degenerate outcasts in Harpe's 
 Head,^^ showing also the attitude of the other pioneers toward them. 
 
 The Outlaw, a crude poem, published by Charles A. Jones in 
 1835, tells the story of an outlaw band operatiljg along the river 
 from Cave In Rock. He described them as : 
 
 "A fierce and numerous robber band. ' 
 The plague and terror of the land. 
 Met to pillage and to slay. 
 And make their fellow men their prey." 
 
 They kill a traveller and he is soon : 
 
 "Fast anchored in the sleeping wave. 
 Full many a murdered victim's grave." 
 
 ''^Legends of the Weet, 18B3. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 49 
 
 The band is finally destroyed, however, so the pioneer boats can 
 again ply up and down the river in safety. 
 
 "Their crews no more will deem they see 
 A robber's form in every tree, 
 And grasp their rifles and prepare 
 For deeds of blood and carnage there." 
 
 In later, and more lurid, stories such dens were often made use 
 of for the incarceration of interesting and beautiful heroines, who 
 were loved — invariably, it seems, — by the gallant leader of the 
 robber band. These earlier stories, however, go to no such lengths 
 of romance, but almost always treat the robber caves with much 
 realism. The robbers are real men to them, and the caves are de- 
 scribed with care as to the details of the interior and of the furniture 
 required by a robber band. 
 
 (e) Other Types 
 
 Another interesting type on the frontier was the missionary 
 or preacher. He varied all the way from a wild prophet like the 
 Leatherwood God with his horselike snort, to the Anglican clergy- 
 man preaching under the forest trees in his robes of office, much 
 to the amusement of his backwoods congregation. Apparently there 
 was not a backwoods preacher who was not a notable character in 
 some respect, and the story writers enjoyed picturing his weak- 
 nesses as well as his good qualities. The following description is 
 from Timothy Flint's Francis Berrian '^^ : The preacher's voice had 
 "a vile trick of the profession which had accustomed him to twang 
 through his nostrils, with a sound, not unlike a brazen trumpet. 
 .... Occasionally deep sighs, and groans half suppressed, as from 
 distress of cholic, an assumption of canonical and immaculate sanc- 
 tity, frequent ejaculation of the words 'Gracious Lord', did not con- 
 ceal from any observer of ordinary acuteness, the quickness of his 
 apprehension upon every point of worldly advantage." And his 
 description of the feminine saint is quite as good : "The sister was 
 a well-formed and rather pretty woman ; half fine and half Quaker- 
 ish in her dress, of unlettered shrewdness, and the severe sanctity 
 of restraint, so characteristic of the profession. A certain smile, 
 that showed brilliant and fine teeth, and a pretty movement of the 
 head, evidenced a little spice of woman, mixed up with the ingredi- 
 ents of the saint." 
 
 »2 Vol. II, (1826, p. 128). 
 
50 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 But the types are too many to enumerate. There was the river 
 boatman,^^ the pedlar, the dandy, the young lady of sentiment, and 
 as many different types of foreigners as there were nationalities 
 represented in the backwoods county. Much of the interest of the 
 stories lies in their contrasting of widely different types — as they 
 appeared on the frontier. The Yankee and the Virginian, the Vir- 
 ginian and the raw frontiersman, the Irishman and the German, 
 the backwoodsman and the dandy, the frontier girl and the society 
 lady, the Harvard graduate and the ignorant squatter, the pedlar 
 and the easy-going hunter, the preacher and the outlaw — there was 
 an infinite possibility of setting one over against another in the 
 ever-shifting life along the river. 
 
 One rather early story, possibly not written by a resident, se- 
 cures a particularly stirring effect by introducing nearly all these 
 types of character. This is the novel variously known in different 
 editions as New Hope or The Rescue, Young Kate or The Rescue, 
 and The Aliens, A Tale of the Great Kanawha Valley. The date of 
 its original publication seems to be about 1840. The following ac- 
 count of this interesting story is quoted from an earlier study " : 
 The story begins, "On a fine day in October, 1798, a young gentle- 
 man and lady were standing near that remarkable canal worn down 
 by the action of the swiftly rushing water of the falls of the Great 
 Kanawha." They are brother and sister, Matilda and Henry Bal- 
 lenger, the tenderly reared children of an eastern Virginian, who, 
 having lost his fortune, has withdrawn to the backwoods of the 
 Kanawha, and named his home "New Hope." Among their ac- 
 quaintances are, Ben Bramble, a kind-hearted backwoodsman and 
 hunter (probably suggested by the character of Daniel Boone) , and 
 a land agent, Isaac Forster, who acts with power of attorney for 
 Virginian owners of western lands. Forster is the villian, — smooth- 
 spoken, unscrupulous, and crafty, a very lago in his designs upon 
 the helpless Virginians. Then there is the pioneer pedler, a gang of 
 counterfeiters, numerous tavern keepers, the German, the Irishman, 
 and the negro servants of the Ballengers — truly a varied and con- 
 trasting group of characters ! 
 
 Later writers recognized in this method a possibility of arous- 
 ing interest even in a crudely managed tale. About 1850 whole 
 series of "best sellers" appeared and became well known — ^not for 
 
 " Particularly well drawn in Mike Fink the Last of the Boatmen, Morgan Neville, 1829. 
 ^* Writers of Weat Virginia. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 51 
 
 their pictures of pioneer conditions, but for their succession of hair- 
 raising incidents. Every stirring happening of fifty years of fron- 
 tier history, with many a lurid addition from the writer's imagina- 
 tion, dashed through the story with no motivation of character nor 
 logical succession of events. Indians and beautiful maidens, and 
 wild beasts and prairie fire and robbers, all mixed together in a 
 very hodge-podge of wild western material — and held the reader's 
 breathless interest to the end. For a time these cheap tales were 
 very popular. As W. H. Venable says of the novels of Emerson Ben- 
 nett,°° "There are grave and respectable men, and women, not of 
 the 'lower million,' who, if put to the confessional must own that 
 there was a time when, lured by the Prairie Flower or The Forest 
 Rose or Kate Clarendon, or The Artist's Bride, or The Outlaw's 
 Daughter, they followed the complicated plot, sympathizing in the 
 romantic adventures of brave young heroes, lovely orphan heiresses, 
 impossible Indians, mixed up with love and prairie fire, and the 
 sharp crack of a rifle, with robbers and panthers, in woods and cav- 
 ern, by land and water, in city and solitude, to the breathless end 
 of the last chapter, in which the villain is slam, and the lost bride 
 is, restored to her happy lover." Even yet, it is said, these lurid 
 stories are occasionally brought out in new editions for Ohio Valley 
 readers. 
 
 Yet in the early literature these types of character are not by 
 any means mere conventions. Crude as the descriptions are at 
 times they seem always to come from a sincere desire to set down 
 upon the page that which has been seen with the eyes or actually 
 experienced in life. An Indian hater is not a typical figure, but an 
 individual expressed with as careful particulars as if he were the 
 only one in the whole wildemess — ^though he may have some qual- 
 ities in common with other Indian haters. This careful realism, 
 which is the chief charm of this early Ohio Valley literature, seems 
 to arise from a sincere belief in the writer that his own life "sot 
 down in a book," as was the backwoods phrase, must be more in- 
 teresting than any other literature in the world. And the modem 
 reader turning these old pages finds himself rebuilding in his im- 
 agination from these materials the whole edifice of early life in the 
 backwoods of the valley. 
 
 ' Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, p. 293. 
 
52 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 3. The Reaiistic Attitude Toward Natural Scenery 
 in Ohio Valley Literature 
 
 It would be too much to say that the realistic description of 
 natural scenery developed any special characteristics in the early 
 writings of the Ohio Valley. Already Scott and Wordsworth and 
 Bryant and many other writers, both in prose and in poetry, had 
 given much attention to the realistic presentation of natural scen- 
 ery. Yet, taken in connection with the attitude shown by pioneer 
 writers toward the Indian and the pioneer, the tendency here toward 
 realism has some significance. 
 
 The pioneers were generally expert observers of nature and 
 for good reason, for life itself often depended upon intelligent ob- 
 servation. They passed this on to a great extent to their children, 
 the earliest lessons of the backwoods boy or girl was in careful 
 and accurate use of the senses. We are told of the backwoods 
 hunter,'" "Though unacquainted with books, he had perused cer- 
 tain parts of the great volume of nature with diligent attention. 
 The changes of the seasons, the atmospherical phenomena, the 
 growth of plants, the habits of animals, had for years engaged his 
 observing powers." And Andrew CofRnberry says of a lone for- 
 ester" 
 
 '*Your close attentive observation, 
 Affords a fund of information, 
 Of greater value in this wood 
 Than all the intellectual food 
 That e'er was gleaned from books or schools. 
 Or journals writ by travelled fools." 
 
 Joseph Doddridge vigorously describes the observant woods- 
 man in action.^* "Let the imagination of the reader pursue the 
 solitary track of the adventurer into this solitary wilderness. Bend- 
 ing his course toward the setting sun, over undulating hills, under 
 the shade of large forest trees, and wading through the rank weeds 
 and grass which then covered the earth. Now viewing from the 
 top of a hill the winding course of a creek whose stream he wished 
 to explore, doubtful of its course and of his own, he ascertains the 
 cardinal points of north and south by the thickness of the moss and 
 bark on the north side of the ancient trees. Now descending into a 
 valley and presaging his approach to a river by seeing large ash, 
 bass-wood and sugar trees, beautifully festooned with wild grape 
 
 " Hall, Legends of the Weet, 1853 
 "' The Forest Bangers, 1842. 
 »« Notes, 1824, p. 22. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 53 
 
 vines. Watchful as Argus, his restless eye catches everything 
 about him." 
 
 Then, apparently fearful the reader may take the pioneer for 
 a mere nature lover, he adds, "But let not the reader suppose that 
 the pilgrim of the wilderness could feast his imagination with the 
 romantic beauties of nature without any drawback from conflicting 
 passions. His situation did not afford him much time for con- 
 templation." 
 
 Yet the pioneer was a nature lover in a way, and not at all 
 indifferent to the beauty around him. The charm of the Great 
 Wilderness had possessed him before he left his eastern home. He 
 had seen in anticipation the vast outlook from the mountains, the 
 limitless reaches of the forest, and the beauty of the streams and 
 the waterfalls. As Timothy Flint says of the people he knew,°® "En- 
 thusiasm and strong excitement naturally inspire eloquence, and 
 these people become eloquent in relating their early remembrances 
 of the beauty of this country." And we are told of the backwoods 
 preacher who, in the midst of an impassioned attempt to picture 
 the joys of Heaven, expressed the climax by saying that Heaven 
 is a "Kentuck of a place!" Kentucky is also celebrated in many 
 poems. Micah P. Flint thus described a Kentucky sugar-camp.^" 
 
 *'To fancy's eye it might have seemed 
 As though the golden days of yore 
 Had circled back to earth once more ; 
 And brought again that guileless mirth 
 Which bards have sung and sages dreamed 
 In bright reversion yet for earth." 
 
 The natural beauties around him often made the pioneer think 
 of literature. Such charms of the landscape, he thought, should be 
 written down in books for the unfortunate people still dragging out 
 an existence on the other side of the mountains. Were these natural 
 wonders not greater than anything told of in the old libraries? 
 How could a poem or story fail to be great with such a collection 
 of natural beauties on its pages ? He had strongly the feeling, com- 
 mon among West Virginians even yet — and probably among all 
 mountain dwellers — that a mountain or a waterfall needs only to 
 be described to become a poem, and that any story rises to the 
 grandeur of its natural setting. 
 
 ^^ RecoUectiona of the Last Ten Years, 1826, p. 67. 
 •» The Hunter and Other Poems, 1826. 
 
54 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 And in his literary forest scenes, the pioneer, who found his 
 way so readily through the trackless forest was not likely to care 
 for inaccurate details. He had little use for the romantic scenery, 
 which later became popular in the ladies' magazines, which de- 
 pended for its charm on some weird "atmosphere" or "touching" 
 association. The woodsman was seldom touched by such charms. 
 If there were to be forests in the stories, he liked them exactly as 
 they were, true to all the cardinal points of the backwoodsman's 
 lore. For instance he might pause with real appreciation over every 
 detail of this somewhat elaborate description of a pioneer field :^^ 
 "A hundred times his delight was excited by seeing the gray and 
 black squirrels skip away from the trees which he began to fell. 
 The parroquets, in their splendid livery of green and gold, were 
 fluttering among the sycamores, raising their shrill scream, as dis- 
 agreeable as their plumage is brilliant, and seemed to be scolding 
 at these meddlers with the freshness of their empire. The red-bird,- 
 springing away from the briar copse, which he began to disturb 
 with his grubbing hoe; the powerful mocking-bird, seated at his 
 leisure on a dead branch and pouring its gay song, and imitating 
 every noise that was heard ; the loud and joyous bark of the family 
 dog, as he was pursuing his own sport beside them, digging for an 
 opossum; the morning crow of the cock; the distant cry of the 
 hounds in the settlement, ringing through the forests, the morning 
 mists, lying like the finest drapery of muslin, spread over the tops 
 of the trees; these, and a thousand mingled and joyous morning 
 cries of animals in the woods, filled his young and susceptible heart 
 with the purest joy." 
 
 And again, (p. 32) "The red-bud in a thousand places was one 
 compact tuft of peach-blow flowers. The umbrella tops of the dog- 
 woods were covered with their large blossoms of brilliant white. 
 At every step the feet trampled upon clusters of violets. The swell- 
 ing buds and the half-formed leaves diffused on every side the deli- 
 cious aroma of spring." Indeed Timothy Flint never seems tired 
 of rehearsing the beauties of spring, "that season nowhere more 
 delightful than on the shores of the Ohio." 
 
 Even when he falls into a sentimental vein, his observation is 
 almost as careful. For instance in The Shoshonee VaUey:^'' "The 
 evening saw their camp fire blazing amidst a beautiful wood, on 
 
 «i Flint, George Mason, 1829, p. 29. 
 "2 p. 102-3. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 55 
 
 the banks of the wide and flush salmon stream. The vernal leaves 
 were formed. Innumerable water dwellers croaked around. The 
 whippoorwills were pouring forth their monotonous song. Fire 
 flies gleamed in the grass and on the branches. The happy horses, 
 turned loose, were rioting in the fresh grass. The warriors with 
 their blazing torches rushed into the stream ; and with shouts and 
 peals of laughter, as reckless, as though they had never experienced 
 other sensations than those of abundance and joy, were throwing 
 the salmon on shore." 
 
 The following poetical description also shows the early writer's 
 delight in details,^^ 
 
 "Through the deep vale below the river flowed, 
 Falling at times in silver sheets — then hid 
 The overhanging wilderness amid — 
 Now hurrying 'tween the jagged rocks and rude ; 
 Yet not a murmur rose to where they stood. 
 The infrequent clouds drifted across the sky 
 Ever and ever floating silently. 
 Upon the topmost crag, splintered and bare. 
 Its angles glittering in the morning's glare 
 With an unsteady wing 
 r And naked talons balancing, 
 
 An eagle sat and screamed to the silence ; — ^hill 
 
 And wood and silent cloud echoed his accents shrill." * 
 
 And Cincinnati is described by Edward A. McLaughlin in 1841,^* 
 
 "City of gardens, verdant parks, sweet bowers ; 
 Blooming upon thy bosom, bright and fair, 
 Wet with the dews of spring and summer's showers. 
 And fanned by every breath of wandering air; 
 Rustling the foliage of the green groves, where 
 The bluebird's matin wakes the smiling mom. 
 And sparkling humming-birds of plumage rare. 
 With tuneful pinions on the zephyrs borne. 
 Disport the flowers among, and glitter and adorn." 
 
 In many of the tales of the frontier it is true, the scene becomes 
 of little importance except as a general background, and the interest 
 is in the characters or the incidents. James Hall remarks in one 
 story,^^ "As the travellers passed along, I am not aware that either 
 of them cast a thought upon the romantic and picturesque beauties 
 by which they were surrounded," thereby cleverly saving himself 
 the trouble of picturing them for the reader. Later stories, like 
 those of Ned Buntline and Emerson Bennett, use scenery only as 
 the conventional background of a lurid story which might have hap- 
 
 *' Epfaraim Feabody, Poems on Ohio, p. 4-5. 
 
 ** Poems on Ohio, 
 
 "^^ Legends of the West, 1853, p. 271. 
 
56 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 pened as well in New York or Florida as on the upper Ohio. Caves, 
 cliffs, and streams are managed to fit the story, rather than pic- 
 tured with fidehty to nature. 
 
 The poets were, naturally, often given to elaborate descriptions, 
 and the grandeur of the full stream of the Ohio sweeping onward 
 to the West early impressed them. One of the early poets, Thomas 
 J. Lees, gives the following picture of the stream,^^ 
 
 "How oft o'er these Breen banks, at eventide 
 I roam, to view the glorious setting sun, 
 When Phoebus, robed in majesty, descends 
 Upon the peaks of yon blue western hills ; 
 Flings his broad beams on the transparent breast 
 Of this unruffled, fair and glitt'ring flood. 
 And decks profuse with many a varied dye. 
 The changing beauties of the glowing heaven ; 
 Which, when reflected in the glassy stream. 
 Attract at once our deep admiring gaze. 
 Beneath the flood a beauteous world appears, 
 A world of fairy forms and brilliant hues ; 
 Too soon they change, take wings, and flit away. 
 
 Like fancy's vision or a magic spell 
 
 Then freely roamed 
 
 The surly bear, the nimble footed deer. 
 The antler'd elk, the lordly buffaloe. 
 The lofty eagle — ^freedom's favorite bird, 
 * Sat on his native rock ; and from the bough 
 Of hoary sycamore, the red-bird poured 
 His softest, sweetest note." 
 
 Hence, we see that there were two classes of early writers, in 
 regard to their use of natural scenery. One class, the realists, made 
 much of it and delighted to picture the infinite details of the wilder- 
 ness scenes with loving fidelity — the other reduced the forest back- 
 ground to a mere convention. Yet the former class is much the 
 larger of the two. The descriptions of Ohio Valley scenery seem 
 numberless. One begins to feel that every stream or cliff or water- 
 fall in the whole valley has been immortalized in some kind of 
 verse. The poets, like the story writers, never tire of singing the 
 beauties of the forests. The redbud and the dogwood and the buck- 
 eye and the wild honeysuckle, are told over times without number in 
 the backwoods rosaiy. The Indian mounds also excited much 
 poetry, probably from the baffling mystery of their birth and their 
 obvious moral of the passing of human life, as well as for their 
 beauty. There is scarcely a valley poet but has at least one or two 
 "Lines to a Mound" to his credit. The beautiful Blennerhassett's 
 Island, embraced by the shining river, with its striking contrast of 
 
 " Mwsinga of Carol, 1831. 
 
THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE 57 
 
 the magnificent white palace against the surrounding forests, and 
 the romantic and tragic story of its owners, was also a favorite sub- 
 ject with the early poets. One of these was, of course, Mrs. Blen- 
 nerhassett herself*'^ — though her verse has little but its historic 
 interest. Frederick W. Thomas thus apostrophizes the beautiful 
 island as he descends the Ohio."' 
 
 "Isle of the beautiful I how much thou art, 
 Now in they desolation, like the fate 
 Of those who came in innocence of heart. 
 With thy ereen Eden to assimilate ; 
 Then Art her coronal to Nature grave, 
 To deck thy brow, Queen of the onward wave I 
 And woman came, the beautiful and good. 
 And made her happy home 'mid thy embracing flood. 
 
 Alas I another csme : his blandishment. 
 The fascination of his smooth address. 
 That read so well the very heart's intent. 
 And could so well its every thought express, — 
 Won thy fair spirits to his dark design. 
 And gave our country, too, her Cataline." 
 
 In many of these frontier poems there is a suggestion of the 
 leisurely descriptive method of Thomson's Seasons or of some of 
 the poems of Bryant. Few of them are vigorous enough to suggest 
 Scott or deep enough in their insight to suggest Wordsworth. 
 Though a moral lesson was thought almost necessary to a poem, 
 particularly to the New England born writers, it was usually tacked 
 on in the last stanza — not growing out of the very substance of 
 the poem. None of it is great poetry, and little of it is even good. 
 The early writer delighted most in the more apparent phases of 
 natural beauty and particularly those that are awe-inspiring, the 
 things that appeal most to the average mind — it was not his for- 
 tune to be the seer or the artist and grasp the connection between 
 these natural manifestations and the problems of human life. 
 
 »' Widow of the Rock and Other Poems, 1823. 
 '" The Emigrant, 1833. 
 
Conclusion 
 
 If the writer has succeeded at all in presenting an impression 
 of this early Ohio Valley literature, the reader must feel that these 
 writings have a certain very real vigor and vitality. Reading these 
 old tales — most of them long since out of print, and mouldering un- 
 read on old library shelves — is not by any means the melancholy 
 business it seems at first thought. Bad as they are, they have life ; 
 they are seldom mediocre or correctly dull. 
 
 Even their faults have an entertaining quality of their own. 
 In Coflinberry's crude tale,"' when the sturdy backwoods hero passes 
 through the forest he sees a panther just ready to spring upon him. 
 He looks at "The ravenous beast, that threatens on his flesh to 
 feast." But instead of the action the reader expects in such a situa- 
 tion — "Thus did the man soliloquize" — 
 
 "Is this the sequel of the past. 
 To die by this fierce beast at last? 
 Is this unlocked for immolation, 
 Of my bright hopes the consumation ?" 
 
 And he proceeds with a full page of these deep moral reflections — 
 while the ferocious panther most obligingly waits ! 
 
 Many of the writers would be of interest for their personality 
 alone. One cannot regret having become acquainted with the very 
 sensible and independent Joseph Doddridge, the genial and kindly 
 Timothy Flint (always seeing the better side of everyone he meets 
 on his travels) , and the courteous James Hall, who is always an in- 
 terested and unprejudiced observer of everything about him in the 
 West. They are great and far-seeing men in their way. They be- 
 lieve devoutly in the West and they deal with western material with 
 a loving enthusiasm which renders their pages interesting even 
 when their literary technique is most crude. They are not writing 
 to glorify themselves, but only to gain for the West that glory that 
 is hers by right. Even in their sturdy independence there is little 
 
 " The Forest Bangers, 1842. 
 
 58 
 
CONCLUSIONS 59 
 
 egotism or desire for personal fame. Coffinberry," for instance, 
 says that his story is told by 
 
 *'A bard without a name. 
 Who fain would sing of wildwood fare. 
 The redman's vast retreat. 
 And paint its ills and terrors where 
 Its varied evils meet." 
 
 And W. D. Gallagher thus addresses the Ohio River :'^ 
 
 "And he who now thy name would twine 
 With his and poesy's and wed, 
 Them thus, knows not that e'er his line. 
 Save on thy borders shall be read." 
 
 It is not to be expected, or perhaps desired, that these early 
 writings will be read except by the student of literary history — 
 they have served their purpose, and their day has passed long since. 
 Like the hunters in the trackless forest, these early writers but 
 blazed the way for those who were to follow them to the real achieve- 
 ments of the West. And yet because they were the path-finders, 
 they deserve our consideration. What American literature would 
 have been if these writers had not struck the new note of progres- 
 sive western Americanism and of realistic truth to local conditions, 
 no one can say. Yet one cannot read these stories and poems with- 
 out feeling strongly that here our American literature first set foot 
 upon that trail which it has mainly followed in its later develop- 
 ment. 
 
 To these early writers the credit belongs that in our later litera- 
 ture the Indian is neither an angel nor a demon, but has real ethno- 
 logical characteristics. They have influenced later writers to study 
 the pioneer and his life at first hand, or through authentic accounts, 
 rather than to make him a creature of the imagination. They first 
 used in literature the homely, but truly American, speech of the 
 common people of the Valley. Is it not significant that William Dean 
 Howells, the leader of the later realistic school of American writers, 
 grew up in the Ohio Valley? Perhaps it is even worthy of notice 
 that Mark Twain lived under very similar river conditions and in- 
 fiuences in the farther West. Who can say how many other later 
 writers, consciously or unconsciously, have followed this early forest 
 trail toward the new lands of American ideas and ideals? For 
 
 '"Forest Rangers, 1842. 
 
 ^1 Our Weateirn Land, Poems on Ohio, p. 26. 
 
60 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
 in their raw newness there is the beginning of a new day. 
 They express a new spirit of realism and of enthusiasm for the life 
 of the West. They develop a peculiar American style and show a 
 tendency toward fresh forms of expression and to their pioneer 
 struggle we owe much of that particular quality of Americanism 
 we find expressed in the literature of yesterday and today. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Refhieence Works 
 
 Cairns, William B., On the Development of Atnerican Literature from 1815-18S3. University of 
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 Drake, Daniel, Pioneer Life in Kentucky. Cincinnati, 1870. 
 
 Howe, Historical Collections. 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, Wintiing of the West. 
 
 Sainte Beuve, Chateaubriand et Son groupe. 
 
 Stathers, Madison, Chateaubriand et V Amerique. Grenoble, 1906. 
 
 Trollope, Francis M., Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1828-31. New York, reprint, 1904. 
 
 Turner, Frederick J., The Frontier in American History, Arnerican Historical Association Re- 
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 61 
 
62 LOCAL LITERATURE OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 
 
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