Life on The Mississippi (51 page)

Until the unholy train comes tearing along—which it presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil’s war whoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels—and straightway you are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready to hand for your entertainment: for you remember that this is the very road whose stock always goes down after you buy it, and always goes up again as soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day to remember that I once came near not getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful thing to have a railroad left on your hands.

The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat almost the whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul—eight hundred miles. These railroads have made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The clerk of our boat was a steamboat clerk before these roads were built. In that day the influx of population was so great, and the freight business so heavy, that the boats were not able to keep up with the demands made upon their carrying capacity; consequently the captains were very independent and airy—pretty “biggity,” as Uncle Remus would say. The clerk nutshelled the contrast between the former time and the present, thus:

“Boat used to land—captain on hurricane roof—mighty stiff and straight—iron ramrod for a spine—kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted behind—man on shore takes off hat and says:

“‘Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, Cap’n—be great favor if you can take them.’

“Captain says:

“ ‘I’ll take two of them’—and don’t even condescend to look at him.

“But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch and smiles all the way around to the back of his ears, and gets off a bow which he hasn’t got any ramrod to interfere with, and says:

“‘Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you—you’re looking well—haven’t seen you looking so well for years—what you got for us?’

“‘Nuth’n’,’ says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and just turns his back and goes to talking with somebody else.

“Oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain was on top; but it’s Smith’s turn now. Eight years ago a boat used to go up the river with every stateroom full, and people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and a solid deckload of immigrants and harvesters down below, into the bargain. To get a first-class stateroom, you’d got to prove sixteen quarterings of nobility and four hundred years of descent, or be personally acquainted with the nigger that blackened the captain’s boots. But it’s all changed now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below—there’s a patent self-binder now, and they don’t have harvesters anymore; they’ve gone where the woodbine twineth—and they didn’t go by steamboat, either; went by the train.”

Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber rafts coming down—but not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashioned way, manned with joyous and reckless crews of fiddling, songsinging, whisky-drinking, break-down-dancing rapscallions; no, the whole thing was shoved swiftly along by a powerful stern-wheeler, modern fashion, and the small crews were quiet, orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, with not a suggestion of romance about them anywhere.

Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran some exceedingly narrow and intricate island chutes by aid of the electric light. Behind was solid blackness—a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrow elbow of water, curving between dense walls of foliage that almost touched our bows on both sides; and here every individual leaf, and every individual ripple stood out in its natural color, and flooded with a glare as of noonday intensified. The effect was strange, and fine, and very striking.

We passed Prairie du Chien; another of Father Marquette’s camping places; and after some hours of progress through varied and beautiful scenery, reached La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or thirteen thousand population, with electric-lighted streets, and with blocks of buildings which are stately enough, and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any city. It is a choice town, and we made satisfactory use of the hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though the weather was rainier than necessary.

We added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among others an old gentleman who had come to this northwestern region with the early settlers, and was familiar with every part of it. Pardonably proud of it, too. He said:

“You’ll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson points. You’ll have the Queen’s Bluff—seven hundred feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau Island, which isn’t like any other island in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you. And above Winona you’ll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand Islands, too beautiful for anything. Green? why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick; it’s like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking glass—when the water’s still; and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides of the river—ragged, rugged, dark-complected—just the frame that’s wanted; you always want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice points of a delicate picture and make them stand out.”

The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two—but not very powerful ones.

After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islands to St. Paul; naming its names with such facility, tripping along his theme with such nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton word, here and there, with such a complacent air of ’tisn’t-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such judicious intervals, that I presently began to suspect—

But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him:

“Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the blue depths of heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have known no other contact save that of angels’ wings.

“And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendous aspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration, about twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perched far among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy heights—sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon, town of early days, now desolate and utterly deserted.

“And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly—noble shaft of six hundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our attention is attracted by a most striking promontory rising over five hundred feet—the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape—thickly wooded surface girding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, cause the spectator to wonder at nature’s workings. From its dizzy heights superb views of the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyond for miles are brought within its focus. What grander river scenery can be conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys below? The primeval wildness and awful loneliness of these sublime creations of nature and nature’s God, excite feelings of unbounded admiration, and the recollection of which can never be effaced from the memory, as we view them in any direction.

“Next we have the Lion’s Head and the Lioness’s Head, carved by nature’s hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream; and then anon the river widens, and a most charming and magnificent view of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our vision; rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base, level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful Wabasha, City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of Bright’s disease, and that grandest conception of nature’s works, incomparable Lake Pepin—these constitute a picture whereon the tourist’s eye may gaze uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and unappeasable.

“And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes, the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden Rock—which latter, romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and ofttimes as the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story.

“Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jaded summer tourists; then progressive Red Wing, and Diamond Bluff, impressive and preponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix; and anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride in the van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization, carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise, sounding the war whoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the steam plow and the schoolhouse—ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever—”

“Have you ever traveled with a panorama?”

“I have formerly served in that capacity.”

My suspicion was confirmed.

“Do you still travel with it?”

“No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping now to work up the materials for a Tourist’s Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company are going to issue this summer for the benefit of travelers who go by that line.”

“When you were talking of Maiden’s Rock, you spoke of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story. Is she the maiden of the rock? And are the two connected by legend?”

“Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most celebrated, as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of the Mississippi.”

We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversational vein and back into his lecture-gait without an effort, and rolled on as follows:

“A little distance above Lake City is a famous point known as Maiden’s Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but is full of romantic interest from the event which gave it its name. Not many years ago this locality was a favorite resort for the Sioux Indians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had there, and large numbers of them were always to be found in this locality. Among the families which used to resort here was one belonging to the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na (firstborn) was the name of a maiden who had plighted her troth to a lover belonging to the same band. But her stern parents had promised her hand to another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him. The day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief. She appeared to accede to the proposal and accompany them to the rock, for the purpose of gathering flowers for the feast. On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran to its summit and standing on its edge upbraided her parents who were below, for their cruelty, and then singing a death dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed them in pieces on the rock below.”

“Dashed who in pieces—her parents?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say. And moreover, there is a startling kind of dramatic surprise about it which I was not looking for. It is a distinct improvement upon the threadbare form of Indian legend. There are fifty Lover’s Leaps along the Mississippi from whose summit disappointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the only jump in the lot that turned out in the right and satisfactory way. What became of Winona?”

“She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herself together and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot; and ’tis said she sought and married her true love, and wandered with him to some distant clime, where she lived happy ever after, her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the romantic incident which had so early deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother’s love and a father’s protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold charity of a censorious world.”

I was glad to hear the lecturer’s description of the scenery, for it assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabled me to imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night.

As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indian tales and traditions. But I reminded him that people usually merely mentioned this fact—doing it in a way to make a body’s mouth water—and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impression left was that these tales were full of incident and imagination—a pleasant impression which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told. I showed him a lot of this sort of literature which I had been collecting, and he confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish; and I ventured to add that the legends which he had himself told us were of this character, with the single exception of the admirable story of Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I would hunt up Mr. Schoolcraft’s book, published near fifty years ago, and now doubtless out of print, I would find some Indian inventions in it that were very far from being barren of incident and imagination; that the tales in Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came from Schoolcraft’s book; and that there were others in the same book which Mr. Longfellow could have turned into verse with good effect. For instance, there was the legend of “The Undying Head.” He could not tell it, for many of the details had grown dim in his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and enlarge my respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale, and most of the others in the book, was current among the Indians along this part of the Mississippi when he first came here; and that the contributors to Schoolcraft’s book had got them directly from Indian lips, and had written them down with strict exactness, and without embellishments of their own.

I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are several legends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of them—“The Undying Head,” and “Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of the Seasons.” The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth reading in the original form, if only that one may see how effective a genuine poem can be without the helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm: