36 



attempted to become permaneist residents and to adoj^t, in some measure, tlie 

 habits of the conquerors. The result ii too well known. An ancestor of theirs 

 gifted with the powers of a seer may have Iieen the subject of these lines: 



" There was once a neolithic man, an enterprising wight. 

 Who kept his simple instruments unusually bright; 

 Unusually clean he was, unusually brave, 

 And he sketched delightful mammoths on the borders of his cave. 



To his neolithic neighbors, who were startled and surprised. 

 Said he, " My friends, in course "r time we shall be civilized ! 

 We are going to live in cities and build churches and make laws ; 

 We are going to eat three times a day without the natural cause ; 

 We are going to turn life upside down about a thing called gold: 

 We're going to want the earth and take as much as we can hold; 

 We're going to wear a pile of stuff outside our proper skins; 

 We're going to have diseases! and accomplishments! ! and sins! ! ! " 



One can not Ijut be impressed with the significance of the design oi "The 

 Seal of the Territory of the U. S., N. W. of the River Ohio." Impressions of it 

 are preserved in the Department of State, Washington, D. C. In the light of 

 the development of the past century, of the changes that have been witnessed, it 

 w-ould be impossible standing iiere, at the other end of the century, to conceive a 

 device more expressive or truer to facts. I quote from a work that has just ap- 

 peared : 



"A study of this historic seal will show that it is far from being destitute of 

 appropriate and expressive meaning. The coiled snake in the foreground and 

 tiie boats in the middle distance ; the rising sun ; the forest tree felled by the ax 

 and cut into logs, succeeded by, apparently, an apple tree laden with fruit; the 

 I-atin inscription ^ Meliorem lapsa locavit,' all combine to forcibly express the idea 

 tliat a wild and savage condition is to be superseded by a higher and better 

 civilization. The wilderness and its dangerous denizens of reptiles, Indians and 

 wild beasts, are to disappear before the ax and riHe of the ever-advancing western 

 pioneer, with his fruits, his harvests, his boats, his commerce, and his restless and 

 aggressive civilization." "Meliorem lapt^a locarit.'" "He has planted a better 

 than the fallen !"i 



The white man made the navigable water ways his routes and settled along 

 them. At once, under his influence, the aspects of nature began to change. As 

 in every other land the effects of man's settlement began to be seen. The need 

 for food and clothing and the desire for tillable land were the great causes which 

 impelled him to action. In every land, on every sea, the stor^' has been the 

 same. Before his aggression disappeared the most noticeable forms of life. The 

 large or conspicuous species were those most easily affected — the ones which were 



1. William Hayden English: ron<iuest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 

 Vnl. IT. 18yt3, 11.774. 



