THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 507 



daring pioneers ventured their lives and fortunes, with their families, testing the 

 means and luxuries of life which nature has set before them in the country where 

 the buried tomahawk is scarce rusted and the war-cry has scarcely died on the 

 winds. Among these people have I roamed. On the Red River I have seen the rich 

 Louisianian checking out his cotton and sugar plantations where the sunbeams could 

 be seen reflected from the glistening pates of his hundred negroes, making first tres- 

 pass with the hoe. I have sat with him at his hospitable table in his log cabin, 

 sipping sherry and champagne. He talks of hogsheads and price of stocks or goes 

 in for cotton. 



In the western parts of Arkansas or Missouri I have shared the genuine cottage hos- 

 pitality of the abrupt, yet polite and honorable, Kentuckian ; the easy, affable, and 

 social Tennesseean ; this has " a smart chance of corn," the other perhaps " a power 

 of cotton," and then occasionally (from the "Old Dominion") " I reckon I shall have 

 a mighty heap of tobacco this season," &c. 



Boys in this country are "peart", fever and ague render one " powerful weak," 

 and sometimes it is almost impossible to get " shet " of it. Intelligence, hospitality, 

 and good cheer reign under all of these humble roofs, and the traveler who knows 

 how to appreciate those things, with a good cup of coffee, " corn-bread,"* and fresh 

 butter, can easily enjoy moments of bliss in converse with the humble pioneer. 



On the Upper Mississippi and Missouri, for the distance of seven or eight hundred 

 miles above Saint Louis, is one of the most beautiful champagne countries in the world, 

 continually alternating into timber and fields of the softest green, calculated, from its 

 latitude, for the people of the Northern and Eastern States, and "Jonathan" is already 

 here — and almost everybody else from "down East" — with fences of white drawn 

 and drawing, like chalk lines, over the green prairie. " By gosh, this 'ere is the big- 

 gest clerin' I ever see ; " "I expect we hadn't ought to raise nothin' but wheat and rye 

 here ;" "I guess you've come arter land, han't you ?" 



Such is the character of this vast country, and such the manner in which it is filled 

 up, with- people from all parts, tracing their own latitudes, and carrying with them 

 their local peculiarities and prejudices. The mighty Mississippi, however, the great 

 and everlasting highway on which these people are forever to intermingle their 

 interests and manners, will effectually soften down those prejudices, and eventually 

 result in an amalgamation of feelings and customs from which this huge mass of 

 population will take one new and general appellation. 



THE TRUE AMERICAN IN THE WEST. 



It is here that the trne character of the American is to be formed, here where the 

 peculiarities and incongruities which detract from his true character are surrendered 

 for the free, yet lofty principle that strikes between meanness and prodigality, be- 

 tween literal democracy and aristocracy, between low cunning and self-engendered 

 ingenuousness. Such will be found to be the true character of the Americans when 

 jostled a while together until their local angles are worn off; and such may be found, 

 and already pretty well formed, in the genuine Kentuckian, the first brave and dar- 

 ing pioneer of the Great West ; he is the true model of an American — the nucleus 

 around which the character must form, and from which it is to emanate to the world. 

 This is the man who first relinquished the foibles and fashions of Eastern life, trail- 

 ing his rifle into the forest of the Mississippi, taking simple nature for his guide. 

 From necessity (as well as by nature) bold and intrepid, with the fixed and unfal- 

 tering brow of integrity, and a hand whose very grip (without words) tells you wel- 

 come. 



And yet many people of the East object to the Mississippi " that it is too far off— - 

 is out of the world." But how strange and insufficient is such an objection to the 

 traveler who has seen and enjoyed its hospitality, and reluctantly retreats from it 



* Maize. 



