FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
We traveled eastward for two
days, and then the gloomy ridges of the
Black Hills rose up before us. The village
passed along for some miles beneath their
declivities, trailing out to a great length
over the arid prairie, or winding at times
among small detached hills or distorted
shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we
entered a wide defile of the mountains, down
the bottom of which a brook came winding,
lined with tall grass and dense copses, amid
which were hidden many beaver dams and
lodges. We passed along between two lines of
high precipices and rocks, piled in utter
disorder one upon another, and with scarcely
a tree, a bush, or a clump of grass to veil
their nakedness. The restless Indian boys
were wandering along their edges and
clambering up and down their rugged sides,
and sometimes a group of them would stand on
the verge of a cliff and look down on the
array as it passed in review beneath them.
As we advanced, the passage grew more
narrow; then it suddenly expanded into a
round grassy meadow, completely encompassed
by mountains; and here the families stopped
as they came up in turn, and the camp rose
like magic.
The lodges were hardly erected when, with
their usual precipitation, the Indians set
about accomplishing the object that had
brought them there; that is, the obtaining
poles for supporting their new lodges. Half
the population, men, women and boys, mounted
their horses and set out for the interior of
the mountains. As they rode at full gallop
over the shingly rocks and into the dark
opening of the defile beyond, I thought I
had never read or dreamed of a more strange
or picturesque cavalcade. We passed between
precipices more than a thousand feet high,
sharp and splintering at the tops, their
sides beetling over the defile or descending
in abrupt declivities, bristling with black
fir trees. On our left they rose close to us
like a wall, but on the right a winding
brook with a narrow strip of marshy soil
intervened. The stream was clogged with old
beaver dams, and spread frequently into wide
pools. There were thick bushes and many dead
and blasted trees along its course, though
frequently nothing remained but stumps cut
close to the ground by the beaver, and
marked with the sharp chisel-like teeth of
those indefatigable laborers. Sometimes we
were driving among trees, and then emerging
upon open spots, over which, Indian-like,
all galloped at full speed. As Pauline
bounded over the rocks I felt her
saddle-girth slipping, and alighted to draw
it tighter; when the whole array swept past
me in a moment, the women with their gaudy
ornaments tinkling as they rode, the men
whooping, and laughing, and lashing forward
their horses. Two black-tailed deer bounded
away among the rocks; Raymond shot at them
from horseback; the sharp report of his
rifle was answered by another equally sharp
from the opposing cliffs, and then the
echoes, leaping in rapid succession from
side to side, died away rattling far amid
the mountains.
After having ridden in this manner for six
or eight miles, the appearance of the scene
began to change, and all the declivities
around us were covered with forests of tall,
slender pine trees. The Indians began to
fall off to the right and left, and
dispersed with their hatchets and knives
among these woods, to cut the poles which
they had come to seek. Soon I was left
almost alone; but in the deep stillness of
those lonely mountains, the stroke of
hatchets and the sound of voices might be
heard from far and near.
Reynal, who imitated the Indians in their
habits as well as the worst features of
their character, had killed buffalo enough
to make a lodge for himself and his squaw,
and now he was eager to get the poles
necessary to complete it. He asked me to let
Raymond go with him and assist in the work.
I assented, and the two men immediately
entered the thickest part of the wood.
Having left my horse in Raymond's keeping, I
began to climb the mountain. I was weak and
weary and made slow progress, often pausing
to rest, but after an hour had elapsed, I
gained a height, whence the little valley
out of which I had climbed seemed like a
deep, dark gulf, though the inaccessible
peak of the mountain was still towering to a
much greater distance above. Objects
familiar from childhood surrounded me; crags
and rocks, a black and sullen brook that
gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the
crevices, a wood of mossy distorted trees
and prostrate trunks flung down by age and
storms, scattered among the rocks, or
damming the foaming waters of the little
brook. The objects were the same, yet they
were thrown into a wilder and more startling
scene, for the black crags and the savage
trees assumed a grim and threatening aspect,
and close across the valley the opposing
mountain confronted me, rising from the gulf
for thousands of feet, with its bare
pinnacles and its ragged covering of pines.
Yet the scene was not without its milder
features. As I ascended, I found frequent
little grassy terraces, and there was one of
these close at hand, across which the brook
was stealing, beneath the shade of scattered
trees that seemed artificially planted. Here
I made a welcome discovery, no other than a
bed of strawberries, with their white
flowers and their red fruit, close nestled
among the grass by the side of the brook,
and I sat down by them, hailing them as old
acquaintances; for among those lonely and
perilous mountains they awakened delicious
associations of the gardens and peaceful
homes of far-distant New England.
Yet wild as they were, these mountains were
thickly peopled. As I climbed farther, I
found the broad dusty paths made by the elk,
as they filed across the mountainside. The
grass on all the terraces was trampled down
by deer; there were numerous tracks of
wolves, and in some of the rougher and more
precipitous parts of the ascent, I found
foot-prints different from any that I had
ever seen, and which I took to be those of
the Rocky Mountain sheep. I sat down upon a
rock; there was a perfect stillness. No wind
was stirring, and not even an insect could
be heard. I recollected the danger of
becoming lost in such a place, and therefore
I fixed my eye upon one of the tallest
pinnacles of the opposite mountain. It rose
sheer upright from the woods below, and by
an extraordinary freak of nature sustained
aloft on its very summit a large loose rock.
Such a landmark could never be mistaken, and
feeling once more secure, I began again to
move forward. A white wolf jumped up from
among some bushes, and leaped clumsily away;
but he stopped for a moment, and turned back
his keen eye and his grim bristling muzzle.
I longed to take his scalp and carry it back
with me, as an appropriate trophy of the
Black Hills, but before I could fire, he was
gone among the rocks. Soon I heard a
rustling sound, with a cracking of twigs at
a little distance, and saw moving above the
tall bushes the branching antlers of an elk.
I was in the midst of a hunter's paradise.
Such are the Black Hills, as I found them in
July; but they wear a different garb when
winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the
fir tree are bent to the ground by the load
of snow, and the dark mountains are whitened
with it. At that season the
mountain-trappers, returned from their
autumn expeditions, often build their rude
cabins in the midst of these solitudes, and
live in abundance and luxury on the game
that harbors there. I have heard them
relate, how with their tawny mistresses, and
perhaps a few young Indian companions, they
have spent months in total seclusion. They
would dig pitfalls, and set traps for the
white wolves, the sables, and the martens,
and though through the whole night the awful
chorus of the wolves would resound from the
frozen mountains around them, yet within
their massive walls of logs they would lie
in careless ease and comfort before the
blazing fire, and in the morning shoot the
elk and the deer from their very door.
