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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!
On the next morning we rode
to Fort Leavenworth. Colonel, now General,
Kearny, to whom I had had the honor of an
introduction when at St. Louis, was just
arrived, and received us at his headquarters
with the high-bred courtesy habitual to him.
Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort, being
without defensive works, except two
block-houses. No rumors of war had as yet
disturbed its tranquillity. In the square
grassy area, surrounded by barracks and the
quarters of the officers, the men were
passing and repassing, or lounging among the
trees; although not many weeks afterward it
presented a different scene; for here the
very off-scourings of the frontier were
congregated, to be marshaled for the
expedition against Santa Fe.
Passing through the garrison, we rode toward
the Kickapoo village, five or six miles
beyond. The path, a rather dubious and
uncertain one, led us along the ridge of
high bluffs that bordered the Missouri; and
by looking to the right or to the left, we
could enjoy a strange contrast of opposite
scenery. On the left stretched the prairie,
rising into swells and undulations, thickly
sprinkled with groves, or gracefully
expanding into wide grassy basins of miles
in extent; while its curvatures, swelling
against the horizon, were often surmounted
by lines of sunny woods; a scene to which
the freshness of the season and the peculiar
mellowness of the atmosphere gave additional
softness. Below us, on the right, was a
tract of ragged and broken woods. We could
look down on the summits of the trees, some
living and some dead; some erect, others
leaning at every angle, and others still
piled in masses together by the passage of a
hurricane. Beyond their extreme verge, the
turbid waters of the Missouri were
discernible through the boughs, rolling
powerfully along at the foot of the woody
declivities of its farther bank.
The path soon after led inland; and as we
crossed an open meadow we saw a cluster of
buildings on a rising ground before us, with
a crowd of people surrounding them. They
were the storehouse, cottage, and stables of
the Kickapoo trader's establishment. Just at
that moment, as it chanced, he was beset
with half the Indians of the settlement.
They had tied their wretched, neglected
little ponies by dozens along the fences and
outhouses, and were either lounging about
the place, or crowding into the trading
house. Here were faces of various colors;
red, green, white, and black, curiously
intermingled and disposed over the visage in
a variety of patterns. Calico shirts, red
and blue blankets, brass ear-rings, wampum
necklaces, appeared in profusion. The trader
was a blue-eyed open-faced man who neither
in his manners nor his appearance betrayed
any of the roughness of the frontier; though
just at present he was obliged to keep a
lynx eye on his suspicious customers, who,
men and women, were climbing on his counter
and seating themselves among his boxes and
bales.
The village itself was not far off, and
sufficiently illustrated the condition of
its unfortunate and self-abandoned
occupants. Fancy to yourself a little swift
stream, working its devious way down a woody
valley; sometimes wholly hidden under logs
and fallen trees, sometimes issuing forth
and spreading into a broad, clear pool; and
on its banks in little nooks cleared away
among the trees, miniature log-houses in
utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of
narrow, obstructed paths connected these
habitations one with another. Sometimes we
met a stray calf, a pig or a pony, belonging
to some of the villagers, who usually lay in
the sun in front of their dwellings, and
looked on us with cold, suspicious eyes as
we approached. Farther on, in place of the
log-huts of the Kickapoos, we found the
pukwi lodges of their neighbors, the
Pottawattamies, whose condition seemed no
better than theirs.
Growing tired at last, and exhausted by the
excessive heat and sultriness of the day, we
returned to our friend, the trader. By this
time the crowd around him had dispersed, and
left him at leisure. He invited us to his
cottage, a little white-and-green building,
in the style of the old French settlements;
and ushered us into a neat, well-furnished
room. The blinds were closed, and the heat
and glare of the sun excluded; the room was
as cool as a cavern. It was neatly carpeted
too and furnished in a manner that we hardly
expected on the frontier. The sofas, chairs,
tables, and a well-filled bookcase would not
have disgraced an Eastern city; though there
were one or two little tokens that indicated
the rather questionable civilization of the
region. A pistol, loaded and capped, lay on
the mantelpiece; and through the glass of
the bookcase, peeping above the works of
John Milton glittered the handle of a very
mischievous-looking knife.
Our host went out, and returned with iced
water, glasses, and a bottle of excellent
claret; a refreshment most welcome in the
extreme heat of the day; and soon after
appeared a merry, laughing woman, who must
have been, a year of two before, a very rich
and luxuriant specimen of Creole beauty. She
came to say that lunch was ready in the next
room. Our hostess evidently lived on the
sunny side of life, and troubled herself
with none of its cares. She sat down and
entertained us while we were at table with
anecdotes of fishing parties, frolics, and
the officers at the fort. Taking leave at
length of the hospitable trader and his
friend, we rode back to the garrison.
Shaw passed on to the camp, while I remained
to call upon Colonel Kearny. I found him
still at table. There sat our friend the
captain, in the same remarkable habiliments
in which we saw him at Westport; the black
pipe, however, being for the present laid
aside. He dangled his little cap in his hand
and talked of steeple-chases, touching
occasionally upon his anticipated exploits
in buffalo-hunting. There, too, was R.,
somewhat more elegantly attired. For the
last time we tasted the luxuries of
civilization, and drank adieus to it in wine
good enough to make us almost regret the
leave-taking. Then, mounting, we rode
together to the camp, where everything was
in readiness for departure on the morrow.
