ORDER OF WESTERN MIGRATIONS—EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MINERS AND OTHERS—RANCHMEN PRINCIPAL CREATORS OF SPIRIT OF WEST—THAT SPIRIT—IMPRESS LEFT BY RANCHMEN.
HISTORY discloses that an affirmative public consciousness, an affirmative national spirit, occurs only among such people as are mutually engaged in active business affairs of however diverse sorts, and that, to exist, it must be founded on a lasting and overwhelming popular support of such principles as, deeper than mere matters of party politics, are socially and governmentally fundamental.
Before the gold excitement of 1848 but few whites lived beyond the far edge of the narrow strip which skirted the western bank of the Mississippi River. These few whites consisted of the scattered hunters, trappers, and Indian traders who, with blithesome contempt for distance, were wandering about the entire territory between that river and the Sierra Nevadas; consisted also of the scanty populations of California’s and New Mexico’s Spanish settlements, of an isolated group of ranchmen in southeastern Texas, of a pitifully small and astonishingly brave community in western Oregon, of the Mormon colony in Utah, and finally of a handful of expatriates who, quitting ships whaling or hide-droughing upon the Californian coast, had settled on its shore.
These few whites were too few in number, and, save for the people of Oregon and of the Spanish settlements, and for the Mormons in Utah, too widely dispersed, too differing in interests, and too individualistic to form even a local public consciousness; although the hunters, trappers, and traders passed down traditions which made an impress upon the consciousness of the entire West when that consciousness appeared.
The Oregonians and all their accretions of later years were merely a transplanted slice of New England, and, to this day in the year 1922, the peoples of coastal Oregon and of New England have been identical in thought, ideals, and action. The Mormons and the peoples of the various Spanish settlements each formed an isolated civilization, and were wholly self-contained.
The Oregonians, the Mormons, and the peoples of the Spanish settlements were not originators of the spirit of the West.
The next to invade the West were the miners, who, struck with the gold fever, began in numbers to make migration to California in 1849, to Colorado in 1851, to Oregon in 1852, to Nevada in 1859, to Idaho in 1860, to Montana in 1862, to Wyoming in 1867, to Dakota in 1875. But these miners, confining themselves to the circumscribed tracts of the ore beds, produced no general settling of the country.
Nor did they create a public consciousness. Once westward of the frontier, these miners, like the hunters, trappers, traders, and the expatriates mentioned above, considered themselves to be in a foreign land; regarded the territory in which they were as merely space from which wealth might be extracted; and restricted their ideas either to the labor in hand or to recollections of conditions “back home,” in “the States.”
These miners, self-cloistered in the areas of the orelands, gathered within those areas and about “rich strikes,” like bees about a hive. They all stayed put where they were, and pecked away at the ground until the announcement that some one had elsewhere “struck it rich.” Instantly some bearded, red-shirted, enterprising soul, seizing his shovel, pick, and pan, would desert his companions, and would “strike out” for the “new excitement,” to be followed by a portion of the members of the “camp” just as a part of the inmates of a hive emigrate with a queen-bee. But this transit by the miners would mean merely a shifting from one settlement to another, the two identical in thought as well as in work.
This thought was limited largely to the contents of the ground and their extraction; and the miners’ relations were with the earth rather than with people. The miners not only did not come into contact with persons living outside of the mineral belts; but also, as among themselves, had scant business intercourse. Their vocation, from its nature, required individual effort or at most that of small squads; and, from its severity, reduced life to digging in daytime and to sleeping at night.
Then too, natural desire to monopolize the results of eager, persistent, and successful search engendered secretiveness as to one’s delving operations. Secretiveness, pursued on this point, tended to create uncommunicativeness in all important matters.
The miner carried with him to the West all the customs that he later followed there; and he changed them not at all except in so far as they related to the mechanical processes of procuring and refining ore, and save that he roughened his social manners.
He did found various towns, and he was the principal factor in their subsequent development into cities of importance and of multiple interests. Thus came Denver.
He did enter sleepy little Yerba Buena, a Mexican ranching hamlet lying upon the borders of a bay that had seen no ships except naval vessels, occasional Mexican coasters dropping in for trade, more occasional Yankee or Kanaka hide-droughers calling for hides or drinking-water, and equally rare Yankee whalers putting into port for either a refitting or an overhauling. True, he entered Yerba Buena; and, both directly by his local business and indirectly by the commerce which he induced, he converted a tiny, drowsy cluster of adobe huts into one of the cities of the world, San Francisco.
But he founded places, not the civilization which ultimately pervaded them.
He produced nothing except the structures in these cities and except extracted mineral wealth; and, as a class, has left no imprint beyond that of the recorded fact of his civic foundings, and that of a few phrases and of a picturesque memory. He for himself grew rich, and for us made Bret Harte and Mark Twain possible.
The miners were closely followed by their two providers, the merchant who sold supplies, and the transportation man, the latter portaging across the continent at first by wagon and later by railway train. The Western merchants, through the close of the nineteenth century, took on the color of their environments; and, until the comparatively recent urban development, were not sufficiently numerous to be a material factor in forming a public opinion. The transportation man, whether of the wagon or of the later railway, ever completely immersed himself in his immediate job, and customarily regarded the country he traversed not as the home of a populace but merely as a gap between terminal stations. These transportation men, who, with the army’s aid, enabled the peopled West to be born and to grow, did not create or shape its spirit.
The superb Old Army was in the West, but officer and men dated their thoughts so generally from the city of Washington, kept their minds so much in national instead of local lines, tended so strictly to their military knitting, and lived so inside their own traditions that they left no imprint, although they primarily had made the West generally habitable.
The sheepmen, by the unadventurous nature of their animals, were withheld from the Cattle Country until it had been permeated by the raisers of horses and cattle, and its spirit had been crystallized. Furthermore, the sheepmen were too few in relative number, and were too much under the vituperative domination of the cattlemen to have been at any time a considerable factor. Among these sheepmen, were very able persons; but even these the Cattle Country said “smelt of wool,” and so they were denied an influence.
Gamblers too were in the West, but they were of course merely incidental.
If the so-called spirit of the West was not made by any of the classes thus recited, who did make it? It had been formed in its entirety before the advent of the manufacturer, the professional man, and the farmer, so they could have played no part.
There is but one class left, the class composed of the rancher, the cowboy, and their fellow ranchmen. These men rode out into a vacant empire; met the traditions and the customs of the hunters, trappers, and traders, the primal pioneers; with unanimity adopted all of the traditions and the usable part of the customs; added to them; crystallized the whole into a code of compulsory usage, and actively embarked in the pursuit of a vocation by which they kept themselves in touch with all conditions of people and all four corners of the map. These men thus fulfilled the historical requirements for leave to create a public consciousness, and they performed the task.
If one wishes further proof, let him consider the present basic principles of the Far West. They stand forth in well advertised, clear-cut lore, even though in action they often be disregarded. They are the traditions of the open Range; and, when now transgressed, are so transgressed not by the ranchman, or by his children, but by some recent settler who knows not Israel, who has mistaken Elijah’s mantle for a rag carpet. Mere living west of the Missouri River does not make one a Westerner.
If one desires still more evidence, then from his dictionary let him list all the words and phrases which have crept into popular use from any of the callings that were represented in the West before its spirit came. Let him take the words and phrases that were either invented or vitalized within each such calling. If he will ignore the numerous gambling terms (and logically they should be ignored), he will find the ranchmen to have been by far the largest contributors. But a few moments’ search will give numerous expressions, like stampeded, bucked at it, caught in the noose, roped in, rounded up, rounded in, hobbled, hog-tied, corralled it, cinched it, it was a cinch, a lead-pipe cinch, ranch (in sense of home), cut it out, milling around, locoed, rattled, buffaloed, rustled, threw my hooks into him, throw the bull, horned in, butted in, bawled him out, to but a few verbal gifts from the miners with their now classic phrases, prospect around, good prospect, panned out, lucky strike, pay dirt, and struck it rich. Philologists assert that the best measure of the influence by one nation upon another is the extent of the modifications imposed upon the second nation’s language.
The miner and the ranchman, though each living in the West, and thinking of the entire West as his own, did not conflict; for each dealt physically with only the sections for which the other calling could find no use. The miner, while beginning his West at the Missouri River, ignored the countless miles of flat lands, and pictured the country as, in part, a series of busy towns which, blocking the entrances to sombre gulches, filled the air with acid fumes, with the smoke of chimneys, with the ceaseless pounding of the stamps; pictured it also as in part a series of lonely canyons, within which isolated men either dug all day into rocky walls or stood all day upon a river bar and shovelled gravel into an ever hungry sluice-box; pictured it also as, in part, a wide surrounding area of uninteresting, oreless lands not worth investigating, of no advantage to himself, but of reputed value to the ranchman, and geographically a part of the West, in which the miner took such pride.
The ranchman, beginning his West also at the Missouri River, knew intimately every rise and swale throughout all the grass lands. He had no reason for entering the gulches and the canyons save to gratify curiosity or sectional pride. He thought in terms of sweeping stretches of open country, and had no instinct to found a city. However, as one of the exceptions, he did start Cheyenne upon its way.
Thus there were, coincidently within the geographical limits of the West, and each at heart claiming all of its territory, two Wests, that of the miner and that of the ranchman.
Such was the Old West.
What was the spirit of the West, of the Old West? It was a spirit that begat personal service and extreme self-reliance, which, in their exercise, were at all times, upon the instant, for however long duration, and without expectation of reward, as subject to the call of others, were they friends or entire strangers, as to the requisition of their owner. It was a spirit that offered a contempt for distance or danger as an impediment to duty or pleasure. It was a spirit that gave to a man an intense individualism, and not only a hatred of class distinctions save such as the West itself created, but also a bitter antipathy to all social usages in limitation of personal action except those which either were prescribed by universal fundamental law or were in the Western code. It was a spirit that nurtured an undying pride in the country of the West, a devoted loyalty to its people as a class, a fierce partisanship in favor of that country and its people, and a complete silence about and very generous forgiving of whatever wrongs any of the latter might have done.
The exhibition of these qualities was governed by the closely followed conventions which earlier pages of this book have attempted to portray.
Out of this spirit of the West, out of the forces which produced it or from the men who made it came three affirmative, continuing results. Of these three, two are patently of national importance and the third may ultimately prove itself to be so.
The first of these results was that Mason and Dixon’s Line as a purveyor of sectional prejudices was never allowed to extend into the Cattle Country. It never yet has invaded where once the Range was open, and the lariat used to swing. Although Eastern emigration, obedient to nature’s law, moved westward on parallels of latitude, although Texas had seceded and been in the Confederacy, although New Mexico and Arizona later were enpeopled dominantly by Texans, there was no North vs. South in the Cattle Country. Montana, Texas, and the States between met amicably over the cow’s back.
The Texas Trail brought Southerner and Northerner of the Range together in intimate human contact, and fused them into the Westerner except in so far as the Texan reserved the right to pay obeisance primarily to his beloved Texas. Thus present-day Americans owe to the bygone man, atop a pitching bronco, thanks that the United States, for purposes of sectional prejudices, has but three divisions and not four.
The second result was a corollary of the first. It was an intense solidarity among all trans-Missouri River people; a solidarity still existent, and which, when the geographical centre of national population goes materially further westward than it now is, perhaps may speak dominantly at the polls. The West has not yet outgrown, gives no present evidence of ever outgrowing the example of the average cowboy. He had for his particular Western State and county an affection which, were he a Texan, was so strong as to make him call himself a Texan rather than a Westerner, but which, were he not a Texan, was not strong enough to prevent his terming himself a Westerner instead of a Coloradan, an Oregonian, or whatever. Nevertheless, and in any event, his ultimate, if not his primary, abject, blind, devoted allegiance was to the entire West, “God’s Country.” And, when the geographical centre of national population moves far westward, it will be politically well for the East if the then people of the one-time Cattle Country forgive the citizens who used to talk of the Alps instead of the Rockies.
The third result was that not only did Western democracy retain its vigor, unabated in quantity and unaltered in nature, but also it set itself affirmatively at work for the production of certain tangible results.
Although the methods of production and the tangible results produced were such as had been advocated by political socialists, the Westerner had no leaning toward socialism when he thus harnessed his democracy. His mind still functioned in terms of the neighborliness and of the willingness for mutual service that, in the early days, existed of necessity, and as a logical result, from both the scarcity of population and also the paucity of equipment for meeting untoward conditions. In this he was not inimical to the socialists.
But he still preserved his insistent demand for individualism, and bitterly resented any factor which might jeopardize its continuance. In this he was in diametrical opposition to the basic theory upon which political socialism rested.
Nor was any part of the Westerner’s actuating motive a desire to dispense charity. He wished to benefit not the poor alone but the entire public, of which he formed a part.
With this attitude of mind, he was disposed to require that whatever institutions of higher learning, whatever hospitals, whatever orphanages, asylums, and other eleemosynary institutions might be locally needed be not left to the chance of private foundation or to support from private endowment. He took it for granted that he and his neighbors should get together and build and support a university, a hospital, or whatever, just as in primitive days he and his neighbors had joined forces when the round-ups called for collective efforts. Thus, save for the Rice Institute in Texas, and for various railway companies’ hospitals, there are as yet, within the former Cattle Country and under private management, virtually no institutions organized for any of the purposes above enumerated.
The Cattle Country did not, of course, invent public foundation and public support, for the Eastern States already had institutions so set up. But these Eastern States were accustomed to additional institutions, all of private creation and, for their income, making no demand upon the taxpayer. It, however, remained for the Cattle Country wholly to omit from the public’s reckoning all thought of private institutions in connection with plans for local betterments.
This omission did not come from any resentment against privately owned wealth. It did not signify any opposition to private endowment and management. It was not due even to scantiness of population. It was a direct inheritance from the enforced co-operation of the pioneer days.
It was not tinctured by any thought that Washington might provide at least a portion of the necessary moneys. True, the West had been accustomed not to pay for lands, grass, water, wood, or minerals, but rather to receive them as federal gifts; but the West had not yet awakened, as had some portions of the East, to the pleasing taste of federal cash. In the matter of its local institutions the West expected to foot the entire bill.
Perhaps the most picturesque task at which harnessed democracy was set was that of installing and maintaining in various localities, and for the gratuitous use of the entire public, camping-places, each available for occupancy by numerous parties at a single time, and many equipped with permanent cooking grates flanked by piles of free wood. These camping-places were for the use of the entire public, local or foreign, and not of only that portion of the entire public which represented what the East amid its own population called the “general public,” which is to say the poor and also such of the financially more well-to-do as at political meetings were given mere admission tickets and not reserved seats. All Westerners, regardless of class or wealth distinctions, used and still use these camping-places conducted under the democratic doctrines of “for everybody,” and “first come first served,” but nevertheless not requiring any more social intimacy than the various camping-parties might care to have with each other.
These Western recreative spots stand out in contrast with most of those within the East, a contrast which reflects adversely upon the East unless its cause be understood. Heretofore such public playgrounds in the East as have not consisted of mere roads have been devoted largely to people financially unable to purchase recreation elsewhere. That some persons have studiously avoided these resorts the West has believed to have been due wholly to snobbishness, a word and a quality detested in the Cattle Country. The West has ignored the other side of the picture, and thus has overlooked the fact that the habitual users of these places have commonly resented the attendance by such persons as supposedly had means to go elsewhere and, by failing to do so, have occupied space which otherwise a poorer man might have enjoyed.
However, whatever the causes, the East has not what the West has, public parks filled with the spirit of democracy. That spirit in those Western parks, that cooking grate flanked with piles of wood and available to all who come, is neither more nor less than a perpetuation of a little fire of sage-brush twigs which, built long years ago far out upon the Range, heard its builder say “Light, stranger, light.”
Not only was Western democracy thoroughly virile, but also, because it was created and regulated by the public itself, it was thoroughly practical in both spirit and operation. In all this it differed much from the laboratory democracy which cloistered political theorists have, from time to time since America’s founding, sought academically to purvey to what they termed the masses.
The West but little welcomed such abstract prescriptions for social betterment as on occasion detached theorists, however high-minded, formulated and presented at long range to an ungrateful public. The West had no wish to be uplifted from afar, no wish to be uplifted by any one claiming superiority to it, no wish in fact to be uplifted at all. It was quite content with its own system of democracy.
This system, while starting with the American axioms that all men were created free and equal, and thus that a man might not acquire by inheritance an assured social position, declined nevertheless to admit that all men had to remain socially equal, but, on the contrary, ungrudgingly accorded to a man whatever position he by his individual worth had achieved. The Cattle Country thus recognized very distinctly defined social gradations. Brains, moral and physical courage, strength of character, native gentlemanliness, proficiency in riding or shooting—every quality of leadership tended to raise its owner from the common level. The aristocracy of the Cattle Country consisted of the likable element among the scouts, the ranch foremen, the “top” riders, the “crack” shots, the drivers upon principal stage routes, and the forceful ranch owners.
The West had such keen admiration for individual achievement that there were admitted to at least the fringe of this aristocracy such of the train-robbers as, not being “bad men,” plied their vocation on bold lines, with conspicuous success, and with a tincture of chivalry.
The truth was that the West was so human and so masculine that it was somewhat addicted to hero-worship.
An Englishman’s possessing a title of nobility or having close relationship with it did not in itself insure admission to the Western inner circles, though it universally made the man an object of curious interest. However, most of the English ranchmen of the type in question had so much innate social adaptability as, when in the country, to “travel on their own and not on their titles.” Many of them were of great popularity, but they all, when absent from the country, were subject to be considered as impersonal absentees.
Nevertheless, all this is beside the mark, in as much as the West was made by its citizens and not by its guests.
The men who made the spirit of the West, who forbade Mason and Dixon’s Line to extend, who harnessed democracy, wore “chaps.”
Wherefore this book closes with the appeal that these bygone, virile, warm-hearted men of real idealism, of high courage and brave achievement, of maturest force and childlike simplicity, of broad tolerance if often of violent prejudices, these builders of an empire, may not, through the drama’s stressing of their picturesqueness, be forgotten as to their bigness and be recorded by some definitive, historical treatise in the future as having been mere theatric characters.