Part 4

As for the Indians, so stately in their robes of fur and nodding plumes, William Penn walked with them, and sat down on the ground to eat with them. They gave him hominy and roasted acorns. And after the feast, they entertained him with their sports, jumping and hopping. And William Penn sprang up gayly like a boy, and joining in their games, beat them all, young Braves and old.

And so the Red Men learned to love and trust their great White Father--Onas they called him. For Onas is Indian for a pen, or a quill.

Such was William Penn’s happy welcome to the City of Brotherly Love.

THE PLACE OF KINGS

It was the last of November. The lofty forest trees on the shore of the Delaware had shed their summer attire. The ground was strewn with leaves. A Council-fire was burning brightly beneath a huge Elm, not far from the City of Brotherly Love.

It was an ancient Elm, which for over a hundred years had guarded Shackamaxon, the Place of Kings. For long before the Pale-faces had landed on the shore of the Delaware, Indian Sachems, Kings of the Red Skins, had held their friendly councils in its shade, and smoked many a Pipe of Peace.

On that November day, the tribes of the Lenni Lenapé under the wide-spreading branches of the Elm, were gathered around the Council-fire. They were seated in a half circle, like a half moon. They were all unarmed.

Among the Chiefs, was the Great Sachem Taminend, revered for his wisdom and beloved for his goodness. He sat in the middle of the half moon, with his council, the aged and wise, on either hand.

They waited.

Then, lo! a barge approached. At its masthead flew the broad pennant of Governor William Penn. The oars were plied with measured strokes, guiding the barge to land. And near the helm sat William Penn attended by his council.

He landed with his people, and advanced toward the Council-fire. A handsome man he was, only thirty-eight years old, athletic, and graceful. His manners were courteous, his blue eyes were friendly. He was plainly dressed, with a scarf of sky-blue network bound about his waist.

Some of his people preceded him. They carried presents for the Indians, which they laid on the ground before them.

Then William Penn approached the Council-fire.

Thereupon the Great Sachem, Taminend, put on a chaplet surmounted by a horn, the emblem of his power, and through an interpreter announced that the Nations were ready to hear William Penn.

Thus being called upon, William Penn began his speech:--

“The Great Spirit,” he said, “who made me and you, who rules the heavens and the earth, and who knows the innermost thoughts of men, knows that I and my friends have a hearty desire to live in peace and friendship with you, and to serve you to the utmost of our power.

“It is not our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow-creatures, for which reason we have come unarmed. Our object is not to do injury, and thus provoke the Great Spirit, but to do good.

“We are met on the broad pathway of good faith and good will, so that no advantage is to be taken on either side, but all to be openness, brotherhood, and love.”

Here William Penn unrolled a parchment on which was inscribed an agreement for trading, and promises of friendship. He explained the agreement article by article. Then laying the parchment on the ground, he said that that spot should ever more be common to both Peoples,--Pale-face and Red Skin.

The Indians listened to his speech in perfect silence, and with deep gravity. And when he was finished speaking, they deliberated together, for some time. Then the Great Sachem ordered one of his Chiefs to address William Penn.

The Chief advanced, and in the Sachem’s name saluted him, and taking William Penn by the hand, made a speech pledging kindness and neighbourliness, saying that the English and the Lenni Lenapé should live together in love, so long as the sun and the moon should endure.

_Samuel M. Janney_ (_Retold_)

ONAS

After the Treaty was made at the Place of Kings, the Lenni Lenapé, for many years enjoyed the mild and just rule of their “elder brother Onas.” He met them often around the Council-fire, hearing and rectifying their wrongs, adjusting trade matters, and smoking with them the Pipe of Peace.

And William Penn made treaties with the Indians who dwelt on the Potomac, and with the Five Nations. Thus Pennsylvania had quiet; and the Red Men were friends of the settlers. Sometimes they brought the white men venison, beans, and maize, and refused to take pay. Whereas, in the other Colonies, the Indians were dangerous neighbours, cruel and delighting in blood. They had been made suspicious and revengeful by the injustice and wickedness of white men.

So the Red Men of Pennsylvania, trusted William Penn, although he was a Pale-face. What Pale-face had they ever seen like him? A Pale-face was to them a trapper, a soldier, a pirate, a man who cheated them in barter, who gave them fire-water to drink, who hustled them off their hunting-ground.

But here was one Pale-face, who would not cheat and lie; who would not fire into their lodge; who would not rob them of their beaver skins; who would not take a rood of land from them, till they had fixed and he had paid their price.

Where were they to look for such another lord?

So when they heard that Onas was about to sail for England, Indians from all parts of Pennsylvania gathered to take sorrowful leave of him.

After he was gone, they preserved with care the memory of their treaties with him, by means of strings or belts of wampum. Often they gathered together in the woods, on some shady spot, and laid their wampum belts on a blanket or a clean piece of bark, and with great satisfaction went over the whole. So great was their reverence and affection for William Penn, inspired by his virtues, that they handed on the memory of his name to their children.

* * * * *

When William Penn died in England, the Indians sent his wife a message, mourning the loss of their “honoured brother Onas.”

And with the message went a present of beautiful skins for a cloak “to protect her while passing through the thorny wilderness without her guide.”

_W. Hepworth Dixon and Other Sources_

OCTOBER 27

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AMERICA’S HERO

_On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means, than of the honest man who earns each day’s livelihood by that day’s sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing as between man and man._

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE SQUARE DEAL

_We of the great modern democracies, must strive unceasingly to make our several Countries, lands in which a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty._

_And yet, we must judge rich man and poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and not on caste. And we must frown with the same stern severity on the mean and vicious envy which hates and would plunder a man because he is well off, and on the brutal and selfish arrogance, which looks down on and exploits the man with whom life has gone hard._

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

COLONEL THEODORE ROOSEVELT was born in New York City, October 27, 1858

Was appointed Police Commissioner of New York City, 1895

Aided in establishing the Independence of Cuba, 1898

Was elected Governor of the State of New York, 1898

Served as President of the United States, 1901-1909

He died, January 6, 1919.

THE BOY WHO GREW STRONG

_Not in a Log Cabin_

Theodore Roosevelt, unlike Abraham Lincoln, was not born in a log cabin. On the contrary, he was born to wealth and position in the City of New York.

He was reared in an elegant home and educated in one of the famous universities of the Country. He read law, but he had no need to practise a profession. His father had retired from business, and there was no occasion for the son to take up a business career.

But Theodore Roosevelt preferred for himself a life of toil--the strenuous life.

Ill-health was the first and greatest of all his disadvantages. “When a boy,” said he, “I was pig-chested and asthmatic.”

From earliest infancy he was called to battle with asthma. It lowered his vitality and threatened his growth. His body was frail, but within was the conquering spirit. He determined to be strong like other boys.

In this, he had the loving help of gentle parents. On the wide back porch of their home in the City of New York, they fitted up a gymnasium, where he strove for bodily vigour with all his might. Although at the start, his pole climbing was very poor, he kept trying until he got to the top. He would carry his gymnastic exercises to the perilous verge of the window ledge, more to the alarm of the neighbours than of his own family.

_In the Wide Out-of-Doors_

Summer was the season of Roosevelt’s delight. Then he ceased to be a city boy. At his father’s country place on Long Island, he learned to run and ride, row, and swim. And when the long sleepless nights came, the father would take his invalid boy in his arms, wrap him up warmly, and drive with him in the free open air through fifteen or twenty miles of darkness.

The boy had his father’s love of the woods and the fields. He studied and classified the birds of the neighbourhood, until he knew their songs and plumage and nests. He and his young friends could be relied on to find the spot where the violets bloomed the earliest, and the trees on which the walnuts were most plentiful, as well as the pools where the minnows swarmed, and the favourite refuge of the coon.

He was taken to Europe, in the hope that it would benefit his health, “a tall thin lad with bright eyes and legs like pipestems.”

When at last, he was ready to go to college, he had vanquished his enemy, ill-health, and was ready to play a man’s part in life.

“I made my health what it is,” he said later, “I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard, I was able to take part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred, and I ran a great deal, and, although I never came in first, I got more out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.

_Busting Broncos_

After leaving college, young Roosevelt entered politics. Finally, between legislative sessions, he surrendered to his impulses and started for the Wild West.

He left the train in North Dakota at the little town of Medora. The young visitor from the East, sought out two hunters and told them that he wished to go buffalo hunting with them. And he did so, though hunting the buffalo then was no fancy pastime.

It was, in truth, a rare chance to see the Wild West in the last glow of its golden age. Soon it was all to vanish and pass into the most romantic chapter of American history.

Before his first visit was at an end, he had become a ranchman.

The young master of Elkhorn Ranch, brave, outspoken, and always ready to bear his full share of toil, and hardship, was not long in winning the respect and hearty good-will of the bluff, honest men of the Bad Lands.

After only a little experience in ranching, he learned to sit in his saddle and ride his horse like a life-long plainsman.

But he never pretended to any special fondness for a bucking bronco; and a story is told of a trick played on him by some friendly persons in Medora.

He was in town, waiting for a train that was to bring a guest from the East. While he was in a store, the jokers placed his saddle on a notoriously vicious beast, which they substituted for his mount.

When he came out, in haste to ride around to the railway station, he did not detect the deception.

Once, he was on the horse’s back, the bronco bucked and whirled to the amusement of the grinning villagers. But to their amazement, the young ranchman succeeded in staying on him and spurring him into a run.

Away they flew to the prairies, and soon back they raced in a cloud of dust and through the town. The friend from the East arrived, and joined the spectators, who waited to see if the young squire of Elkhorn ever would return.

In a little while, he was seen coming along the road at a gentle gait. And when he reached his starting point, he dismounted, with a smile of quiet mastery, from as meek a creature as ever stood on four legs.

He had no use, however, for a horse whose spirit ran altogether to ugliness. When he first went West, he doubted the theory of the natives that any horse was hopelessly bad.

For instance, there was one in the sod-roofed log stable of Elkhorn, who had been labelled _The Devil_. Roosevelt believed that gentleness would overcome Devil. The boys thought it might, if he should live to be seventy-five.

After much patient wooing, Devil actually let Roosevelt lay his hand on him and pat him. The boys began to think that possibly there was something in this new plan of bronco busting.

One day, however, when his gentle trainer made bold to saddle and mount him, Devil quickly drew his four hoofs together, leaped into the air, and came down with a jerk and a thud. Then he finished with a few fancy curves, that landed his disillusioned rider a good many yards in front of him.

Roosevelt sprang to his feet and on to the back of the animal. Four times he was thrown. Finally, the determined rider manœuvred Devil out on to a quicksand where bucking is impossible. And, when at last, he was driven back to solid earth, he was like a lamb.

In this rough life of the range, the young ranchman conquered for ever the physical weaknesses of his youth, and put on that rude strength which enabled him to stand before the world, a model of vigorous manhood.

_James Morgan_ (_Arranged_)

SAGAMORE HILL

_His Home at Oyster Bay_

_From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_

Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who, as Chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land, two centuries and a half ago.

The house stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over the Bay and the Sound.

We see the sun go down beyond long reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods near by. And, of course, in Winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the Bay and the Sound.

We love all the seasons; the snows and bare

woods of Winter; the rush of growing things and the blossom-spray of Spring; the yellow grain, the ripening fruits, and tasseled corn, and the deep, leafy shades that are heralded by “the green dance of Summer”; and the sharp fall winds that tear the brilliant banners with which the trees greet the dying year.

The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights, we watch it from the piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall River boats as they steam steadily by. Now and then we spend a day on it, the two of us together in the light rowing skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an extra pair of oars. We land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit of white sand; while the sails of the coasting schooners gleam in the sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the waters....

Early in April, there is one hillside near us which glows like a tender flame with the white of the bloodroot. About the same time, we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus. And although we rarely pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul hungers for the northern Spring.

Then there are shadblow and delicate anemones about the time of the cherry blossoms. The brief glory of the apple orchards follows. And then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests with their radiance.

And so flowers follow flowers, until the springtime splendour closes with the laurel and the evanescent honey-sweet locust bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, and pale beach rosemary; and the goldenrod and the asters, when the afternoons shorten and we again begin to think of fires in the wide fireplaces.

_Theodore Roosevelt_

THE CHILDREN OF SAGAMORE HILL

Mrs. Roosevelt looked after the place itself. She supervised the farming, and the flower gardens were her especial care.

The children were now growing up, and from the time when they could toddle, they took their place--a very large place--in the life of the home. Roosevelt described the intense satisfaction he had in teaching the boys what his father had taught him.

As soon as they were large enough, they rode their horses, they sailed on the Cove and out into the Sound. They played boys’ games, and through him, they learned very young to observe nature.

In his college days, he had intended to be a naturalist, and natural history remained his strongest avocation. And so he taught his children to know the birds and animals, the trees, plants, and flowers of Oyster Bay and its neighbourhood. They had their pets--Kermit, one of the boys, carried a pet rat in his pocket.

Three things Roosevelt required of them all: obedience, manliness, and truthfulness.

_William Roscoe Thayer_

OFF WITH JOHN BURROUGHS

_From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_

One April, I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep, and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of the Park, the wild creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and tolerant of human presence.

In the Yellowstone, the animals seem always to behave as one wishes them to! It is always possible to see the sheep, and deer, and antelope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer than the smaller beasts.

In April, we found the elk weak after the short commons and hard living of Winter. Once, without much difficulty, I regularly rounded up a big band of them so that John Burroughs could look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much as I did.

The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl, the size of a robin, which we saw perched on the top of a tree, in mid-afternoon, entirely uninfluenced by the sun, and making a queer noise like a cork being pulled from a bottle.

I was rather ashamed to find how much better his eyes were than mine, in seeing the birds and grasping their differences.

_Theodore Roosevelt_

THE BIG STICK

I saw in Roosevelt a strong man, who had taken early to heart Hamlet’s maxim, and had steadfastly practised it:--

“_Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When Honour’s at the stake._”

He himself summed up this part of his philosophy in a phrase which has become a proverb:--

“_Speak softly; but carry a big stick._”

More than once in his later years, he quoted this to me, adding, that it was precisely because this or that Power knew that he carried a big stick, that he was enabled to speak softly with effect.

_William Roscoe Thayer_ (_Condensed_)

A-HUNTING TREES WITH JOHN MUIR

_From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_

When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the “big trees,” the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite with John Muir. Of course, of all people in the world, he was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite....

John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days’ trip.

The first night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in colour and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervour of the Middle Ages.

Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in the evening, and again with a burst of wonderful music at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. The hermit thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the flowers and the cliffs, everything. The only birds he noticed or cared for, were some that were very conspicuous, such as the water-ousels--always particular favourites of mine too.

The second night, we camped in a snow-storm on the edge of the cañon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir. And next day, we went down into the wonderland of the Valley itself.

I shall always be glad that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir, and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs.

_Theodore Roosevelt_ (_Condensed_)

THE BEAR HUNTERS’ DINNER

_From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_

When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport but also by the strange new birds and other creatures, and the trees and flowers I had not known before.

By the way, there was one feast at the White House, which stands above all others in my memory, this was “The Bear Hunters’ Dinner.”

I had been treated so kindly by my friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them at a hunters’ dinner at the White House.

One December, I succeeded. There were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring riders, as first class citizens as could be found anywhere. No finer set of guests ever sat at meat in the White House.

And among other game on the table, was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same guests.

_Theodore Roosevelt_ (_Condensed_)

HUNTING IN AFRICA

_From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_

The African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that the few that I shot did not charge.

A bull elephant, a vicious “rogue” which had been killing people in the native villages, did charge before being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards.

Another bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle, in killing the bull I was after--the first wild elephant I had ever seen. The second bull came through the thick brush to my left, like a steam plow through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past him behind a tree.

People have asked me how I felt on this occasion. My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of like experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment, a hunter is so very busy that he has no time to get frightened. He wants to get in his cartridges and try another shot.

Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot, I mortally wounded at a few rods’ distance, and it charged with the utmost determination. Whereat I and my companion both fired, and, more by good luck than anything else, brought it to the ground just thirteen paces from where we stood.