Woman on the American Frontier | Page 6

she shows the same self-devotion as in "the brave days of old;" it is this
quality which peculiarly fits her to be the pioneer's companion in the
new world, and by her works in that capacity she must be judged.
If all true greatness should be estimated by the good it performs, it is
peculiarly desirable that woman's claims to distinction should thus be
estimated and awarded. In America her presence has been
acknowledged, and her aid faithfully rendered from the beginning. In
the era of colonial life; in the cruel wars with the aborigines; in the
struggle of the Revolution; in the western march of the army of
exploration and settlement, a grateful people must now recognize her
services.
There is a beautiful tradition, that the first foot which pressed the
snow-clad rock of Plymouth was that of Mary Chilton, a fair young
maiden, and that the last survivor of those heroic pioneers was Mary
Allerton, who lived to see the planting of twelve out of the thirteen
colonies, which formed the nucleus of these United States.
In the Mayflower, nineteen wives accompanied their husbands
to a waste land and uninhabited, save by the wily and vengeful savage.
On the unfloored hut, she who had been nurtured amid the rich carpets
and curtains of the mother-land, rocked her new-born babe, and
complained not. She, who in the home of her youth had arranged the
gorgeous shades of embroidery, or, perchance, had compounded the
rich venison pasty, as her share in the housekeeping, now pounded the

coarse Indian corn for her children's bread, and bade them ask God's
blessing, ere they took their scanty portion. When the snows sifted
through the miserable roof-tree upon her little ones, she gathered them
closer to her bosom; she taught them the Bible, and the catechism, and
the holy hymn, though the war-whoop of the Indian rang through the
wild. Amid the untold hardships of colonial life she infused new
strength into her husband by her firmness, and solaced his weary hours
by her love. She was to him,
"----an undergoing spirit, to bear up Against whate'er ensued."
The names of these nineteen pioneer-matrons should be engraved in
letters of gold on the pillars of American history:
The Wives of the Pilgrims.
Mrs. Catharine Carver. Mrs. Dorothy Bradford. Mrs. Elizabeth
Winslow. Mrs. Mary Brewster. Mrs. Mary Allerton. Mrs. Elizabeth
Hopkins. Mrs. ------ Tilley. Mrs. ------ Tilley. Mrs. ------ Ticker. Mrs.
------ Ridgdale. Mrs. Rose Standish. Mrs. ------ Martin. Mrs. ------
Mullins. Mrs. Susanna White. Mrs. ------ Eaton. Mrs. ------ Chilton.
Mrs. ------ Fuller. Mrs. Helen Billington. Mrs. Lucretia Brewster.
Nor should the names of the daughters of these heroic women be
forgotten, who, with their mothers and fathers shared the perils of that
winter's voyage, and bore, with their parents, the toils, and hardships,
and changes of the infant colony.
The Daughters of the Pilgrim Mothers.
Elizabeth Carver. Remember Allerton. Mary Allerton. Sarah Allerton.
Constance Hopkins. Mary Chilton. Priscilla Mullins.
The voyage of the Mayflower; the landing upon a desolate
coast in the dead of winter; the building of those ten small houses, with
oiled paper for windows; the suffering of that first winter and spring, in
which woman bore her whole share; these were the first steps in the
grand movement which has carried the Anglo-Saxon race across the

American continent. The next steps were the penetration of the
wilderness westward from the sea, by the emigrant pioneers and their
wives. Fighting their way through dense forests, building cabins,
block-houses, and churches in the clearings which they had made;
warred against by cruel savages; woman was ever present to guard, to
comfort, to work. The annals of colonial history teem with her deeds of
love and heroism, and what are those recorded instances to those which
had no chronicler? She loaded the flint-lock in the block-house while it
was surrounded by yelling savages; she exposed herself to the
scalping-knife to save her babe; in her forest-home she worked and
watched, far from the loved ones in Old England; and by discharging a
thousand duties in the household and the field, did her share in a silent
way towards building up the young Republic of the West.
Sometimes she ranged herself in battle beside her husband or brother,
and fought with the steadiness and bravery of a veteran. But her
heroism never shone so brightly as in undergoing danger in defense of
her children.
In the early days of the settlement of Royalton, Vermont, a sudden
attack was made upon it by the Indians. Mrs. Hendee, the wife of one
of the settlers, was working alone in the field, her husband being absent
on military duty, when the Indians entered her house and capturing her
children carried them across the White river, at that place a