The "Far West" is rapidly becoming only a traditionaldesignation; railroads have destroyed the romance of frontierlife or have surrounded it with so many appliances of civilization that the pioneer character is rapidly becoming mythical. The men and women who obtain their groceries anddry-goods from New York by rail in a few hours have nothing in common with those who, fifty years ago, "packed"salt a hundred miles to make their mush palatable and couldonly exchange corn and wheat for molasses and calico bymaking long and perilous voyages in flat-boats down the Ohioand Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Two generations offrontier lives have accumulated stores of narrative , which,like the small but beautiful tributaries of great rivers, areforgotten in the broad sweep of the larger current of history.The march of Titans sometinnes tramples out the memoryof smaller, but more useful,lives, and sensational glare ofteneclipses more modest but purer lights. This has been thecase in the popular demand for the dime novel dilutions ofFenimore Cooper's romances of border life, which havepreserved the records of Indian rapine and atrocity as theonly memorials of pioneer history. But the early days ofWestern settlement witnessed sublimer heroisms than thoseof human torture, and nobler victories than those of the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
Among the heroes of endurance that was voluntaryand of action that was creative and not sanguinary, therewas one man whose name, seldom mentioned now save bysome of the few surviving pioneers, deserves to be perpetuated.
The first reliable trace of our modest hero finds himin the Territory of Ohio, in 1801, with a horse-load of appleseeds, which he planted in various places on and about theborders of Licking Creek -the first orchard thus originatedby him being on the farm of Isaac Stadden, in what is nowknown as Licking County, in the state of Ohio. During thefive succeeding years, although he was undoubtedly followingthe same strange occupation, we have no authentic accountof his movements until we reach a pleasant spring day in1806, when a pioneer settler in Jefferson County, Ohio, noticed a peculiar craft, with a remarkable occupant and acurious cargo, slowly dropping down with the current of theOhio River. It was "Johnny Appleseed," by which nameJonathan Chapman was afterward known in every log-cabinfrom the Ohio River to the northern lakes and westward tothe prairies of what is now the state of Indiana. With twocanoes lashed together, he was transporting a load of appleseeds to the western frontier, for the purpose of creatingorchards on the farthest verge of white settlements. Withhis canoes he passed down the Ohio to Marietta, where heentered the Muskingum, ascending the stream of that riveruntil he reached the mouth of the Walhonding, or WhiteWonnan Creek, and still onward, up the Mohican, into theBlack Fork, to the head of navigation in the region nowknown as Ashland and Richland counties, on the line of thePittsburg and Fort Wayne Railroad, in Ohio. A long andtoilsome voyage it was, as a glance at the map will show,and must have occupied a great deal of time, as the lonelytraveler stopped at every inviting spot to plant the seeds andmake his infant nurseries. These are the first well-authenticated facts in the history of Jonathan Chapman, whosebirth, there is good reason for believing, occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1775. According to this, which washis own statement in one of his less reticent moods, he was,at the time of his appearance on Licking Creek, twenty-sixyears of age; and whether impelled in his eccentricities bysome absolute misery of the heart which could only find relief in incessant motion or governed by a benevolent monomania, his whole after-life was devoted to the work of planting apple seeds in remote places. The seeds he gatheredfrom the cider -pres ses of western Pennsylvania; but hiscanoe voyage in 1806 appears to have been the only occasionupon which he adopted that method of transporting them, asall his subsequent journeys were made on foot. Havingplanted his stock of seeds, he would return to Pennsylvaniafor a fresh supply; and, as sacks made of any less substantial fabric would not endure the hard usage of the long tripthrough forests dense with underbrush and briers, he provided himself with leathern bags. Securely packed, theseeds were conveyed, sometimes on the back of a horse,and not unfrequently on his own shoulders, either over apart of the old Indian trail that led from Fort Duquesne toDetroit, by way of Fort Sandusky, or over what is styled inthe appendix to "Hutchins's History of Boguet's Expeditionin 1764" the "second route through the wilderness of Ohio,"which would require him to traverse a distance of one hundred and sixty-six miles in a west-northwest direction fromFort Duquesne in order to reach the Black Fork of the Mohican.
This region, although it is now densely populated, stillpossesses a romantic beauty that railroads and bustlingtowns can not obliterate--a country of forest-clad hills andgreen valleys, through which numerous bright streams flowon their way to the Ohio; but when Johnny Appleseed reachedsome lonely log-cabin he would find himself in a veritablewilderness. The old settlers say that the margins of thestreams, near which the first settlements were generallymade, were thickly covered with a low, matted growth ofsmall timber, while nearer to the water was a rank mass oflong grass, interlaced with morning-glory and wild peavines, among which funereal willows and clustering aldersstood like sentinels on the outpost of civilization. The hills,that rise almost to the dignity of mountains, were crownedwith forest trees; and in the coverts were innumerablebears, wolves, deer, and droves of wild hogs that were asferocious as any beast of prey. In the grass the massasaugaand other venomous reptiles lurked in such numbers that asettler named Chandler has left the fact on record that during the first season of his residence, while mowing a littleprairie which formed part of his land, he killed over twohundred black rattlesnakes in an area that would involve anaverage destruction of one of these reptiles for each rod ofland. The frontiers-man, who felt himself sufficiently protected by his rifle against wild beasts and hostile Indians,found it necessary to guard against the attacks of the insidious enemies in the grass by wrapping bandages of driedgrass around his buckskin leggings and moccasins; but Johnny would shoulder his bag of apple seeds, and with bare feet penetrate to some remote spot that combined picturesqueness and fertility of soil; and there he would plant his seeds,place a slight inclosure around the place, and leave them togrow until the trees were large enough to be transplantedby the settlers, who in the mean time would have madetheir clearings in the vicinity. The sites chosen by himare, many of them, well known and are such as an artistor a poet would select; open places on the loamy lands thatborder the creeks--rich, secluded spots, hemmed in bygiant trees, picturesque now, but fifty years ago, with theirwild surroundings and the primal silence, they must havebeen tenfold more so.
In personal appearance Chapman was a small, wiryman, full of restless activity; he had long dark hair, a scantybeard that was never shaved, and keen black eyes that sparkled with a peculiar brightness. His dress was of the oddest description. Generally, even in the coldest weather, hewent barefooted; but sometinnes for his long journeys hewould make himself a rude pair of sandals; at other timeshe would wear any cast-off foot-covering he chanced to find --a boot on one foot and an old brogan or a moccasin on theother. It appears to have been a matter of conscience withhim never to purchase shoes, although he was rarely without money enough to do so. On one occasion, in an unusuallycold November, while he was traveling barefooted throughmud and snow, a settler who happened to possess a pair ofshoes that were too snnall for his own use forced their acceptance upon Johnny, declaring that it was sinful for a human being to travel with naked feet in such weather. A fewdays afterward the donor was in the village that has sincebecome the thriving city of Mansfield and met his beneficiary contentedly plodding along with his feet bare and halffrozen. With some degree of anger.he inquired for the causeof such foolish conduct and received for reply that Johnnyhad overtaken a poor, barefooted family moving westward,and as they appeared to be in much greater need of clothingthan he was, he had given them the shoes. His dress wasgenerally composed of cast-off clothing that he had takenin payment for apple-trees; and as the pioneers were far less extravagant than their descendants in such matters, thehomespun and buckskin garments that they discarded wouldnot be very elegant or serviceable. In his later years, however, he seems to have thought that even this kind of second-hand raiment was too luxurious, as his principal garmentwas made of a coffee sack, in which he cut holes for his headand arms to pass through, and pronounced it "a very serviceable cloak and as good clothing as any man need wear. "In the matter of head-gear,his taste was equally unique; hisfirst experiment was with a tin vessel that served to cookhis mush; but this was open to the objection that it did notprotect his eyes from the beams of the sun, so he constructeda hat of pasteboard with an immense peak in front, and having thus secured an article that combined usefulness witheconomy, it becanne his permanent fashion.
Thus strangely clad, he was perpetually wanderingthrough forests and morasses and suddenly appearing inwhite settlements and Indian villages; but there must havebeen some rare force of gentle goodness dwelling in hislooks and breathing in his words, for it is the testimony ofall who knew him that, notwithstanding his ridiculous attire,he was always treated with the greatest respect by the rudest frontiers -man; and, what is a better test, the boys ofthe settlements forbore to jeer at him. With grown-up people and boys he was usually reticent but manifested greataffection for little girls, always having pieces of ribbon andgay calico to give to his little favorites. Many a grandmother in Ohio and Indiana can remember the presents she received, when a child,from poor homeless Johnny Appleseed. When he consented to eat with any family,he would never sitdown to the table until he was assured that there was an ample supply for the children; and his sympathy for their youthful troubles and his kindness toward them made him friendsamong all the juveniles of the borders.
The Indians also treated Johnny with the greatest kindness. By these wild and sanguinary savages,he was regardedas a "great medicine man, " on account of his strange appearance, eccentric actions, and, especially, the fortitudewith which he could endure pain, in proof of which he wouldoften thrust pins and needles into his flesh. His nervoussensibilities really seem to have been less acute than thoseof ordinary people, for his method of treating the cuts andsores that were the consequences of his bare -footed wanderings through briers and thorns was to sear the wo\ind with ared-hot iron, and then cure the burn. During the war of1812, when the frontier settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the savage allies of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed continued his wanderings and was never harmed by the roving bands of hostile Indians, On many occasions theimpunity with which he ranged the country enabled him togive the settlers warning of approaching danger in tinne toallow them to take refuge in their block-houses before thesavages could attack them. Our informant refers to one ofthese instances, when the news of Hull's surrender camelike a thunder-bolt upon the frontier. Large bands of Indiansand British were destroying every thing before them andmurdering defenseless women and children, and even theblock-houses were not always a sufficient protection. Atthis time Johnny traveled day and night, warning the peopleof the approaching danger. He visited every cabin and delivered this message: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,and he hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness and sound an alarm in the forest; for, behold, thetribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them," The aged man whonarrated this incident said that he could feel even now thethrill that was caused by this prophetic announcement of thewild-looking herald of danger, who aroused the family on abright moonlight midnight with his piercing voice. Refusingall offers of food and denying himself a moment's rest, hetraversed the border day and night until he had warned everysettler of the approaching peril.
His diet was as meagre as his clothing. He believedit to be a sin to kill any creature for food and thought thatall that was necessary for human sustenance was producedby the soil. He was also a strenuous opponent of the wasteof food, and on one occasion, on approaching a log-cabin, heobserved some fragments of bread floating upon the surface ofa bucket of slops that was intended for the pigs. He innme-diately fished them out; and when the housewife expressedher astonishment, he told her that it was an abuse of thegifts of a merciful God to allow the smallest quantity of anything that was designed to supply the wants of mankind to bediverted from its purpose.
In this instance, as in his whole life, the peculiar religious ideas of Johnny Appleseed were exemplified. He wasa most earnest disciple of the faith taught by Emanuel Swedenborg, and himself claimed to have frequent conversationswith angels and spirits; two of the latter, of the femininegender, he asserted, had revealed to him that they were tobe his wives in a future state if he abstained from a matrimonial alliance on earth. He entertained a profound reverence for the revelations of the Swedish seer and always carried a few old volumes with him. These he was veryanxious should be read by every one, and he was probablynot only the first colporteur in the wilderness of Ohio, butas he had no tract society to furnish him supplies, he certainly devised an original method of multiplying one book into a number. He divided his books into several pieces, leaving a portion at a log-cabin, and on a subsequent visit furnishing another fragment, and continuing this process asdiligently as though the work had been published in serialnumbers. By this plan he was enabled to furnish readingfor several people at the same time and out of one book;but it must have been a difficult undertaking for some nearlyilliterate backwoodsman to endeavor to comprehend Swedenborg by a backward course of reading, when his first installment happened to be the last fraction of the volume. Johnny's faith in Swedenborg's works was so reverential asalmost to be superstitious. He was once asked if, in traveling barefooted through forests abounding with venomousreptiles, he was not afraid of being bitten. With his peculiarsmile, he drew his book from his bosom and said, "Thisbook is an infallible protection against all danger here andhereafter."
It was his custom, when he had been welcomed toSonne hospitable log-house after a weary day of journeying,to lie down on the puncheon floor, and, after inquiring if hisauditors would hear "some news right fresh from heaven,"produce his few tattered books, among which would be a NewTestament, and read and expound until his uncultivated hearers would catch the spirit and glow of his enthusiasm, whilethey scarcely comprehended his language. A lady who knewhim in his later years writes in the following terms of oneof these domiciliary readings of poor, self-sacrificing Johnny Appleseed: "We can hear hinn read now, just as he didthat summer day when we were busy quilting up stairs, andhe lay near the door; his voice rose denunciatory and thrilling--strong and loud as the roar of wind and waves, thensoft and soothing as the balmy airs that quivered the morning-glory leaves about his gray beard. His was a strangeeloquence at times, and he was undoubtedly a man of genius."What a scene is presented to our imagination: the interiorof a primitive cabin; the wide, open fire-place, where a fewsticks are burning beneath the iron pot in which the eveningmeal is cooking; around the fire-place the attentive group,composed of the sturdy pioneer and his wife and children,listening with a reverential awe to the "news right fresh fromheaven"; and reclining on the floor, clad in rags, but withhis gray hairs glorified by the beams of the setting sun thatflood through the open door and the unchinked logs of thehumble building, this poor wanderer with the gift of geniusand eloquence, who believes with the faith of apostles andmartyrs that God has appointed him a mission in the wilderness to preach the Gospel of love and plant apple seeds thatshall produce orchards for the benefit of men, and women,and little children whom he has never seen. If there is asublimer faith or a more genuine eloquence in richly decorated cathedrals and under brocade vestments, it would beworth a long journey to find it.
Next to his advocacy of his peculiar religious ideas,his enthusiasm for the cultivation of apple-trees in what hetermed "the only proper way"--that is, from the seed--wasthe absorbing object of his life. Upon this, as upon religion,he was eloquent inhis appeals. He would describe the growing and ripening fruit as such a rare and beautiful gift of theAlmighty with words that became pictures, until his hearerscould almost see its manifold forms of beauty present beforethem. To his eloquence on this subject as well as to hisactual labors in planting nurseries, the country over whichhe traveled for so many years is largely indebted for its numerous orchards. But he denounced as absolute wickednessall devices of pruning and grafting and would speak of theact of cutting a tree as if it were a cruelty inflicted upon asentient being.
Not only is he entitled to the fame of being the earliestcolporteur on the frontiers, but in the work of protectinganimals from abuse and suffering, he preceded; while, in hissmaller sphere, he equaled the zeal of the good Mr. Bergh.Whenever Johnny saw an animal abused, or heard of it, hewould purchase it and give it to some more humane settler,on condition that it should be kindly treated and properlycared for. It frequently happened that the long journey intothe wilderness would cause the new settlers to be encumbered with lame and broken-down horses, that were turnedloose to die. In the autumn Johnny would make a diligentsearch for all such animals, and, gathering them up, hewould bargain for their food and shelter until the next spring,when he would lead them away to some good pasture for thesummer. If they recovered so as to be capable of working,he would never sell them but would lend or give them away,stipulating for their good usage. His conception of the absolute sin of inflicting pain or death upon any creature wasnot limited to the higher forms of animal life, but everything that had being was to him, in the fact of its life, endowed with so much of the Divine Essence that to wound ordestroy it was to inflict an injury upon some atom of Divinity. No Brahmin could be more concerned for the preservation of insect life; and the only occasion on which he destroyed a venomous reptile was a source of long regret, towhich he could never refer without manifesting sadness. Hehad selected a suitable place for planting apple seeds on asmall prairie; and, in order to prepare the ground, he wasmowing the long grass, when he was bitten by a rattlesnake.In describing the event, he sighed heavily, and said, "Poorfellow, he only just touched me, when I, in the heat of myungodly passion, put the heel of my scythe in hinn and wentaway. Sonne time afterward I went back, and there lay thepoor fellow dead. " Numerous anecdotes bearing upon hisrespect for every form of life are preserved and form thestaple of pioneer recollections. On one occasion, a cool autumnal night, when Johnny, who always camped out in preference to sleeping in a house, had built a fire near which he intended to pass the night, he noticed that the blaze attractedlarge numbers of mosquitoes, many of whom flew too nearto his fire and were burned. He immediately brought waterand quenched the fire, accounting for his conduct afterwardby saying, "God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort which should be the means of destroying any of His creatures!" At another time he removed the fire he had built near a hollow log and slept on the snow, because he foundthat the log contained a bear and her cubs, whom, he said,he did not wish to disturb. And this unwillingness to inflictpain or death was equally strong when he was a sufferer byit, as the following will show. Johnny had been assistingsome settlers to make a road through the woods, and in thecourse of their work, they accidentally destroyed a hornets'nest. One of the angry insects soon found a lodgment underJohnny's coffee-sack cloak, but although it stung him re-peatedly, he removed it with the greatest gentleness. Themen who were present laughingly asked him why he did notkill it. To which he gravely replied that "It would not beright to kill the poor thing, for it did not intend to hurt me. "Theoretically, he was as methodical in matters of busi-ness as any nnerchant. In addition to their picturesqueness,the locations of his nurseries were all fixed with a view toa probable demand for the trees by the time they had attainedsufficient growth for transplanting. He would give themaway to those who could not pay for them. Generally, however, he sold them for old clothing or a supply of corn meal;but he preferred to receive a note payable at some indefiniteperiod. When this was accomplished, he seemed to thinkthat the transaction was completed in a business-like way;but if the giver of the note did not attend to its payment, theholder of it never troubled himself about its collection. Hisexpenses for food and clothing were so very limited that,notwithstanding his freedom from the auri sacra fames , hewas frequently in possession of more money than he caredto keep; and it was quickly disposed of for wintering infirmhorses or given to some poor family whom the ague hadprostrated or the accidents of border life impoverished. Ina single instance only he is known to have invested his surplus means in the purchase of land, having received a deedfrom Alexander Finley, of Mohican Township, Ashland County, Ohio, for a part of the southwest quarter of sectiontwenty-six; but with his customary indifference to mattersof value, Johnny failed to record the deed, and lost it. Onlya few years ago the property was in litigation.
We must not leave the reader under the impressionthat this man's life, so full of hardship and perils, was agloomy or unhappy one. There is an element of human pridein all martyrdom, which, if it does not soften the pains,stimulates the power of endurance. Johnny's life was madeserenely happy by the conviction that he was living like theprimitive Christians. Nor was he devoid of a keen humorto which he occasionally gave vent, as the following willshow. Toward the latter part of Johnny's career in Ohio anitinerant missionary found his way to the village of Mansfield and preached to an open-air congregation. The dis-course was tediously lengthy and unnecessarily severe upon the sin of extravagance, which was beginning to manifestitself among the pioneers by an occasional indulgence in thecarnal vanities of calico and "store tea. " There was a gooddeal of the Pharisaic leaven in the preacher, who very frequently emphasized his discourse by the inquiry, "Wherenow is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, istraveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?"When this interrogation had been repeated beyond all reasonable endurance, Johnny rose from the log on which hewas reclining; and advancing to the speaker, he placed oneof his bare feet upon the stump which served for a pulpit',and pointing to his coffee -sack garment, he quietly said,"Here's your primitive Christian!" The well-clothed missionaryhesitated^and stammered, and dismissed the congre-gation. His pet antithesis was destroyed by Johnny's personal appearance, which was far more primitive than thepreacher cared to copy.
Some of the pioneers were disposed to think that John-ny's humor was the cause of an extensive practical joke; butit is generally conceded now that a wide -spread annoyancewas really the result of his belief that the offensively odoredweed known in the West as the dog-fennel, but more generally styled the May-weed, possessed valuable antimalarialvirtues. He procured some seeds of the plant in Pennsylvania and sowed them in the vicinity of every house in theregion of his travels. The consequence was that successive,flourishing crops of the weed spread over the whole countryand caused alnnost as much trouble as the disease it was intended to ward off; and to this day the dog-fennel, introducedby Johnny Appleseed, is one of the worst grievances of theOhio farmers.
In 1838 -- thirty-seven years after his appearance onLicking Creek -- Johnny noticed that civilization, wealth, andpopulation were pressing into the wilderness of Ohio. Hitherto he had easily kept just in advance of the wave of settlement; but now towns and churches were making their appearance, and even, at long intervals, the stage-driver'shorn broke the silence of the grand old forests, and he feltthat his work was done in the region in which he had laboredso long. He visited every house, and took a solennn farewellof all the families. The little girls who had been delightedwith his gifts of fragments of calico and ribbons had becomesober matrons, and the boys who had wondered at his abilityto bear the pain caused by running needles into his fleshwere heads of families. With parting words of admonition,he left them and turned his steps steadily toward the setting sun.
During the succeeding nine years, he pursued his ec-centric avocation on the western border of Ohio and in Indiana. In the summer of 1847, when his labors had literallyborne fruit over a hundred thousand square miles of territory, at the close of a warm day, after traveling twentymiles, he entered the house of a settler in Allen County, Indiana, and was as usual warmly welcomed. He declinedto eat with the family but accepted some bread and milk,which he partook of sitting on the door -step and gazing onthe setting sun. Later in the evening he delivered his "newsright fresh from heaven" by reading the Beatitudes. Declining other accommodation, he slept as usual on thefloor; and in the early morning he was found with his features all aglow with a supernal light and his body so neardeath that his tongue refused its office. The physician, whowas hastily summoned, pronounced him dying but addedthat he had never seen a man in so placid a state at the approach of death. At seventy-two years of age, forty-six ofwhich had been devoted to his self-imposed mission, he ripened into death as naturally and beautifully as the seeds ofhis own planting had grown into fibre and bud and blossomand the matured fruit.
Thus died one of the memorable men of pioneer times,who never inflicted pain or knew an enemy -- a man of strangehabits, in whom there dwelt a comprehensive love thatreached with one hand downward to the lowest forms of lifeand with the other upward to the very throne of God. A laboring, self-denying benefactor of his race, homeless, sol-itary, and ragged, he trod the thorny earth with bare andbleeding feet, intent only upon making the wilderness fruitful. Now, "no man knoweth of his sepulchre"; but his deedswill live in the fragrance of the apple blossoms he loved sowell; and the story of his life, however crudely narrated,will be a perpetual proof that true heroism, pure benevolence, noble virtues, and deeds that deserve immortalitymay be found under meanest apparel and far from gildedhalls and towering spires.
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