And With His Grain He Scattered The Seeds Of The
Dandelion And The Wild Trefoil Over The Meadows, Mingling His
English Flowers With The Wild Native Ones.
The bristling
burdock, the sweet-scented catnip, and the humble yarrow planted
themselves along his woodland road, they too seeking "freedom to
worship God" in their way.
And thus he plants a town. The white
man's mullein soon reigned in Indian cornfields, and
sweet-scented English grasses clothed the new soil. Where, then,
could the Red Man set his foot? The honey-bee hummed through the
Massachusetts woods, and sipped the wild-flowers round the
Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed, when, with prophetic
warning, it stung the Red child's hand, forerunner of that
industrious tribe that was to come and pluck the wild-flower of
his race up by the root.
The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought,
with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well
what he knows, not guessing but calculating; strong in community,
yielding obedience to authority; of experienced race; of
wonderful, wonderful common sense; dull but capable, slow but
persevering, severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a
laboring man, despising game and sport; building a house that
endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and
baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length forgets
where he is buried and ploughs up his bones. And here town
records, old, tattered, time-worn, weather-stained chronicles,
contain the Indian sachem's mark perchance, an arrow or a beaver,
and the few fatal words by which he deeded his hunting-grounds
away.
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