Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1869-09-01
Our guung FOLKS.
The Indians Daughter.

Some years ago there lived in Kingston,
Upper Canada, an old lady, whose father
had been one of the earliest settlers in the
western part of that province. She was a
woman of good Jense and sincere piety,
and, being blest with the retension of her
faculties in complete preservation to the
close of her long life, her conversation was
both edifying and EMBARRASSING to the wiser
part OF the young generation round her.
The changes of times and ways in that
new world of the west, within the memory
of its aged inhabitants, are greater than
could be well imagined in our old Europe.
She had seen hunters go out in pursuit of
the elk and the bear to districts now
covered with farm fields and orchards, and
the giant trees of a primeval forest grow
ing where busy towns and thriving villages
now stand, full of the life and labors of
civilized man. The old lady's memory
was strong and clear. and could take a
backward journey of seventy years and
more. She had come to the time of re-
membering as people do when they sit
down in the late and quiet evening of life.
1t was pleasant to her to relate the ex-
periences, and return to the scenes of her
youth, which time had so altered and eff
faced. Many a tale of those old adven-
turous days, when the first hardy settlers
cleft their way westward through the
ancient pine forest, did her young King
ston friends gather round to hear but
more especially she took pleasure in re-
counting to them the wonderful works of
Him in whom her trust was placed-how
his providence had preserved those that
were ready to perish, and made the light
of Christian faith and hope to shine on the
dark places of the land. One most strik-
ing. though simple, illustration of this
providential care she was accustomed to
tell in the following manner
1t is now sixty years since | was a
young girl in my fathers house on the
banks of st. Clair's river, as they call that
part of the great st. Lawrence which flows
from Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair. The
district is all farms and villages now, with
law-courts and market-places, schools and
churches but at the time of which | speak
it was one wide forest, without highway or
hamlet, but with solitary clearings few and
far apart, with rudely-fenced and half
reclaimed fields surrounding the low log
houses of the earliest settlers, who lived
partly by farming and partly by hunting.
Ny father was one of them, though neither
farmer nor hunter by calling and educa
ton, but a minister of the church Of Scot
land. While yet young and unsettled in
kirk or manse, he had cast in his lot with
a company of adventurous emigrants,-old
friends and ~neighbors going from his native
highland parish, to cultivate farms for
themselves in the forest-land of Upper
Canada, which the government was giving
in freehold at a nominal value, by way of
encouraging emigration to the province,
which its armies had kept with such diff
Guilty in the American war, then just come to
a close. The settlement of St. Clair's river
began with a great promise of increase and
prosperity, trade was to come and capital to
flow into it but those brilliant expecta-
tions were not to be realized in the life
time of its first inhabitants. The trade
did not come, the capital did not flow the
report of the wild land and its stern
winters stopped and turned away the
stream of emigration for many a year. The
hardy highland men built their homes,
nevertheless, cleared away the forest-trees
around them. cultivated such crops as the
forest soil would yieIc, rearra~ stScr-Ty arTe
cattle as hardy as themselves, and increased
their winter stock of provisions by hunting
the bear, the elk, and the bison. Most Of
the settlers had brought young families
with them sons and daughters grew up
in the wild the old neighbors formed new
relationships by their weddings. NY
father got related in that way to an old
friend of his family, whose eldest daughter
he married, and she was my good mother.
His small congregation one and all assisted
in building for him the largest Lighthouse
In the whole community. One end of it
was fitted up as a plain and primitive
Presbyterian church. the other was his
manse, or dwelling and the fabric stood
ON the highest point of a gentle sIope.
which his own hands had cleared. in the
form of a semicircle, open to the river and
the south, and on all other sides shut in
by some of the tallest trees of the mighty
forest. ~
My father was one of the HIGHLAND
Frazers, and they called the place in his
honor, Frazer's Clearing, by which name
1T is still known, though now a ponulops
and thriving township. Few have left be-
l them In this world a fairer name than
his for he was a true Christian and a
faithful minister. His church in the will.
derness was blest with the spirit of devotion
and of concord, not always to be found in
larger communities. He and they had
known each other from childhood !; their
went back to the same far hioh-
land hills and homestead the trials and
nardshIps of life in the trackless woods
lad bound them to each other. My father
regarded his flock as his larger household
nd, next to the Preserver of men. the
highland settlers looked up to and confded.
n their minister. My mother was of one {
with him in all things, a true and |,