Dallas herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1849-1873, 1872-12-28
DALLAS HER AID.
THE SOUTHWESTERN PIONEERS.
Albert Pike. Sam Houston, Kent
Toland, David Crockett, Burr
aud Wilkinson. Solon,
Boreland.
ANECDOTES AND MEMORIALS.

George Alfred Townsend In Chicago Tribuhe'l
.... ALBERT PIKE.
Tho chief literary spirit of the
Southwest is Albert Pike, who
long resided in the Indian country
and at Little Rock, but now lives
in Washington City, and practices
before the Indian Department. Ho
is an author, lofty Mason, an In
dian by adoption, and a skilled
lawyer, whom largo wants turned
aside from authorship at an I'M
timely period. .4.
He says, in bashful preface to
his book, now long out of print,
such as a man might writo removed
from mankind at is some time
since / have seen the works of any
poet, ond the things of my memo
ry have become so confused with
those of my own Imagination that
l am at times, when an idea flashes
upon me, uncertain whether it be
my own. 4: 4: i These poems
have been written in desertion and
loneliness, and sometimes in places
Of fear and danger. My only sour
COS of thought and imagery have
been my own mind, aud nature,
who has appeared to NE generally
in desolate fashion and utter drea-
riness, and not unfrequently in the
guise of sublimity. ] have acquired,
by wild and desolato life, a habit
of looking steadily in upon my
own mind, and of fathoming its re-
sources; and perhaps solitude has
been the creator of egotism."
The reader may be reminded by
tho above of tho. apology of Joa-
quin Miller, 'the Poet of the Sier-
ras,' who follows Albert Pike, after
thirty years, in similar track of
desert literature but Pike was q
classical exile seeking to reconcile
an educated taste to wild regions
and wild follow-men. Tho politi-
clan, the Indians lawyer and tho
poet arc produced alternately in
his book. The first and longest
piece in it is called "Narative of a
Journey in the Prairie and is de-
scriptive of q party which left Ar
kansas in 1881 for Santa Fe, and
wandered on the desert. In the
Narrative wc come to this passage,
showing an instant conclusion like
some Nimrod's on the historic
trail: 'It was on the heads OF the
Del Norte, that General Pike, then
lieutenant, was taken by the
Mexicans. Has it ever been salts
factorily known why he was there Z
l think not. He could not have been
mistaken in the river. Ho knew
it not to be the Arkansas, and he
knew himself to be in the Mexican
Territory. Was he not seeking a
place for the army of Aaron Burr
to enter and subdue Mexico? Lie
was no traitor, l know and Meth.
er, in my opinion, was Burr,
Neither ever armed to raise hand
against our own country"
| produce this extract, which was
not germane to Albert Pike; mean
time, to show that this filibuster in
the Southwest has been both the
poets and tho politicians hero
there since the days of Burr. AS
close as tho alcbemist stood to
chemist or the Mississippi river
gambler stands to the modern mi
ming operator, stand Burr and his
flibustero posterity to the Jcfierso-
nian statesman. Tho one was the
overreacher seeking to anticipate
the reachcr, the political adventure
er in hurry to &c tin before author
ity. Burr's line includes Jackson,
Houston Quitman and Walker. The
lawlessness they performed on the
grander scale found q popular con-
stituency in that less than semi.
scrupulousness which took the land
of the Indian and the Spaniard as
far as the Rio Grande, but has left
the curse behind it of a posterity
which will not brook the laws's dc.
lay nor the insolcnce of Office. To
60 ahead and grasp province, is
old and easy; to civilize the spirit
which grasped it, is the problem
before us today in Texas and Ar
kansas.
Pixies PARTY.
Now see, directly after the above
patient and minute narrative in
hunters prose, the same Indian
spirit of Albert Pike, with one foot
in New England and one among
the Cherokees, sing to robin
redbreast ("the only one that L ev'
er heard there:")
Hush whore art thou clinging,
And what.s thou singing,
Bird of my own native landp
Thy song is as sweet
As q fairy's feet
Stepping on silver sand.
Or this pantheistic spirit celebra
ting bis foeman in the song of thu
Nabajo: $3.50
Up. then, and swayi Let the quiver b
full
And as soon as the stars make the noun
tain air cool,
The FIRE Of the harvest shall make HEAVIER
| pale,
And the priesthood shall curse and th
coward shall vail
And there will be counting Of heads thsr
to do
And the Pueblos shall mount and prepar
10 pursus;
But when could their siseds. so mule-fooi
ed and slow,
Compare with the birds Of the fre'
Nsbajo7
Through the prose of Alber
Pike one sees the acuta frapDeri