The Green Forest tribune., 1897-04-15
The Mover.

the mover, just as the birds were &C.
customed to come before the sparrow
blockade says the Kansas City Star.
In the dictionary the people in the wag
ons are called emigrants or migrants
according as they are leaving place or
arriving at one. But Americans con-
| slider that every man who.is leaving one
place is also going to another, and SO
covered wagon movers
The mover is great American in
stitution. The covered wagon, the
movers, should appear on the coat of
of arms on every s tate of the Union.
Of the the old pictures in the capitol
at Washington the one most looked
at is "Westward the Star of Empire
Takes Its Way"-just some movers
finding their way through high pass
in the Rocky Mountains and catching
their first glimps of the farther and
latest West. Thousando of people
have looked with visible emo ton upon
that picture for the reason that they
in their time had been movers, or We've
born in the West, the children of
movers
The man who wrote the line about
the ar of empire taking its way, or
course, westward was bishop and an
Englishman. The man who pushed
the star along, as good thing, was
the mover. 1t was the party with the
family in the wagon and the dog under
the hind axle who started the ball
rolling from the Atlantic in the direc-
ton of the Pacific. The first families
of all the great states of the Ohio,
Mississippi and Missouri valleys, and
SO on to the valley of the Columbia,
We're movors, and the first family
mansion in all their cases was the
covered wagon. All American insttu-
tions, such as law and liberty, have
been hauled across the breadth and
y
We talk much of railroads and great
highways Of commerce and waterways
but no state or territory of the United
States has ever settled by means of
these. The founders of empires on
this North American con ntinent has
been the man who drove oxen or horses
fo tho coVarpd Woronc
Nothing, it may be remarked, has
ever checked or daunted the mover
No terror or peril has ever appalled,
him. Alone with his wife and children
in the wagon and with no armament
save his one rifle, he has, time and
again, faced an unknown wilderness
filled with Indians, and has paid the
penalty-he and his wife and little
children. Loneliness, a terror to most
human creatures, has never seemed so
to him, for oftenest the obi ect of his
journey has seemed to be interposed
between his household and human
society and assistance, the grea test
possible distance. The hunter, trap
per and employer face the desert and
the forestsb by themselves; but the
mover takes all the chances Of these,
and more, in the company Of his
family.
The moveri is the true pioneer. His
courage is contagious. When he has /!
camped beside some stream so distant
and remote that his is the first white
face ever reflected in the waters and
his wife the first woman on the
creek" he is overtaken. Other wagons
line up beside his own. His solitary
wagon track marks the "Main Street"
of the future. A village, town, a
city, metropolis, comes where the /
mover built his fire in the blackened ,
hollow of the big cotton wood.
There are movers and movers. Some
go or come to stay. After long journeys |
some movers find green pastures and
still waters, and there abide. They I
turn into permanent settlers and first
settlers have township and creeks
named after them. Others move on.
The first move but creates a real or
fancied necessity for anOther. Hence
they keep on after the star Of empire.
with occasional return trips in the
opposite direction. These move from
force, and there is belief that the
earliest movers were the parents of
the movers wenow see, who travel by