Year: 1867

"reminiscences of a Pioneer.


We know not who first advanced the
idea that, if all sin received its merited
reward in the present life, there might
seem no necessity for future judgment; /;
while, on the other hand, if no sin were
visibly punished here, some might con-
clude that the supreme Being regarded it
with Indifference.


However true this remark may be, We
are relieved from all perplexity in either
of the supposed cases by the condition of
things as they actually exist. For while
we often see notorious transgressors not
only escaping punishment in the present
life, but applauded for their crimes, there
are many instances in which the perpe-
traitors of wicked deeds are so signally
visited, that the most careless observers
are constrained TO acknowlgdgefieagen-
cy OF an unseen hand.


Not long after the first military post
was established in the Indian country,
west of the Arkansas territory, the wife
of one of the soldiers connected with it,
who seemed to be an exemplary woman,
was taken dangerously ill. A short time
before her death, she called her husband
to her bedside, and after telling him that
she had no hope of recovery, remarked
to him that she had laid away between
three and four hundred dollars which she
had earned by service done in the fami-
lies of the officers. This money she re-
quested him to keep, and as his time of
enlistment was about expiring, she wish
ed him to take their three small children,
as soon after her death as possible, to her
relatives in the East. The money she
desired him to place in safe hands to be
laid out in their education.


He was true to her dying request; and
soon after her decease he procured ca
noe, which was the only way of reaching
the Mississippi at that time, in which he
placed his children, and such of his eff
fects as he could carry with him, and
committed himself to the current of the
Arkansas. After a few days solitary
travel along the shores of that stream,
then ever verdant with cane, he arrived
at new settlement on the northern bank
of the river, where he landed his canoe,
intending to remain few days in order
to dry their clothes, which had been ex-
posed to rain, and also to procure provi-
sions for the remainder of their journey.
He procured lodging for himself and his
children at the house of man named
H. The soldier, who was simple
hearted and unsuspecting man, related
to H all the circumstances Of his
wife's death, of the money which she had
earned, and which he had in his trunk,
and of the object he had in view in con-
veying his children to ner relatives.


After a few days, having accomplished
his object in landing, he placed his chill
dren, trunk, &C., in his frail bark, and
pushing from the shore, again began to
descend the silent stream.


To understand the state of things as
they then existed, it must be keptin mind
that the few scattered settlements were,
in many places, fifty or hundred miles
apart, without an intervening inhabitant.
Consequently deed committed in one
of them could not easily escape detec-
ton.


1t 50 happened that on the day the
soldier left the house of H, there was
a funeral in one part of the settlement,
and public sale in the other Every
man in the settlement was known to be
at one or the other of these assemblases,
with the exception of H and another
man who lived on the south side of the
river. Not many days after this the