Green Russell and his men arrived in June, 1858. If we stop a moment to
consider these true founders of Denver, we shall see that they add a new
picture to the varied, highly colored gallery of paintings that make the
true pictorial history of the growth of our country. We have seen the
stolid, dignified Dutchmen sail into New York Harbor with their swords,
banners, queer old flint-lock guns, and quaint long pipes. We have seen
the grave Puritans assemble in Massachusetts with their sober garments,
their stern faces, and their muskets and Bibles carried side by side. We
have seen the gorgeously dressed servants of the kings of France and
Spain at their work of founding New Orleans, having their wives sent to
them in ships, to make their acquaintance and be their wives after they
got there. And at St. Louis we came upon the same sort of men who built
up Canada--rough, brave boatmen in furs, singing and dancing, and
throwing away their money that they earned in pathless forests and in
savage Indian camps. When we came to study the birth of Helena, Montana,
we saw upon the canvas of history the veteran gold-miner, old at the
business, leaving one camp when it ceased to pay, and roaming all over
the mountains, with, sharp, ferretlike eyes that saw no beauties in
nature--nothing but the dull rocks and the sand in the beds of the
streams where gold might be found. Rough, long-haired, bearded, dressed
in whatever they could get, these "prospectors" clambered over the
mountains, leaving many cities behind them that did not exist until they
started them.
And now, at the birth of Denver, we see the life of the immigrants on
the plains. We see the caravans of "prairie-schooners," crossing the
continent like flights of brown moths, and settling a city as winged
things light on a field or on a bed of flowers that offers food. They
were miners, or were led by miners, but they were not yet veterans of
the far Western type. They were closely followed by absolute strangers
to the business--Eastern folk who wanted to pick up gold between their
feet. Therefore the newest part of the picture is the life in the
caravans of "prairie-schooners."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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