Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existingCatlin, George
History
Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existing
Catlin, George
Indians of North America
A great part of the way, the country is prairie, gracefully
undulating—well watered, and continually beautified by copses and
patches of timber. On our way my attention was rivetted to the tops
of some of the prairie bluffs, whose summits I approached with
inexpressible delight. I rode to the top of one of these noble mounds,
in company with my friends Lieut. Wheelock and Joseph Chadwick, where
we agreed that our _horses_ instinctively _looked_ and _admired_.
They thought not of the rich herbage that was under their feet,
but, with deep-drawn sighs, their necks were loftily curved, and
their eyes widely stretched over the landscape that was beneath us.
From this elevated spot, the horizon was bounded all around us by
mountain streaks of blue, softening into azure as they vanished, and
the pictured vales that intermediate lay, were deepening into green
as the eye was returning from its roamings. Beneath us, and winding
through the waving landscape was seen with peculiar effect, the “bold
dragoons,” marching in beautiful order forming a train of a mile in
length. Baggage waggons and Indians (_engagés_) helped to lengthen
the procession. From the point where we stood, the line was seen in
miniature; and the undulating hills over which it was bending its way,
gave it the appearance of a huge black snake gracefully gliding over a
rich carpet of green.
This picturesque country of 200 miles, over which we have passed,
belongs to the Creeks and Choctaws, and affords one of the richest and
most desirable countries in the world for agricultural pursuits.
Scarcely a day has passed, in which we have not crossed oak ridges,
of several miles in breadth, with a sandy soil and scattering timber;
where the ground was almost literally covered with vines, producing the
greatest profusion of delicious grapes, of five-eighths of an inch in
diameter, and hanging in such endless clusters, as justly to entitle
this singular and solitary wilderness to the style of a vineyard (and
ready for the vintage), for many miles together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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