The Minute Man on the FrontierPuddefoot, William George
History
The Minute Man on the Frontier
Puddefoot, William George
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Missions -- West (U.S.)
The minute-man in the South-west has a big field. He is often hundreds
of miles from his next church. He preaches to the cowboys one day, to
the Digger Indians or the blanket variety the next. He is off among
the miners, and sometimes in less than four hours he must change from
the cold mountain air to the heat which requires two roofs to the
house in order to keep it cool enough. He eats steak that has come one
thousand miles from the East, although ten thousand cattle are all
about him. He passes a million cows, and yet has to use condensed milk
for his coffee or go without.
He finds himself in the midst of the grandest scenery on the
continent. In his long journey he often finds himself sleeping on the
plain outside the teepees of his red brother, rather risking the
tarantulas, lizards, and rattlers that may come, than the thousands of
smaller nuisances that are sure to come if he goes under cover. He is
in the midst of a past age; and as he visits the pueblos, he would not
be surprised to see De Soto come forth, so Spanish are his
surroundings. The adobe building prevails everywhere, cool in summer,
warm in winter, and in this climate well nigh indestructible.
The priesthood are centuries removed from those of the East. Here he
will meet with men living in the Middle Ages, beating their backs with
cactus until the blood streams, and often dying under self-inflicted
blows. We often hear of America having no ruins, no ancient history.
This may be so in regard to time; but in regard to conditions we are
in the time of Boadicea of the ancient Briton, and in the South-west
are ruins of buildings that were inhabited when William was crowned at
Westminster. So great are the States of the South-west that the
counties are larger than New England States; and you may be stuck in a
blizzard in northern Texas, while people in the southern portion are
eating oranges out-doors with the oleanders for shade-trees.
I will close this chapter with a description given me in part by the
Rev. E. Lyman Hood, who was Superintendent of Missions in the
South-west until he was broken down by his arduous toil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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