Oration by Miss Mildred SEANEY, Crawford County, Illinois Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives Copyright 2000 Cindy McCachern Spirit of the Pioneers   7 August 1918, Robinson (IL) Argus   Oration by Miss Mildred Seaney, Delivered at the Old Settlers' Picnic On the top of one of the buildings at the World's Fair in San Francisco there was a base relief of statuary called "The Pioneer Spirit."  When the Exposition was over this work of art was removed to the Art Institute in Chicago.  One day in Statuary Hall, I came upon this statue.  I stopped and looked down upon it from the gallery, then, that I might see it better, I walked below.  And I said, "I never knew before what brought them west--I never knew before but now I know, for the artist carved his idea out of stone, had it cast into bronze and now it is revealed to me."  The colossal figure is that of a young pioneer leading his team up a westward slope.  Behind him his oxen are plodding but the young man is not plodding.  He walks with determination and resolve and there is a glow of youthful anticipation upon his face; his head and eyes are lifted westward and his whole attitude suggests what his brain and brawn will accomplish in the new country.   Some people would have passed it by, but not so the granddaughter and great great granddaughter of American pioneer people.  I stopped and studied it and I thougth, if I were to define the thing that I see here, whata would I call it?  The spirit of the pioneer translated means what?  And I thougth a long time.  Then I said it is this:  The greatest dream of man is on that young pioneer's face.  And you ask me, what is the greatest dream that man may have?  Surely you will agree with me that the greatest dream a man can have is to live better, to be better housed, better educated, and better governed. And then I said there must be one word that would include it all and I thought of democracy or freedom, American freedom and American democracy. And I thought this young pioneer with the glow upon his face would make a better emblem for New York harbor than the Statue of Liberty, because it better expressed the youth and freedom of our pioneer nation.  And I thought it was for this that they came in the Mayflower, it was for this that they freed themselves from the mother country, it was for this that they left the Atlantic seaboard and came into the unbroken forests and grassy plains of the great northwest. It was for this that my grandfather's grandfather and four sons and their wives and famililies left Surrey County, North Carolina in 1810 headed for Northwest Territory.  It was for this indomitable spirit that your people came and settled about the old fort at Palestine.  It take initiative and daring to be a pioneer, it takes courage and hardihood to change environments.  Why, they tell us that only individuals with the strongest wills and personalities ever leave the communities in which they were born.  What manner of folk, then, settled first in Crawford County?  If you are a student of names and antionalities and you will look down a list of the earliest settlers of this county, you will find that a large per cent of them were of Scotch Irish and French-Hugenot descent--the very folk to make the best backbone of our civilization.  Political and inducstrial oppression had had their share in sending these people to America in the first palce, but why they came farther west we do not know.  As a rule, they were silent, hardworking men, too busy firing and plowing to talk much and, since not many have left us their reasons, we can only conjecture that love of adventure and the natural desire of some free born souls to emigrate brougth them to Crawford County.   Then, again, perhaps they came for economic reasons.  Money was scarce on the Atlantic seaboard after the Revolution and before the war of '12; most of these people were not plantation owners but they were upland farmers in the Virginia, the Carolinas or Kentucky; they had to compete with the ever-increasing slave labor and they felt themselves above it.  So, they left their homes with their babies in their arms, and with a few of their most precious relics, a Bible, a Shakespeare, a few pieces of prized china, and their bedding in their wagons, they turned their faces toward Northwest Territory.   They tell us that all peoples in all times move in paralells.  These people moved in paralells and also in relays.  They often stopped in Kentucky, Indiana or Ohio for a few years and then moved on to find a more suitable location.  But when they crossed the banks of our beautiful Wabash and camped for the night, they fell in love with the beauty of the scene and decided never to leave it.   They entered land at the old land office at Palestine that was the land office for a county then by the act of 1816 stretched from the Embarrass River on the south to Canada on the north.  They settled by a spring, built a log cabin, and began to make a clearning about it. As they sat on their three-legged stools and the glowing backlogs cast their shadows upon the puncheon floor, while on the outside the wolves howled and the panthers screamed, these men and women must ahve looked into the fire of long winter evenings and dreamed of doing things.  In some respects a pioneer is a pioneer by instincts--in another sense he is a brave seer.These people knew that they wanted to live better, to have better homes and better education and they worked to accomplish their dreams. It has sometimes been unjustly said of them that they were content with their lot.  Their very advance disproves it. Why?  They had come from a people who had lived better than they, and they mauled rails and dreamed as they mauled of better clothing than linsey woolsey, better shoes than boots of home-tanned leather, better roads than the crooked trail following the hilltop and shunning the marsh, better schools than the old log schoolhouse, better homes than the clapboarded roofed cabin, better laws, less whisky drinking, a better civilization.  But there were some things that these old settlers would never have cared to have improved upon.  No one could ever convince them that the advance of new things with its white bread and cake could ever equal the old corn pone and johnny cake baked in front of the fireplace.   These people of ours were quick to defend their country.  When the news passed around the settlement that brave young Hutson came home one evening to find his cabin burning over the forms of his tomahawked wife and baes, there was born in Crawford County a new sense of nationalism and they turned upon the Indians and drove them away.  It was this spirit of Freedom that recruited parts of ten companies during the Civil War.  It was because of this spirit that your grandmothers bade your grandfathers and their sons to fight that the democracy that had stood the test so long might yet endure.  It was this spirit that sent many of them away to return no more.  It is this same spirit that today sends our Crawford County pioneers across the sea to fight the Hun!   It was to foster this spirit that the settlers themselves first organized the Pioneer Association of Montgomery Township.  They used to come here to talk over old times together and we listened to them. Now that time is past.  The old settlers are all gone.  But we come here today just the same and we shall come next year and the next. Why do we come?  We come here to acknowledge the debt we owe them. Uncle Aaron's picnic has come to be a memorial picnic.  I contend that we need to come here one day each year to remeber them, for surely, patriotism and the ideals that make a citizen arise from the traditions of local history as well as from the stirring events of national history.  But we as an American people have been slow to recognize this fact.  We have allowed the repatriated French, Italians, and Belgians to teach us that community spirit is the very essence of patriotism.  We have learned from them that their simple love of their humble homes, their sil and little villages has made them the present, enduring, yet devotedly patrioic people that we are.   If it be true that at the beinning of our war we were an unpatriotic people, I believe that is was largely due to one thing, ignorance of local and national history.  We have never attempted to teach history well in Crawford County.  Our national history we have not taught fairly nor authentically and our county history not at all!  Think of it!  The French child is an heir to stories of the people who lived around and about his own home and environment, stories that go down by word of mouth grom one generation to another.  Parents in Crawford County have not cared to treasure up this valuable lore and pass it to their children.  Then they wonder why all the young men are not enlisting.  This year we must teach history better and we shall begin with the communities in which we teach, then the historic old county in which we live, next our proud state and then our nation. People, this is our Centennial year in Illinois.  We are centenarians. One hundred years ago in the 13th of last April the Congress of the United States voted an Enabling Act, an act enabling the people of Illinois to become a sovereign state is she whished,.  One hundred years ago today, August 3, 1818, the first session of the Constitutional Convention of this state was held in old Kaskaskia to frame the Constitution under which you and I live.  So this year we might call Uncle Aaron's Pictnic one of the Centennial celebrations of our county.  One hundred years!  Behold the change.  We builded upon the foundations they laid for us and they laid them better than they knew. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations or persons. 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