My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians by Mrs. Fanny Kelly

Author:Mrs. Fanny Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sioux & Cheyenne Indians, Life on the Western Frontier, Indian Captivity, Western Immigration, Native American Indians, women's issues, Native American Culture, Montana Idaho Wyoming Settlement, Western Americana, Western Settlement, Western American History
Publisher: Maine Book Barn Publishing
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI.

SCENES ON CANNON BALL PRAIRIE——REFLECTIONS.

WELL, do I remember my thoughts and feelings when first I beheld the mighty and beautiful prairie of Cannon Ball River. With what singular emotions I beheld it for the first time! I could compare it to nothing but a vast sea, changed suddenly to earth, with all its heaving, rolling billows; thousands of acres lay spread before me like a mighty ocean, bounded by nothing but the deep blue sky. What a magnificent sight——a sight that made my soul expand with lofty thought and its frail tenement sink into utter nothing ness before it! Well, do I remember my sad thoughts and the turning of my mind upon the past, as I stood alone upon a slight rise of ground, and overlooked miles upon miles of the most lovely, the most sublime scene I had ever beheld. Wave upon wave of land stretched away on every hand, covered with beautiful green grass and the blooming wild flowers of the prairie. Occasionally I caught glimpses of wild animals, while flocks of birds of various kinds and beautiful plumage skimming over the surface here and there, alighting or darting upward from the earth, added life and beauty and variety to this most enchanting scene.

It had been a beautiful day, and the sun was now just burying himself in the far-off ocean of blue, and his golden rays were streaming along the surface of the waving grass and tinging it with a delightful hue. Occasionally some elevated point caught and reflected back his rays to the one I was standing upon, and it would catch, for a moment, his fading rays, and glow like a ball of golden fire. Slowly he took his diurnal farewell, as if loth to quit a scene so lovely, and at last hid himself from my view beyond the western horizon.

I stood and marked every change with that poetical feeling of pleasant sadness which a beautiful sunset rarely fails to awaken in the breast of the lover of nature. I noted every change that was going on, and yet my thoughts were far, far away. I thought of the hundreds of miles that separated me from the friends that I loved. I was recalling the delight with which I had, when a little girl, viewed the farewell scenes of day from so many romantic hills, and lakes, and rivers, rich meadows, mountain gorge and precipice, and the quiet hamlets of my dear native land so far away. I fancied I could see my mother move to the door, with a slow step and heavy heart, and gaze, with yearning affection, toward the broad, the mighty West, and sigh, wondering what had become of her lost child.

I thought, and grew more sad as I thought, until tears filled my eyes.

Mother! What a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels; how lightly do we look

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