IV. THE RANGER. "When purposed vengeance I forego, Then brand me as a slave, and live." SCOTT. IN elaborating the character of the pioneer, we have unavoidably anticipated, in some measure, that of the Ranger-for the latter was, in fact, only one of the capacities in which the former sometimes acted. But-since, in the preceding article, we have have endeavored to confine the inquiry, so as to use the term Pioneer as almost synonymous with Immigrantwe have, of course, ignored, to some extent, the subordinate characters, in which he frequently figured. We therefore propose, now, briefly to review one or two of them in their natural succession. The progress of our country may be traced and measured, by the representative characters which marked each period. The missionarypriest came first, when the land was an unbroken wilderness. The military adventurer, seeking to establish new empires, and acquire great fortunes, entered by the path thus opened. Next came the hunter, roaming the woods in search of wild beasts upon which he preyed. Making himself familiar with the pathless forest and the rolling prairie, he qualified himself to guide, even while he fled from, the stream of immigration. At last came the pioneer, to drive away the savage, to clear out the forests, and reclaim the land. his At first, he was only a pioneer. He had few neighbors, he belonged to no community household was his country, his family were his only associates or companions. In the course of time others followed him- he could occasionally meet a white man on the prairies; if he wandered a few miles from home, he could see the smoke of another chimney in the distance. If he did not at once abandon his "clearing" and go further west, he became, in some sort, a member of society was the fellow-citizen of his neighbors. The Indians became alarmed for their-hunting grounds, or the nations went to war and drew them into the contest: the frontier became unsafe: the presence of danger drew the pioneers together: they adopted a system of defence, and the ranger was the offspring and representative of a new order of things. Rough and almost savage as he sometimes. was, he was still the index to a great improvement. Rude as the system was, it gave shape and order to what had before been mere chaos. The ranger marks a new era, then; his existence is another chapter in the history of the west. Previous to his time, each pioneer depended only on himself for defence his sole protection, against the wild beast and the savage, was his rifle — self-dependence was his peculiar characteristic. The idea of a fighting establishment the germ of standing armies-had never occurred to him: even the rudest form of civil government was strange to him-taxes, salaries, assessments, were all "unknown quantities." But, gradually, all this changed; and with his circumstances, his character was also modified. He lost a little of his sturdy independence, his jealousy of neighborhood was softened his solitary habits became more social-he acknowledged the necessity for concert of action - he merged a part of his individuality into the community, and-became a ranger. In this capacity, his character was but little |