Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

Page 19 text:

My dear Sister : I have been trying in vain to get my wife to give vou some account of her sudden change as respects her opinions of the natives ; therefore I must do it mv-self. A few days after our arrival here we walked out, to see and be seen. We came in sight of a number of wigwams; I proposed we should go and visit them. We went to the opening of one and found it occupied by a number of male Indians. After looking at them for a few moments we proceeded to another, and found it filled with females (Indians). Pauline entered into conversation with them in Frencli, and I assisted with Indian; at last one of them said, in English, that she (Pauline) was very beautiful. This, of course, I agreed to. But it is astonishing what a change it has wrought. She never speaks of the Indians except she remarks what shameful treatment they have received from the whites, and, finally, by saying she feels for them, and they are a much-injured people, etc. . . . The two Paulines are in good health, and are quite contented with their situation. The little pet is very good-looking (the mother says, a great beauty), and looks, as all say, very much like her father. . . . Pauline has found lier French of some use here. A Frenchman came one day to sell some partridges ; he could not speak Engli-sh, and she was called upon to make a bar- gain with him. The poor fellow was delighted to find she could speak French, and said he would come frequently to sell to her, and that his wife was very sick, and she would be much pleased to talk with her. I presume he thought his wife would be recovered by Pauline ' s conversation. As for making bargains, your sister is a very good Cazeno ' e at it; our money here is bread tickets, say two and a quarter poimds, which cost us five cents. In the spring of 1S33, Major Fowle was ordered to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, to relieve troops that had been there during the Black Hawk War. At this time there were no regular chaplains in the arin} ' , and Major Fowle invited the home missionary, Mr. Jeremiah Porter, a great grandson of Jonathan Edwards, to accompany him. Mr. Porter had come out to Sault Ste. Marie the year before, and had organized a little Presbyterian church there. As the re- moval of the troops virtually removed his congregation, and as there was already a Baptist chinxh at the Sault, where the Pre.sbyterian remnant could be cared for, Mr. Porter accepted the Major ' s invitation. Many years after, the veteran missionary spoke with pleasine of the little child who brightened the deck of the small schooner that brought the troops to Fort Dearborn. The new arrivals at Chicago, in this spring of 1S33, foimd themselves on the edge of the flowering prairie in a straggling, waterside village, where two-story frame houses were just beginning to go up among the log cabins, — a village of bareh ' three hundred inhabitants, in- cluding soldiers, traders of the American Fur Company, Indians, trappers, roughs; hard and wild characters, in the main, with a leaven of four praying men among them. These four gave delighted welcome to the newcomers; for the garrison embraced eighteen professing Christians, in addition to the missionary, and their coming was to the discouraged few like the bursting out of the sun from the darkest clouds. The new conunand, well-drilled and •5

Page 18 text:

witli tliat illustrious corps known as Scott ' s ]5rigade, in the Niagara Campaign, remaining at the head of his company through the battle of Lundy ' s Lane, regardless of the wound he had received early in the action. He was much engaged, later, in the Indian wars on the frontier, in Arkansas and Minnesota. He was, like his father, a man of purest integrity, his nickname being Honest Jack. A strict disciplinarian, he was a commander who could command him- self. Card-playing, for instance, had been an accustomed pastime at home, but as soon as he noted its demoralizing effect upon the soldiers in garrison, he woidd no longer allow it either to his men or to himself. He made it understood that he counted it an aHVont to he invited to a card party; and so resolute and consistent was his opposition to cai ' ds in garrison, tliat his superior officers were embarrassed to be discovered b3- him in a game. There was nothing petty in his natme. Even the keeping of accounts was given up by him, because he would not, as he said, attach such consequence to a sixpence. Major Fowle exemplified the truth of the poet ' s words, The bravest are the tenderest. He appears to have been cjuite the ideal lover, yet with a margin of courtesy and kindness for others than the sovereign lady. A sister of his betrothed refers to him, in a letter now vellowed with the years, as the most thoughtful and considerate man for one in love we ever knev -. ' And another of these treasured letters of long ago bears this enthusiastic testimony : Sophia, Charlotte, and myself have unanimously agreed that since the creation of the world no lover ever was half so attentive and agreeable as the Major. The marriage took place in May of 1S31, and on the thirteenth of June in the following year was born, in Alexandria, the daughter without whcjm Welleslev College would never have been. She was a traveled baby. At the age of three months she journeyed on a pillow to Sault Ste. Marie, where Major Fowle was stationed. It was no easy trip in those early days. There was one little strip of railroad in Western New York, but apait from that and boats of one sort and another, the travelers had to depend on such rude vehicles as they coidtl obtain over frightful roads with gaping holes, of which it was said you could lose a wagon in anv one of them and never miss it. The little party went to Fort Brady by the last boat of the fidl, and were ordered to take their departure by the first boat of spring. The conditions of life there at the Sault were rough and primitive. Yet by the infrequent mails, carried on snowshoes or by dog teams, cheery letters went out from the brave young bride and her proud husband to the anxious people at home. The playful tone of the letter from which the following extracts are taken, a letter from Major Fowle to one of his wife ' s sisters, written in midwinter from the icebound, fort, shows how warm and happy were those wedded hearts among the snows. 14

Page 20 text:

well-principled, was, indeed, welcome to all ; for these pioneer settlers knew what it was to suffer from disorderly, pilfering soldiers. The Major had been in Fort Dearborn before, and the excellence of his discipline was well known. Now !Major Fovvle has come, said the people, we shall be able to keep some chickens. The Major, although a regular attendant at Sunday service and at Bible class, was not enrolled upon the list of church members. Yet he reverenced his wife ' s Christian devotion, and worked with her for the promotion of Mr. Porter ' s labors, feeling that religion would be a sovereign agent for tiie regenerating of society in those frontier posts. On the first Sunday at Fort Dearborn the Major had the car- penter ' s shop swept out and rudely furnished with seats for service ; and from this humble yet appropriate origin sprang the earliest church of Chicago. While the infant church was making its vay, — with its plain little house of worship out on the open prairie, its one silver sacramental cup, and its Sunday-school library that could be comfortably carried in a silk handkerchief, — Major Fowle had been promoted to West Point, as Instructor of Tactics and Commandant of the Corps of Cadets, winning here, as everywhere, universal confidence and esteem. It was said that the discipline had never been so good and so uniform, nor the cadets so well satisfied, as under Major Fowle ' s command. Here, at West Point, the little Pauline passed five sunny years, a baby brother and a baby sister claiming much of her childish attention. The stmdy tot, already possessed of more than her share of logic, was concerned that the tiny sister in long clothes did not go outdoors to play. Mamma, if you don ' t send Annie out to walk, she ' ll never know what kind of an earth God has given her to walk on. Upon Annie she promptly bestowed her Mother Goose, finding that classic worthy such an intolerable liar, I can ' t stand her; but Annie is too young to be hurt. She can just look at the pictures. Pauline was a budding financiei ' , liking to save her pennies until they counted up to a goodly sum ; while poor Annie, as the elder sister said disdainfully, never could keep two pennies to rub against each other. The little maiden was carefully trained in all womanly arts. ' erv neat and even are the many stitches in the pretty hussy laboriously fashioned as a gift foi ' the handsome soldier papa, who had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and ordered to Florida, to take command of his regiment in the Seminole Indian Wars. The hussy was in his trunk when the Colonel, having placed his family temporarily in Alexandria, embarked at Cincinnati on the steamboat Moselle. The vessel was urged beyond her power, the boiler burst, and in the terrible disaster that filled the papers of the day, no manlier life was blotted out than that of Colonel Fowle. His wife, almost crushed by the shock and sorrow, began to lean upon her i6