s"
have now covered them all!

Such is the wife and mother of the pioneer, and, with such influences
about him, how could he be otherwise than honest, straightforward, and
manly?

But, though a life in the woods was an enemy to every sort of
sentimentalism--though a more unromantic being than the pioneer can
hardly be imagined--yet his character unquestionably took its hue, from
the primitive scenes and events of his solitary existence. He was, in
many things, as simple as a child: as credulous, as unsophisticated. Yet
the utmost cunning of the wily savage--all the strategy of Indian
warfare--was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one
might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make
him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without
reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all,
you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable and outrageous
fictions, without fear of contradiction or of unbelief. He never
questioned the superior knowledge or pretensions of any one who claimed
acquaintance with subjects of which _he_ was ignorant.

The character of his intellect, like that of the Indian, was thoroughly
synthetical: he had nothing of the faculty which enables us to detect
falsehood, even in matters of which we know nothing by comparison and
analogy. He never analyzed any story told him, he took it as a unit;
and, unless it violated some known principle of his experience, or
conflicted with some fact of his own observation, never doubted its
truth. At this moment, there are men in every western settlement who
have only vague, crude notions of what a city is--who would feel
nervous if they stepped upon the deck of a steamboat--and are utterly at
a loss to conjecture the nature of a railroad. Upon either of these
mystical subjects they will swallow, without straining, the most absurd
and impossible fictions. And this is not because of their ignorance
alone, for many of them are, for their sphere in life, educated,
intelligent, and, what is better, sensible men. Nor is it by any means a
national trait: for a genuine Yankee will scarcely believe the truth;
and, though he may sometimes trust in very wild things, his faith is
usually an active "craze," and not mere passive credulity. The pioneer,
then, has not derived it from his eastern fathers: it is the growth of
the woods and prairies--an embellishment to a character which might