Crow Wing, October, 1856.

I desire in this letter to say something about the pioneer, and life on the frontier.  And by pioneer I mean the true pioneer who comes into the West to labor and to share the vicissitudes of new settlements; not the adventurer, who would repine at toil, and gather where he has not sown.

As I have looked abroad upon the vast domain of the West beyond the dim Missouri, or in the immediate valley of the Mississippi, I have wondered at the contrast presented between the comparatively small number who penetrate to the frontier, and that great throng of men who toil hard for a temporary livelihood in the populous towns and cities of the Union.  And I have thought if this latter class were at all mindful of the opportunities for gain and independence which the new territories afforded, they would soon abandon—­ in a great measure at least—­ their crowded alleys in the city, and aspire to be cultivators and owners of the soil.  Why there has not been a greater emigration from cities I cannot imagine, unless it is owing to a misapprehension of Western life.  Either it is this, or the pioneer is possessed of a very superior degree of energy.

It has been said that the frontier man always keeps on the frontier; that he continues to emigrate as fast as the country around him becomes settled.  There is a class that do so.  Not, however, for the cause which has been sometimes humorously assigned—­ that civilization was inconvenient to them—­ but because good opportunities arise to dispose of the farms they have already improved; and because a further emigration secures them cheaper lands.  The story of the pioneer who was disturbed by society, when his nearest neighbor lived fifteen miles off, even if it be true, fails to give the correct reason for the migratory life of this class of men.

It almost always happens that wherever we go somebody else has preceded us.  Accident or enterprise has led some one to surpass us.  Many of the most useful pioneers of this country have been attracted hither by the accounts given of its advantages by some one of their friends who had previously located himself here.  Ask a man why he comes, and he says a neighbor of his, or a son, or a brother, has been in the territory for so many months, and he likes it so well I concluded to come also.  A very respectable gentleman from Maine, a shipowner and a man of wealth, who came up on the boat with me to St. Paul, said his son-in-law was in the territory, and he had another son at home who was bound to come, and if his wife was willing he believed the whole family would come.  Indeed the excellent state of society in the territory is to be attributed very much to the fact that parents have followed after their children.