"And don't you recollect how you little babes in the wilderness could never
go anywhere? If you heard wild turkeys gobbling just inside the forest, or
an owl hooting, or a paroquet screaming, or a fawn bleating, you were warned
never to go there; it was the trick of the Indians. You could never go near
a clump of high weeds, or a patch of cane, or a stump, or a fallen tree. You
must not go to the sugar camp, to get a good drink, or to a salt lick for a
pinch of salt, or to the field for an ear of corn, or even to the spring for
a bucket of water: so that you could have neither bread nor water nor sugar
nor salt. Always, always, it was the Indians. If you cried in the night,
your mother came over to you and whispered 'Hush! they are coming! They will
get you!' And you forgot your pain and clung to her neck and listened.
"Now you are let alone, you go farther and farther away from your homes, you
can play hide-and-seek in the canebrakes, you can explore the woods, you
fish and you hunt, you are free for the land is safe.
"And then only think, that by the time you are men and women, Kentucky will
no longer be the great wilderness it still is.
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