Читать книгу Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies - Gilmore Melvin Randolph - Страница 2

To the Real Pioneers of the Great Plains: to those whose questing spirit first sought out the wonders and the beauties of this land; – its vast reaches, league upon league, of grassland, verdant in springtime, sere and red and brown in autumn; its inviting valleys and its forbidding buttes; – to those whose moccasined feet made the first human footprints upon the turf of these prairies and upon the sands of these river margins; whose self-reliance made them the first to breast the current of these streams; whose humble footpaths over the land have now become the transcontinental highways of the world’s travel and trade; to those who first slaked thirst at these cool, clear watersprings, whose hunger was first satisfied by the fruits of this land, and who, in eating and in drinking, devoutly gave thanks to our tender Mother Earth for her bounties, receiving them gratefully as sacred gifts to be prudently used and thankfully enjoyed, and never to be wasted; who knew and loved this land in all its spacious extent, east to west and south to north; who reverenced its sacred places, the holy watersprings, the grand and silent hills, the mysterious caves, the eery precipices, – all places where their fathers had with prayer and fasting sought and obtained the favour of the gods, and where the gods had granted revelations and given wisdom to their fathers; to those whose eyes first beheld this land in its virgin beauty, fresh and joyous, unscarred and unspoiled, clean and wholesome, animated with exuberance of life of many species of both plant and animal in wonderful balance and adjustment, spontaneously replenished; and who held it a form of sacrilege to violate or in any way endanger the overthrow of that delicate balance of nature; – to those first inhabitants of this land which we now inhabit.

That something of their appreciation, of their love and reverence for the land and its native life, something of their respect for its sacred places and holy associations; that something of their sense of its charm, of its beauty and wonder, may come to us; that we may the more worthily occupy and more sympathetically enjoy our tenure of this land.

To these ends and purposes this book is hopefully and earnestly dedicated.