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Show UCIl was the tribute which a noted , ifKZf .writer, Herbert . Kaufman, once rjw paid to "the I'ralrle Mother," the women pioneers of that great re- aS glon comprising Minnesota and the T Pakotas, the empire known as the . k new Northwest But what he said ga of the prairie mother wus true of iMiJ all pioneer women who were moth- ers of the frontiersmen -who won a wilderness, whether that wilderness was the wooded wood-ed lands east of the Mississippi or the great plains and mountains of the trans-Mississippi west. For the pioneer mother of. America was one of the most heroic typos of motherhood the world has ever known and as Mother's Day approaches this Tear It Is Interesting to note t lint America In recent years has phown Its appreciation of that fact and has been busy In many places perpetuat-; Ing her memory. ' . , , One of the leaders In this movement have been , th3 Daughters of the American Revolution who . began some two years ao to mark tin National ; , Old Trails route from the Atlanth to the Pacific , with heroic statues of the women who followed that trail across . country. The design of a SL Louis sculptor, A. Lelmhach, known as the j'Ma--donna of the Trail," was accepted and twelve oi these Btatue8, eah eighteen 'et tall, nre today standing along the trail In the states of. Mary-. land, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Ohio, Indiana. , Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California. In nearly every case these statues were unveiled on Mother's day and special Interest was attached to the ceremonies In California Cali-fornia because one of the women who participated In them was Mrs. Caroline Cook (who Is shown In the picture above), an eighty-three year-old pioneer mother who crossed the plains in a covered cov-ered wagon. Two years ago an Oklahoma oil millionaire, E. W. Marland. announced his Intention of honoring honor-ing the pioneer women who settled on tht famous Cherokee strip, the last American frontier, by erecting n monument to them. He nsked the leading lead-ing American sculptors to submit models for t'jch a monument and twelve of them responded. The deslpn submitted by riryuni Taker was chosen und It Is from this model (shown above) that the statue more than forty feel In height, will be wist and stand on a knoll near K.nca flty. OlJa-It OlJa-It .vlll be one Oi the most eollo.-ss.nl that has been made In recent years ard will itt eecimd only to the statue of Liberty In New York harbor in size and majesty. The state of Kansas Is also planning to honor Its pioneer woman and has accepted another design de-sign by the same sculptor for that purpose. In January of this year one of the features of the celebration of the sixty-eighth birthday of Kansas was the dedication of the site on the state house grounds In Topekn where this statue Is to stand. The Pioneer Women's Memorial Association of Kansas, Which Is sponsoring the movement. Is raising a fund of $2",000 for this memorial. In both the. Kansas and Oklahoma pioneer mother statues, the sculptor has emphasized the qualities of teacher-and worker ns well as mother In the women who first came to those states and helped make them the, abode of. civilization. When the town of Elmwood, 111., commlsrioned Its most famous son, i.ora do Taft, to model a statue which would typify the pioneer spirit, the sculptor did portray that . Idea with the figure of a pioneer' man. Today the statue which stands in the park square: of Elmwood and which was unveiled last year shows a. stalwart frontiersman standing, gun In hand, defiantly braving the dan- ' gers which beset a wilderness breaker. Close beside be-side him stands a woman, a typical plonee. moth er shielding In her strong young arms, her baby, and facing with her husband the dangers of the new land. L-Iow worthy the pioneer mother Is of having her memory perpetuated In enduring stone or bronze la forcibly Impressed upon anyone who reads the hlstary of the American frontier, Volumes could be written about the pioneer woman alone how she did her share 'n making n home for ter mate, how when It was necessary she could ;iandle the rifle Htid the x to defend that home, how she braved all the terrors of flooded rivers, prairie fires, snow-filled mountains, hunger, thirst 'and sickness as she marched by his side tn carrying the sta. of empire westward. One Instance of the westward faring pioneer Is typical It Is the story of the settling of Nashville, Tenn.. of which a re- THE MADONNA OF THE TRAIL cent writer has said. "It Is an Odyssey without parallel in the annals of Tennessee, if Indeed It can be matched anywhere. "Here Is that story as Emerson Hough tells It In Ids book "The Way to the West": "In 1779, one James Robertson of the Watauga settlements of North Carolina, a steadfast man. heard certain voices that cnlled him to the West. James Robertson, the steadfast, forming his company com-pany for this uncertain, perilous enterprise, said: "We are the advance guard of a civilization, and our way Is across the continent." Simple words yet that was In 1779! Now. for the building or this one town, the town that is now the city of Nashville, and the capital ; of Tennessee, this leader had gathered three hundred hun-dred and eighty persons, men, women, and children. All the women and children, one hundred and thirty In number. In charge of a few men, went by boat. scow, pirogue, and canoe, tn the winter time, down the bold waters of the Holston and Tennessee rivers. The rest traveled as best they might over the five hundred miles of "trace" across Kentucky. Of this whole party two hundred and twenty-six got through alive. The boat party had many hundreds of miles of unknown and dangerous waters to travel, and the journey took them three months, n time longer than It now requires to travel around the world. They ran thirty -miles of rapids on the shoals of the Tennessee, pursued and fired upon by Cher-okces. Cher-okces. Of this division of the party only ninety-seven ninety-seven got through alive, and nine of these were wounded. One was drowned, one died of natural causes and was burled, nnd the rest were killed by the Indians, Their voyage was Indeed "without a parallel In modern history." Among those who survived sur-vived the hardships of the Journey was Rachel Donelson, later the wife of Andrew Jackson. The path of empire In America, the path of corn and venison, was a highway that never ran backward. back-ward. These men would never leave this country now that they had taken It. But what a tax was this that the barbaric land demanded of them! In . November of 1780, less than a year after the party was first organized, there were only one hundred and thirty-four persons left alive out of the original orig-inal three hundred and eighty, but in the settlement settle-ment Itself there had not been a -natural death. The Indians killed these eettlers, and the settlers killed the Indians. Death nnd wounds meant nothing noth-ing to the adults. The very Infants learned a stole hardihood. ' The spring of 1781 found only seventy persons left alive. But when the voto was cast whether to stay or return, not one man voted to give up the fight. In that Wost corn was worth one hundred hun-dred and sixty-five dollars a bushel, and In Its raising rais-ing the rlfl6 was as essential as the plow. Powder nnd lead were priceless Man and woman together, togeth-er, fearless, changeless, they held the land, giving bark not one Inch of the west-boutd distance they had gained t In 1791 thcr were only fifteen persons left alive out of the three hundred and eighty that made this American migration. There had been only one natural death among thorn. In such n settlement there was no suh thing as a hero, because all were heroes- Eg eh man was a master of weapons . and incapable of fear. No action ever painted a hero like to any one of theso. One man, after hav ing been shot and stabbed many times, was scalped alive, und Jested about It. A little girl was scalped alive, and lived to forget 1L An army of Indlan-HHsaullcd Indlan-HHsaullcd th settlement, and fifteen men nnd ttilrty women brat them off. Mrs. Sally Buchanan, n forgotten for-gotten heroine, molded bullets all one night durlrg an Indian ntlack. and on the next morning gave birth to a son This was the ancestral fiber or the West. Wh--t time had fnlk like these for powder pufT or ruffle, ruf-fle, for fa ii ti r Jeweled snuiT box? Their garb wttc I made from (he skin or the deer, the fox, the wolt. Their shuo!" were or hide, the beds were made of the robi tit the tear und buftalo They laid thr land undiT tribute. Yet, no far from mere savage ry was tho spirit that animated these men that i ' ten year arter they had first cut away the forest thuy. wen- founding a college und establishing a court of l:iw Read this forgotten history, on chapter, jiml a Utile one. in thu history of the Wovi and then turn. If vou like, to tho chapters of fli'tlui in un oldtf wotld. Vou have your choic of lc or e'kKkiii, |