In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came."

His talk of the Indians left an impression entirely unlike that of the
Cooper novel and the red man of the theatre. It was untouched by
romance or sentimentality. It made them a grave, manly race,
intimately familiar with nature, with a lofty scorn of feebleness. The
sylvan shade and the leafy realm and Arden and pastoral poetry were
wholly wanting in the picture he drew, quite as much as the theory
that they are vermin to be exterminated as fast as possible. He said
that the pioneers of civilization, as it is called, among the Indians
are purveyors of every kind of mischief. We graft the sound native
stock with a sour fruit, then denounce it bitterly and cut it down.
What was most admirable in Daniel Boone, he said, was his Indian
nature and sympathy; and the least admirable part was his hold, such
as it was, upon civilization. He seemed to imply that if Boone could
only have succeeded in becoming an Indian altogether, it would have
been a truly memorable triumph. Thoreau acknowledged that the Indian
was not only doomed, but, as he gravely said, damned, because his
enemies were his historians; and he could only say, "Ah, if we lions
had painted the picture!"

The sylvan idea of Daniel Boone would probably have been very rudely
shattered could he have been actually seen; and Thoreau's Indian was
certainly not visible in the stories of men of his time who had passed
weeks among the Indians upon the plains. The pioneers, like Boone, are
not romantic; their life is a hard toil and struggle; they are
ignorant, rude, and even repulsive. This is natural, because their
real work is that of the subsoil plough and the harrow. They lay the
strong foundations. Without them, no soft waving field of golden