Pioneer Thanksgiving

 The Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout, Pie Town, New Mexico 1940 (Russell Lee/Library of Congress)

We don’t have an official pioneer memorial day, but Thanksgiving seems a very appropriate time to think of all those trailblazers who came before us, especially the ones that didn’t make it.

 

So, here’s to the pioneers, the one’s who couldn’t sit still, the visionaries, the utopians, the filibusters, the proto-hippies, the foolhardy, the oddballs, and the merely hungry.

Here’s to the Studebaker company, that made the Conestoga wagons and all the little wagon shops too.

Here’s to the Overland Trail, The Oregon trail, and the Cumberland Gap, not to mention the Ozark Trail where the jalopies first rolled.

Here’s to the Susquehannock, the Sioux, and Comanche, who tried to keep us out.

Here’s to the  captive, the scalped, and the innocents of both sides.

Here’s to the indentured servant and the slave and the immigrant, to the Mexican citizen who suddenly became Hispanic American.

Here’s to the plainsman, the rancher, granger, ploughman, ranger, homesteader, sod buster, husbandman, stockman, pilgrim, and nester.

Here’s to the failures, the burnt out, dusted out, starved out, flat broke and busted.

Here’s to the sickly, the consumptive, and the pioneer mother burying another one too soon.

Here’s to the rebels, Quanah Parker, Delfido Gonzales, and Billy the Kid, who claimed to ride for justice, and probably did.

Here’s to the merchants and the freighters, hauling it all across the Santa Fe Trail and Belen Cutoff.

Here’s to the preachers, giving us hope and burying our dead.

Here’s to the teachers in the sod schools, the dugout schools, lean-to schools, and the dame schools.

Here’s to Bob Wills, Woody Guthrie, and all the fiddle & guitar players who lifted the gloom, if only for awhile.

Here’s to anybody who finds themselves “a stranger in a strange land.”

God bless you all, and finally, thanks.