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It seems to be a striking case of misunderstanding from the Romans down,
or up, to the Americans. Every theory and supposition has curiously
added to the misapprehension. Rightly judged, with the plainest facts of
his life even casually considered, the Bird o' Freedom seems so
disreputable a fowl that one wonders how he ever came to be chosen as a
figure-head by Romans, Germans, Americans, or the Michigan Regiment that
bore him alive as its standard through the smoke of a score of battles,
and brought him home again unscathed to make a curious part of the
history of a gallant State in the times that tried men's souls.
Innumerable myths trail behind him as appendages to his unearned fame.
He was the Bird of Jove. He has ever been the reputed king of an
ethereal world of fancy. His eye alone may look upon the sun unwinking
and undazed. And yet it is all in his eye, or rather in that of the
credulous mortals who believe the ancient story. There never lived a
poet, sticking to his business, that has not at some time in his career
become a panegyrist of his extraordinary supposed qualities and a
proclaimer of his magnificence. It is a curious fact, too, that all the
moralists, save one, have at some time or other used him as a simile, a
great example, a something to be imitated. That one, greatest of all, is
content with the familiar and plebeian hen and chickens in one of the
most eloquent and touching of his monologues, and uses the miserable
sparrow in that illustration which has in all time since given comfort
to forsaken souls.
With the poetry about this overrated fowl everybody is more or less
familiar. There is nothing finer; and it is somewhat startling, and also
destructive of our most cherished ideas, to say that it seems a case of
mistaken identity almost from beginning to end. It cannot be the eagle,
our eagle, that is meant. He has never in a single instance done
anything to entitle him to a medal. Yet the idealism of the ages has
been heaping honors on his crested head through the necessity, as yet
unexplained, of having some winged creature to glorify, to use as an
emblem, to paint, to describe incorrectly if poetically, to embellish a
heroic national moral with. It has been done without regard to fact in
all the school-readers and other truthful volumes intended for the use
of the very young. Every boy regards the American Eagle as the king of
birds even from a moral standpoint, and he is liable to at least a brief
spell of disappointment if he has the faculty of observation and the
love of nature sufficiently developed to find out by-and-by that he has
been deceived.
The coparcener with the eagle in all this beautiful nonsense is a bird
that never existed at all, and who, having at last fallen from her high
estate, is now principally useful as a name for a hotel that has been
too often burned, or as the escutcheon of an insurance company.
Considered in a matter-of-fact way, and in the cold and unflattering
light of natural history, our national emblem is no more a truth than
the Phœnix is, and is almost as preposterous as the roc. One wonders
why, in the course of so many ages in which the gradual drift has been
toward common-sense and fact, men have not learned to turn for their
animal ideals, if it is necessary to have them, to the beasts and birds
entitled to some consideration for actual qualities; for both beauty and
gallantry, for instance, to the male of the barn yard fowl; for
devotion, to the grotesquely homely stork; for self-sacrifice, to any of
the beautiful creatures who flutter along before you in the path, with
the distressful pantomime of a broken wing and great distress, inviting
you to kill them easily with a stick or stone if you have the heart, and
offering you every inducement to pursue them that is latent in man's
cruel heart, but only after all to lead the marauder further and further
away from a nest that is cherished.
As to the first of these hastily-given examples, any country-raised boy
will concede the point, and he has not been left entirely out in the
poetry, and especially in the folk-lore, of the nations. He it was who
marked with his clarion the moment when he upon whose name is founded
the most powerful of the Christian Churches denied his master and his
faith. He sings the coming of the dawn in every clime, and marks the
hour when graveyards cease to yawn, or when Romeos must depart. He leads
his harem abroad in the morning as he has ever done, ever ready to fight
his rival from across the fence or to meet in unconsidered duel the
marauding hawk. With a gallantry quite unknown to any other bird or
human, he calls familiarly to others of his family to come and eat the
choicest morsel he may find. He is gay. He has the natural gait and air
of an acknowledged chieftain. The sun glints upon his neck. His tail is
a waving plume the equal of which few birds can boast. He hath a bold
and glittering eye. Sometimes retreating under the dictates of prudence,
as many higher personages have often done and been commended therefor,
he is yet the ideal of homely, home-defending courage. Withal, he will
upon necessity demean himself to scratch for a brood of chirping
orphans, and gather them to his gallant breast because they have no
mother. Yet, forsooth, not this illustrious bird, but the eagle—the
"American" Eagle—is the emblem of the foster-mother of all the nations.
There is a place where every visitor to Chicago may see this emblematic
lordling near at hand. It is at Lincoln Park. There is a colossal cage
there where there are a dozen or so of him, and he is not even
restricted in certain limited flights which seem fully satisfying to him
in his well-fed condition. If you go to see him there you will have the
advantage of observing how absurdly draggle tailed and slovenly he may
become with full leisure to make his toilet if he ever does, and that he
evidently is not naturally a dandy. This trait is not common with any of
his captive neighbors except the coyotes, and nobody who has known the
coyote in his native wilderness expects anything better of him. You can
also observe his grotesqueness when he is on the ground, where he often
comes, and there is probably nothing more ridiculously abortive in all
nature than his movements when so situated. But one cannot visit him
often or observe him long without becoming convinced that none of the
attitudes in which he is almost invariably depicted on flags, medals,
seals, coins, and other ornamental and emblematic devices is natural to
him. He never assumes them even by mistake or chance. "The poised eagle"
becomes poetry like all the rest, when you observe that his "eagle
glance" has taken in a piece of fresh meat somewhere, and he wishes to
keep someone else from getting it. He then scrambles to the edge of a
board, or hitches along to the end of a branch of the dead tree where he
sits, and drops off like a hen, making an awkward flight toward the
morsel that has attracted him. And when he gets there he edges
suspiciously around it in the evident fear that it may be alive and may
bite him.
You will, however, be able to observe some of his traits that seem more
natural. There are the cruel eyes and the relentless expression; the
"hooked claws" and the "bending beak." It is an eye whose expression
never changes, and which regards with constant malice all its
surroundings. The brow, which gives it the look so much admired, seems,
according to Mr. Ruskin, to be merely a provision of nature to keep the
sun from shining into it, thus disposing, Ruskin-like, at one fell swoop
of one of the most striking of the poetical myths.
Still others will be disposed of if you stay long. Did any one of my
readers ever read that neither the eagle nor the lion would eat anything
they had not themselves slain? Well, later advices seem to indicate that
both will upon occasion descend to carrion of the basest quality, and
that both consume considerable time in their native haunts in catching
and devouring bugs. Lizards and such small fry are assiduously looked
for. Convincing proof of this, in the eagle's case, was not wanting in
one brief visit to the above-mentioned famous and beautiful resort. In
the same huge cage with the eagles were certain crocodiles, or
alligators, or whatever name you may choose to call the Floridian
saurian by. To me they all seem very much alike. I suppose this is
because I do not care much about supra-orbital bones, or the number of
teeth or toes, or minute particulars of anatomical conformation, but am
disposed, after a blundering and non-technical fashion, to mostly regard
looks and actions. The adult, or semi-adult, alligators lie all the time
asleep, never moving, never winking, never so much as apparently
breathing, and looking very much like chunks in a clearing. One wonders,
in view of all the stories told, if they are really alive this fine
summer weather, when there is no excuse for hibernation, and if so, how
they ever manage to catch anything except possibly by lying with their
mouth open and waiting until something mistakes the locality and crawls
into it by inadvertance.
But there is one little beast in this interesting family so young and
inexperienced as to be only about nine inches long, including all there
is belonging to him, largely tail. He is of a dark-green color, with a
mottled-yellow belly, and a mouth, when he opens it, very red indeed. He
has no teeth large enough to be very frightful at a distance, and
evidently depends upon the mere opening of this fiendish mouth to scare
away all disturbers of the profound peace which broods perpetually over
him and all his family.
This small one had got away, and in a modified and unsatisfactory search
for his native bayou had crept through the meshes of the wire and into
the other apartment where the eagles were. He was down in the little
rill of running water, and partially hidden under a stone. An eagle had
espied him there, and was watching him, while I watched the eagle.
Presently the natural instincts of the bird of Jove became too strong
for successful repression even in the presence of distinguished company,
and he left his perch in the usual ungraceful way, and after alighting
on the ground waddled to where the little reptile was having a
comfortable time in his exile. He hesitated about the water, but finally
waded in and scratched the monster out from under his sheltering rock.
He then caught him round the middle with one gigantic claw which met
entirely around his prey, and scrambled ashore. By this time the saurian
was fairly awake, and began to provide for his immediate future by
opening his mouth. The eagle, looking between his legs, saw this and
dropped him as an uncanny thing, and afterwards spent some ridiculous
minutes dancing around his foe and warily dodging his satanic
manifestations of open mouth. The whole performance was such on the part
of the eagle as would have disgraced in the eyes of her waiting family,
an ordinary hen, and the end was that the alligator got safely back to
his puddle and his rock. He did it deliberately, and backwards, with his
mouth open about one-third of his entire length. The bird was of average
size. He had the white feathers on his head which made him the "bald" or
"American" eagle. Here was the emblem of this great republic vanquished
by a sleepy little lizard less than a foot long. It was almost as
disgraceful a performance as the Mexican War of '46.
I was once part proprietor of an eagle. He belonged to us, and we were a
company of soldiers at a frontier post. While I knew him he lived in the
mule-corral, and appeared to me to be at a great disadvantage there.
Somebody had winged him against the face of the brown cliff at whose top
he had been hatched, and he was now accustomed to sit upon a rail in the
corner of the shed, and glare balefully at all intruders in the place he
fancied he owned. He was perhaps fat beyond rule, but his claws were as
long and sharp, and his eye was as relentless, as though still obliged
to follow his natural calling of catching the little New-Mexican
cotton-tail, and swooping down upon horned toads.
His wings measured about five feet from tip to tip, though he was
supposed to have only lately passed the perilous period of his first
moulting, and to be quite young. He was fed with bloody morsels of beef,
and had, when he chose to take it, the freedom of the whole enclosure.
But he was not on good terms with his neighbors, and maintained a very
dignified demeanor toward some fifty mules, a dozen or so of cocks and
hens, and an especially-privileged pig who had the run of the premises
because it had been brought up by hand, and had, for a pig, remarkably
aristocratic ideas. He frowned upon all manner of fellow-creatures who
by accident and unintentionally paid a visit to his majesty. Peg, who
owned a house which she considered her own near his perch, this mansion
being a deal-box turned down, was a special aversion. Peggy was a large
dog, and was herself not a pattern of amiability, especially when she
was the mother of from nine to thirteen puppies, as frequently was the
case; and it was commonly remarked that Aquila was in danger of having
his head bitten off if he interfered with this interesting family, which
he seemed rather foolishly inclined to do. Yet this was not by any means
what became of this Monarch of the Air finally.
If the eagle is one of the striking emblems of power, he is also upon
occasion, as before remarked, a specimen of decided and almost pitiable
imbecility. He cannot even walk. His utmost endeavors in that humble
direction seem to result only in an ungraceful waddle, in which his
claws interfere with his shins, and those of his right foot interfere
with those of his left, and he drags his tail in a most undignified
manner in the dust. Also, his long wing-tips refuse to stay folded in a
proper manner, as each time he stumbles he is impelled to throw out a
wing, reminding one of a boy walking across a brook on a log. This one
could fly only a little. The accident that had resulted in his captivity
he had recovered from, but the wing bone had not been properly set where
it was broken, and the short flights he attempted were very one-sided.
So when he wished to go anywhere he usually walked, and it was such a
walk as above described, or worse.
And when he did, it was to a place one would never have imagined that a
properly conducted and self-respecting eagle would have thought of. But
the bird seemed to have a liking for low resorts, and his special
weakness was the pig-pen. This was, as it should have been, outside the
walls, and was generally occupied by some eight or a dozen little,
sharp-nosed, pointed-eared, anti-Berkshire, Mexican pigs, whose business
it was to eat up all that was left from the dinner of more than a
hundred soldiers, and to be the heirs of all the condemned commissary
stores, and whose fate it was to be finally eaten themselves, say about
Christmas. The last lot that went in there is a distinct recollection to
me, aside from their doings with the eagle. They came from some
aboriginal hamlet on the banks of the Rio Grande, about a hundred miles
away. Each two of them had accommodations to themselves—a pen made of
willow sticks, tied together with raw-hide, and slung upon a donkey. The
long-suffering animal who had carried them so far had a round dozen for
his cargo. He was heaped and piled with pig-cages, and the topmost pair
of little swine were having an airy ride at the apex of a pyramid about
eight feet from the ground, swaying from side to side with a sea-sick
motion as the donkey walked; and they looked sick. A more unpromising
family was never reared even in New Mexico. Nevertheless they were
dropped over the side of the pen after much chaffering with the owner,
and at an expense of "four bits" each.
As soon as by some means he found out they were there, it was to the
pig-pen that this fatuous fowl resorted. I do not know why, but it was
not because he loved them, nor that he had especial business with them.
Making his way thither as best he could he would perch upon the side of
the pen and glare balefully down upon the occupants, who did not seem to
greatly care if he chose to amuse himself in that senseless manner. But
after a while he would drop down on the back of the nearest one, and
holding fast with his claws, he would proceed to bite the back of his
neck, tweak his ears, and otherwise maltreat him. But at his first
squeal the others would make common cause with him, after the unselfish
fashion of pigs, and together they would pull our emblem down, drag him
down in the dust or mud as the case might be, and finally would hustle
him off into a corner, where he would sit scowling until some soldier
came and took him away. Whenever the shrill voice of a pig was heard
expostulating it would be understood that the eagle was at it again, and
somebody would go to the rescue of our national greatness. Often have I
seen a couple of soldiers, each with the tip of a wing in his hand, and
with the eagle between them, marching him across the parade-ground to
his proper roost. On these occasions he looked exceedingly silly. When
his feet touched the ground he would attempt to walk, and with even less
success than usual. He reminded me of some urchin who had fallen into
the creek, and who was being led homeward in much wetness and
humiliation.
It is a sad story when the traditional dignity of the principal
character is considered, for he was finally killed by those pigs. The
facts developed at the inquest seemed to indicate that he had no
discretion, and had gone too often. They had walked over him, and had
even lain down upon him. Dead and disregarded he lay in a corner among
the litter, and they had not even attempted to eat him. This seemed to
indicate that they had killed him merely as a lesson to him. There never
was more ignominious end to an exalted character.
Literature is very full of the reputed nobleness of certain birds and
beasts; their vaunted qualities of head and heart; the pride of their
bearing; the independence of their lives; the solitary grandeur of their
characters. And in the majority of cases these heathenish notions have
remained undispelled by the lapse of time. Even men assume for long
periods of time the characters that romantic biographers have clothed
them with, and the youth of this country, now men, are only just
beginning to recover their senses after the singular yarns of such books
as Abbott's Life of Napoleon, read in youth. As instances of the first
statement, the elephant is actually, and in his real circus life, an
indocile and malicious beast, prone to blind rages, revenges, and sly
malice. The camel, darling of the Arab, ship of the desert, etc., has,
by the testimony of those who know him well, less sense than a sheep; as
long-necked and homely a piece of perfect stupidity as there is in the
caravan, and looks it. I shall have attained the topmast round of a
species of high treason when I mention a doubt as to whether that noble
slave, the horse, is entitled to his general reputation, but such a
doubt I have. There are those who lose a good deal of money on him, and
will forgive him anything, even to the occasional breaking of their
necks. He has his admirers in a majority of mankind, yet there never
actually lived that fabled creature, a "safe" horse.
To revert again, and finally, to our national emblem, his mode of life
gives him, if we may fall into the vernacular, dead away. He may have
his virtues from our standpoint, and one of them is that he is not
prolific. His crude nest is such a one as a boy might build in rough
imitation of a nest, and call it an eagle's. Made of big sticks and
nothing else, and added to as the years pass, it is wedged into the
forks of a solitary hemlock, as high as possible from the ground and as
remote as possible from any other thing, or is perched upon the shelf of
the cliff above the canyon or the coast. It contains only three or four
homely eggs. He seems faithful in his domestic relations, and pairs off
not for a season, but for life or good behavior. This one fact covers
his good qualities, for there is undoubtedly a spice of the heroic about
it. With all his rapacious and predatory power of wing it may not be
doubted that he is a bug-eater and a lizard-catcher, and that on mesa or
in valley he fights with the raven and the buzzard for the possession of
the uppermost eye of the casual dead mule. But his especial, weakness is
an article of diet that he has no right to in the animal code, for the
reason that he can't catch it. That is fish, and he invariably simply
steals it when he gets it. Any man who has witnessed this proceeding and
not been outraged by it could hardly be considered a competent juryman
in a Chicago boodle case. The osprey, having caught his lawful fish by
pure skill and natural capacity, bears it away wriggling in his talons.
He is weighted by his booty and flies heavily. Somebody who has been
sulkily watching him for perhaps a day or two from some unseen nook,
sails after him and pounces upon him from above. Turning to fight he
must drop his fish, which the other gets and goes off with. One can but
see the disappointed fisherman return again to his watching, and think
of a hungry brood of nestlings waiting at home, and feel some degree of
displeasure and regret in the fact that the marauder, unpunished and
unregretful, is none other than the emblem and figure-head of the great
republic. He knows that no nation can be considered strictly honest
except his own, and he ever after is disposed to wonder at that
ignorance of the plainest facts of natural history that has led it to
choose out from the beasts and birds a thief and a coward for the only
bit of heraldry its statutes know,
James Steele.
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