Did ever you hear of Sweet Betsy from Pike,
Crossed the wide mountains with her lover Ike,
With two yoke of oxen and one spotted hog,
A tall shanghai rooster, and an old yeller dog.
That’s the first of twelve verses, each singing of archetypical America attitude and spirit. It doesn’t matter whether there was ever a real Betsy or real Ike. The story is real on its own. Betsy and Ike may not represent every pioneer, but they do represent the can-do gumption of every pioneer. Crossing, “wide mountains”, is not for the weak or cautious. Especially with no more backup than two oxen, one hog, “a tall Shanghai rooster”, and, “an old yeller dog”.
That’s boldly optimistic and very American, in so many ways.
The tall Shanghai rooster is equally symbolic. America welcomed everyone, including tall roosters from far away Shanghai. Everyone was welcomed, but nobody was guaranteed anything. That was fine with those that came. Most came to get away from the busy-bodies in their home countries that were always telling them what to do and think - then taxing their pockets empty for the unsolicited help.
They wanted freedom to pursue their own fortune in their own way.
Betsy and Ike might have come from families that had been in America for generations, or they might have been new arrivals. Either is possible because America is the natural home of any who are adventuresome and ambitious.
For some reason, I sometimes mix thoughts of Sweet Betsy from Pike with the image of George Caleb Bingham’s painting: Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Pass. Bingham’s painting is based on events from around the 1770’s. Sweet Betsy from Pike was written from around the time of the California gold rush. The only thing they have in common is ambition and adventurous spirit. Maybe that’s enough.
The history of the America West would have been very different without the Cumberland Gap. It provided access for ox-drawn wagons that would have not gotten through the long chain of the Appalachian mountains otherwise.
Most of those early settlers were Scots-Irish, some of whom came from homelands along the Carlyle mountains of Scotland. They didn’t know that when they got to America they would be pioneering along the same range they had left behind in Scotland.
Eons ago - before the continents drifted apart - the Carlyle mountains were connected to the Appalachians. In those days the joined mountains were as high as the Himalayas are today. Since then, long, long, long, years of erosion by wind and rain have had their way with them, leaving them rounded and reduced in height - though no less a barrier to ox-cart travel. The ox-cart barrier was fortuitously removed by an eons-ago meteor (estimated at one and a half thousand feet in diameter) that blasted out the Cumberland Gap..
There is strange poetic providence in these connective coincidences. The Scots-Irish traveled from the mountains of their birth - across an ocean - to continue their travel along the very same mountains - on a different continent - to discover a door to the land beyond - opened for them by a monstrous meteor from long ages before.
Mmm . . . Manifest Destiny?
If so, It wasn’t on the minds of Betsy and Ike. They were busy pursuing their own destiny. By verse seven they had crossed the Sierras and sighted California below. Ike gave a cheer, saying, ” Betsy my darlin’, I’m a made millioneer”.
Of course that was only after weeks, months, and miles of dust, drought, break-downs, starvation, and cholera.
American opportunity is providential – after that it’s
up to us.
Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Pass, Painting, 1850-1851, by, George Caleb Bingham.