Pioneer Days And Ways
Arrived on the lower Ohio, or one of its tributaries, the pioneer looked
out upon a land of remarkable riches. It was not a Mexico or a Peru,
with emblazoned palaces and glittering temples, nor yet a California,
with gold-flecked sands. It was merely an unending stretch of wooded
hills and grassy plains, bedecked with majestic forests and fructifying
rivers and lakes. It had no treasures save for the man of courage,
industry, and patience; but for such it held home, broad acres, liberty,
and the coveted opportunity for social equality and advancement.
The new country has been commonly thought of, and referred to by writers
on the history of the West, as a "wilderness"; and offhand, one might
suppose that the settlers were obliged literally to hew their way
through densely grown vegetation to the spots which they selected for
their homes. In point of fact, there were great areas of upland--not
alone in the prairie country of northern Indiana and Illinois, but in
the hilly regions within a hundred miles of the Ohio--that were almost
treeless. On these unobstructed stretches grasses grew in profusion; and
here roamed great herds of herbivorous animal-kind--deer and elk, and
also buffalo, "filing in grave procession to drink at the rivers,
plunging and snorting among the rapids and quicksands, rolling their
huge bulk on the grass, rushing upon each other in hot encounter, like
champions under shield." Along the watercourses ducks, wild geese,
cranes, herons, and other fowl sounded their harsh cries; gray
squirrels, prairie chickens, and partridges the hunter found at every
turn.
Furthermore, the forests, as a rule, were not difficult to penetrate.
The trees stood thick, but deer paths, buffalo roads, and Indian trails
ramified in all directions, and sometimes were wide enough to allow two
or three wagons to advance abreast. Mighty poplars, beeches, sycamores,
and "sugars" pushed to great heights in quest of air and sunshine, and
often their intertwining branches were locked solidly together by a
heavy growth of grape or other vines, producing a canopy which during
the summer months permitted scarcely a ray of sunlight to reach the
ground. There was, therefore, a notable absence of undergrowth. When a
tree died and decayed, it fell apart piecemeal; it was with difficulty
that woodsmen could wrest a giant oak or poplar from its moorings and
bring it to the ground, even by severing the trunk completely at the
base. Here and there a clean swath was cut through a forest, for perhaps
dozens of miles, by a hurricane. This gave opportunity for the growth of
a thicket of bushes and small trees, and such spots were equally likely
to be the habitations of wild beasts and the hiding-places of warlike
bands of redskins.
There were always adventurous pioneers who scorned the settlements and
went off with their families to fix their abodes in isolated places. But
the average newcomer preferred to find a location in, or reasonably
near, a settlement. The choice of a site, whether by a company of
immigrants wishing to establish a settlement or by an individual
settler, was a matter of much importance. Some thought must be given to
facilities for fortification against hostile natives. There must be an
adequate supply of drinking-water; and the location of innumerable
pioneer dwellings was selected with reference to free-flowing springs.
Pasture land for immediate use was desirable; and of course the soil
must be fertile. As a rule, the settler had the alternative of
establishing himself on the lowlands along a stream and obtaining ground
of the greatest productiveness, with the almost certain prospect of
annual attacks of malaria, or of seeking the poorer but more healthful
uplands. The attractions of the "bottoms" were frequently irresistible,
and the "ague" became a feature of frontier life almost as inevitable as
the proverbial "death and taxes."
The site selected, the next task was to clear a few acres of ground
where the cabin was to stand. It was highly desirable to have a belt of
open land as a protection against Indians and wild beasts; besides,
there must be fields cleared for tillage. If the settler had neighbors,
he was likely to have their aid in cutting away the densest growth of
trees, and in raising into position the heavy timbers which formed the
framework and walls of his cabin. Splendid oaks, poplars, and sycamores
were cut into convenient lengths, and such as could not be used were
rolled into great heaps and burned. Before sawmills were introduced
lumber could not be manufactured; afterwards, it became so plentiful as
to have small market value.
Almost without exception the frontier cabins had log walls; and they
were rarely of larger size than single lengths would permit. On an
average, they were twelve or fourteen feet wide and fifteen or eighteen
feet long. Sometimes they were divided into two rooms, with an attic
above; frequently there was but one room "downstairs." The logs were
notched together at the corners, and the spaces between them were filled
with moss or clay or covered with bark. Rafters were affixed to the
uppermost logs, and to one another, with wooden pins driven through
auger holes. In earliest times the roof was of bark; later on, shingles
were used, although nails were long unknown, and the shingles, after
being laid in rows, were weighted down with straight logs.
Sometimes there was only an earth floor. But as a rule "puncheons,"
i.e., thick, rough boards split from logs, were laid crosswise on round
logs and were fastened with wooden pins. There was commonly but a single
door, which was made also of puncheons and hung on wooden hinges. A
favorite device was to construct the door in upper and lower sections,
so as to make it possible, when there came a knock or a call from the
outside, to respond without offering easy entrance to an unwelcome
visitor. In the days when there was considerable danger of Indian
attacks no windows were constructed, for the householder could defend
only one aperture. Later, square holes which could be securely barred at
night and during cold weather were made to serve as windows. Flat pieces
of sandstone, if they could be found, were used in building the great
fireplace; otherwise, thick timbers heavily covered with clay were made
to serve. In scarcely a cabin was there a trace of iron or glass; the
whole could be constructed with only two implements--an ax and an auger.
Occasionally a family carried to its new home some treasured bits of
furniture; but the difficulty of transportation was likely to be
prohibitive, and as a rule the cabins contained only such pieces of
furniture as could be fashioned on the spot. A table was made by
mounting a smoothed slab on four posts, set in auger holes. For seats
short benches and three-legged stools, constructed after the manner of
the tables, were in common use. Cooking utensils, food-supplies, seeds,
herbs for medicinal purposes, and all sorts of household appliances were
stowed away on shelves, made by laying clapboards across wooden pins
driven into the wall and mounting to the ceiling; although after sawed
lumber came into use it was a matter of no great difficulty to construct
chests and cupboards. Not infrequently the settler's family slept on
bear skins or blankets stretched on the floor. But crude bedsteads were
made by erecting a pole with a fork in such a manner that other poles
could be supported horizontally in this fork and by crevices in the
walls. Split boards served as "slats" on which the bedding was spread.
For a long time "straw-ticks"--large cloth bags filled with straw or
sometimes dry grass or leaves--were articles of luxury. Iron pots and
knives were necessities which the wise householder carried with him from
his eastern or southern home. In the West they were hard to obtain. The
chief source of supply was the iron-manufacturing districts of
Pennsylvania and Virginia, whence the wares were carried to the
entrepôts of river trade by packhorses. The kitchen outfit of the
average newcomer was completed with a few pewter dishes, plates, and
spoons. But winter evenings were utilized in whittling out wooden bowls,
trenchers, and noggins or cups, while gourds and hard-shelled squashes
were turned to numerous uses. The commonest drinking utensil was a
long-handled gourd.
The dress of the pioneer long remained a curious cross between that of
the Indians and that of the white people of the older sections. In
earlier times the hunting-shirt--made of linsey, coarse nettle-bark
linen, buffalo-hair, or even dressed deerskins--was universally worn by
the men, together with breeches, leggings, and moccasins. The women and
children were dressed in simple garments of linsey. In warm weather they
went barefooted; in cold, they wore moccasins or coarse shoes.
Rarely was there lack of food for these pioneer families. The soil was
prodigal, and the forests abounded in game. The pièce de résistance of
the backwoods menu was "hog an' hominy"; that is to say, pork served
with Indian corn which, after being boiled in lye to remove the hulls,
had been soaked in clear water and cooked soft. "Johnny cake" and
"pone"--two varieties of cornbread--were regularly eaten at breakfast
and dinner. The standard dish for supper was cornmeal mush and milk. As
cattle were not numerous, the housewife often lacked milk, in which case
she fell back on her one never-failing resource--hominy; or she served
the mush with sweetened water, molasses, the gravy of fried meat, or
even bear's oil. Tea and coffee were long unknown, and when introduced
they were likely to be scorned by the men as "slops" good enough perhaps
for women and children. Vegetables the settlers grew in the garden plot
which ordinarily adjoined the house, and thrifty families had also a
"truck patch" in which they raised pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, beans,
melons, and corn for "roasting ears." The forests yielded game, as well
as fruits and wild grapes, and honey for sweetening.
The first quality for which the life of the frontier called was untiring
industry. It was possible, of course, to eke out an existence by
hunting, fishing, petty trading, and garnering the fruits which Nature
supplied without man's assistance. And many pioneers in whom the roving
instinct was strong went on from year to year in this hand-to-mouth
fashion. But the settler who expected to be a real home-builder, to gain
some measure of wealth, to give his children a larger opportunity in
life, must be prepared to work, to plan, to economize, and to sacrifice.
The forests had to be felled; the great logs had to be rolled together
and burned; crops of maize, tobacco, oats, and cane needed to be
planted, cultivated, and harvested; live stock to be housed and fed;
fences and barns to be built; pork, beef, grain, whiskey, and other
products to be prepared for market, and perhaps carried scores of miles
to a place of shipment.
All these things had to be done under conditions of exceptional
difficulty. The settler never knew what night his place would be raided
by marauding redskins, who would be lenient indeed if they merely
carried off part of his cattle or burned his barn. Any morning he might
peer out of the "port hole" above the cabin door to see skulking figures
awaiting their chance. Sickness, too, was a menace and a terror. Picture
the horrors of isolation in times of emergency--wife or child suddenly
taken desperately ill, and no physician within a hundred miles; husband
or son hovering between life and death as the result of injury by a
falling tree, a wild beast, a venomous snake, an accidental gun-shot, or
the tomahawk of a prowling Indian. Who shall describe the anxiety, the
agony, which in some measure must have been the lot of every frontier
family? The prosaic illnesses of the flesh were troublesome enough. On
account of defective protection for the feet in wet weather, almost
everybody had rheumatism; most settlers in the bottom-lands fell victims
to fever and ague at one time or another; even in the hill country few
persons wholly escaped malarial disorders. "When this home-building and
land-clearing is accomplished," wrote one whose recollections of the
frontier were vivid, "a faithful picture would reveal not only the
changes that have been wrought, but a host of prematurely broke-down men
and women, besides an undue proportion resting peacefully in country
graveyards."
The frontiersman's best friend was his trusty rifle. With it he defended
his cabin and his crops from marauders, waged warfare on hostile
redskins, and obtained the game which formed an indispensable part of
his food supply. At first the gun chiefly used on the border was the
smooth-bored musket. But toward the close of the eighteenth century a
gunsmith named Deckhard, living at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, began making
flintlock rifles of small bore, and in a short time the "Deckhard rifle"
was to be found in the hands of almost every backwoodsman. The barrel
was heavy and from three feet to three feet and a half in length, so
that the piece, when set on the ground, reached at least to the
huntsman's shoulder. The bore was cut with twisting grooves, and was so
small that seventy bullets were required to weigh a pound. In loading, a
greased linen "patch" was wrapped around the bullet; and only a small
charge of powder was needed. The gun was heavy to carry and difficult to
hold steadily upon a target; but it was economical of ammunition, and in
the hands of the strong-muscled, keen-eyed, iron-nerved frontiersman it
was an exceedingly accurate weapon, at all events within the ordinary
limits of forest ranges. He was a poor marksman who could not shoot
running deer or elk at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards, and
kill ducks and geese on the wing; and "boys of twelve hung their heads
in shame if detected in hitting a squirrel in any other part of the body
than its head."
Life on the frontier was filled with hard work, danger, and anxiety. Yet
it had its lighter side, and, indeed, it may be doubted whether people
anywhere relished sport more keenly or found more pleasure in their
everyday pursuits. The occasional family without neighbors was likely to
suffer from loneliness. But few of the settlers were thus cut off, and
as a rule community life was not only physically possible but highly
developed. Many were the opportunities that served to bring together the
frontiersmen, with their families, throughout a settlement or county.
Foremost among such occasions were the log-rollings.
After a settler had felled the thick-growing trees on a plot which he
desired to prepare for cultivation, he cut them, either by sawing or by
burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in length. Frequently these
were three, four, or even five feet in diameter, so that they could not
be moved by one man, even with a team of horses. In such a situation,
the settler would send word to his neighbors for miles around that on a
given day there would be a log-rolling at his place; and when the day
arrived six, or a dozen, or perhaps a score, of sturdy men, with teams
of horses and yokes of oxen, and very likely accompanied by members of
their families, would arrive on the scene with merry shouts of
anticipation. By means of handspikes and chains drawn by horses or oxen,
the great timbers were pushed, rolled, and dragged into heaps, and by
nightfall the field lay open and ready for the plough--requiring, at the
most, only the burning of the huge piles that had been gathered.
Without loss of time the fires were started; and as darkness came on,
the countryside glowed as with the light of a hundred huge torches. The
skies were reddened, and as a mighty oak or poplar log toppled and fell
to the ground, showers of sparks lent the scene volcanic splendor. Bats
and owls and other dim-eyed creatures of the night flew about in
bewilderment, sometimes bumping hard against fences or other objects,
sometimes plunging madly into the flames and contributing to the general
holocaust. For days the great fires were kept going, until the last
remnants of this section of the once imposing forest were consumed;
while smoke hung far out over the country, producing an atmospheric
effect like that of Indian summer.
Heavy exertion called for generous refreshment, and on these occasions
the host could be depended on to provide an abundance of food and drink.
The little cabin could hardly be made to accommodate so many guests,
even in relays. Accordingly, a long table was constructed with planks
and trestles in a shady spot, and at noon--and perhaps again in the
evening--the women folk served a meal which at least made up in "staying
qualities" what it lacked in variety or delicacy. The principal dish was
almost certain to be "pot-pie," consisting of boiled turkeys, geese,
chickens, grouse, veal, or venison, with an abundance of dumplings.
This, with cornbread and milk, met the demands of the occasion; but if
the host was able to furnish a cask of rum, his generosity was
thoroughly appreciated.
In the autumn, corn-huskings were a favorite form of diversion,
especially for the young people; and in the early spring neighbors
sometimes came together to make maple sugar. A wedding was an important
event and furnished diversion of a different kind. From distances of
twenty and thirty miles people came to attend the ceremony, and often
the festivities extended over two or three days. Even now there was work
to be done; for as a rule the neighbors organized a house-building
"bee," and before separating for their homes they constructed a cabin
for the newly wedded pair, or at all events brought it sufficiently near
completion to be finished by the young husband himself.
Even after a day of heavy toil at log-rolling, the young men and boys
bantered one another into foot races, wrestling matches, shooting
contests, and other feats of strength or skill. And if a fiddler could
be found, the day was sure to end with a "hoe-down"--a dance that "made
even the log-walled house tremble." No corn-husking or wedding was
complete without dancing, although members of certain of the more
straitlaced religious sects already frowned upon the diversion.
Rough conditions of living made rough men, and we need not be surprised
by the testimony of English and American travelers, that the frontier
had more than its share of boisterous fun, rowdyism, lawlessness, and
crime. The taste for whiskey was universal, and large quantities were
manufactured in rude stills, not only for shipment down the Mississippi,
but for local consumption. Frequenters of the river-town taverns called
for their favorite brands--"Race Horse," "Moral Suasion," "Vox Populi,"
"Pig and Whistle," or "Split Ticket," as the case might be. But the
average frontiersman cared little for the niceties of color or flavor so
long as his liquor was cheap and produced the desired effect. Hard work
and a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; and while ordinarily
he drank only water and milk at home, at the taverns and at social
gatherings he often succumbed to potations which left him in happy
drunken forgetfulness of daily hardships. House-raisings and weddings
often became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting and terminating in
brutal and bloody brawls. Foreign visitors to the back country were led
to comment frequently on the number of men who had lost an eye or an
ear, or had been otherwise maimed in these rough-and-tumble contests.
The great majority of the frontiersmen, however, were sober,
industrious, and law-abiding folk; and they were by no means beyond the
pale of religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch-Irish,
Presbyterianism was in earlier days the principal creed, although there
were many Catholics and adherents of the Reformed Dutch and German
churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About the beginning of the
nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists and
Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited by means of one of the most
curious and characteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp-meeting
"revival." The years 1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several
great waves of religious excitement by which the West--especially Ohio,
Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee--was periodically swept until within
the memory of men still living.
Camp-meetings were usually planned and managed by Methodist
circuit-riders or Baptist itinerant preachers, who hesitated not to
carry their work into the remotest and most dangerous parts of the back
country. When the news went abroad that such a meeting was to take
place, people flocked to the scene from far and near, in wagons, on
horseback, and on foot. Pious men and women came for the sake of
religious fellowship and inspiration; others not so pious came from
motives of curiosity, or even to share in the rough sport for which the
scoffers always found opportunity. The meeting lasted days, and even
weeks; and preaching, praying, singing, "testifying," and "exhorting"
went on almost without intermission. "The preachers became frantic in
their exhortations; men, women, and children, falling as if in
catalepsy, were laid out in rows. Shouts, incoherent singing, sometimes
barking as of an unreasoning beast, rent the air. Convulsive leaps and
dancing were common; so, too, 'jerking,' stakes being driven into the
ground to jerk by, the subjects of the fit grasping them as they writhed
and grimaced in their contortions. The world, indeed, seemed demented."
¹ Whole communities sometimes professed conversion; and it was
considered a particularly good day's work when notorious disbelievers or
wrong-doers--"hard bats," in the phraseology of the frontier--or gangs
of young rowdies whose only object in coming was to commit acts of
deviltry, succumbed to the peculiarly compelling influences of the
occasion.
¹ Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley, p. 116.
In this sort of religion there was, of course, much wild emotionalism
and sheer hysteria; and there were always people to whom it was
repellent. Backsliders were numerous, and the person who "fell from
grace" was more than likely to revert to his earlier wickedness in its
grossest forms. None the less, in a rough, unlearned, and materialistic
society such spiritual shakings-up were bound to yield much permanent
good. Most western people, at one time or another, came under the
influence of the Methodist and Baptist revivals; and from the men and
women who were drawn by them to a new and larger view of life were
recruited the hundreds of little congregations whose meeting-houses in
the course of time dotted the hills and plains from the Alleghanies to
the Mississippi. As for the hard-working, honest-minded frontier
preachers who braved every sort of danger in the performance of their
great task, the West owes them an eternal debt of gratitude. In the
words of Roosevelt, "their prejudices and narrow dislikes, their raw
vanity and sullen distrust of all who were better schooled than they,
count for little when weighed against their intense earnestness and
heroic self-sacrifice."
Nor was education neglected. Many of the settlers, especially those who
came from the South, were illiterate. But all who made any pretense of
respectability were desirous of giving their children an opportunity to
learn to read and write. Accordingly, wherever half a dozen families
lived reasonably close together, a log schoolhouse was sure to be found.
In the days before public funds existed for the support of education the
teachers were paid directly, and usually in produce, by the patrons.
Sometimes a wandering pedagogue would find his way into a community and,
being engaged to give instruction for two or three months during the
winter, would "board around" among the residents and take such
additional pay as he could get. More often, some one of the settlers who
was fortunate enough to possess the rudiments of an education undertook
the rôle of schoolmaster in the interval between the autumn
corn-gathering and the spring ploughing and planting.
Instruction rarely extended beyond the three R's; but occasionally a
newcomer who had somewhere picked up a smattering of algebra, Latin, or
astronomy stirred the wonder, if not also the suspicion, of the
neighborhood. Schoolbooks were few and costly; crude slates were made
from pieces of shale; pencils were fashioned from varicolored soapstone
found in the beds of small streams. No frontier picture is more familiar
or more pleasing than that of the farmer's boy sitting or lying on the
floor during the long winter evening industriously tracing by firelight
or by candlelight the proverb or quotation assigned him as an exercise
in penmanship, or wrestling with the intricacies of least common
denominators and highest common divisors. It is in such a setting that
we get our first glimpse of the greatest of western Americans, Abraham
Lincoln.