CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND PURSUITS OF THE PEOPLE.
Cotton and Sugar Planters;--Farmers;--Population of the large towns and
cities;--Frontier class;--Hunters and Trappers;--Boatmen.
There is great diversity in the character and habits of the population
of the Valley of the Mississippi.
Those who have emigrated from the Atlantic states, as have a very large
proportion of those persons who were not born in the Valley, of course
do not differ essentially from the remaining population of those states.
Some slight shades of difference are perceptible in such persons as have
lived long enough in the country to become assimilated to the habits,
and partake of the feelings, of western people.
Emigrants from Europe have brought the peculiarities of the nations and
countries from whence they have originated, but are fast losing their
national manners, and feelings, and, to use a provincial term, will soon
become "westernized."
The march of emigration from the Atlantic border has been nearly in a
line due west. Tennessee was settled by Carolinians, and Kentucky by
Virginians. Ohio received the basis of its population from the states in
the same parallel, and hence partakes of all the varieties from Maryland
to New England. Michigan is substantially a child of New York. The
planters of the south have gone to Mississippi, Louisiana, and the
southern part of Arkansas. Kentucky and Tennessee have spread their sons
and daughters over Indiana, Illinois and Missouri; but the two former
states are now receiving great numbers of emigrants from all the
northern states, including Ohio, and multitudes from the south, who
desire to remove beyond the boundaries and influence of a slave
population.
Slavery in the west, keeps nearly in the same parallels as it holds in
the east, and is receding south, as it does on the Atlantic coast. Many
descendants of the Scotch, Irish and Germans, have come into the
frontier states from Western Pennsylvania.
We have European emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. Those of the
latter are more generally found about our large towns and cities, and
along the lines of canalling.
The French were the explorers and early settlers of the Valley
immediately bordering on the Mississippi, 150 years since. They formed
the basis of population of Louisiana a few years since, but are
relatively diminishing before the emigration from other states of the
Union. Their descendants show many of the peculiar and distinctive
traits of that people in all countries. They possess mild vivacity, and
gaiety, and are distinguished for their quiet, inoffensive, domestic,
frugal, and unenterprising spirit and manners. The poorer class of
French are rather peculiar and unique. Their ancestors were isolated
from the rest of the world, had no object of excitement or ambition,
cared little for wealth, or the accumulation of property, and were
accustomed to hunt, make voyages in their canoes, smoke and traffic with
the Indians. But few of them knew how to read and write. Accustomed from
infancy to the life of huntsmen, trappers and boatmen, they make but
indifferent farmers. They are contented to live in the same rude, but
neatly whitewashed cabin, cultivate the same cornfields in the same
mode, and drive the same rudely constructed horse cart their fathers
did. In the neatness of their gardens, which are usually cultivated by
the females, they excel the Americans. They are the _coureurs du bois_
of the West.
The European Germans are now coming into the Valley by thousands, and,
for a time, will retain their manners and language.
_Cotton and Sugar Planters._--These people, found chiefly in
Mississippi, Louisiana, and the southern part of Arkansas, have a great
degree of similarity. They are noted for their high-mindedness,
generosity, liberality, hospitality, sociability, quick sense of honor,
resentment of injuries, indolence, and, in too many cases, dissipation.
They are much addicted to the sports of the turf and the vices of the
gaming table. Still there are many planters of strictly moral, and even
religious habits. They are excessively jealous of their political
rights, yet frank and open hearted in their dispositions, and carry the
duties of hospitality to a great extent. Having overseers on most of
their plantations, the labor being performed by slaves, they have much
leisure, and are averse to much personal attention to business. They
dislike care, profound thinking and deep impressions. The young men are
volatile, gay, dashing and reckless spirits, fond of excitement and high
life. There is a fatal propensity amongst the southern planters to
decide quarrels, and even trivial disputes by duels. But there are also
many amiable and noble traits of character amongst this class; and if
the principles of the Bible and religion could be brought to exert a
controlling influence, there would be a noble spirited race of people in
the southwestern states.
It cannot be expected that I should pass in entire silence the system of
slaveholding in the lower Valley, or its influence on the manners and
habits of the people. This state of society seems unavoidable at
present, though I have no idea or expectation it will be perpetual.
Opposite sentiments and feelings are spreading over the whole earth, and
a person must have been a very inattentive observer of the tendencies
and effects of the diffusion of liberal principles not to perceive that
hereditary, domestic servitude must have an end.
This is a subject, however, that from our civil compact, belongs
exclusively to the citizens of the states concerned; and if not
unreasonably annoyed, the farming slaveholding states, as Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri, will soon provide for its eventual termination.
Doubtless, in the cotton and sugar growing states it will retain its
hold with more tenacity, but the influence of free principles will roll
onward until the evil is annihilated.
The barbarous and unwise regulations in some of the planting states,
_which prohibit the slaves from being taught to read_, are a serious
impediment to the moral and religious instruction of that numerous and
unfortunate class. Such laws display on the part of the law makers,
little knowledge of human nature and the real tendency of things. To
keep _slaves_ entirely ignorant of the rights of man, in this
spirit-stirring age, is utterly impossible. Seek out the remotest and
darkest corner of Louisiana, and plant every guard that is possible
around the negro quarters, and the light of truth will penetrate. Slaves
will find out, for they already know it, that they possess rights as
men. And here is the fatal mistake now committed in the southern
slaveholding states--legislating against the instruction of their
slaves--to keep them from knowing their rights. They will obtain some
loose, vague, and undefined notion of the doctrine of human rights, and
the unrighteousness of oppression in this republican country. Being
kept from all the moral and religious instruction which Sabbath schools,
the Bible, and other good books are calculated to impart, and with those
undefined notions of liberty, and without any moral principle, they are
prepared to enter into the first insurrectionary movement proposed by
some artful and talented leader. The same notion prevailed in the West
Indies half a century since, and many of the planters resisted and
persecuted the benevolent Moravians, who went there to instruct the
blacks in the principles and duties of religion. A few of the planters
reasoned justly. They invited these benevolent men on their plantations,
and gave them full liberty on the Sabbath, and at other suitable
seasons, to instruct their slaves. The happiest effects followed. On
these plantations, where riot, misrule, and threatened insurrections,
had once spread a panic through the colony, order, quietness and
submission followed. Such would be the effects if the southern planter
would invite the minister of the gospel and the Sunday school teacher to
visit his plantation, allow his slaves to be instructed to read, and
each to be furnished with a copy of the Scriptures. The southern planter
hourly lives under the most terrific apprehensions. It is in vain to
disguise the fact. As Mr. Randolph once significantly said in Congress,
"_when the night bell rings, the mother hugs her infant closer to her
breast_." Slavery, under any circumstances, is a bitter draught--equally
bitter to him who tenders the cup, and to him who drinks it. But in all
the northern slaveholding states, it is comparatively mild. Its condition
would be much alleviated, and the planter might sleep securely if he would
abolish his barbarous laws, more congenial with Asiatic despotism than
American republicanism, and provide for his slaves the benefits of
wholesome instruction. Philanthropy and interest unite in their demands
upon every southern planter to provide Sunday school instruction for his
slaves.
The planting region of the lower Valley furnishes an immense market for
the productions and manufactures of the upper Valley. Indirectly, the
Louisiana sugar business is a source of profit to the farmer of Illinois
and Missouri. Pork, beef, corn, corn-meal, flour, potatoes, butter, hay,
&c. in vast quantities, go to supply these plantations. In laying in
their stores, the sugar planters usually purchase one barrel of second
or third quality of beef or pork per annum, for each laborer. Large
drafts for sugar mills, engines and boilers, are made upon the
Cincinnati and Pittsburg iron foundries. Mules and horses are driven
from the upper country, or from the Mexican dominions, to keep up the
supply.
The commerce of the upper country that concentrates at New Orleans is
amazing, and every year is rapidly increasing. Sixteen hundred arrivals
of steamboats took place in 1832, and the estimated number in 1835 is
2,300.
_Farmers._--In the northern half of the Valley the productions, and the
modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large
proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such
facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons
ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every
farmer in a few years, with reasonable industry, becomes comparatively
independent. Tobacco and hemp are among the staple productions of
Kentucky.
Neat cattle, horses, mules and swine are its stock. Some stock growers
have monopolized the smaller farms till they are surrounded with several
thousand acres. Blue grass pastures furnish summer feed, and extensive
fields of corn, cut up near the ground, and stacked in the fields,
furnish stores for fattening stock in the winter.
In some counties, raising of stock has taken place of all other
business. The Scioto Valley, and other districts in Ohio, are famous for
fine, well fed beef. Thousands of young cattle are purchased by the Ohio
graziers, at the close of winter, of the farmers of Illinois and
Missouri. The Miami and Whitewater sections of Ohio and Indiana, abound
with swine. Cincinnati has been the great pork mart of the world.
150,000 head of hogs have been frequently slaughtered there in a season.
About 75,000 is estimated to be the number slaughtered at that place the
present season. This apparent falling off in the pork business, at
Cincinnati, is accounted for by the vast increase of business at other
places. Since the opening of the canals in Ohio, many provision
establishments have been made along their line. Much business of the
kind is now done at Terre Haute and other towns on the Wabash,--at
Madison, Louisville, and other towns on the Ohio,--at Alton and other
places in Illinois.
The farmers of the West are independent in feeling, plain in dress,
simple in manners, frank and hospitable in their dwellings, and soon
acquire a competency by moderate labor. Those from Kentucky, Tennessee,
or other states south of the Ohio river, have large fields, well
cultivated, and enclosed with strong built rail or worm fences, but they
often neglect to provide spacious barns and other outhouses for their
grain, hay and stock. The influence of habit, is powerful. A Kentuckian
would look with contempt upon the low fences of a New-Englander as
indicating thriftless habits, while the latter would point at the
unsheltered stacks of wheat, and dirty threshing floor of the former, as
proof direct of bad economy and wastefulness.
_Population of the Cities and large Towns._ The population of western
towns does not differ essentially from the same class in the Atlantic
states, excepting there is much less division into grades and ranks,
less ignorance, low depravity and squalid poverty amongst the poor, and
less aristocratic feeling amongst the rich. As there is never any lack
of employment for laborers of every description, there is comparatively
no suffering from that cause. And the hospitable habits of the people
provide for the sick, infirm and helpless. Doubtless, our
_circumstances_ more than any thing else, cause these shades of
difference. The common mechanic is on a social equality with the
merchant, the lawyer, the physician, and the minister. They have shared
in the same fatigues and privations, partook of the same homely fare, in
many instances have fought side by side in defence of their homes
against the inroads of savages,--are frequently elected to the same
posts of honor, and have accumulated property simultaneously. Many
mechanics in the western cities and towns, are the owners of their own
dwellings, and of other buildings, which they rent. I have known many a
wealthy merchant, or professional gentleman occupy on rent, a building
worth several thousand dollars, the property of some industrious
mechanic, who, but a few years previous, was an apprentice lad, or
worked at his trade as a journeyman. Any sober, industrious mechanic can
place himself in affluent circumstances, and place his children on an
equality with the children of the commercial and professional community,
by migrating to any of our new and rising western towns. They will find
no occasion here for combinations to sustain their interests, nor meet
with annoyance from gangs of unprincipled foreigners, under the
imposing names of "Trades Unions."
Manufactures of various kinds are carried on in our western cities.
Pittsburg has been characterized as the "Birmingham of America." The
manufactures of iron, machinery and glass, and the building of
steamboats, are carried on to a great extent.
Iron and salt, are made in great quantities in Western Pennsylvania, and
Western Virginia. Steamboats are built to a considerable extent at
Fulton, two miles above Cincinnati, and occasionally at many other
places on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Alton offers great facilities
for this business. Cotton bagging, bale ropes, and cordage, are
manufactured in Tennessee and Kentucky. The following article from the
Covington Enquirer, gives a few items of the industry and enterprise of
Kentucky,--of the manufacture of Newport and Covington. Both of these
thriving towns lie at the mouth of the Licking river, the one on the
right bank, and the other on the left, and both in direct view of
Cincinnati.
MANUFACTURES IN COVINGTON AND NEWPORT.
"Founding the calculation upon the actual manufactures of October, and
the known power of their machinery, the Company will the ensuing year,
give employment to more than four hundred operatives, and manufacture,
60,000 lbs. of Cotton Bagging,
84,000 do Cotton Yarns,
274,268 lbs. Bale Rope,
448,000 do Cordage,
44,592 yards Linseys,
63,588 do Cotton Plains,
97,344 do Kentucky Jeans,
548,530 do Cotton Bagging and Hemp.
Estimating Bale Rope and Cotton Bagging at 33 per cent under the price
at which the Company have sold these articles for the last six months,
the manufactures of this Company during the ensuing year will amount to
$358,548.44. Almost all the manufactures at Covington and Newport being
exported to foreign markets, it will result that the annual exports from
these points will, in round numbers, be from the
Interior $750,000
Campbell County 150,000
Boone County 234,000
Covington 548,500
Newport 358,500
----------
$2,041,000
The Newport Manufacturing Company has depended principally for its
supply of Hemp, on the production of Mason county, of which Maysville is
the market;--this season they have not been able to get a supply at
Maysville, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of the Hemp
manufactories in Kentucky, that this company, owing to the scarcity and
high prices of Hemp in Kentucky, _has imported this season_ 354,201 lbs.
_Russia Hemp_.
Various manufactures are springing up in all the new states, which will
be noticed under their proper heads.
The number of merchants and traders is very great in the Valley of the
Mississippi, yet mercantile business is rapidly increasing.--Thousands
of the farmers of the West, are partial traders. They take their own
produce, in their own flat boats, down the rivers to the market of the
lower country.
_Frontier class of Population._ The rough, sturdy habits of the
backwoodsmen, living in that plenty which depends on God and nature,
have laid the foundation of independent thought and feeling deep in the
minds of western people.
Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the waves
of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the Pioneer,
who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural
growth of vegetation, called the "range," and the proceeds of hunting.
His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his
efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn, and a "truck patch." The last
is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears,
cucumbers and potatoes. A log cabin, and occasionally a stable and corn
crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or "deadened,"
and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. It is quite immaterial whether
he ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time
being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the "lord of the
manor." With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes
into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of a new county,
or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other
families of similar taste and habits, and occupies till the range is
somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more
frequently the case, till neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges and
fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow-room. The pre-emption law enables
him to dispose of his cabin and cornfield, to the next class of
emigrants, and, to employ his own figures, he "breaks for the high
timber,"--"clears out for the New Purchase," or migrates to Arkansas or
Texas, to work the same process over.
The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, add "field to field,"
clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn
log houses, with glass windows, and brick or stone chimneys,
occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school houses, court houses,
&c., and exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life.
Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enterprise come. The
"settler" is ready to sell out, and take the advantage of the rise of
property,--push farther into the interior, and become himself, a man of
capital and enterprise in time. The small village rises to a spacious
town or city,--substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields,
orchards, gardens--colleges and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks,
leghorns, crapes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies,
frivolities and fashions, are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling
westward--the real _el dorado_ is still farther on.
A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general
movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale of
society.
The writer has travelled much amongst the first class--the real
pioneers. He has lived many years in connexion with the second grade,
and now the third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana,
Illinois and Missouri. Migration has become almost a habit in the west.
Hundreds of men can be found, not fifty years of age, who have settled
for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new spot. To sell out and
remove only a few hundred miles, makes up a portion of the variety of
backwoods life and manners.
But to return to the Frontier class.
1. _Dress._--The hunting shirt is universally worn. This is a kind of
loose, open frock, reaching halfway down the thighs, with large sleeves,
the body open in front, lapped over, and belted with a leathern girdle,
held together with a buckle. The cape is large, and usually fringed with
different colored cloth from that of the body. The bosom of this dress
sometimes serves as a wallet for a "chunk" of bread, jerk or smoke-dried
venison, and other articles. It is made either of dressed deer skins,
linsey, coarse linen, or cotton. The shirt, waistcoat and pantaloons are
of similar articles and of the customary form. Wrappers of cloth or
dressed skins, called "leggins" are tied round the legs when travelling.
Moccasins of deer skins, shoe packs, and rough shoes, the leather tanned
and cobbled by the owner, are worn on the feet.
The females' dress in a coarse gown of cotton, a bonnet of the same
stuff, and denominated in the eastern states a "sun-bonnet." The latter
is constantly worn through the day, especially when company is present.
The clothing for both sexes is made at home. The wheel and loom are
common articles of furniture in every cabin.
2. _Dwellings._--"Cabin" is the name for a plain, rough log-house,
throughout the west. The spot being selected, usually in the timbered
land, and near some spring, the first operation of the newly arrived
emigrant is to cut about 40 logs of the proper size and length for a
single cabin, or twice that number for a double one, and haul them to
the spot. A large oak or other suitable timber, of straight grain, and
free from limbs, is selected for clapboards for the roof. These are four
feet in length, split with a froe six or eight inches wide, and half an
inch thick. _Puncheons_ are used for the floor. These are made by
splitting trees about eighteen inches in diameter into slabs, two or
three inches in thickness, and hewn on the upper surface. The door way
is made by cutting out the logs after raising, of a suitable width, and
putting upright pieces of timber at the sides. The shutter is made of
clapboards, pinned on cross pieces, hung by wooden hinges, and fastened
by a wooden latch. A similar aperture, but is wider made at one end for
the chimney. The men of the settlement, when notified, collect and raise
the building. Four stout men with axes are placed on the corners to
notch the logs together, while the rest of the company lift them up.
After the roof is on the body of the building, it is slightly hewed down
both out and inside. The roof is formed by shortening each end log in
succession till one log forms the comb of the roof. The clapboards are
put on so as to cover all cracks, and held down by poles or small logs.
The chimney is built of sticks of wood, the largest at the bottom, and
the smallest at the top, and laid up with a supply of mud or clay
mortar. The interstices between the logs are chinked with strips of wood
and daubed with mortar both outside and in. A double cabin consists of
two such buildings with a space of 10 or 12 feet between, over which the
roof extends.
A _log house_, in western parlance, differs from a cabin in the logs
being hewn on two sides to an equal thickness before raising,--in having
a framed and shingled roof, a brick or stone chimney, windows, tight
floors, and are frequently clapboarded on the outside and plastered
within.
A log house thus finished, costs more than a framed one. Cabins are
often the temporary dwellings of opulent and highly respectable
families.
The axe, auger, froe, drawing knife, broad-axe, and crosscut saw are the
only tools required in constructing these rude edifices;--sometimes the
axe and auger only are employed. Not a nail or pane of glass is needed.
Cabins are by no means as wretched for residences as their name imports.
They are often roomy, comfortable and neat. If one is not sufficient to
accommodate the family, another is added, and another until sufficient
room is obtained.
3. _Furniture and mode of living._--The genuine backwoodsman makes
himself and family comfortable and contented where those, unaccustomed
to his mode of life, would live in unavailing regret, or make a thousand
awkward apologies on the visit of a neighbor or traveller. A table is
made of a split slab and supported by four round legs. Clapboards
supported by pins stuck in the logs answer for shelves for table
furniture. The bedstead is often made in the corner of the room by
sticks placed in the logs, supported at the outward corner by a post, on
which clapboards are laid, the ends of which enter the wall between the
logs, and which support the bedding. On the arrival of travellers or
visiters, the bed clothing is shared with them, being spread on the
puncheon floor that the feet may project towards the fire. Many a night
has the writer passed in this manner, after a fatiguing day's ride, and
reposed more comfortably than on a bed of down in a spacious mansion.
All the family of both sexes, with all the strangers who arrive, often
lodge in the same room. In that case the under garments are never taken
off, and no consciousness of impropriety or indelicacy of feeling is
manifested. A few pins stuck in the wall of the cabin display the
dresses of the women and the hunting shirts of the men. Two small forks
or bucks-horns fastened to a joist are indispensable articles for the
support of the rifle. A loose floor of clapboards, and supported by
round poles, is thrown over head for a loft which furnishes a place to
throw any articles not immediately wanted, and is frequently used for a
lodging place for the younger branches of the family. A ladder planted
in the corner behind the door answers the purpose of stairs.
The necessary table and kitchen furniture are a few pewter dishes and
spoons, knives and forks, (for which however, the common hunting knife
is often a substitute,) tin cups for coffee or milk, a water pail and a
small gourd or calabash for water, with a pot and iron Dutch oven,
constitute the chief articles. Add to these a tray for wetting up meal
for corn bread, a coffee pot and set of cups and saucers, a set of
common plates, and the cabin is furnished. The hominy mortar and hand
mill are in use in all frontier settlements. The first consists of a
block of wood with an excavation burned at one end and scraped out with
an iron tool, wide at top and narrow at the bottom that the action of
the pestle may operate to the best advantage. Sometimes a stump of a
large tree is excavated while in its natural position. An elastic pole,
20 or 30 feet in length, with the large end fastened under the ground
log of the cabin, and the other elevated 10 or 15 feet and supported by
two forks, to which a pestle 5 or 6 inches in diameter and 8 or 10 feet
long is fixed on the elevated end by a large mortice, and a pin put
through its lower end so that two persons can work it in conjunction.
This is much used for pounding corn. A very simple instrument to answer
the same purpose, is a circular piece of tin, perforated, and attached
to a piece of wood like a grater, on which the ears of corn are rubbed
for meal. The hand mill is in the same form as that used in Judea in the
time of our Savior. Two circular stones, about 18 inches in diameter
constructed like ordinary mill stones, with a staff let into the runner
or upper stone near its outer edge, with the upper end inserted in a
joist or board over head, and turned by the hands of two persons while
one feeds it with corn. Horse mills follow the mortar and hand mill in
the scale of improvement. They are constructed variously. A _hand_ mill
is the most simple. A large upright post is placed on a gudgeon, with
shafts extending horizontally 15 or 20 feet. Around the ends of these is
a band of raw hide twisted, which passes around the trundle head and
turns the spindle and communicates motion to the stone. A _cog_ mill is
formed by constructing a rim with cogs upon the shafts, and a trundle
head to correspond. Each person furnishes his own horses to turn the
mill, performs his own grinding, and pays toll to the owner for use of
the mill. Mills with the wheel on an inclined plane, and carried by oxen
standing on the wheel, are much in use in those sections where water
power is not convenient, but these indicate an advance to the second
grade of society.
Instead of bolting cloths, the frontier people use a sieve or as called
here, a "search." This is made from a deer skin prepared to resemble
parchment, stretched on a hoop and perforated full of holes with a hot
wire.
Every backwoodsman carries on all occasions, the means of furnishing his
meat. The rifle, bullet pouch and horn, hunting knife, horse and dog are
his constant companions when from home, and woe be to the wolf, bear,
deer or turkey that comes within one hundred and fifty yards of his
trail.
With the first emigration there are few mechanics; hence every settler
becomes expert in supplying his own necessaries. Besides clearing land,
building cabins, and making fences, he stocks his own plough, repairs
his wagon and his harness, tans his own leather, makes his shoes,
tables, bedsteads, stools or seats, trays and a hundred other articles.
These may be rudely constructed, but they answer his purpose very well.
The following extracts from the graphic "SKETCHES OF THE WEST,"
by James Hall, Esq. completes this extended picture of backwoods
manners.
"The traveller, accustomed to different modes of life, is struck with
the rude and uncomfortable appearance of every thing about this
people,--the rudeness of their habitations, the carelessness of their
agriculture, the unsightly coarseness of all their implements and
furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels,
except the axe, the rifle, and the horse--these being invariably the
best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is
mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; and is little aware
how much ingenuity and toil have been exerted in procuring the few
comforts which they possess, in a country without arts, mechanics,
money, or commercial intercourse.
"The backwoodsman has many substantial enjoyments. After the fatigue of
his journey, and a short season of privation and danger, he finds
himself surrounded with plenty. His cattle, hogs, and poultry, supply
his table with meat; the forest abounds in game; the fertile soil yields
abundant crops; he has, of course, bread, milk, and butter; the rivers
furnish fish, and the woods honey. For these various articles, there is,
at first, no market, and the farmer acquires the generous habit of
spreading them profusely on his table, and giving them freely to a
hungry traveller and an indigent neighbor.
"Hospitality and kindness are among the virtues of the first settlers.
Exposed to common dangers and toils, they become united by the closest
ties of social intercourse. Accustomed to arm in each other's defence,
to aid in each other's labor, to assist in the affectionate duty of
nursing the sick, and the mournful office of burying the dead, the best
affections of the heart are kept in constant exercise; and there is,
perhaps, no class of men in our country, who obey the calls of
benevolence, with such cheerful promptness, or with so liberal a
sacrifice of personal convenience.
"We read marvellous stories of the ferocity of western men. The name of
Kentuckian is constantly associated with the idea of fighting, dirking,
and gouging. The people of whom we are now writing do not deserve this
character. They live together in great harmony, with little contention
and less litigation. The backwoodsmen are a generous and placable race.
They are bold and impetuous; and when differences do arise among them,
they are more apt to give vent to their resentment at once, than to
brood over their wrongs, or to seek legal redress. But this conduct is
productive of harmony; for men are always more guarded in their
deportment to each other, and more cautious of giving offence, when they
know that the insult will be quickly felt, and instantly resented, than
when the consequences of an offensive action are doubtful, and the
retaliation distant. We have no evidence that the pioneers of Kentucky
were quarrelsome or cruel; and an intimate acquaintance with the same
race, at a later period, has led the writer to the conclusion, that they
are a humane people; bold and daring, when opposed to an enemy, but
amiable in their intercourse with each other and with strangers, and
habitually inclined to peace."
In morals and the essential principles of religion, this class of people
are by no means so defective as many imagine. The writer has repeatedly
been in settlements and districts beyond the pale of civil and criminal
law, where the people are a "law unto themselves," where courts,
lawyers, sheriffs, and constables existed not, and yet has seen as much
quiet and order, and more honesty in paying just debts, than where legal
restraints operated in all their force. The turpitude of vice and the
majesty of virtue, were as apparent as in older settlements. Industry,
in laboring or hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, and hospitality
were rewarded with the confidence and honor of the people. Regulating
parties would exist, and thieves, rogues and counterfeiters were sure to
receive a striped Jacket "worked nineteen to the dozen," and by this
mode of operation, induced to "clear out;" but truth, uprightness,
honesty and sincerity are always respected. Many of the frontier class
are _illiterate_, but they are by no means _ignorant_. They are a
shrewd, observing, thinking people. They may not have learned the black
marks in books, but they have studied _men and things_, and have a quick
insight into human nature. They are not inattentive to religion, though
their opportunities of religious instruction are few, compared with old
countries. They have prejudices and fears about many of the organized
benevolent societies of the present age, yet there are no people more
readily disposed to attend religious meetings, and whose hearts are more
readily affected with the gospel than the backwoods people; and as large
a proportion are orderly professors of religion as in any part of the
Union. Ministers of the gospel and Missionaries, who can suit themselves
to the circumstances and habits of frontier people,--who like Paul, can
"become all things to all men,"--find pleasant and interesting fields of
labor on all our frontiers. But let such persons show fastidiousness,
affect superior intelligence and virtue, catechise the people for their
plainness and simplicity of manners, and draw invidious comparisons, and
they are sure to be "used up," or left without hearers, to deplore the
"dark clouds" of ignorance and prejudice in the west.
_Hunters and Trappers._ Entirely beyond the boundaries of civilization
are many hundreds of a unique class, distinguished by the terms Hunters
and Trappers. They are engaged in hunting buffalo and other wild game,
and trapping for beaver. They are found upon the vast prairies of the
West and Northwest,--in all the defiles and along the streams of the
Rocky mountains, and in various parts of the Oregon Territory, to the
peninsula of California. They are an enterprising and erratic race from
almost every state, and are usually in the employ of persons of capital
and enterprise, and who are concerned in the fur and peltry business.
Expeditions for one, two, or three years, are fitted out from St. Louis,
or some commercial point, consisting of companies, who ascend the rivers
to the regions of fur. The hunters and trappers, receive a proportion of
the profits of the expedition. Some become so enamored with this
wandering and exposed life as to lose all desire of returning to the
abodes of civilization, and remain for the rest of their lives in the
American deserts. There are individuals, who are graduates of colleges,
and who once stood high in the circles of refinement and taste, that
have passed more than twenty years amongst the roaming tribes of the
Rocky mountains, or on the western slope, till they have apparently lost
all feelings towards civilized life. They have afforded an interesting
but melancholy example of the tendencies of human nature towards the
degraded state of savages. The improvement of the species is a slow and
laborious process,--the deterioration is rapid, and requires only to be
divested of restraint, and left to its own unaided tendencies. Many
others have returned to the habits of civilization, and some with
fortunes made from the woods and prairies.
_Boatmen._ These are the fresh water sailors of the West, with much of
the light hearted, reckless character of the sons of the Ocean,
including peculiar shades of their own. Before the introduction of
Steamboats on the western waters, its immense commerce was carried on by
means of _keel boats_, and _barges_. The former is much in the shape of
a canal boat, long, slim-built, sharp at each end, and propelled by
setting poles and the cordelle or long rope. The barge is longer, and
has a bow and stern. Both are calculated to ascend streams but by a very
slow process. Each boat would require from ten to thirty hands,
according to its size. A number of these boats frequently sailed in
company. The boatmen were proverbially lawless at every town and
landing, and indulged without restraint in every species of dissipation,
debauchery and excess. But this race has become reformed, or nearly
extinct;--yes, reformed by the mighty power of steam. A steamboat, with
half the crew of a barge or keel, will carry ten times the burden, and
perform six or eight trips in the time it took a keel boat to make one
voyage. Thousands of flat boats, or "broad horns," as they are called,
pass _down_ the rivers with the produce of the country, which are
managed by the farmers of the West, but never return up stream. They
are sold for lumber, and the owners, after disposing of the cargo,
return by steam. The number of boatmen on the western waters is not only
greatly reduced, but those that remain are fast losing their original
character.