"You know the position of our settlement; therefore I need not describe
it. To the west it is enclosed by a chain of mountains, reaching to----.
To the east, the country is yet but very thinly inhabited. We are almost
insulated, and the houses are at a considerable distance from each other.
From the mountains we have but too much reason to expect our dreadful
enemy, the Indians; and the wilderness is a harbour, where it is
impossible to find them. It is a door through which they can enter our
country at any time; and as they seem determined to destroy the whole
frontier, our fate cannot be far distant. From lake Champlain almost all
has been conflagrated, one after another. What renders these incursions
still more dreadful is, that they most commonly take place in the dead
of the night. We never go to our fields, but we are seized with an
involuntary fear, which lessens our strength, and weakens our labour. No
other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts,
which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and
these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted
imaginations into the most terrific ideas. We never sit down, either to
dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and
prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals. The very appetite
proceeding from labour and peace of mind is gone! Our sleep is disturbed
by the most frightful dreams! Sometimes I start awake, as if the great
hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to
announce the arrival of the enemy: we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my
poor wife, with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if
we were to see each other no more. She snatches the youngest children from
their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions
the horrour of the dreadful moment! She tries to hide them in the cellar,
as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire! I place all my servants at
the window, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish. Fear
industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to
each other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole
hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense! What
a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a soldier
engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the
spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the
next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, quite
unmans me. Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest
despondency: at last, finding it was a false alarm, we return once more to
our beds; but what good can the sleep of nature do us, when interrupted
with _such_ scenes?"
* * * * *
But we will suppose our planter to have escaped the scalping knife and
tomahawk; and in the course of years situate in a thick, settled
neighbourhood of planters like himself, who have struggled through all the
foregoing difficulties: he is now a man of some consequence, builds a
house by the side of his former hut, which now serves him for a kitchen;
and as he is comfortably situate, we will leave him to the enjoyment of
the fruits of his industry.
Such a being has often ideas of liberty, and a contempt of vassalage and
slavery, which do honour to human nature.
The planter I have endeavoured to describe, I have supposed to be sober
and industrious: but when a man of an opposite description makes such an
attempt, he often degenerates into a demisavage; he cultivates no more
land than will barely supply the family with bread, or rather makes his
wife, and children perform that office. His whole employment is to procure
skins, and furs, to exchange for rum, brandy, and ammunition; for this
purpose he is often for several days together in the woods, without seeing
a human being. He is by no means at a loss; his rifle supplies him with
food, and at night he cuts down some boughs with his tomahawk, and
constructs a _wigwam_[Footnote: The Indian name for their huts so
constructed.], in which he spends the night, stretched on the skins of
those animals he has killed in the course of his excursion. This manner of
living he learned from his savage neighbours, the Indians, and like them
calls every other state of life _slavery_. It sometimes happens, that
an unsuccessful back settler joins the Indians at war with the states.
When this is the case, it is observed he is, if possible, more cruel than
his new allies; he eagerly imbibes all the vices of the savages, without a
single spark of their virtues. Farewell,
Yours &c.
_Philadelphia, March 18th, 1794_.
Dear Friend,
My present intention is to give you some conception of the family of a
planter, whose ancestors had in some degree gone through all the
difficulties I described in my last.
We will suppose them descended from the original english emigrants, who
came over with Penn; like them, to possess a high sense of religion; and
that this family are now in the quiet possession of about three hundred
acres of land, their own _property_[Footnote: There are very few _farms_
properly so called in the United States.], situate in Pennsylvania, about
seventy or eighty miles from Philadelphia. Whatever difficulties they, or
their ancestors, struggled formerly with, are now over; their lands are
cleared, and in the bosom of a fine country, with a sure market for every
article of produce they can possibly raise, and entirely out of the reach
of the most desperate predatory excursions of the savages.
They enjoy a happy state of mediocrity[Footnote: The quakers in
particular. I have seen at a meeting in West Jersey, in a very small town,
upwards of two hundred carriages, one horse chairs, and light waggons,
which are machines peculiar to this country, and well adapted to the sandy
soil of the state of New Jersey; they are covered like a caravan, and will
hold eight persons; the benches are removable at pleasure, and they are
also used to convey the produce of the country to market.], between riches
and poverty, perhaps the most enviable of all situations. When the boys of
this family are numerous, those the father cannot provide for at home, and
who prefer a planter's life to a trade, or profession, are, when married,
presented with two or three hundred acres of uncultivated land, which
their parents purchase for them as near home as possible. The young couple
are supplied with stock, and supported till they have a sufficient
quantity of land cleared to provide for themselves.
If unsuccessful through want of industry, &c., they often sell off, and
emigrate to Kentucky, or some other new country seven or eight hundred
miles to the S.W., and begin the world again as back settlers.
The daughters are brought up in habits of virtue and industry; the strict
notions of female delicacy, instilled into their minds from their earliest
infancy, never entirely forsake them. Even when one of these girls is
decoyed from the peaceful dwelling of her parents, and left by her
infamous seducer a prey to poverty and prostitution in a _brothel_ at
Philadelphia, her whole appearance is neat, and breathes an air of
modesty: you see nothing in her dress, language, or behaviour, that could
give you any reason to guess at her unfortunate situation; (how unlike her
unhappy sisters so circumstanced in England!) she by no means gives over
the idea of a husband, she is seldom disappointed: and, I am informed,
often makes an excellent wife.
The chief amusement of the country girls in winter is sleighing, of which
they are passionately fond, as indeed are the whole sex in this country. I
never heard a woman speak of this diversion but with rapture. You have
doubtless read a description of a _sleigh_, or sledge, as it is
common in all northern countries, and can only be used on the snow. In
British America this amusement may be followed nearly all the winter; but
so far to the south as Pennsylvania, the snow seldom lies on the ground
more than seven or eight days together. The consequence is, that every
moment that will admit of sleighing is seized on with avidity. The tavern
and inn-keepers are up all night; and the whole country is in motion. When
the snow begins to fall, our planter's daughters provide hot sand, which
at night they place in bags at the bottom of the sleigh. Their sweethearts
attend with a couple of horses, and away they glide with astonishing
velocity; visiting their friends for many miles round the country. But in
large towns, in order to have a sleighing frolic in _style_, it is
necessary to provide a _fiddler_ who is placed at the head of the
sleigh, and plays all the way. At every inn they meet with on the road,
the company alight and have a dance. But I perceive I am _dancing_
from my subject, which I suppose you are by this time heartily tired of; I
shall therefore conclude, by assuring you,