[6]Uniform exposure to the weather is favorable to health. I can affirm this from long experience and observation. Our hunters, and surveyors, who uniformly spend their time for weeks in the woods and prairies, who wade in the water, swim creeks, are drenched in the rains and dews, and sleep in the open air or a camp at night, very rarely are attacked with fevers. I have known repeated instances of young men, brought up delicately in the eastern cities, accustomed, as clerks, to a sedentary life, with feeble constitutions,—I have known such repeatedly to enter upon the business of surveying the public lands, or in the hunting and trapping business, be absent for months, and return with robust health. It is a common thing for a frontier man, whose health is on the decline, and especially when indications of pulmonary affection appear, to engage in a hunting expedition to renovate his health. I state these facts, and leave it to the medical faculty to explain thewhy and wherefore. One circumstance may deserve attention. All these men, as do the Indians,sleep with their feet towards the fire at night. And it is a common notion with this class, that if the feet are kept hot through the night, however cold the atmosphere, or however much exposed the rest of the body, no evil consequences will ensue. I have passed many a night in this position, after fatiguing rides of thirty or forty miles in the day on our extreme frontiers, and through rains, and never experienced any inconvenience to health, if I could get a pallet on the cabin floor, and my feet to the fire.Those who are exposed to these hardships but occasionally, when compelled by necessity, and who endeavor to protect themselves at all other times, usually suffer after such exposure.I have observed that children, when left to run in the open air and weather, who go barefoot, and oftentimes with a single light garment around them, who sleep on the floor at night, are more healthy than those who are protected.
[6]Uniform exposure to the weather is favorable to health. I can affirm this from long experience and observation. Our hunters, and surveyors, who uniformly spend their time for weeks in the woods and prairies, who wade in the water, swim creeks, are drenched in the rains and dews, and sleep in the open air or a camp at night, very rarely are attacked with fevers. I have known repeated instances of young men, brought up delicately in the eastern cities, accustomed, as clerks, to a sedentary life, with feeble constitutions,—I have known such repeatedly to enter upon the business of surveying the public lands, or in the hunting and trapping business, be absent for months, and return with robust health. It is a common thing for a frontier man, whose health is on the decline, and especially when indications of pulmonary affection appear, to engage in a hunting expedition to renovate his health. I state these facts, and leave it to the medical faculty to explain thewhy and wherefore. One circumstance may deserve attention. All these men, as do the Indians,sleep with their feet towards the fire at night. And it is a common notion with this class, that if the feet are kept hot through the night, however cold the atmosphere, or however much exposed the rest of the body, no evil consequences will ensue. I have passed many a night in this position, after fatiguing rides of thirty or forty miles in the day on our extreme frontiers, and through rains, and never experienced any inconvenience to health, if I could get a pallet on the cabin floor, and my feet to the fire.
Those who are exposed to these hardships but occasionally, when compelled by necessity, and who endeavor to protect themselves at all other times, usually suffer after such exposure.
I have observed that children, when left to run in the open air and weather, who go barefoot, and oftentimes with a single light garment around them, who sleep on the floor at night, are more healthy than those who are protected.
Cotton and Sugar Planters;—Farmers;—Population of the large towns and cities;—Frontierclass;—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 theemigration 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 thecoureurs du boisof 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 ofinjuries, 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 ofliberal 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 keepslavesentirely 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 theunrighteousness 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, atCincinnati, 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 amongstthe 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, ourcircumstancesmore 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 unprincipledforeigners, 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. ofCotton Bagging,84,000 lbs. ofCotton Yarns,274,268 lbs. ofBale Rope,448,000 lbs. ofCordage,44,592 yards ofLinseys,63,588 yards ofCotton Plains,97,344 yards ofKentucky Jeans,548,530 yards ofCotton 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$750,000Campbell County150,000Boone County234,000Covington548,500Newport358,500$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 season354,201 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 isthe 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 edificesof 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 realel doradois 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 otherarticles. 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.Puncheonsare 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 theupper 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.
Alog 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. Thefirst 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. Ahandmill 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 bandof raw hide twisted, which passes around the trundle head and turns the spindle and communicates motion to the stone. Acogmill 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 ofspreading 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, andinstantly 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 areilliterate, but they are by no meansignorant. They are a shrewd, observing, thinking people. They may not have learned the black marks in books, but they have studiedmen 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, andtrapping 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 havereturned 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 ofkeel boats, andbarges. 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, passdownthe rivers with the produce of the country, which are managed by the farmers of the West, but never return upstream. 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.
System of Surveys.—Meridian and Base Lines.—Townships.—Diagram of a townshipsurveyed into Sections.—Land Districts and Offices. —Pre-emption rights.—MilitaryBounty Lands.—Taxes.—Valuable Tracts of country unsettled.
In all the new states and territories, the lands which are owned by the general government, are surveyed and sold under one general system. Several offices, each under the direction of a surveyor general, have been established by acts of Congress, and districts, embracing one or more states, assigned them. The office for the surveys of all public lands in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and the Wisconsin country is located at Cincinnati. The one including the states of Illinois and Missouri, and the territory of Arkansas is at St. Louis. Deputy surveyors are employed to do the work at a stipulated rate per mile, generally from three to four dollars, who employ chain bearers, an axe, and flag man, and a camp-keeper.They are exposed to great fatigue and hardship, spending two or three months at a time in the woods and prairies, with slight, moveable camps for shelter.
In the surveys, "meridian" lines are first established, running north from the mouth of some noted river. These are intersected with "base" lines.
There are five principal meridians in the land surveys in the west.
The "First Principal Meridian" is a line due north from the mouth of the Miami.
The "Second Principal Meridian" is a line due north from the mouth of Little Blue river, in Indiana.
The "Third Principal Meridian" is a line due north from the mouth of the Ohio.
The "Fourth Principal Meridian" is a line due north from the mouth of the Illinois.
The "Fifth Principal Meridian" is a line due north from the mouth of the Arkansas. Another Meridian is used for Michigan, which passes through the central part of the state. Its base line extends from about the middle of lake St. Clair, across the state west to lake Michigan. Each of these meridians has its own base line.
The surveys connected with the third and fourth meridians, and a small portion of the second, embrace the state of Illinois.
The base line for both the second and third principal meridians commences at Diamond Island, in Ohio, opposite Indiana, and runs duewest till it strikes the Mississippi, a few miles below St. Louis.
All thetownshipsin Illinois, south and east of the Illinois river, are numbered from this base line either north or south.
The third principal meridian terminates with the northern boundary of the state.
The fourth principal meridian commences in in the centre of the channel, and at the mouth of the Illinois river, but immediately crosses to theeastshore, and passes up on that side, (and at one place nearly fourteen miles distant) to a point in the channel of the river, seventy-two miles from its mouth. Here its base line commences and extends across the peninsula to the Mississippi, a short distance above Quincy. The fourth principal meridian is continued northward through the military tract, and across Rock river, to a curve in the Mississippi at the upper rapids, in township eighteen north, and about twelve or fifteen miles above Rock Island. It here crosses and passes up thewestside of the Mississippi river fifty-three miles, and recrosses into Illinois, and passes through the town of Galena to the northern boundary of the state. It is thence continued to the Wisconsin river and made the principal meridian for the surveys of the territory, while the northern boundary line of the state is constituted its base line for that region.
Having formed a principal meridian with itscorresponding base line, for a district of country, the next operation of the surveyor is to divide this into tracts of six miles square, called "townships."
In numbering the townshipseastorwestfrom a principal meridian, they are called "ranges," meaning a range of townships; but in numberingnorthorsouthfrom a base line, they are called "townships." Thus a tract of land is said to be situated in township four north in range three east, from the third principal meridian; or as the case may be.
Townships are subdivided into square miles, or tracts of 640 acres each, called "sections." If near timber, trees are marked and numbered with the section, township, and range, near each sectional corner. If in a large prairie, a mound is raised to designate the corner, and a billet of charred wood buried, if no rock is near. Sections are divided into halves by a line north and south, and into quarters by a transverse line. In sales under certain conditions, quarters are sold in equal subdivisions of forty acres each, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. Any person, whether a native born citizen, or a foreigner, may purchase forty acres of the richest soil, and receive an indisputable title, for fifty dollars.
Rangesare townships counted either east or west from meridians.
Townshipsare counted either north or south from their respective base lines.
Fractions, are parts of quarter sections intersected by streams or confirmed claims.
The parts of townships, sections, quarters, &c. made at the lines of either townships or meridians are calledexcessesordeficiencies.
Sections, or miles square are numbered, beginning in the northeast corner of the township, progressively west to the range line, and then progressively east to the range line, alternately, terminating at the southeast corner of the township, from one to thirty-six, as in the following diagram: