Pioneers of the Old Southwest

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of moving westward by slow degrees, subduing the wilderness as they went, overleaped great spaces and planted themselves beyond, out of contact with the life they had left behind. Thus separated by hundreds of miles of intervening wilderness from the more civilized communities, the conquerors of the first American "West," prototypes of the conquerors of succeeding "W

ar behind their European contemporaries in the culture of the day. They were rich, without effort, both from their plantations, where black slaves and indentured servants labored, and from their coastwise and overseas trade. Their battles with forest and red man

d the rattlesnake and, being shaded by the overhead foliage, they held the heavy dews and bred swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and big flies which tortured both men and cattle. To protect the cattle and horses from the attacks of these pests the settlers were obliged to build large "smudges"-fires of green timber-against the wind. The animals soon learned to back up into the dense smoke and to move from one grazing spot to another as the wind changed. But useful as were the green timber fires that rolled their smoke on the wind t

ing was called, was undertaken by the community chiefly because the Indian danger necessitated swift building and made group action imperative. But the stanch heart is ever the glad heart. Nothing in this frontier history impresses us more than the joy of the pioneer at his labors. His determined optimism turned danger's dictation into an occasion for jollity. On the ap

t grip by its own substance alone to hold up the pioneer's dwelling, for there was not an iron nail to be had in the whole of the Back Country. Logs laid upon the foundation logs and notched into each other at the four corners formed the walls; and, when these stood at seven feet, the builders laid parallel timbers and puncheons to make both flooring and ceiling. The ri

abor was done. At supper the men took their ease on the ground, but with their rifles always in reach. If the cabin just raised by their efforts stood in the Yadkin, within sight of the great mountains the pioneers were one day to cross, perhaps a sudden bird note warning from the lookout, hidden in the brush, would bring the builders with a leap to their feet. It might be only a hunting band of friendly Catawbas that passed, or a lone Cherokee who knew that this was not his hour. If the latter, we can, in imagination, see him look once at

service berry is cherished alike by white men and Indians; and the red men have woven about it some of their prettiest legends. When June had ripened the tree's blue-black berries, the Back Country folk went out in parties to gather them. Though the service berry was a food staple on the frontier and its gathering a matter of household economy, the folk made their berry-picking jaunt a gala occasion. The women and children with pots and baskets-the young girls vying with each other, under the eyes of the youths, as to who could strip boughs the fastest-plucked gayly while the men, rifles in hand, kept guard. For these happy summer days were also the red man's scalping days and, at any

ide of frontier life. The bands of women and children at the harvestings, the log rollings, and the house raisings, were not there merely to lighten the men's work by their laughter and love-making. It was not safe for them to remain in the cabins, for, to the Indian, the cabin thus boldly thrust upon his immemorial hunting grounds was only a secondary evil; the greater evi

h their sustenance mainly depended. Sometimes, fortunately, the warning came in time for the frontiersman to collect his goods and chattels in his wagon and to round up his live stock and drive them safely into the common fortified enclosure. At other

stockades, and were fitted with portholes for the watchers and the marksmen. The entrance to the fort was a large folding gate of thick slabs. It was always on the side nearest the spring. The whole structure of the fort was bullet-proof and was erected without an iron nail or spike. In the border wars these forts withstood all attacks. The savages, having proved that they

dged the red-skinned schoolmaster, for their chief games were a training in his woodcraft and in the use of his weapons. Tomahawk-throwing was a favorite sport because of its gruesome practical purposes. The boys must learn to gauge the tomahawk's revolutions by the distance of the throw so as to bury the blade in its objective. Swift running and high jumping through the brush and fallen timber were sports that taught agility in escape. The boys learned to shoot accurately the long rifles of their time, with a log or a forked stick for a rest, and a moss pad under the barrel to keep it from jerking and spoiling the aim. They wrestled with each other, mastered the tricks of throwing an opponent, and learned the scalp hold instead of

lt. The rainfall in North Carolina was much heavier than in Virginia and, from autumn into early winter, the Yadkin forests were sheeted with rain; but wet weather, so far from deterring the hunter, aided him to the kill. In blowing rain, he knew he would find the deer herding in the sheltered places on the hillsides. In windless rain, he knew that his quarry ranged the open woods and the high places. The fair play of the pioneer held it a great disgrace to kill a deer in winter when the heavy frost had crusted the deep snow. On the crust men

equally for lightness, strength, and elasticity. It provided his straight logs for building, his block mortars-hollowed by fire and stone-for corn-grinding, his solid plain furniture, his axles, rifle butts, ax handles, and so forth. It supplied his magic wand for the searching out of iniquity in the junior members of his household, and his most cogent argument, as a citizen, in convincing the slothful, the blasphemous, or the dishonest adult whose errors disturbed communal harmony. Its nuts fed his hogs. Before he raised sto

built into the wall in the same way and softened for slumber by a mattress of pine needles, chaff, or dried moss. In the best light from the greased paper windowpanes stood the spinning wheel and loom, on which the housewife made cloth for the family's garments. Over the fireplace or beside the doorway, and suspended usually on stags' antlers, hung the firearms and the yellow powderhorns, the latter often carved in Indian fashion with scenes of the hunt or war. On a shelf or on pegs were the wooden spoons, plates, bowls, and noggins. Also near the fireplace, which was made of large flat stones with a mud-plastered

the cabin stood in a typical Virginian settlement where the folk were of English stock, it may be that the dulcimer and some old love song of the homeland enlivened the work-or perhaps chairs were pushed back and young people danced the country dances of the homeland and the Virginia Reel, for these Virginian English were merry folk, and the

f John Sevier, who was barely past his seventeenth birthday when he took to himself a wife. Or perhaps the dancing, in moccasined feet on the puncheon flooring, was a ceremonial to usher into Back Country life the new

ms by the fires of the primitive forge his father had set up near the trading path running from Hillsborough to the Catawba towns. It was said by the local nimrods that none could doctor a sick rifle better than young Daniel Boone, already the master huntsman of them all. And per

er Scot in a shining script that time cannot dull, there might sit a group of stern-faced men, all deep in discussion of some point of spiritual doctrine or of the temporal rights of men

inisters who fared into the Back Country to remind the Ulster Presbyterians of their spiritual duties was the Reverend Hugh McAden of Philadelphia. He made long itineraries under the greatest hardships, in constant danger from Indians and wild beasts, carrying the counsel of godliness to the far scattered flock. Among the Highland settlements the Reverend James Campbell f

p when the day's work was done. We who look back with thoughtful eyes upon the frontiersman-all links of contact with his racial past severed, at grips with destruction in the contenting of his needs-see something more, something larger, than he saw