USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 14
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FIRST YEAR
Let none understand me to say that religious meetings in the wooden world are not by very many attended from serious and devout motives : yet there, as elsewhere, many attend such meet- ings from secular motives, and some from very improper ones. Numbers go to see their neighbours or to hear the news, and not a few to electioneer. A very frequent cause is to "advertise strays."
Dignity is given to our pulpit gazetteering by confining the business to the clergy ; but in the Purchase, lay members, and even "a worldling" give out notices : and that, not by reading .the ad- vertisement in the reverential manner of the civilized churches, but extemporaneously and orally. Sometimes the affair assumes the form of the question implied, as thus :-
"Neighbour Bushwhack, livin down the lower end of Sugar Holler, would like to hear if any body in this here settlement has heern or seed a stray critter of hissin, as his hoss-beast, a three year old black geldin, come next spring, with a switch tail, but a kind a eat off by his other colt, slipt his bridle on Hick'ry Ridge last big meetin, and he aint heern or seen nothin of him sense."
To which indirect query one or more neighbours rising up will answer in this style ;-
"Well, I allow the critter didn't come over here, as he'd been heern on or seed by some of us-but if any body hears or sees sich a stray, we'll put him up, and let neighbour Bushwhack know of it."
Perhaps a notice thus given and answered in a city church would do as much to discountenance Sabbath advertising, as the rebukes of the religious press. Try it.
A big meeting is often held in the woods in our delicious autumns. And nothing is more welcome to our young people hard at work till then, and needing a holiday, than such a gath- ering. Then is the grand sparking time, and young men go ex- pressly as they say, to find "a most powerful heap of gals!" Nor is this curious heap of sun-bonnets and calico frocks adverse to a little extra attention; and hence, compound parties steal away at intervals to the springs, where they contrive accidentally to have a little meeting of their own, whose merry and loud notes return as strange echoes to the voice of psalmody and prayer.
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A small meeting extra, is often held at night in a friend's cabin. Then it sometimes happens, by reason of a storm or very long sermon, or both, that the folks conclude to stay all night; and then if the author's memory is faithful, we used to see what was called "a leetle fun." Nothing immoral or gross ever takes place ; but certainly we had something more lively than praying and singing.
It was, therefore, with some surprise we used to read reports from new missionaries, in which "the large numbers that came in all weathers and from great distances to attend protracted meetings, and who seemed unable to tear themselves away from the exercises, &c. &c." was considered as conclusive evidence that we New Purchase people had uncommon anxieties to hear the truth. Now, the result of all our experience, and we had a pretty rich one, is and was-that unregenerate hearts are pretty much out there as in here-that men born of log cabins and stick chimneys, and men born of silks and broadcloths, are all equally "born of the flesh" and "are flesh.", Maybe the German popula- tion about central Pennsylvania are exceptions, as a certain learned young Doctor of Divinity seems to think; but then, they are the sole exceptions.
The occasion offers to say a few words about the missionaries themselves. But while we profess to be very good-natured and social, we are not, reader, so charitable as to extend our term beyond pretty well educated, talented and evangelical mission- aries. We made Glenville head-quarters for missionaries and we ever found uneducated preachers and even small talented gentlemen, an inconvenience and an evil more than a blessing; and as to the unevangelical sort, learned or unlearned, they were a nuisance and a pest.
As a body, then, the true missionaries in the New Purchase were very excellent men; eminent in self-denial, in ardent zeal, in endless labours, in disinterestedness. They were considered Domestic Missionaries; but they endured as much as their breth- ren in the foreign field, and that without the incidental excite- ment and support derived from the eclat of a mission: especially when the wood's preacher comes to depend for his entire susten- ance on two or more weak settlements, the aid of the missionary
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society being declined or withdrawn. For a year or two an approximate salary may be paid, a few shillings in cash and the balance in "trade." Still, educated men need a few other articles beyond pork, corn, tow-linen, leather, &c .- a few books for instance. And they are forced to go a few journeys; wish to educate their children; pay doctor's fees, and the like. Nor is it, maybe, an unpardonable sin to aspire after furniture one de- gree above rough cabin apparatus. Hence the missionary must have a little hard cash; and hard enough for them, poor fellows, it is by the time they handle it.
The outposts, therefore, must be either wholly abandoned to profoundly ignorant, vain, empty, conceited, self-confident, and snarling fanatical preachers ; or proper preachers must do some things that are secular. And if the New Purchasers are abandon- ed, then must they be cursed out there with inspired clergy, such as we have heard thus reciting their apostolic creed :-
"Yes, bless the Lord, I am a poor, humble man-and I doesn't know a single letter in the A B C's, and couldn't read a chapter in the Bible no how you could fix it, bless the Lord !- I jist preach like old Peter and Poll, by the Sperit. Yes, we don't ax pay in cash nor trade nither for the Gospel, and arn't no hirelins like them high-flow'd college-larned sheepskins-but as the Lord freely give us, we freely give our fellow critturs."
Hence a few of the true preachers betake themselves to teach- ing as the least uncanonical avocation. And all would gladly do this, if scholars were plenty enough; and, if after all the extra labour in teaching, pay came not also in the shape of fat- flitch, cord-wood, eggs, and butter. Most true preachers and pastors are, therefore, compelled to enter some land; and then after long and arduous toils they contrive to barter some pro- duce at the settlement store for sugar, tea, coffee and paper. But to jingle a few silver dollars, the person must sell a cow, or calf, or even a horse!
The proverb, "half a loaf better than no bread," applies here; for if proper ministers out West do not, in very many places, in a great measure maintain themselves, settlements now half served by those noble men would not and could not be served at all. True, the folks out there might have husks from fanatical fel-
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lows; but Christ's sheep ought to have pastors and proper food -they are not hogs to be fed by the Devil's swine-herds.
Very nice and classic essays used to find their way sometimes to Glenville, which were full of very proper rhetorical words against secular clergy, and commanding them to reform and give them- selves wholly to the work of God and the ministry: essays no doubt well intended, but written, we apprehend, by inexperienced young gentlemen, just married, and seated in the parsonage in the midst of a well furnished library. Sometimes, too, such essays were penned by learned gentlemen, with sons and daughters at good boarding schools; and the writers, maybe, received so much hard silver per page, especially if a prize essay; and our far east censors not only had the pleasure of pelting our poor frogs, but found it profitable too. In such essays the Proton Pseudos was, "all pastors and preachers must give up secular employments-their schools-their farms-their merchandise- their trades-and imitate the Apostles, &c." In extraordinary times men are sustained by the providence of God in extraordin- ary ways, and purse, scrip, and books in the Apostles' time were not needed; and few then had the care and expense of a family, except Pope Peter !- and he, unlike some Unholinesses, was wicked enough to prefer a Wife to a Harlot!
And even in those days Paul, whilst aiding to erect a spiritual tabernacle, supported himself at secular tent-making! It is not improbable that Luke, the beloved and benevolent physician, pre- scribed and took fees in emergencies. May, then, modern ministers in no cases do secular things, without being subjected to unkind suspicions, and not rarely denounced as merchants, farmers, speculators, and even jockies? Nay, many thus stig- matized are among the best of men; and that, however warned by hasty young clerks and clergy to look out for the doom of unfaithful stewards to bid to expect, after a life of toil for the gospel and after bestowing the spiritual without reaping the carnal, bid to look out for banishment into the outer darkness !! Ah! ye hasty censors! God will never forget labours of love in that far West or elsewhere; even if a preacher, to put bread into the mouths, and garments on the bodies of his family, do work secularly with his own hands!
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It is even granted by hasty writers, too, that the penuriousness and dishonesty of congregations may drive the minister to secular labour; and that surely is ample and sufficient apology, one would think, for the minister's irreverent conduct. Why then this per- petual cannonade against the Clergy? Does it never occur, that the niggardly Mr. Miser, the close-fisted Mr. Grip, the narrow- minded Miss Snarl, and the dishonest Mr. and Mrs. Finepromise, may, at the grand assize, have to appear as defendants and show cause why the preacher was driven to be secular? Strange? passing strange, if a hunted, defrauded, broken-spirited man, who, because he wishes yet to preach, maintains himself, should, in addition to all his sufferings, be decried and rebuked as faithless and money-loving !- as needing reform !- as passing to a severe doom and vengeance in the life to come! Oh! you that in one sense, at least, are "at ease in Zion," and have, therefore, so much time to buffet, go, visit a New Purchase !- and then write- "Mr. Carlton !!- keep cool."
Well, then, I will go on to say that meetings in the Purchase were not always dry affairs. Once, this very autumn, a two days' meeting was to come off on Saturday and Sunday in the Welden settlement. At the close of the first day, while Glen- ville and Carlton were "settin the toone for-them," a heavy shower began suddenly to fall; and as we clerks could not get out to secure our saddles they became well soaked. Many, indeed, hurried out to secure their own accoutrements and those of the "wimmin folks's," but they forgot the clerks and the rector's: hence after service we found seats cool and refreshing as a wet sponge. We had been invited to spend the night at a chieftain's 1 in the settlement : and as we were without umbrellas or cloaks, and the rain kept mizzling away, we had a very agreeable ride of it, receiving too, from overhanging branches and thick bushes frequent "baby-sprinklings" until the whole amounted to "be- liever's baptism"-a thorough immersion.
However, we were neither salt nor sugar. On we splattered and splashed, laughing and talking, while our saddle-seats added to the noise very hearty and peculiar notes or sounds, which may be called-soggings; and we comforted one another with mutual
1 White, of course.
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FIRST YEAR
promises of a dry house and a drying fire. But-ah! me !- our dear good landlady, and expressly to honour her guests, had de- termined to have "things fixed !"-and a wet fix it was. First and foremost, the puncheon-floor had undergone a deluge of scrub- bing, effected by pouring over it forty great calabashes of water, or one great calabash forty times emptied! Then the floor had been violently assaulted with stiff brooms, till its dirt was raked and floated away to form an alluvion in the cellar below; but much of the flood having eluded the swabbing process that fol- lowed, there remained many Lilliputian lakes of muddy water in the cavities and gulleys of the puncheons. Secondarily, chairs, tables, benches, and even bedsteads had undergone Pharisaical ablutions : and although things did dry in process of time, yet, as the good woman remarked, "Things were a leetle dampish, to be sure!" Indeed, chairs and benches on which persons of a sanguine temperament sat, exhibited, on their rising, a decided Mosaic of dark and light shades. Thirdly, when we washed before supper and dinner in one, we were offered a wet towel to dry on ! the lady apologizing for the anomaly by saying, "Thar'd been sich a rite down smart chance of rain that their wash wouldn't dry." Of course this apology accounted for the undried table-cloth at the meal; where, by the way, we recognized, in the midst of other good things, and full of milk, the republican bowl that a few moments before had enacted the part of wash-basin. In anticipation of its complex and yet desultory character, we of Glenville, instead of dipping at the time our hands into the bowl had poured from it the water over the hands. All the guests, we must say, were not so considerate.
But a most sumptuous fire was roaring away for our comfort ; and, be satisfied, in no sense was it cold comfort. And soon all, and at a very respectable distance, were steaming away, and, in the midst of haze and vapour, snuffling the savoury odours of ham fried in lard-of venison and wild-turkey in ditto-and of chickens in cream and butter! Generally, meats of every sort in the Purchase were fried, and that so perfectly as to be not only done, but actually done up; till the pieces curled at the 'edges, and the taste of one kind of flesh could not be distinguished from another, like-like-oh like the carcasses of one horse and
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two cows burnt to death in the conflagration of Mr. Forgethis- name's1 livery stables in the Northern Liberties. And yet a cookery of squirrels or chickens, a la Kaintuc, in cream, butter, and dusted flour, excels any fry in the world.
By bed-time affairs had become dryish. Still, much vapour hung in our atmosphere; and towards the arctic regions of the cabin, matters were puddly. However, ten of the company were accommodated in the beds, and as many others,-indeed, I do not know where: yet we all retired; when a spirited and general confabulation was maintained till most of the trebles, tenors, and basses grew, some flat and others muttering, and there was a subsidence into a colloquy between two. At last, one of these returning a mumbling kind of response, Mr. Holdon, despairing to extract any more talk, cried out, "Well! good night:" which signal was followed by a farewell crackling of bedsteads, and an audible rustling of "kivers;" and then all lately so active and chatty, was turned into sleeping and snoring. Bah !- tell me not about the sleep of innocence! nothing comes up to the sleep of a backwoodsman; and as to his snoring, beat it if you can !
Well, I dreamed a dream. Methought old Dick was harnessed to our bedstead, and was pulling us through showery bushes and nettles, and that I had the tooth-ache, and so uncomfortable all seemed that I determined, as is the case in some dreams, to wake myself. Happy resolution! for whilst Dick had vanished, and we were safe enough in the cabin, yet the interpretation of the dream was present :- a gentle stream was trickling from above through a hole in the clapboard roof, the eau d'esprit having al- ready saturated my rag-pillow, and more than a foot of the adjoining covers !- and, what was very remarkable !- I had the toothache ! !
"Indeed !"
"Yes! indeed. I whipped out of bed; quietly worked the bed- stead from under the unelectric water spout; doubled my end of the bolster in place of the pillow removed; got once more into bed, and began to lull the grumbling tooth by holding my mouth shut and breathing through the nose, and occasionally counting slowly and deliberately as high as a hundred. And in this 1 Said accident happened once upon a time, when we was a boy.
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FIRST YEAR
laudable work I had at last succeeded, and was sinking away into dryer dreams, when I was suddenly aroused to my last and severest "trial by water" by a rude shake from Glenville, who also thus addressed me :-
"Carlton !- are you going to sleep all day ?- get up if you don't want your boots full of water-"
"My boots !- my boots !!- man alive! don't let them get any wetter-I shall never get them on-never!"
"Up then-or Tom Hilton will clean yours as he has mine- he'll dip them in the rain-trough."
Fortunately all were up and out but myself-and yet it would have been the same if Queen Victoria had been there-my boots were not to be trifled with, even when dry ;- what! if provoked by such a ducking! I thought, therefore, of neither man, woman, nor child-I thought only of my boots-and I leaped out of bed without regard to the ordinary precautions-and slipping on the limbs of the indispensables-(anglicè, jerking on my breeches)- and holding up and buttoning as I moved, I rushed to the door! and in the very nick of time to witness the catastrophe. Yes! there on the muddy earth stood, sad and sullen, boot the first, clean and soaked as a scrubbed puncheon! and there descended into the rain-trough boot the second, up to the strap-stiches !!
"Tom! Tom !- why didn't you let my boots alone !- you've fixed me now-I shan't get them on to-day !"
"Well, sir, I was only a sort of cleanin them-they was most powerful muddy like-hope no harm done, Mr. Carltin?"
"Well, Tom, thank you -- but I am afraid we have tight work now-please let's have the articles, any how."
And our fear, reader, was not unfounded. Never, since the origin of boots, and the abolition of sandals, was there such a tugging at straps! It did seem as if, at last, the grand philos- ophical achievement would be effected, and with a leetle harder pull we should, boots and all, be raised clean up from the punch- eons !- nearly equal to lifting one's self over a fence! 'And oh! what soaping of heels !- what numerous and contradictory sug- gestions and advices from commiserating and laughing friends ! tears in all eyes! Oh; the rubbing of insteps !- the contortions of the os sublime! And then, withal, when a boot had reached
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a certain point, the creature could be neither pulled on nor pulled off! But there limped Mr. Carlton, his two limbs glued, some- where about the junction of ancle and foot, in two remorseless leathers; a very "odd fellow," indeed, hobbling with four feet, two of his own treading downward, and two of the boots treading sideways-and all with vain hopes of stretching, and thus coax- ing further on or off the half-tanned conveniences !
At last it seemed necessary to cut the articles, as all ordinary and extraordinary attempts to move them up or down had failed, when, at the crisis, in came a Goliah-like woods-man, who, un- derstanding the fix, declared; "if them 'are straps thare would a sort a hold, he allow'd he'd pull on Mr. Carltin's boots." We agreed to a new trial. Accordingly, Mr. Goliah placed himself behind the patient, with his own back to the wall, and then work- ing two fingers apiece into each strap-(all he could get in)-he did pull the boots on, sure enough !! Ay! and that he would have done if both of Mr. Carlton's legs had been in the same boot, in- stead of one leg per boot !
King William was of opinion that thumkins was logic enough to make him confess to a lie-what, if he had tried the logic of my boots! If the iron boot is any more forcible-I cannot stand it at all-I should scream out my belief in the Pope or the Devil, or any other dogma of the particular catholic church! The holy church will of course canonize a man who has already discovered two efficacious ways to make Christians-our bark-wheel-and now our boots !
Apropos! de botte, this reminds me of the Kentuckian saved from the massacre, at the Blue Licks, by a pair of wet buckskin breeches. He was pursued by two Indians, and on reaching the river, was forced to plunge in and swim over. Emerging, he soon discovered that to run with his former speed, his buckskins must be left for booty : hence, he halted an instant to unskin himself, whilst his nimble foes had now reached the opposite bank of the stream. But now the wet unmentionables, half-way off, became obstinately adhesive, and could be drawn neither up nor down-and the enemy coming nearer and nearer.
"Poor fellow !- what a dreadful situation !"
Very ; and so he made up his mind, like a gallant man, to die-
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FIRST YEAR
in his breeches. And yet, being a Presbyterian, his predestined time had not come: for, to his amazement, his red friends, on arriving, burst into loud laughter, and, instead of knocking him on the head, they only spanked him on the antipodes and took him prisoner; and the Kentuckian, being ransomed, got home to tell his adventure-and was one of the very few brave gentlemen that survived the battle of the Blue Licks.
"Yes-but, Mr. Carlton, what has this deliverance to do with the Pope or the Devil?"
"Oh! nothing-it was owing to the Indians :- other torturers do not let off folks so easily. But talking of one thing, you know, makes us think of another."
However, after the second edition of wet towels, wet table- cloths, and other dampers, we all went to church-or, by courtesy, the dissenters' conventicle-where seats and floor. were also dampish : yet none of these little affairs killed us then, and even now, most of the Glenvillians live and talk, occasionally, of Carl- ton's Wet Time."
During the present summer and fall, others of our colony had little adventures. For instance, John Glenville, in moving a, piece of bark to throw under the wheel, was bitten in the wrist by a copper head coiled under the bark ; but, by a timely applica- tion of proper remedies, he escaped very serious injury. Uncle Leatherstocking also came something nearer being killed than Sir Roger's ancestor, that had a narrow escape from being slain in a battle by arriving on the field the very day after the fight: for our uncle, stooping to examine a fine cabbage in his patch, dis- covered a rattlesnake ready to salute him, and yet time enough to leap back and avoid the favour. And then a young woman coming from Welden, by herself, to return a call due to Glen- ville Settlement, just as she had reached the outskirts of our ter- ritory, was gratified by the sight, a little way from her, of a lady panther, affectionately sporting with two rampant pantherines- each as big as a pair of domestic tom-cats.
"La !- and did she not scream?"
Scream !- Miss Peggy Whatmore scream! Fortunate for the quadrupeds, Peggy was within reach of no rifle! No, no! to use her own language, she only "a sort a skued round towards ole-
1
PRESIDENT ANDREW WYLIE First President of Indiana College 1828
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man Ashmoresis-and didn't say nuthin to them, as they didn't seem like wantin to say nuthin to her-yet it was a leetle skary as they was powerful nasty lookin varmints."
A missionary, also, coming to fulfill an appointment among us saw in the edge of our clearing "three barr"-i. e., three bears; there being, in western phrase, "a powerful sprinkle" of such shaggy coats in our borough. At this information, all our domestic and neighbourhood forces being mustered, we succeeded in overtaking and killing the growling trio; and in due time, the largest skin, properly prepared at our tannery, was presented to the missionary who ever after, till the day of his death, used it as a bruin-saddle cover.
Perhaps we may here say, that at night, on many occasions, were around invisible serenaders, that gave exact imitations of wolves howling, foxes barking, and owls screaming, hooting and screeching, with interruptions now and then from sudden cries and growls so strange that we could not say what bird or beast precisely was designed or represented. The whole, however, riveted the conviction that we were no longer dreaming about the woods, but were actually living there; and, to be candid, I had never in visions seen single serpent, and could not have guessed the wild beasts would turn out so very wild. But to all things I got used, except snakes. To the very last of my sojourn in the Purchase, I was slow to crawl through dark thickets; and never did step over or off a log, till satisfied no serpent was there to be tramped upon: and, that it was necessary so to ponder our ways, may be believed by the incident with which we now end the chapter.
One night Mr. and Mrs. C. were on a visit at Mr. Hilsbury's ; and, though pressed to remain till morning, and warned of the danger in walking in the dark at that season of the year, we de- cided on returning to Uncle John's. The path between the cabins was only a few inches wide, and running through high grass and tall weeds, was pretty invisible in the day: yet having travelled it some half dozen times daily, I was familiar with every stone, stick and root, lying in or across the path; and any thing new there would be sure to arrest my attention. Furnished with a light in a small glass lantern, we proceeded homeward, myself in front
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