USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 1 > Part 51
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When the weather was not suitable for hunting. the skins and carcasses of the game were brought in and disposed of.
Many of the hunters rested from their labors on the Sabbath day; some from a motive of piety; others said that when they hunted on Sunday, they were sure to have bad luck during the rest of the week.
1 "The house-warming was the usual manner of settling a young couple in the world.
"A spot was selected on a piece of land of one of the parents, for their habitation. A day was appointed, shortly after their marriage, for com- mencing the work of building their cabin. The fatigue-party consisted of choppers, whose business it was to fell the trees and cut them off at proper lengths; a man with a team for hauling them to the place and arranging them, properly assorted, at the sides and ends of the building ; a carpenter, if such he might be called, whose business it was to search the woods for a proper tree for making clapboards for the roof. The tree for this purpose must be straight-grained, and from three to four feet in diameter. The boards were split four feet long, with a large frow, and as wide as the timber would allow. They were used without planing or shaving. Another division was employed in getting puncheons for the floor of the cabin. This was done by splitting trees, about eighteen inches in diameter, and hewing the faces of them with a broad ax. They were half the length of the floor they were intended to make. The materials for the cabin were mostly prepared on the first day, and sometimes the foundation laid in the evening. The second day was allotted for the raising.
"In the morning of the next day the neighbors collected for the raising. The first thing to be done was the election of four corner men, whose busi- ness it was to notch and place the logs. The rest of the company furnished them with the timbers. In the meantime, the boards and puncheons were collected for the floor and roof ; so that by the time the cabin was a few rounds high, the sleepers and floor began to be laid. The door was made by sawing or cutting the logs in one side, so as to make an opening about three feet wide. This opening was secured by upright pieces of timber
I Doddridge's Notes.
394
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
about three inches thick, through which holes were bored into the ends of the logs for the purpose of pinning them fast. A similar opening, but wider, was made at the end for the chimney. This was built of logs, and made large, to admit of a back and jambs of stone. At the square, two end logs projected a foot or eighteen inches beyond the wall, to receive the butting poles, as they were called, against which the ends of the first row of clapboards was supported. The roof was formed by making the end logs. shorter, until a single log formed the comb of the roof. On these logs the clapboards were placed, the ranges of them lapping some distance over those next below them, and kept in their places by logs placed at proper distances. upon them.
"The roof, and sometimes the floor, were finished on the same day of the raising. A third day was commonly spent by a few carpenters in level- ing off the floor, making a clapboard door and a table. This last was made of a split slab, and supported by four round legs set in auger-holes. Some three-legged stools were made in the same manner. Some pins, stuck in the logs at the back of the house, supported some clapboards which served for shelves for the table furniture. A single fork, placed with its lower end in a hole in the floor, and the upper end fastened to a joist, served for a bedstead, by placing a pole in the fork with one end through a crack between the logs of the wall. This front pole was crossed by a shorter one within the fork, with its outer end through another crack. From the front pole. through a crack between the logs of the end of the house, the boards were put on, which formed the bottom of the bed. Sometimes other poles were pinned to the fork a little distance above these, for the purpose of support- ing the front and foot of the bed, while the walls were the supports of its back and head. A few pegs around the walls for a display of the coats of the women and hunting-shirts of the men, and two small forks or buck- horns to a joist for the rifle and shot-pouch, completed the carpenter work.
"In the meantime, masons were at work. With the heart pieces of the timber of which the clapboards were made, they made billets for chunking up the cracks between the logs of the cabin and chimney ; a large bed of mortar was made for daubing up these cracks; a few stones formed the back and jambs of the chimney.
"The cabin being finished, the ceremony of house-warming took place, before the young couple were permitted to move into it.
"The house-warming was a dance of a whole night's continuance. made up of the relations of the bride and groom and their neighbors. On the day following, the young couple took possession of their new mansion.
" In giving the history of the state of the mechanic arts as they were exercised at an early period of the settlement of this country, we present a people, driven by necessity to perform works of mechanical skill, far be- yond what a person enjoying all the advantages of civilization would expect from a population placed in such destitute circumstances.
395
PIONEER METHOD OF GRINDING MEAL.
"The reader will naturally ask, where were their mills for grinding grain? Where their tanners for making leather? Where their smith's shops tor making and repairing their farming utensils? Who were their carpen- ters, tailors, cabinet-workmen, shoemakers, and weavers? The answer is, those manufacturers did not exist; nor had they any tradesmen, who were professedly such. All the families were under the necessity of doing every- thing for themselves as well as they could. The hominy block and hand-mills were in use in most of the houses. The first was made of a large block of wood about three feet long, with an excavation burned in one end, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so that the action of the pestle on the bottom threw the corn up to the sides toward the top of it, from whence it continually fell down into the center.
"In consequence of this movement, the whole mass of the grain was pretty equally subjected to the strokes of the pestle. In the fall of the year, while the Indian corn was soft, the block and pestle did very well for making meal for johnny-cake and mush; but were rather slow when the corn be- came hard.
"The sweep was sometimes used to lessen the toil of pounding grain into meal. This was a pole of some springy, elastic wood, thirty feet long or more; the butt end was placed under the side of a house, or a large stump; this pole was supported by two forks, placed about one-third of its length from the butt end, so as to elevate the small end about fifteen feet from the ground; to this was attached, by a large mortise, a piece of sap- ling about five or six inches in diameter, and eight or ten feet long. The lower end of this was shaped so as to answer for a pestle. A pin of wood was put through it, at a proper height, so that two persons could work at the sweep at once. This simple machine very much lessened the labor and expedited the work.
" From the saltpetre caves, the first settlers made plenty of excellent gunpowder by the means of those sweeps and mortars.
" A machine, still more simple than the mortar and pestle, was used for making meal while the corn was too soft to be beaten. It was called a grater. This was a half-circular piece of tin, perforated with a punch from the concave side, and nailed by its edges to a block of wood. The ears of corn were rubbed on the rough edge of the holes, while the meal fell through them on the board or block, to which the grater was nailed, which, being in a slanting direction, discharged the meal into a cloth or bowl placed for its reception. This, to be sure, was a slow way of making meal; but neces- sity has no law.
" The hand-mill was better than the mortar and grater. It was made of two circular stones, the lowest of which was called the bed-stone, the upper one the runner .. These were placed in a hoop, with a spout for discharging the meal. A staff was let into a hole in the upper surface of the runner, near the outer edge, and its upper end through a hole in a board fastened
396
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
to a joist above, so that two persons could be employed in turning the mill at the same time. The grain was put into the opening in the runner by hand. The mills are still in use in Palestine. the ancient country of the Jews. To a mill of this sort our Saviour alluded when, with reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, He said: 'Two women shall be grinding at a mill, the one shall be taken and the other left.'
"Instead of bolting cloths, sifters were in general use. These were made of deer skins in the state of parchment, stretched over a hoop and perforated with a hot wire.
"The clothing was all of domestic manufacture. They had no other resource for clothing, and this, indeed, was a poor one. The crops of flax often failed, and the sheep were destroyed by the wolves. Linsey, which is made of flax and wool, the former the chain and the latter the filling, was the warmest and most substantial cloth they could make. Almost every house contained a loom, spinning, and hand cards, and almost every woman was a weaver, a spinner, and a carder.
"Every family tanned its own leather. The tan-vat was a large trough sunk to the upper edge in the ground. A quantity of bark was easily ob- tained every spring in clearing and fencing land. This, after drying, was brought in, and in wet days was shaved and pounded on a block of wood with an ax or mallet. Ashes were used in place of lime for taking off the hair .. Bear's oil, hog's lard, and tallow answered the place of fish oil. The leather, to be sure, was coarse; but it was substantially good. The opera- tion of currying was performed by a drawing-knife with its edge turned, after the manner of a currying-knife. The blacking for the leather was made of soot and hog's lard.
"Almost every family contained its own tailors and shoemakers. Those who could not make shoes could make shoe-packs. These, like moccasins, were made of a single piece on the top of the foot. This was about two inches broad and circular at the lower end. To this the main piece of leather was sewed, with a gathering stitch. The seam behind was like that of a moccasin. To the shoe-pack a sole was sometimes added. The women did the tailor work. They could all cut out and make hunting-shirts, leg- gins, and drawers.
"The state of society which exists in every country at an early period of its settlements is well calculated to call into action every native mechan- ical genius. So it happened in this country. There was in almost every neighborhood some one whose natural ingenuity enabled him to do many things for himself and his neighbors far above what could have been reason- ably expected. With the few tools which they brought with them into the country, they certainly performed wonders. Their plows, harrows, with their wooden teeth, and sleds were, in many instances, well made. Their cooperware, which comprehended everything for holding milk and water. was generally pretty well executed. The cedarware, by having alternately
. ..
397
SPORTS OF EARLY TIMES.
a white and red stave, was then thought beautiful. Many of their puncheon floors were very neat, their joints close, and the top even and smooth. Their looms, although heavy, did very well. Those who could not exercise these mechanic arts were under the necessity of giving labor or barter to their neighbors in exchange for the use of them, so far as their necessities required.
"One important pastime of the boys was that of imitating the noise of every bird and beast in the woods. This faculty was not merely a pastime, but a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitations of the gobbling and other sounds of wild turkeys often brought those keen-eyed and ever-watchful tenants of the forest within the reach of their rifle. The bleating of the fawn brought its dam to her death in the same way. The hunter often collected a company of mopish owls to the trees about his camp, and amused himself with their hoarse screaming. His howl would raise and obtain responses from a pack of wolves, so as to inform him of their neighborhood, as well as guard him against their depredations.
" This imitative faculty was sometimes requisite as a measure of precau- tion in war. The Indians, when scattered about in a neighborhood, often collected together, or lured their enemies to danger, by imitating turkeys by day and wolves or owls by night. In similar situations, our people did the same. There was often witnessed the consternation of a whole settlement in consequence of a few screeches of owls. An early and correct use of this imitative faculty was considered as an indication that its possessor would become, in due time, a good hunter and valiant warrior. Throwing the tomahawk was another boyish sport, in which many acquired considerable skill. The tomahawk, with its handle of a certain length, will make a given number of turns in a given distance; say in five steps, it will strike with the edge, the handle downward; at the distance of seven and a half, it will strike with the edge, the handle upward, and so on. A little experience en- abled the boy to measure the distance with his eye, when walking through the woods, and strike a tree with his tomahawk in any way he chose.
"The athletic sports of running, jumping, and wrestling were the pas- times of boys, in common with the men. A well-grown boy, at the age of twelve or thirteen years, was furnished with a small rifle and shot-pouch. He then became a fort soldier and had his port-hole assigned him. Hunt- ing squirrels, turkeys, and raccoons soon made him expert in the use of his gun.
"Dancing was the principal amusement of the young people of both sexes. Their dances, to be sure, were of the simplest form-three and four-handed reels and jigs. Country dances, cotillions, and minuets were unknown.
"Shooting at a mark was a common diversion among the men when their stock of ammunition would allow it: this. however, was far from being
398
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
always the case. The present mode of shooting off-hand was not then much in practice. This mode was not considered as any trial of the value of a gun, nor, indeed, as much of a test of the skill of a marksman. Their shooting was usually from a rest, and at as great a distance as the length and weight of the barrel of the gun would throw a ball on a horizontal level. Such was their regard to accuracy in those sportive trials of their rifles, and of their own skill in the use of them, that they often put moss or some other soft substance on the log or stump from which they shot, for fear of having the bullet thrown from the mark by the spring of the barrel. When the rifle was held to the side of a tree for a rest, it was pressed against it as lightly as possible, for the same reason.
"Rifles of former times were different from those of modern date-the flint lock, with very fine sights and accurate range. Few of them carried more than forty-five bullets to the pound. Bullets of a less size were not thought sufficiently heavy for hunting or war."
1 "The settlement of the transmontane wilderness was unlike that of the present new country of the United States. Emigrants from the Atlantic cities, and from most points in the Western interior, now embark upon steamboats or other craft, and, carrying with them all the conveniences and comforts of civilized life-indeed, many of its luxuries-are, in a few days. without toil, danger, or exposure, transported to their new abodes, and in a few months are surrounded with the appendages of home, of civilization. and the blessings of law and of society. The wilds of Dakota and Ne- braska, by the agency of steam or the stalwart arms of Western boatmen. are at once transformed into the settlements of a commercial and civilized people. Kansas City and St. Paul, six months after they are laid off, have their stores and their workshops, their artisans and their mechanics. The mantua-maker and the tailor arrive in the same boat with the carpenter and mason. The professional man and the printer quickly follow. In the suc- ceeding year, the piano, the drawing-room, the restaurant, the billiard-table. the church bell, the village, and the city in miniature are all found, while the neighboring interior is yet a wilderness and a desert. The town and comfort, taste and urbanity are first; the clearing, the farm-house, the wagon road, and the improved country second. It was far different on the frontier in Kentucky. At first, a single Indian trail was the only en- trance to the eastern border of it. and for many years admitted only of the hunter and the pack-horse."
Thus civilization, with all its comforts, conveniences, and luxuries, is borne forward with the tides of emigration; and the contrast of to-day with a century ago but amazes us, though familiar with the facts, with the mar- velous achievements of human invention, art, and enterprise, in this com- paratively brief period of the world's history. The progress in these has outstripped all that was accomplished in the four thousand years previous.
1 Ramsey's Annals.
399
CORN, THE PIONEER'S RELIANCE.
and yet we realize that we are to-day but in the initial stages of the world's regeneration, material, moral, and intellectual.
1 "Could there be happiness or comfort in such dwellings and in such a state of society? To those who are accustomed to modern refinements, the truth appears like fable. The early occupants of log-cabins were among the most happy of mankind. Exercise and excitement gave them health; they were practically equal; common danger made them mutually depend- ent ; brilliant hopes of future wealth and distinction led them on ; and as there was ample room for all, and as each newcomer increased individual and general security, there was indeed little room for that envy, jealousy, and hatred, which constitute a large proportion of human misery in older societies. Never were the story, the joke, the song, and the laugh better enjoyed than among the hewed blocks, or puncheon stools, around the roaring log-fire of the early Western settler. The lyre of Apollo was not hailed with more delight in primitive Greece than the advent of the first fiddler among the dwellers of the wilderness; and the polished daughters of the East never enjoyed themselves half so well, moving to the music of a full band, upon the elastic floor of their ornamented ball-room. as did the daughters of the emigrants, keeping time to a self-taught fiddler. on the bare earth or puncheon floor of the primitive log-cabin. The smile of the polished beauty is the wave of the lake, where the breeze plays gently over it, and her movement is the gentle stream which drains it; but the laugh of the log-cabin is the gush of nature's fountain, and its movement its leaping water. 2
"On the frontier, the diet was necessarily plain and homely, but exceed- ingly nutritive. The Goshen of America 3 furnished the richest milk, the finest butter, and the most savory and delicious meats. In their rude cabins, with their scanty and inartificial furniture, no people ever enjoyed in wholesome food a greater variety or a superior quality of the necessaries of life. For bread, the Indian corn was almost exclusively used. Of all the farinacea, corn is best adapted to the condition of a pioneer people. Without that grain, the frontier settlements could not have been formed and maintained. It is the nearest to a never-failing crop, and requires the least preparation of the ground, is most congenial to a virgin soil, and needs only the least amount of labor in its culture in such soil, while it comes to ma- turity in the shortest time. It also requires the least care and trouble in preserving it. It may safely stand all winter upon the stalk, without injury from the weather, or apprehension of damage by disease or the accidents to which other grains are subject. Neither smut, nor rust, nor weavil. nor storm, will seriously injure it. After its maturity, but little preparation is needed to store it in the granary. It has the further advantage over all other breadstuffs that it requires, in fitting it for food, few culinary utensils, and neither yeast, sugar, spices, soda, potash, nor other concomitants. can
t Ramsey's Annals.
2 Kendall.
3 Butler.
400
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
even be used without positive injury to the relishable hoe-cake or corn-pone. With the meal from grain grown in the corn belt between latitude thirty-five and forty-two, ground and sifted with a rather coarse grit, and simply and quickly baked, and eaten fresh and warm, there is no bread more palatable and nutritious. The nearest it is made, in the cooking, to preserve the flavor of parched corn, which every person relishes, the more will it be prized and relished. . Any spicing or sweetening, or addition other than buttermilk, soda, and salt, is sure to destroy this natural flavor, and spoil the bread; and from this mistaken method in the culinary management, the making of good corn-bread has, in most families, become a lost art.
There is a departure from this primary method, by which a most deli- cious egg-bread, as it is commonly called. is made. The same cornmeal is the body; and to this is added buttermilk, soda, and salt, eggs, milk, and some lard. Good recipes for both methods may be found in the Bluegrass cook book, made up by the most skilled and intelligent Kentucky house- keepers.
To all this may be added, that it is not only cheap and palatable, but unquestionably the most wholesome and nutritive food. The largest and healthiest, if not the best developed, people in the world have been reared upon it almost exclusively, as known in the robust race of men, giants in miniature, which, two or three generations ago, was found upon the frontier. Distinguished surgeons bore testimony that, during the late civil war, the wounded of the Confederate soldiers who had lived almost entirely on roast- ing-ears and parched corn or meal cured easily and rapidly, rarely dying of gangrene or mortification: while just the reverse of this was true of the Federal wounded soldiers, who were fed on salted meats and stale bread from the army rations.
Of all the duties and cares which most seriously engaged the attention of the backwoodsmen, none were of more concern than those of the measures of self-defense against the ever insidious, wily, and implacable Indian foe. To the mind of the settler, he was suspiciously present everywhere and at all times. If the cabin door was unbarred and opened in the morning, the missive of death from gun or bow might fly from behind a tree, a hillock, or a motte of cane or brush. If the good wife or servant stepped out to milk the cows or bring a pail of water from the spring, the husband or mas- ter of the house could not always avert a tragedy, though he stood on watch with ready rifle. If he, himself, went out to his fields or woods, to do the work of the husbandman, there was not a minute of time when the depend- ent inmates of the house were entirely exempt from the echo of the deadly rifle from ambush, or the scalp halloo that sent tidings of another victim to savage atrocity, and wails of sorrow to anguished hearts. In scurring squads of five or ten. or in larger bands of twenty or one hundred, these elfin guer- rillas of the forest, terrible and remorseless in their methods of predatory warfare, roved the country at will, to prey upon life and property.
.
415
401
CONSTANT DANGER.
They chose some favorable seasons of the year, more than others; but no season was exempt from their raids. Murder, pillage, and arson being held as cardinal virtues toward an enemy, and all the world outside of them- selves being held as enemies, they raided the earth, to murder, pillage, and destroy to the fullest license of savage diabolism. He who bore back to his tribe the greater number of bloody scalps of men, women, and infants, or the largest amount of stolen plunder, or the story of the most horrid incen- diarisms, was listened to with intensest pride and applause, as in the carni- val of celebrations he struck the post, gyrated in the orgies of the wild war dance, and rehearsed his deeds of infamy in the intoned chants of his ecstatic fury.
We may easily imagine how much the mind of every member of the household was pre-occupied with the apprehensions of hourly dangers, from such an omnipresent enemy as beset the pioneers in their first trans- montane experiences. The cares and burdens of life, such as are common to all, were theirs. But pre-eminent also, were the thoughts and cares of self preservation from this danger, which spread its pall of desolation every- where, and left mementos of wasting grief in the widowers, the widows, and the orphans, to be found in almost every family in the land. To-day, in the repose and security of established society, we find it difficult to realize that our brave and daring and noble ancestry could have chosen to ex- change the comforts and safety of civilization for the perils and hardships of the untamed wilderness that lay between the morning shadows of the mountains and the great Mississippi river. But over there, in the far-off West, romance and reality had invested the luxuriant soil, the balmy climate, and the exuberant life, with such enchantment of promise for the future, that all looked forward to an Eden of happiness, in the final fruitions of ad- venture. These ancestors staked life, the homes of civilization, and fortune on the issues of the change.
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