USA > Maryland > Washington County > Hagerstown > A history of Washington County, Maryland from the earliest settlements to the present time, including a history of Hagerstown > Part 2
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
and hunter. The outlying settlements were in constant danger from the incursions of the blood- thirsty Indian, and the flying settlers were some- times pursued with tomahawk and scalping knife far within the bounds of the well settled country. Once within its history has Washington County suffered such an incursion that every white person within its bounds who escaped the toma- hawk fled for protection and safety across the mountain which divided them from civilization.
Of the Indians who inhabited this fair valley when the hardy pioneers first built their cabins between its mountains, it is difficult for us who have never heard the war-whoop, or seen them ply the tomahawk in the dead hour of night by the light of burning homes, to form any correct idea. We may well doubt whether the men and women who have had this experience would concede to the red man the title of "the noble savage." If we may judge by the intense hatred with which the early settlers regarded him, pursued him, and waged a war of extermination against him, we may conclude that they did not regard him as the illus- tration of many of the virtues. There can be but little doubt that the red man who now infests the confines of our far Western States is a degenerate descendant of his ancestors; yet it is certain that the Indians most emulated the qualities of the wild animals after which they named themselves -the ferocity of the wolf, the cunning of the fox and the venom of the rattlesnake.
"The opinion which many careful and just- minded persons of our time have formed touching the Indian of whom the settlers in the border- land then stood in constant dread, is a singular mixture of truth and romance. Time and absence have softened all that is vile in his character and left in full relief all that is good and alluring. We are in no danger of being tomahawked. We are not terrified by his war whoop. An Indian in his war-paint and feathers is now much rarer show than a Bengal tiger or a white bear from the polar sea. Of the fifty millions of human beings scattered over the land, not five millions have ever in their lives looked upon an Indian. We are therefore much more disposed to pity than to hate. But, one hundred years ago, there were to be found, from Cape Ann to Georgia, few men who had not many times in their lives seen num- bers of Indians, while thousands could be found scattered through every State, whose cattle had been driven off, and whose homes had been laid in
ashes by the braves of the six nations, who had fought with them from behind trees and rocks, and carried the scars of wounds received in hand to liand encounters.
"The opinions which such men and women held of the noble red man was, we may be sure, very different from those current among the pres- ent generation, and formed on no better authority than the novels of Cooper, and the lives of such warriors as Red Jacket and Brant. * * He was essentially a child of nature and his character was precisely such as circumstances made it. His life was one long struggle for food. His daily food depended, not on the fertility of the soil or the abundance of the crops, but on the skill with which he used his bow; on the courage with which he fought, single-handed, the largest and fiercest of beasts; on the quickness with which he tracked, and the cunning with which he outwitted the most timid and keen-scented. His knowledge of the habits of animals surpassed that of Audubon. The shrewd devices with which he snared them would have elicited the applause of Ulysses; the clearness of his vision excelled that of the oldest sailor; the sharpness of his hearing was not equalled by that of the deer. While he underwent the most excruciating torture the inge- nuity of his enemies could devise ;. while his ears were being lopped off, while his nose was being slit, while pieces of flesh were being cut from his body, and the bleeding wounds smeared with hot ashes; while his feet were roasting, while his limbs were being torn with hot splinters, while the flames leaped high about him, he shouted his death-song with a steady voice till his tormentors plucked out his tongue or brained him with a tomahawk. Yet this man, whose courage was unquestionable, was given to the dark and crooked ways which are the resort of the cowardly and weak. * * * He was never so happy as when at dead of night, he roused his sleeping enemies with an unearthly yell, and massacred them by the light of their burning homes. Cool and brave men who have heard that whoop, have left us a striking testimony of its nature; how that no number of reptitions could strip it of its terrors; how that, to the very last, at the sound of it the blood curdled, the heart ceased to beat and a strange paralysis seized upon the body." (Mc- Master's History of the United States.)
The Indians who inhabited our own valley have been described by a writer who made his
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OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND.
observations at the time of the French and Indian War. "The men are tall, well made and active, not strong, but very dextrous with a rifle-barrelled gun, and their tomahawk, which they will throw with great certainty at any mark and at a great distance. The women are not so tall as the men, but well made and have many children, but had inany more before spirits were introduced to them. They paint themselves in an odd manner, red, yellow and black intermixed. And the men have the outer rim of their ears cut, which only hangs by a bit, top and bottom, and have a tuft of hair left at the top of their heads which is dressed with feathers. Their watch coat is their chief clothing, which is a thick blanket thrown all around them, and they wear moccasins instead of shoes, which are deer-skin thrown around the ankle and foot. Their manner of carrying their infants is odd. They are laid on a board and tied on with broad bandages, with a piece to rest their feet on, and a board over their heads to keep the sun off, and are strung to the women's backs. These people have no notion of religion, or any sort of superior being, as I take them to be the most ignorant people as to the knowledge of the world and other things. In the day they were in our camp and in the night they go into their own, where they dance and make a most horrible noise."
These "children of nature" had singular apt- ness for learning all the most undesirable practices of their civilized neighbors and an equally singular inaptitude for learning anything that it was to their advantage to learn. But civilization puts its worst foot forward. The first whites with whom the red men came in contact were traders who were bent on cheating them, and taking ad- vantage of their simplicity, and hunters and trap- pers who possessed the vices of civilization without many of its virtues. It was from these that the Indian took his first lessons, and by the time civilized whites, or the missionary reached him he had imbibed a fierce passion for "fire water," along, it may be, with a vindictive hatred of the white race which had eozened him. An old Cherokee chief informed an officer in the United States service that "he doubted the benefits to the red people of what they had learned from the whites ; that before their fathers were acquainted with the whites, the red people needed but little and that little the Great Spirit gave them, the forest supplying them with food and raiment ; that before their fathers were acquainted with
the white people, the red people never got drunk because they had nothing to make them drunk, and never committed theft because they had no temptation to do so. It was true, that when par- ties were out hunting and one party was unsuc- cessful and found the game of the successful party hung up, if they needed provision they took it; and this was not stealing-it was the law and the custom of the tribes. If they went to war they destroyed rach other's property. This was done to weaken their enemy. Red people never swore because they had no words to express an oath. Red people would not cheat, because they had no temptation to commit fraud-they never told false- hoods because they had no temptation to tell Jies. And as to religion, you go to your churches, sing loud, pray loud, and make great noise. . The red people meet once a year, at the feast of new corn, extinguish all their fires and kindle up a new one, the smoke of which ascends to the Great Spirit as a grateful sacrifice. Now what better is your religion than ours? The white people have taught us to get drunk, to steal, to lie, to cheat and to swear; and if the knowledge of these vices, as you profess to hold them, and punish by your laws, is beneficial to the red people, we are bene- fitted by our acquaintance with you ; if not, we are greatly injured by that acquaintance."
In point of fact, for over thirty years the Indians lived at peace with the settlers in the Hagerstown valley and committed no depredations upon their property other than now and then appropriating to their own use when they were on the war path, cattle and hogs that they encoun- tered in their march.
The pioneer settlers of our valley were cut off from civilization by the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were cut off from all the convenienees of life, of which their brethren along the coast, having constant communication with the mother country, were never completely deprived. There was to them in case of need, no hope of effectual and timely help. They were surrounded by the savage red men, and had to struggle with nature for a livelihood. Wild mountain tracts separated them from their kind and kindred, and to the west of them lay the vast and unknown wilds which might have at any time, and did before many years, pour down upon them a destruction compared with which the invasion of Italy from the forests of the Danube was a merciful visitation of Provi- dence. The settlers therefore had only themselves
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
and their strong right arms to rely upon, and it made them an independent and hardy race, strong, healthy, moral and vigorous, untutored in evil and despising weakness and vice. The everyday com- forts and conveniences which their descendants regard as the neces-aries of life were unknown to them. It is a condition of society which has now disappeared. There are now no States of the Umion as remote and inaccessible as the valley of the Antietam and Conocochengne was in 1:35. The settler of that time and for many succeeding years lived in houses built without a nail, because there were none to be had. He felled trees and cut theni of the proper length, notched them near the ends and built a pen. After a height of seven or eight feet had been reached the end logs were made shorter and shorter until the side logs came together in an apex. A tree carefully selected was split up into boards and with these the roof was covered. being held in their plaees by heavy logs laid upon thein, and the floor was formed of the same roughly made boards, smoothed as much as possible with a broad axe. A hole was cut for door and chimney place. a rough door was made and a chimney of stones and clay. The spaces between the logs were "ehinked and daubed," a ladder was placed in position which gave access to the loft, or upper story and the residence was completed and ready for occupancy on the third day. In making the door-way, &c., wooden pins were used instead of nails. The men who eut the notches and fitted the logs together at the corner of the house occupied the posts of honor and were called the "corner men." The building of the house was not the work of the owner alone. He called in all his neighbors and when the work was completed, it was the occasion of a feast and frolie which generally lasted several days, and was only concluded when the guests and hosts had hecome exhausted.
Along with the house, the furniture was eon- structed. Holes were bored in the logs at proper places and pins were inserted which supported the shelves upon which utensils were kept. A fork was planted in the ground which supported two poles-the other ends resting between the logs of the side wall. This supported the bed. Pegs were driven in the sides of the house; upon these the wardrobe was displayed, and from them the riffe and powder horn were suspended. The din- ing table consisted of a large slah smoothed on one side with the broad axe, and supported on four
legs, which were wedged into as many auger holes. Of china plates, cups and saucers and silver spoons he had none. Forks had no place in the domestic economy. A few of the wealthiest could boast of pewter plates and spoons, but the dinner plate of the average settler was of wood, which was indeed the material which most of his table furniture was made-namely. his howls, trenchers and nog- gins. China plates would have been considered very undesirable, because in cutting food on them the hunting knife would be dulled. Gourds were more frequently used as drinking vessels.
With tea and eoffee he had no acquaintance and his children grew up without ever tasting them. Milk, or water sweetened with maple sugar, washed down his meals of pork or bacon and hom- iny or mush. The latter was generally eaten with milk or sweetened water, bear's oil or gravy. Bacon was only used when there was no supply of bear steak, venison. wild turkey, raccoon or other game. Bread was an uneertain artiele of food and the settler's family might not taste it for months. It not unfrequently happened that after a hard year's work to raise a crop of eorn for food for the winter, the settler would find when he came to harvest it in the autumn, that it had been already harvested by the squirrels and rac- coons. In that case, his bill of fare for a whole voar was greatly curtailed. and potatoes had to take the place of bread. hominy and mush. Even if the earn was secured, the process of converting it into meal was tedious and tiresome. It had to he done by heating it with a pestle in the huge wooden hominy mortars which formed a conspieu- ons article of furniture in every house, or else ground by hand between two ride millstones-a proeess almost as tedions as beating it with a pes- tle. When the corn was not yet hardened, it was sometimes grated through a home-made grater. The settler's family had frequently to wait for their breakfast until it could be procured with his rifle in the woods. The dress of the settler was as primitive as his dwelling and his furniture. The fashion of it was largely patterned after the attire of the Indian. He wore a hunting shirt of derr skin or home made linsey, confined around the waist by a belt. Appended to this shirt was a caj. upon which some ornamentation of a rude type, was displayed. Breeches or leggins of deer skin, with deer skin moecasins confined to his feet by thongs or "whangs." completed his attire. Moe- rasins were easily made by means of a moeeasin
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OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND.
awl and thongs and were the only attainable eov- ering for the feet. In dry weather the feet eould be kept very comfortable, but when it was wet the deer-skin instantly became soaked and as a result of constant wet feet in winter the settlers suffered greatly from rheumatism. From the belt were suspended the tomahawk and scalping knife- those weapons of savage warfare which the whites were not slow in adopting-the powder-horn and other artieles which might be needed in the field or forest. On his shoulder was carried the trusty rifle, which was the pioneer's inseparable eonipan- ion, whether he went on a hunting expedition, or went into the field to plow or visited his neighbors. His wife and daughters were dressed in the "linsey petticoat and bedgown" and their only attempt at ornamentation was a homemade handerchief tied around the neck. They bore their part in the field and garden, besides performing their domestie duties, and had they been able to proeure more beautiful garments, there would have been no occasion to wear them. Of shops and shopping they had no experience. The elothing of both men and women was the product of the rude domestic looms, or of the chase.
For many years there were no stores in the settlements, and the few necessaries which the settler required beyond those of his own produe- tion were brought on pack-horses aeross the moun- tain trail. Of vehicles there were none and had there been any there were no roads upon which they could be used. Upon pack-horses, then, the furs and peltries were earried to the towns nearer the seacoast-Baltimore after it grew to be a town, being the ehicf trading post; there they were ex- changed for needed merchandise. Later, Hagers- town became an important distributing centre not only for what is now Washington County, but for a large section of the Valley of Virginia.
The principal artiele of trade which the early settler had to go aeross the mountain to proeure was salt. This he must have at all hazards, and there was no possible method by which he could produce it. A number of men needing this eom- modity would associate and form a caravan to make the long and dreary journey to the seacoast. The bags which were to contain the salt were filled with feed for the horses on the journey down, and some of it was left at points along the way where it would be needed for the return trip, much in the same manner as travelers in the Aretie region eache provisions. Each horse was
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loaded with two bushels of salt. At the earliest period of the settlement it required the price of a good eow and calf to purchase a bushel of salt, and when filling the measure no one was allowed to walk heavily across the floor, for fear of shaking the salt down and getting too much into the meas- ure.
Ilunting was a serious occupation for the man of the backwoods, and not merely a pleasant di- version. 'For out of the woods he procured a good part of his food and his furs brought him in exchange his rifles, his ammunition, his salt and other necessaries. In the autumn he was eager to be off and was busy for many days before the time arrived in preparing his outfit. In this occupation he became skilful beyond the imagina- tion of hunters who had no such material interest in the result of the chase. He studied the habits of animals with the assiduity of the naturalist, and practiced the stalking of the deer with the cunning and adroitness of the Indian himself. Several neighbors, when the time to begin the autumn hunt had finally arrived, would form a little company, and putting their provisions, their Indian meal, blankets and iron pot upon a pack horse, they sallied forth. Entering the forest, they seleeted the location for the hunting camp. This selection required no small exereise of judg- mient. It had to be in a secluded position, secure from the observation of Indians and game. It must be so situated as to be screened from the keen north winds. The hut was made of poles and covered with bark or slabs. The front, towards the south, was left open and the gipsy pot was suspended in front of it. At night the hunters brought in their game and slept with their feet towards the fire. They had to know intimately the habits of the deer and how their movements would be affected by the weather. In stormy weather they expected to find them in a different position from the ground they usually occupied when the weather was fair. They knew the points of the compass, and could guide themselves through the trackless forest by observing the bark of the trees and the moss, which grows more abundantly on the north side of the trunks. While in eamp, the liunter rested from his labor on Sunday, but more from superstition than from religious motives. He was impressed with the belief that unless he did so his operations would be attended by ill-luck during the remainder of the week. Superstition was a prominent feature
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
of the character of the simple folk. If an unfor- tunate person was bitten by a rattlesnake or a copper snake the reptile must be killed at all hazards, and was cut in sections about two inehes long and laid on the wound to draw out the poison. The picees were then gathered up and burned. Afterwards an application of boiled chestnut leaves was made. All remedies failed, however, when the rattlesnake got his fangs into any blood vessel which eould quiekly disseminate the poison throughout the body. It may be well imagined that casualties from rattlesnake bites were of frequent occurrence. Horses and eattle were also often killed by snakes. Hogs were more dangerous to the snakes than the snakes to the hogs. Charms and incantations were used in the treatment of many diseases, and eandor compels us to admit that descendants of these people some- times use them to this day. There were remedies in the garden and forest and field for all manner of diseases and the use of most of them was learned from the Indians. Walnut bark stripped upwards was used for one purpose and the same bark strip- ped from the tree by pulling it downwards was used to produce an entirely different result. The children suffered greatly from eroup, which was called "bold hives" and they were treated with garlie or onion juice. Sweating was greatly prac- ticed and bleeding would have been more fre- quently reported to had it not been that there was no Dr. San Grado to administer this popular specific for all the ills to which flesh is heir.
A striking pieture of the domestie life of the pioneers is given us by Mr. Samuel Kercheval who was the son of a pioneer and grew up just across the Potomae river from us, amidst the scones he has described. The picture of the wed- ding which he gives bears every impress of truth and no one can doubt its accuracy.
"For a long time after the first settlement of this Country," writes Mr. Kercheval, "the in- habitants in general married very vonng. There was no distinction of rank and very little of for- tunc. On those accounts the first impression of love resulted in marriage, and a family establish- ment cost but a little labor and nothing else."
A description of a wedding front beginning to end, will serve to show the manners of our forefathers. and mark the grade of our civilization, which has succeeded to their rude state of society in the course of a few years. At an early period "the practice of celebrating the marriage at the
house of a bride began, and it should seem with great propriety. She also has the choice of the priest to perform the ecremony. In the first years of the settlement of this County a wedding cn- gaged the attention of a whole neighborhood, the frolie was cagerly antieipated by both old and young. This, is not to be wondered at when it is told that a wedding was almost the only gathering which was not accompanied with the labor of reaping, log-rolling, building a cabin, or planning some scout or campaign. On the morning of the wedding day, the groom and his attendants assembled at the house of his fath- er, for the purpose of reaching the mansion of his bride by noon, which was the usual time for celebrating the nuptials, and whieh for certain must take place before dinner. Let the reader imagine an assemblage of people, without a store, tailor or mantuamaker, within an hundred miles, and an assemblage of horses, without a blacksmith or saddler within an equal distance. The gentle- men dressed in shoepacks, moccasons, leather breeches, leggins, and linsey hunting shirts, all home made. The ladies dressed in linsey petti- coats and linsey or linen bed-gowns, coarse shoes, stockings. handkerchiefs, and buckskin gloves, if any ; if there were any buckles, rings, buttons or ruffles, they were relies of old times, family picces from parents or grand-parents. The horses were caparisoned with old saddles, bridles or halters, and paek-saddles. with a bag or blanket thrown over them-a rope or string as often constituted the girth as a piece of leather.
"The mareh in double file, was often inter- rupted by the narrowness and obstruetions of our horse paths, as they were ealled, for we had no roads. These diffieulties were often increased, sometimes by the good. and sometimes by the ill will of neighbors ; by felling trees and tying grape . vines across the way. Sometimes an ambuscade was formed by the wayside, and an unexpected discharge of several guns took place. so as to cover the wedding company with smoke. Let the reader imagine the scene that followed this discharge- the sudden spring of the horses. the shrieks of the girls, and the ehivalrie bustle of their partners to save them from falling. Sometimes, in spite of all that could be done to prevent it, some were thrown to the ground; if a wrist, elbow, or ankle happened to be sprained, it was tied with a handkerchief, and little more was thought or said about it.
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OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND.
"Another ceremony took place before the party reached the house of the bride, after the practice of making whiskey began, which was at an early period. When the party was about a mile from the place of its destination, two young men would single out to run for the bottte, the worse the path, the more logs, brush and deep hollows, the better, as these obstacles afforded an onvor- tunity for the greater display of intrepidity and horsemanship. The English fox chase, in point of danger to the riders and their horses, was noth- ing to this race for the bottle. The start was an- nounced by an Indian yell, when logs, brush, inud- holes, hill and glen, were speedily passed by the rival ponies. The bottle was always filled for the occasion, so that there was no use for the judges for the first who reaclied the door was handed the prize and returned in triumph to the company al .- nouncing his victory over his rival by a shrill whoop.
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