USA > Virginia > A history of the valley of Virginia, 3rd ed > Part 30
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Shooting at marks was a common diversion among the men, when their stock of ammunition would allow it, which, however, was far from being always the case. The present mode of shooting off-hand was not then in practice ; it was not considered as any trial of the value of the gun, nor indeed as much a test of the skill of a marksman. Their shooting was from a rest, and at as great a dis- tance as the length and weight of a 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 a 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 ; few of them carried more than forty-five bullets to the pound, and bullets of a less size were not thought sufficiently heavy for hunting or war.
Dramatic narrations, chiefly concerning Jack and the Giant, furnished our young people with another source of amusement dur- ing their leisure hours. Many of those tales were lengthy, and em- braced a considerable range of incident. Jack, always the hero of the story, after encountering many difficulties, and performing many great achievements, came off conqueror of the Giant. Most of those stories were tales of knight-errantry, in which some captive virgin was released from captivity and restored to her lover.
These dramatic narrations concerning Jack and the Giant bore a strong resemblance to the poems of Ossian, the story of the Cy- clops and Ulysses in the Odyssey of Homer, and the tale of the Giant and Great-heart in the Pilgrim's Progress, and were so arranged as to the different incidents of the narration, that they were easily coni- mitted to memory. They certainly have been handed down from generation to generation from time immemorial. Civilization has indeed banished the use of these ancient tales of romantic heroism ; but what then? It has substituted in their place the novel and romance.
It is thus that in every state of society the imagination of man is eternally at war with reason and truth. That fiction should be ac- ceptable to an unenlightened people is not to be wondered at, as the treasures ot truth has never been unfolded to their mind ; but that a civilized people themselves should, in so many instances, like barbarians, prefer the fairy regions of fiction to the august treasures
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of truth, developed in the sciences of theology, history, natural and moral philosopy, is truly a sarcasm on human nature. It is as much as to say, that it is essential to our amusement, that, for the time being, we must suspend the exercise of reason, and submit to a vol- untary deception.
Singing was another but not very common amusement among our first settlers. The tunes were rude enough, to be sure. Robin Hood furnished a number of our songs; the balance were mostly tragical, and were denominated "love songs about murder." As to cards, dice, backgammon, and other games of chance, we knew nothing about them. These are among the blessed gifts of civilization.
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WITCHCRAFT.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WITCHCRAFT.
I shall not be lengthy on this subject. The belief in Witch- craft was prevalent among the early settlers of the western country. To the witch was ascribed the tremendous power of inflicting strange and incurable diseases, particularly on children, of destroying cattle by shooting them with hair balls, and a great variety of other means of destruction, of inflicting spells and curses on guns and other things, and lastly, of changing men into horses, and often bridling and saddling them, riding them in full speed over hill and dale to their frolics and other places of rendezvous. More ample powers of mischief than these cannot be imagined.
Wizards were men supposed to be possessed of the same mis- chievous powers as the witchies ; but it was seldom exercised for bad purposes. The power of the wizards was exercised almost exclu- sively for the purpose of counteracting the malevolent influence of the witches of the other sex. I have known several of these witch- masters, as they were called, who made a public profession of curing these diseases inflicted by the influence of witches; and I have known respectable physicians, who had no greater portion of business in their line of their professions, than many of those witch- masters had in theirs.
The means by which the witch was supposed to inflict diseases, curses and spells, I never could learn. They were occult sciences, which no one was supposed to understand excepting the witch her- self, and no wonder, as no such arts ever existed in any country.
The diseases of children, supposed to be inflicted by withcraft, were those of the internal dropsy of the brain, and the rickts. The symptoms and cure of these destructive diseases were utterly un- known in former times in this country. Diseases which neither could be accounted for nor cured, were usually ascribed to some supernatural agency of a malignant kind.
For the cure of diseases inflicted by witchcraft, the picture of the supposed witch was drawn on a stump or piece of board, and shot at with a bullet containing a little bit of silver. This bullet transferred a painful and sometimes a mortal spell on that part of the witch corresponding with the part of the portrait struck by the bullet. Another method of cure was that of getting some of the
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child's water, which was closely corked up in a vial and hung up in a chimney. This complimented the witch with a stranguary, which lasted as long as the vial remained in the chimney. The witch had but one way of relieving herself from any spell inflicted on her in any way, which was that of borrowing something, no matter what, of the family to which the subject of the exercise of her witchcraft belonged.
I have known several poor old women much surprised at being refused requests which had usually been granted without hesi- tation, and almost heart broken when informed of the cause of the refusal.
When cattle or dogs were supposed to be under the influ- ence of witchcraft, they were burned in the forehead by a branding iron, or when dead, burned wholly to ashes. This inflicted a spell upon the witch which could only be removed by borrowing, as above stated.
Witches were often said to milk the cows of their neighbors. This they did by fixing a new pin in a new towel for each cow in- tended to be milked. This towel was hung over her own door, and by means of certain incantations, the milk was extracted from the fringes of the towel after the manner of milking a cow. This hap- pened when cows were too poor to give much milk.
The first German glass-blower in this country drove the witches out of their furnaces by throwing living puppies into them.
The greater or less amount of belief in witchcraft, necromancy and astrology, serves to show the relative amount of philosophical science in our country. Ignorance is always associated with super- stition, which, when presented an endless variety of sources of hope and fear, with regard to the good and bad fortunes of life, keep the benighted mind continually harrassed with groundless and delu- siveness, but strong and often deeply distressing impressions of a false faitlı. For the disease of the mind there is no cure but that of philosophy. This science shows to the enlightened reason of man, that no effect whatever can be produced in the physical world with- out a corresponding cause. This science announces that the death bell is but a momentary morbid motion of the nerves of the ear, and the death watch, the noise of a bug in the wall, and that the liowl- ing of the dog, and the croaking of the raven, are but the natural languages of the beast and fowl, and in no way prophetic of the death of the sick. The comet, which used to shake pestilence and war from its fiery train, is now viewed with as little emotion as the movements of Jupiter and Saturn in their respective orbits.
An eclipse of the sun, and an unusual freshet at the Tiber, shortly after the assassination of Julius Cæsar by Cassius and Brut- us, threw the whole of the Roman empire into consternation. It was supposed that all the gods of heaven and earth were enraged, and about to take revenge for the murder of the emperor ; but since the science of astronomy foretells in the calendar the time and
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extent of the eclipse, the phenomenon, is not viewed as a miraculous and portentous, but as a common and natural event.
That the pythoness and wizard of the Hebrews, the monthly soothsayers, astrologers and prognosticators of the Chaldeans, and the sybils of the Greeks and Romans, were mercenary imposters, there can be no doubt.
To say that the pythoness, and all others of her class, were aided in their operations by the intervention of familiar spirits, does not mend the matter ; for spirits, whether good or bad, possess not the power of life and death, health and disease, with regard to man and beast. Pre-science is an incommunicable attribute of God, and therefore spirits cannot foretell future events.
The afflictions of Job, through the intervention of Satan, were miraculous. The possessions mentioned in the New Testament, in all human probability, were maniacal diseases, and if, at their cures, the supposed evil spirit spoke with an audible voice, these events were also miraculous, and effected for a special purpose. But from miracles, no general conclusion can be drawn with regard to the di- vine government of the world.
The conclusion is, that the powers professed to be exercised by the occult science of necromancy and other arts of divination, were neither more nor less than impostures.
Among the Hebrews, the profession of arts of divination was thought deserving of capital punishment, because the profession was of Pagan origin, and of course incompatible with the profession of theism, and a theocratic form of government. These jugglers per- petrated a debasing superstition among the people. They were also swindlers, who divested their neighbors of large sums of money and valuable presents without an equivalent.
On the ground then of fraud alone, according to the genius of the criminal codes of the ancient governments, the offense deserved capital punishment.
But is the present time better than the past with regard to a superstitious belief in occult influences? Do no trace of the poly- theism of our forefathers remain among their christian descendants ? The inquiry must be answered in the affirmative. Should an al- manac-maker venture to give out the christian calendar without the column containing the signs of the zodiac, the calendar would be condemned as totally deficient, and the whole impression would re- main on his hands.
But what are those signs? They are the constellations of the zodiac, that is, clusters of stars, twelve in number, within and in- cluding the tropics of Cancer and Capricon. These constellations resemble the animals after which they are named. But what influ- ence do these clusters of stars exert on the animal and the plant ? Certainly none at all ; and yet we have been taught that the north- ern constellations govern the divisions of living bodies alternately from the head to the reins, and in like manner the southern from
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the reins to the feet. The sign then makes a skip from the feet to Aries, who again assumes the government of the head, and so on.
About half these constellations are friendly divinities, and exert a salutary influence on the animal and the plant. The others are malignant in their temper, and govern only for evil purposes. They blast during their reign the seed sown in the earth, and render medi- cine and the operation of surgery unsuccessful.
We have read of the Hebrew worshippers of the hosts of heaven whenever they relapsed into idolatary ; and these same constellations were the hosts of heaven which they worshipped. We, it is true, make no offering to these hosts of heaven, but we give them our faith and confidence. We hope for physical benefits from those of them whose dominion is friendly to our interests, while the reign of the malignant ones is an object of dread and painful apprehension.
Let us not boast very much of our science, civilization, or even christianity, while this column of the relics of paganism still dis- graces the christian calendar.
I have made these observations with a view to discredit the remnants of superstition still existing among us. While dreams, the howling of the dog, and the croaking of the raven, are prophetic of future events, we are not good christians. While we are dis- mayed at the signs of heaven, we are for the time being pagans. Life has real evils enough to contend with, without imaginary ones.
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MORALS.
CHAPTER XXIX.
MORALS.
In the section of the country where my father lived, there was, for many years after the settlement of the country, "neither law nor gospel." Our want of legal government was owing to the uncer- tainty whether we belonged to the State of Virginia or Pennsyl- vania. The line which at present divides the two States, was not run until some time after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. Thus it happened, that during a long period of time we knew nothing of courts, lawyers, magistrates, sheriffs or constables. Every one was therefore at liberty "to do whatsoever was right in his own eyes."
As this is a state of society which few of my readers have ever witnessed, I shall describe it as minutely as I can, and give in detail those moral maxims which in a great degree answered the important purposes of municipal jurisprudence.
In the first place let it be observed that in a sparse population, where all the members of the community are well-known to each other, and especially in a time of war, where every man capable of bearing arms is considered highly valuable as a defender of his country, public opinion has its full effect, and answers the purpose of legal government better than it would in a dense population in time of peace.
Such was the situation of our people along the frontiers of our settlements. They had no civil, military or ecclesiastical laws, at leased none that were enforced ; and yet, "they were a law unto themselves," as to all the leading obligations of our nature in all the relations in which they stood to each other. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of moral virtue was then as apparent as they are now, and they were then regarded with the same sentiments of aver- sion or respect which they inspire at the present time. Industry in working or hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, hospitality, and steadiness of deportment, received their full reward of public honor and public confidence among our rude forefathers, as well as among their better instructed and more polished descendants. The punishments which they inflicted upon offenders by the imperial court of public opinion, were well adapted for the reformation of the culprit, or his expulsion from the community.
The punishment for idleness, lying, dishonesty, and ill-fame
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generally, was that of "hating the offender out," as they expressed it. This mode of chastisement was like the atimea of the Greeks. It was public expression, in various ways, of a general sentiment of indignation against such as transgressed the moral maxims of the commuity or banishment of the person against whom it was directed.
At house-raising, log-rollings, and harvest-parties, every one was expected to do his duty faithfully. A person who did not per- form his share of labor on these occasions, was designated by the epithet of "Lawrence," or some other title still more opprobrious ; and when it came to his turn to require the like aid from his neighbors, the idler felt his punishment in their refusal to attend to his calls.
Although there was no legal compulsion to the performance of military duty ; yet every man of full age and size was expected to do his full share of public service. If he did not do so, he was " hated out as a coward." Even the want of any article of war equipments, such as ammunition, a sharp flint, a priming wire, a scalping knife, or tomahawk, was thought highly disgraceful. A man, who, without a reasonable excuse failed to go on a scout or campaign when it came to his turn, met with a expression of indig- nation in the countenance of all his neighbors, and epithets of dis- honor were fastened upon him without mercy.
Debts, which make such an uproar in civilized life were but little known among our forefathers at an early settlement of this country. After the depreciation of the continental paper, they had no money of any kind ; everything purchased was paid for in pro- duce or labor. A good cow and calf was often the price of a bashel of alum salt. If a contract was not faithfully fulfilled, the credit of the delinquent was at once ended.
Any petty theft was punished with all the infamy that could be heaped on the offender. A man on a campaign stole from his com- rade a cake out of the ashes in which it was baking. He was im- mediately named "the Bread rounds." This epithet of reproach was bandied about in this way. When he came in sight of a group of men, one of them would call, " Who comes there?" Another would answer, "The Bread rounds." If any one meant to be more serious about the matter, he would call out, " Who stole a cake out of the ashes?" Another replied by giving the name of the man in full. To this a third would give confirmation by exclaiming, "That is true and no lie." This kind of " tongue lashing" he was doomed to hear for the rest of the campaign, as well as for years after his return home.
If a thief was detected in any of the frontier settlements, a summary mode of punishment was always resorted to. The first settlers, so far as I knew of them, had a kind of innate or heredi- tary detestation of the crime of theft, in any shape or degree, and their maxim was that "a thief must be whipped." If the theft was
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something of value, a kind of jury of the neighborhood, after hear- ing the testimony, would condemn the culprit to Moses's law, that is, to forty stripes save one. If the theft was of small articles, the effender was doomed to carry on his back the flag of the United States, which then consisted of thirteen stripes. In either case, some hands were selected to execute the sentence, so that the stripes were sure to be well laid on.
This punishment was followed by a sentence of exile. He then was informed that he must decamp in so many days and be seen there no more on penalty of having the number of his stripes doubled.
For many years after the law was put into operation in the western part of Virginia, the magistrates themselves were in the habit of giving those who were brought before them on charges of small thefts, the liberty of being sent to jail or taking a whipping. The latter was commonly chosen, and was immediately inflicted, after which the thief was ordered to clear out.
In some instances stripes were inflicted ; not for the punishment of an offense, but for the purpose of extorting a confession from sus- pected persons. This was the torture of our early times, and no doubt sometimes very unjustly inflicted.
If a woman was given to tattling and slandering her neighbors, she was furnished by common consent with a kind of patent right to say whatever she pleased, without being believed. Her tongue was then said to be harmless, or to be no scandal.
With all their rudeness, these people were given to hospitality, and freely divided their rough fare with a neighbor or a stranger, and would have been offended at the offer of pay. In their settle- ments and forts, they lived, they worked, they fought and feasted, or suffered together, in cordial harmony. They were warm and constant in their friendships. On the other hand they were re- vengeful in their resentments; and the point of honor sometimes led to personal combats. If one man called another a liar, he was considered as having given a challenge which the person who received it must accept, or be deemed a coward, and the charge was gener- ally answered on the spot with a blow. If the injured person was decidedly unable to fight the aggressor, he might get a friend to do it for him. The same thing took place on a charge of cowardice, or any other dishonorable action. A battle must follow, and the per- son who made the charge must either fight the person against whom he made it, or any champion who choose to espouse his cause. Thus circumstanced, our people in early times were much more cautious of speaking evil of their neighbors than they are at present.
Sometimes pitched battles occurred, in which time, place, and seconds were appointed beforehand. I remember having seen one of these pitched battles in my father's Fort, when a boy. One of the young men knew very well beforehand that he should get the worst of the battle, and no doubt repented the engagement to fight ;
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but there was no getting over it. The point of honor demanded the risk of battle. He got his whipping ; they then shook hands, and were good friend afterwards.
This mode of single combat in those days was dangerous in the extreme. Although no weapons were used, fists, teeth and feet were employed at will ; but above all, the detestable practice of gouging, by which eyes were sometimes put out, rendered the mode of fighting frightful indeed. It was not, however, so destructive as the stiletto of the Italian, the knife of the Spaniard, the small sword of the Frenchman, or the pistol of the American or English duelist.
Instances of seduction and bastardy do not frequently happen in our early times. I remember one instance of the former, in which the life of the man was put in jeopardy by the resentinent of the family to which the girl belonged. Indeed, considering the chival- rous temper of our people, this crime could not then take place without great personal danger from the brothers or other relations of the victim seduced, family honor being then estimated at a high rate.
I do not recollect that profane language was much more preval- ent in our early times than at present.
Among the people with whom I am conversant, there was no other vestige of the christian religion than a faint observance of. Sunday, and that merely a day of rest for the aged and play-day for the young.
The first christian service I ever heard was in the Garrison church, in Baltimore county, in Maryland, where my father had sent me to school. I was then about ten years old. The appearance of the church, the windows of which were Gothic, the white surplice of the minister, and the responses in the service, overwhelmed me with surprise. Among my school-fellows in that place, it was a matter of reproach to me that I was not baptized, and why? Be- cause, as they said, I had no name. Such was their notion of the efficacy of baptism.
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THE REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE REVOLUTION.
The American Revolution was the commencement of a new era in the history of the world. The issue of that eventful contest snatched the sceptre from the hands of the monarch, and placed it where it ought to be, in the hands of the people.
On the sacred altar of liberty it consecrated the rights of man, surrendered to him the right and power to govern himself, and placed in his hands the resources of his country, as munitions of war for his defense. The experiment was indeed bold and hazardous but success has hitherto more than justified the most sanguine an- ticipations of those who made it. The world has witnessed, with astonishment, the rapid growth and confirmation of our noble fabric of freedom. From our distant horizon, we have reflected a strong and steady blaze of light on ill-fated Europe, from time im- memoral involved in the fetters and gloom of slavery. Our history has excited a general and ardent spirit of inquiry into the nature of our civil institutions, and a strong wish on the part of the people in distant countries, to paticipate in our blessings.
But will an example, so portentuous of evil to the chiefs of des- potic institutions, be viewed with indifference by those who now sway the scepter with unlimited power, over the many millions of their vassals? Will they adopt no measures of defense against the influence of that freedom, so widely diffused and so rapidly gaining strength throughout their empires? Will they make no effort to remove from the world those free governments, whose example gives them such annoyance? The measures of defence will be adopted, the effort will be made; for power is never surrendered without a struggle.
Already nations, which, from the earliest period of their his- tory, have constantly crimsoned the earth with each other's blood, have become a band of brothers for the destruction of every germ of human liberty. Every year witnesses an association of the mon- arch of those nations, in unhallowed conclave, for the purpose of concerting measures for effecting their dark designs. Hitherto the execution of those measures has been alas? to fatally successful.
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