Our readers will pardon the length of these extracts from Doddridge, as they convey accurate pictures of many scenes of Western life in the times of Daniel Boone. We add to them a single extract from "Ramsay's Annals of Tennessee." The early settlement of that State took place about the same time with that of Kentucky, and was made by emigrants from the same region. The following remarks are therefore perfectly applicable to the pioneers of Kentucky.
"The settlement of Tennessee 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 Minnesota and Nebraska 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. Independence 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 succeeding 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 Tennessee. At first a single Indian trail was the only entrance to the eastern border of it and for many years admitted only of the hunter and the pack-horse It was not till the year 1776 that a wagon was seen in Tennessee. In consequence of the want of roads—as well as of the great distance from sources of supply—the first inhabitants were without tools, and, of course, without mechanics—much more, without the conveniences of living and the comforts of house-keeping. Luxuries were absolutely unknown. Salt was brought on pack-horses from Augusta and Richmond, and readily commanded ten dollars a bushel. The salt gourd, in every cabin, was considered as a treasure. The sugar-maple furnished the only article of luxury on the frontier; coffee and tea being unknown, or beyond the reach of the settlers, sugar was seldom made, and was only used for the sick, or in the preparation of a sweetened dram at a wedding, or the arrival of a new-comer. The appendages of the kitchen, the cupboard, and the table were scanty and simple.
"Iron was brought, at great expense, from the forges east of the mountain, on pack-horses, and was sold at an enormous price. Its use was, for this reason, confined to the construction and repair of plows and other farming utensils. Hinges, nails, and fastenings of that material, were seldom seen.
"The costume of the first settlers corresponded well with the style of their buildings and the quality of their furniture. The hunting-shirt of the militiaman and the hunter was in general use. The rest of their apparel was in keeping with it—plain, substantial, and well adapted for comfort, use, and economy. The apparel of the pioneer's family was all home-made, and in a whole neighborhood there would not be seen, at the first settlement of the country, a single article of dress of foreign growth or manufacture. Half the year, in many families, shoes were not worn. Boots, a fur hat, and a coat with buttons on each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder, and sometimes received censure and rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broadcloth, and his queue, rather than endure the scoff and ridicule of the backwoodsmen."
The dwelling-house, on every frontier in Tennessee, was the log-cabin. A carpenter and a mason were not needed to build them—much less the painter, the glazier, or the upholsterer. Every settler had, besides his rifle, no other instrument but an axe, a hatchet, and a butcher-knife. A saw, an auger, a froe, and a broad-axe would supply a whole settlement, and were used as common property in the erection of the log-cabin. The floor of the cabin was sometimes the earth. No saw-mill was yet erected; and, if the means or leisure of the occupant authorized it, he split out puncheons for the floor and for the shutter of the entrance to his cabin. The door was hung with wooden hinges and fastened by a wooden latch.
"Such was the habitation of the pioneer Tennessean. Scarcely can one of these structures, venerable for their years and the associations which cluster around them, be now seen, in Tennessee. Time and improvement have displaced them. Here and there in the older counties, may yet be seen the old log house, which sixty years ago sheltered the first emigrant, or gave, for the time, protection to a neighborhood, assembled within its strong and bullet-proof walls. Such an one is the east end of Mr. Martin's house, at Campbell's Station, and the centre part of the mansion of this writer, at Mecklenburg, once Gilliam's Station, changed somewhat, it is true, in some of its aspects, but preserving even yet, in the height of the story and in its old-fashioned and capacious fire-place, some of the features of primitive architecture on the frontier. Such, too, is the present dwelling-house of Mr. Tipton, on Ellejoy, in Blount County, and that of Mr. Glasgow Snoddy, in Sevier County. But these old buildings are becoming exceedingly rare, and soon not one of them will be seen. Their unsightly proportions and rude architecture will not much longer offend modern taste, nor provoke the idle and irreverent sneer of the fastidious and the fashionable. When the last one of these pioneer houses shall have fallen into decay and ruins, the memory of their first occupants will still be immortal and indestructible.
"The interior of the cabin was no less unpretending and simple. The whole furniture, of the one apartment—answering in these primitive times the purposes of the kitchen, the dining-room, the nursery and the dormitory—were a plain home-made bedstead or two, some split-bottomed chairs and stools; a large puncheon, supported on four legs, used, as occasion required, for a bench or a table, a water shelf and a bucket; a spinning-wheel, and sometimes a loom, finished the catalogue. The wardrobe of the family was equally plain and simple. The walls of the house were hung round with the dresses of the females, the hunting-shirts, clothes, and the arms and shot-pouches of the men.
"The labor and employment of a pioneer family were distributed in accordance with surrounding circumstances. To the men was assigned the duty of procuring subsistence and materials for clothing, erecting the cabin and the station, opening and cultivating the farm, hunting the wild beasts, and repelling and pursuing the Indians. The women spun the flax, the cotton and wool, wove the cloth, made them up, milked, churned, and prepared the food, and did their full share of the duties of house-keeping. Another thus describes them: 'There we behold woman in her true glory; not a doll to carry silks and jewels; not a puppet to be dandled by fops, an idol of profane adoration, reverenced to-day, discarded to-morrow; admired, but not respected; desired, but not esteemed; ruling by passion, not affection; imparting her weakness, not her constancy, to the sex she should exalt; the source and mirror of vanity. We see her as a wife, partaking of the cares, and guiding the labors of her husband, and by her domestic diligence spreading cheerfulness all around; for his sake, sharing the decent refinements of the world, without being fond of them; placing all her joy, all her happiness, in the merited approbation of the man she loves. As a mother, we find her the affectionate, the ardent instructress of the children she has reared from infancy, and trained them up to thought and virtue, to meditation and benevolence; addressing them as rational beings, and preparing them to become men and women in their turn.
"'Could there be happiness or comfort in such dwellings and 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 dependant; brilliant hopes of future wealth and distinction led them on; and as there was ample room for all, and as each new-comer increased individual and general security, there was little room for that envy, jealousy, and hatred which constitute a large portion of human misery in older societies. Never were the story, the joke, the song, and the laugh better enjoyed than upon 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.'" [[51]]
"On the frontier the diet was necessarily plain and homely, but exceedingly abundant and nutritive. The Goshen of America[[52]] 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 exclusively used. It was not till 1790 that the settlers on the rich bottoms of Cumberland and Nollichucky discovered the remarkable adaptation of the soil and climate of Tennessee to the production of this grain. Emigrants from James River, the Catawba, and the Santee, were surprised at the amount and quality of the corn crops, surpassing greatly the best results of agricultural labor and care in the Atlantic States. This superiority still exists, and Tennessee, by the census of 1850, was the corn State. Of all the farinacea, corn is best adapted to the condition of a pioneer people; and if idolatry is at all justifiable, Ceres, or certainly the Goddess of Indian corn, should have had a temple and a worshipers among the pioneers of Tennessee. Without that grain, the frontier settlements could not have been formed and maintained. It is the most certain crop—requires the least preparation of the ground—is most congenial to a virgin soil—needs not only the least amount of labor in its culture, but comes to maturity in the shortest time. The pith of the matured stalk of the corn is esculent and nutritious; and the stalk itself, compressed between rollers, furnishes what is known as corn-stalk molasses."