Dishes and other utensils were few—some pewter plates, forks, and spoons; wooden bowls and trenchers, with gourds and hard-shelled squashes for drinking-mugs. For knife, Boone doubtless used his belt-weapon, and scorned the crock plates, now slowly creeping into the valley, as calculated to dull its edge. Over the fireplace deer's horns served as rests for his gun. Into the log wall were driven great wooden pegs, hanging from which flitches of dried and smoked bacon, venison, and bear's-meat mingled freely with the family's scanty wardrobe.
With her cooking and rude mending, her moccasin-making, her distaff and loom for making cloths, her occasional plying of the hoe in the small vegetable patch, and her ever-present care of the children and dairy, Rebecca Boone was abundantly occupied.
BOONE'S POWDER-HORN AND BAKE-KETTLE.
In possession of Wisconsin State Historical Society. The horn once belonged to Daniel's brother Israel, and bears the initials "I B".
In these early years of married life Daniel proved a good husbandman, planting and garnering his crops with regularity, and pasturing a few scrawny cattle and swine upon the wild lands adjoining his farm. Doubtless at times he did smithy-work for the neighbors and took a hand at the loom, as had his father and grandfather before him. Sometimes he was engaged with his wagon in the caravans which each autumn found their way from the Yadkin and the other mountain valleys down to the Atlantic cities, carrying furs to market; it was as yet too early in the history of the back country for the cattle-raisers to send their animals to the coast. In the Valley of Virginia, hemmed in upon the east by the Blue Ridge, packhorses were alone used in this traffic, for the mountain paths were rough and narrow; but wagons could be utilized in the more southern districts. The caravans brought back to the pioneers salt, iron, cloths, and a few other manufactured goods. This annual expedition over, Boone was free to go upon long hunts in the forest, where he cured great stores of meat for his family and prepared the furs for market.
The backwoodsmen of the Yadkin had few machines to assist them in their labor, and these were of the simplest sort. Practically, every settler was his own mechanic—although some men became, in certain lines, more expert than their neighbors, and to them fell such work for the entire settlement. Grinding corn into meal, or cracking it into hominy, were, as usual with primitive peoples, tasks involving the most machinery. Rude mortars and pestles, some of the latter ingeniously worked by means of springy "sweeps," were commonly seen; a device something like a nutmeg-grater was often used when the corn was soft; two circular millstones, worked by hand, were effective, and there were some operated by water-power.
Medicine was at a crude stage, many of the so-called cures being as old as Egypt, while others were borrowed from the Indians. The borderers firmly believed in the existence of witches; bad dreams, eclipses of the sun, the howling of dogs, and the croaking of ravens, were sure to bring disasters in their train.
Their sports laid stress on physical accomplishments—great strength, dexterity with the rifle, hunting, imitating the calls of wild birds and beasts, throwing the tomahawk, running, jumping, wrestling, dancing, and horse-racing; they were also fond, as they gathered around one another's great fireplaces in the long winter evenings, of story-telling and dramatic recitation. Some of the wealthier members of this primitive society owned negro slaves, to whom, sometimes, they were cruel, freely using the whip upon both women and men. Indeed, in their own frequent quarrels fierce brutality was sometimes used, adversaries in a fist-fight being occasionally maimed or otherwise disfigured for life.