Game Still Abundant.
The man of the Western waters, was essentially a man who dwelt alone in the midst of the forest on his rude little farm, and who eked out his living by hunting. Game still abounded everywhere, save in the immediate neighborhood of the towns; so that many of the inhabitants lived almost exclusively by hunting and fishing, and, with their return to the pursuits of savagery, adopted not a little of the savage idleness and thriftlessness. Bear, deer, and turkey were staple foods. Elk had ceased to be common, though they hung on here and there in out of the way localities for many years; and by the close of the century the herds of bison had been driven west of the Mississippi. [Footnote: Henry Ker, "Travels," p.22.] Smaller forms of wild life swarmed. Gray squirrels existed in such incredible numbers that they caused very serious damage to the crops, and at one time the Kentucky Legislature passed a law imposing upon every male over sixteen years of age the duty of killing a certain number of squirrels and crows every year. [Footnote: Michaux, 215, 236; Collins, I., 24.] The settlers possessed horses and horned cattle, but only a few sheep, which were not fitted to fight for their own existence in the woods, as the stock had to. On the other hand, slab-sided, long-legged hogs were the most plentiful of domestic animals, ranging in great, half-wild droves through the forest.
Fondness of the Westerners for the Lonely Life of the Woods.
All observers were struck by the intense fondness of the frontiersmen for the woods and for a restless, lonely life. [Footnote: Crêvecoeur, "Voyage dans la Haute Pennsylvanie," etc., p. 265.] They pushed independence to an extreme; they did not wish to work for others or to rent land from others. Each was himself a small landed proprietor, who cleared only the ground that he could himself cultivate. Workmen were scarce and labor dear. It was almost impossible to get men fit to work as mill hands, or to do high-class labor in forges even by importing them from Pennsylvania or Maryland. [Footnote: Clay MSS., Letter to George Nicholas, Baltimore, Sept. 3, 1796.] Even in the few towns the inhabitants preferred that their children should follow agriculture rather than become handicraftsmen; and skilled workmen such as carpenters and smiths made a great deal of money, so much so that they could live a week on one day's wage. [Footnote: Michaux, pp. 96, 152.]
The River Trade.
In addition to farming there was a big trade along the river. Land transportation was very difficult indeed, and the frontiersman's whole life was one long struggle with the forest and with poor roads. The waterways were consequently of very great importance, and the flatboatmen on the Mississippi and Ohio became a numerous and noteworthy class. The rivers were covered with their craft. There was a driving trade between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the goods being drawn to Pittsburgh from the seacoast cities by great four-horse wagons, and being exported in ships from New Orleans to all parts of the earth. Not only did the Westerners build river craft, but they even went into shipbuilding; and on the upper Ohio, at Pittsburgh, and near Marietta, at the beginning of the present century, seagoing ships were built and launched to go down the Ohio and Mississippi, and thence across the ocean to any foreign port. [Footnote: Thompson Mason Harris, "Journal of Tour," etc., 1803, p. 140; Michaux, p. 77.] There was, however, much risk in this trade; for the demand for commodities at Natchez and New Orleans was uncertain, while the waters of the Gulf swarmed with British and French cruisers, always ready to pounce like pirates on the ships of neutral powers. [Footnote: Clay MSS., W. H. Turner to Thomas Hart, Natchez, May 27, 1797.]
Small Size of the Towns.
Natchez.
Yet the river trade was but the handmaid of frontier agriculture. The Westerners were a farmer folk who lived on the clearings their own hands had made in the great woods, and who owned the land they tilled. Towns were few and small. At the end of the century there were some four hundred thousand people in the West; yet the largest town was Lexington, which contained less than three thousand people. [Footnote: Perrin Du Lac "Voyage," etc., 1801, 1803, p. 153; Michaux, 150.] Lexington was a neatly built little burg, with fine houses and good stores. The leading people lived well and possessed much cultivation. Louisville and Nashville were each about half its size. In Nashville, of the one hundred and twenty houses but eight were of brick, and most of them were mere log huts. Cincinnati was a poor little village. Cleveland consisted of but two or three log cabins, at a time when there were already a thousand settlers in its neighborhood on the Connecticut Reserve, scattered out on their farms. [Footnote: "Historical Collections of Ohio," p. 120.] Natchez was a very important town, nearly as large as Lexington. It derived its importance from the river traffic on the Mississippi. All the boatmen stopped there, and sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty craft were moored to the bank at the same time. The men who did this laborious river work were rude, powerful, and lawless, and when they halted for a rest their idea of enjoyment was the coarsest and most savage dissipation. At Natchez there speedily gathered every species of purveyor to their vicious pleasures, and the part of the town known as "Natchez under the Hill" became a by-word for crime and debauchery. [Footnote: Henry Ker, "Travels," p. 41.]
Growth of Kentucky.
Kentucky had grown so in population, possessing over two hundred thousand inhabitants, that she had begun to resemble an Eastern State. When, in 1796, Benjamin Logan, the representative of the old woodchoppers and Indian fighters, ran for governor and was beaten, it was evident that Kentucky had passed out of the mere pioneer days. It was more than a mere coincidence that in the following year Henry Clay should have taken up his residence in Lexington. It showed that the State was already attracting to live within her borders men like those who were fitted for social and political leadership in Virginia.