129 People of the Woods (1817)
These people are healthy and the females and children better complexioned than their neighbors of the timbered country. It is evident that they breathe better air. But they are in a low state of civilization, about half-Indian in their mode of life. They also seem to have less cordiality towards a “land hunter” as they with some expression of contempt call the stranger who explores their country in quest of a home.
Their habits of life do not accord with those of a thickly settled neighborhood. They are hunters by profession and they would have the whole range of the forests for themselves and their cattle. Thus strangers appear among them as invaders of their privileges as they have intruded on the better founded, exclusive privileges of their Indian predecessors.
But there are agreeable exceptions to the coarse part of this general character. I have met with pleasant intelligent people who were a perfect contrast to their semi-Indian neighbors: cleanly, industrious, and orderly whilst ignorance, indolence, and disorder with a total disregard of cleanliness in their houses and persons are too characteristic of the hunter tribe.
August 1. Dagley’s, twenty miles north of Shawnee Town. After viewing several beautiful prairies, so beautiful with their surrounding woods as to seem like the creation of fancy, gardens of delight in a dreary wilderness. And after losing our horses and spending two days in recovering them, we took a hunter as our guide and proceeded across the Little Wabash to explore the country between that river and the Skillet-fork.
Since we left the Fox [Indian] settlement about fifteen miles north of the Big Prairie, cultivation has been very scanty, many miles intervening between the little “clearings.” This may therefore be truly called a new country.
These lonely settlers are poorly off. Their bread corn must be ground thirty miles off, requiring three days to carry to the mill and bring back the small horse-load of three bushels. Articles of family manufacture are very scanty and what they purchase is of the meanest quality and excessively dear. Yet they are friendly and willing to share their simple fare with you. It is surprising how comfortable they seem, wanting [lacking] everything. To struggle with privations has now become the habit of their lives, most of them having made several successive plunges into the wilderness. And they begin already to talk of selling their “improvements” and getting still farther “back”, on finding that emigrants of another description are thickening about them.
Our journey across the Little Wabash was a complete departure from all mark of civilization. We saw no bears, as they are now buried in the thickets and seldom appear by day. But at every few yards we saw recent marks of their doings, “wallowing” in the long grass or turning over the decayed logs in quest of beetles or worms, in which work the strength of this animal is equal to that of four men. Wandering without track where even the sagacity of our hunter-guide had nearly failed us, we at length arrived at the cabin of another hunter, where we lodged.
This man and his family are remarkable instances of the effect on the complexion produced by the perpetual incarceration of a thorough woodland life. Incarceration may seem to be a term less applicable to the condition of a roving back-woodsman than to any other and especially unsuitable to the habits of this individual and his family. For the cabin in which he entertained us is the third dwelling he has built within the last twelve months, and a very slender motive would place him in a fourth before the ensuing winter. In his general habits, the hunter ranges as freely as the beasts he pursues. Laboring under no restraint, his activity is only bounded by his own physical powers. Still he is incarcerated, “Shut from the common air.” Buried in the depth of a boundless forest, the breeze of health never reaches these poor wanderers. The bright prospect of distant hills fading away into the semblance of clouds never cheered their sight. They are tall and pale like vegetables that grow in a vault, pining for light.
Our stock of provisions being nearly exhausted, we were anxious to provide ourselves with a supper by means of our guns but we could meet with neither deer nor turkey. However in our utmost need, we shot three raccoons, an old one to be roasted for our dogs and the two young ones to be stewed up daintily for ourselves. We soon lighted a fire and cooked the old raccoon for the dogs but, famished as they were, they would not touch it. And their squeamishness so far abated our relish for the promised stew that we did not press our complaining landlady to prepare it. And thus our supper consisted of the residue of our “corn” bread and no raccoon. However we laid our bear skins on the filthy earth (floor there was none) which they assured us was “too damp for fleas” and wrapped in our blankets slept soundly enough, though the collops of venison hanging in comely rows in the smoky fireplace and even the shoulders put by for the dogs and which were suspended over our heads, would have been an acceptable prelude to our night’s rest had we been invited to partake of them. But our hunter and our host were too deeply engaged in conversation to think of supper. In the morning the latter kindly invited us to cook some of the collops, which we did by toasting them on a stick. And he also divided some shoulders among the dogs, so we all fared sumptuously.
The cabin, which may serve as a specimen of these rudiments of houses, was formed of round logs with apertures of three or four inches between. No chimney but large intervals between the “clapboards” for the escape of the smoke. The roof was however a more effectual covering than we have generally experienced, as it protected us very tolerably from a drenching night. Two bedsteads of un-hewn logs and cleft boards laid across. Two chairs, one of them without a bottom, and a low stool were all the furniture required by this numerous family. A string of buffalo hide stretched across the hovel was a wardrobe for their rags and their utensils, consisting of a large iron pot, some baskets, the effective rifle and two that were superannuated stood about in corners, and the fiddle which was only silent when we were asleep hung by them.
These hunters are as persevering as savages and as indolent. They cultivate indolence as a privilege. “You English are very industrious, but we have freedom.” And thus they exist in yawning indifference, surrounded with nuisances and petty wants. The first to be removed and the latter supplied by a tenth of the time loitered away in their innumerable idle days. Indolence under various modifications seems to be the easily besetting sin of the Americans where I have travelled. The Indian probably stands highest on the scale as an example, the backwoods man the next, the new settler who declines hunting takes a lower degree, and so on. I have seen interesting exceptions even among the hunting tribe but the malady is a prevailing one in all classes.
At one of these lone dwellings we found a neat, respectable-looking female spinning under the little piazza at one side of the cabin which shaded her from the sun. Her husband was absent on business which would detain him some weeks. She had no family and no companion but her husband’s faithful dog, which usually attended him in his bear hunting in the winter. She was quite overcome with “lone” she said, and hoped we would tie our horses in the wood and sit awhile with her during the heat of the day. We did so and she rewarded us with a basin of coffee. Her husband was kind and good to her and never left her without necessity, but a true lover of bear hunting. Which he pursued alone, taking only his dog with him though it is common for hunters to go in parties to attack this dangerous animal. The cabin of this hunter was neatly arranged and the garden well stocked.
August 2. We lodged last night at another cabin where similar neatness prevailed within and without. The woman neat and the children clean in skin and whole in their clothes. The man possessed of good sense and sound notions, ingenious and industrious, a contrast to back-woods men in general.
Shawnee Town. Here is the land office for the south-east district of Illinois, where I have just constituted myself a land-owner by paying seven hundred and twenty dollars as one fourth of the purchase money of fourteen hundred and forty acres.
Source: Morris Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey in America from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois (1818), 105-114. https://archive.org/details/toldcontemporari03hartrich/page/462/mode/2up
