Volume I Part 9 (1/2)

34. _Do._ An admirable account of what such a frolic was some thirty-five years later is to be found in Edward Eggleston's ”Circuit Rider.”

35. Such incidents are mentioned again and again by Watson, Milfort, Doddridge, Carr, and other writers.

36. McClung's ”Western Adventures.” All eastern and European observers comment with horror on the border brawls, especially the eye-gouging.

Englishmen, of course, in true provincial spirit, complacently contrasted them with their own boxing fights; Frenchmen, equally of course, were more struck by the resemblances than the differences between the two forms of combat. Milfort gives a very amusing account of the ”Anglo-Americains d'une espece particuliere,” whom he calls ”crakeurs ou gaugeurs,” (crackers or gougers). He remarks that he found them ”tous borgnes,” (as a result of their pleasant fas.h.i.+on of eye-gouging--a backwoods bully in speaking of another would often threaten to ”measure the length of his eye-strings,”) and that he doubts if there can exist in the world ”des hommes plus mechants que ces habitants.”

These fights were among the numerous backwoods habits that showed Scotch rather than English ancestry. ”I attempted to keep him down, in order to improve my success, after the manner of my own country.” (”Roderick Random”).

37. Watson.

38. Doddridge.

39. McAfee MSS.

40. Watson.

41. McAfee MSS. See also Doddridge and Watson.

42. Doddridge, 156. He gives an interesting anecdote of one man engaged in helping such a pack-train, the bell of whose horse was stolen. The thief was recovered, and whipped as a punishment, the owner exclaiming as he laid the strokes l.u.s.tily on: ”Think what a rascally figure I should make in the streets of Baltimore without a bell on my horse.” He had never been out of the woods before; he naturally wished to look well on his first appearance in civilized life, and it never occurred to him that a good horse was left without a bell anywhere.

43. An instance of this, which happened in my mother's family, has been mentioned elsewhere (”Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”). Even the wolves occasionally attacked man; Audubon gives an example.

44. Doddridge, 194. Dodge, in his ”Hunting Grounds of the Great West,”

gives some recent instances. Bears were sometimes dangerous to human life. Doddridge, 64. A slave on the plantation of my great-grandfather in Georgia was once regularly scalped by a she-bear whom he had tried to rob of her cubs, and ever after he was called, both by the other negroes and by the children on the plantation, ”Bear Bob.”

45. Schopf, I., 404.

46. The insignificant garrisons at one or two places need not be taken into account, as they were of absolutely no effect.

47. Brantz Mayer, in ”Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap” (Albany, 1867), ix., speaks of the pioneers as ”comparative few in numbers,” and of the Indian as ”numerous, and fearing not only the superior weapons of his foe, but the organization and discipline which together made the comparatively few equal to the greater number.” This sentence embodies a variety of popular misconceptions. The pioneers were more numerous than the Indians; the Indians were generally, at least in the northwest, as well armed as the whites, and in military matters the Indians were actually (see Smith's narrative, and almost all competent authorities) superior in organization and discipline to their pioneer foes. Most of our battles against the Indians of the western woods, whether won or lost, were fought by superior numbers on our side. Individually, or in small parties, the frontiersmen gradually grew to be a match for the Indians, man for man, at least in many cases, but this was only true of large bodies of them if they were commanded by some one naturally able to control their unruly spirits.

48. As examples take Clark's last Indian campaign and the battle of Blue Licks.

49. Doddridge, 161, 185.

50. At the best such a frontier levy was composed of men of the type of Leatherstocking, Ishmael Bush, Tom Hutter, Harry March, Bill Kirby, and Aaron Thousandacres. When animated by a common and overmastering pa.s.sion, such a body would be almost irresistible; but it could not hold together long, and there was generally a plentiful mixture of men less trained in woodcraft, and therefore useless in forest fighting, while if, as must generally be the case in any body, there were a number of cowards in the ranks, the total lack of discipline not only permitted them to flinch from their work with impunity, but also allowed them, by their example, to infect and demoralize their braver companions.

51. Haywood, DeHaas, Withers, McClung, and other border annalists, give innumerable anecdotes about these and many other men, ill.u.s.trating their feats of fierce prowess and, too often, of brutal ferocity.

52. McAfee MSS. The story is told both in the ”Autobiography of Robert McAfee,” and in the ”History of the First Settlement on Salt River.”

53. Incidents of this sort are frequently mentioned. Generally the woman went back to her first husband. ”Early Times in Middle Tennessee,” John Carr, Nashville, 1859, p. 231.

54. See ”A Short History of the English Colonies in America,” by Henry Cabot Lodge (New York, 1886), for an account of these people.

55. The regulators of backwoods society corresponded exactly to the vigilantes of the western border to-day. In many of the cases of lynch law which have come to my knowledge the effect has been healthy for the community; but sometimes great injustice is done. Generally the vigilantes, by a series of summary executions, do really good work; but I have rarely known them fail, among the men whom they killed for good reason, to also kill one or two either by mistake or to gratify private malice.

56. See Doddridge.

57. McAfee MSS.