Introduction to Pioneer and Frontier Life
Pioneer and Frontier Life (1776–1890), the manner of living of the pioneers who made their homes at the forward edge of United States settlement as the frontier moved westward. The primary lure of the frontier for the settler was land, either free or at a low price. It is generally considered that by 1890 the frontier had come to an end.
Settlement in the United States, when the nation was formed in 1776, was confined largely to the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains. Migration over the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee had just begun. For the next half century the pioneers moved steadily across the central portion of the country, and came to a halt at the edge of the “Great American Desert” (the relatively barren plains between western Arkansas and Missouri and the Rocky Mountains). The land being settled during this time was generally forested, although there were significant areas of prairie in the Midwest. Settlers usually chose a wooded spot to build their homes, as logs were the main construction material. Thus the log cabin became a symbol of pioneer life in general.
Log-cabin Pioneers
Establishing a home on the frontier required little in the way of equipment. The move from the East to frontier areas could be made with one or two horses or oxen for transportation; a gun for providing food and for protection; a knife, ax, and other tools for constructing a cabin and making all manner of useful articles; flint and steel for starting fires; an iron cooking pot; and a hoe. With just these basic necessities, a pioneer could set up a homestead on a tract of wilderness land.
The first settlers to penetrate a region often had to make their own trails, although sometimes there would be Indian trails or animal paths they could use. Supplies were carried by animals tethered together into a train. With use, the trails became wider, and later were improved so that wagons could use them. Early roads such as the Wilderness Road to Kentucky, the Mohawk Trail through New York, and the Cumberland, or National, Road across the Northwest Territory-served to open frontier country to settlers.
Water transportation was favored by many people. Boats could float with the current down the Ohio River to Kentucky and southern Indiana. A family or group of families that built its own boat could migrate to new territory at very little expense.
At first the river travelers were subject to Indian attack, so the settlers' boats were built to be floating forts. Such a boat, called an ark, had a low house that covered the rectangular hull entirely, leaving no deck. There was only one door, heavily barred. Windows, if any, were small and had sliding shutters. The walls were pierced with loopholes through which guns could be fired. The arks were steered with long oars called sweeps. Later, when the Indians had been subdued, flatboats were used. With a log cabin surrounded by farm animals, wagons, a haystack, and washlines on the deck, the settler's flatboat looked like a floating home-stead.
On the frontier, a homesite was chosen near a spring and, if the area was partly settled, near other pioneers or a fort (often called a station). The first shelter—unless the family was living temporarily on the boat that brought them downriver, or at the fort—was a rough shed of stacked logs, open across the front. This was called a half-faced camp. The pioneer family began at once to cut down trees for a log cabin. When enough had been cut, neighbors came to the log , or cabin, raising to help build the cabin.
Generally three days were required to complete a cabin and its essential pieces of furniture—a platform bed built into a corner, a table, and a few benches and stools. Logs and half-logs, called puncheons, were used wherever possible because they were easier to make than hand-split planks. The cabin floor might be of puncheons, but more often it was packed dirt. The fireplace, built of logs and lined with stones and mud, was at one end of the room. It served for both heating and cooking. The cabin had a loft, reached by a ladder, where the children slept.
In rural areas, the pioneer couple often continued to live in their log cabin even after a sawmill, where they could have purchased lumber, was built nearby. As more space was needed, lean-tos were added. Often a second cabin was built close by the first one, and the two were connected by a roof, forming a partially enclosed breezeway called a dogtrot. Later, more elaborate homes, sometimes two stories high, were built out of squared logs. They often had stone chimneys, glass windows, and inner walls of board.
Many household articles could be made of wood by the pioneers themselves. Sections of log were hollowed out—by burning, chipping, and scraping—into storage barrels, pails, bowls, and trenchers (wooden plates). Spoons, ax handles, pitchforks, shovels, and other useful items could be whittled or carved with simple hand tools.
Cooking utensils were commonly of iron. They included skillets, gridirons, Dutch ovens, long-handled forks, ladles, and strainers. One of the first commercial enterprises begun at a fort or settlement was the blacksmith's forge, where wrought-iron items could be produced. Other traders traveled from cabin to cabin—the peddler, cooper (maker of barrels and kegs), and tinker (mender of pots and utensils). Stoneware crocks and jugs and pewter dishes and spoons gradually replaced woodenware in the pioneer home.
To convert dried corn into meal, a pioneer family had to use a hominy block (a large mortar-and-pestle device) or a hand mill. Not every household, however, had this equipment; on the frontier, neighbors often had to share with each other. A loom for weaving cloth was another item owned by a few but needed by all. Almost every home had at least one spinning wheel.
Corn was the staple ingredient in the pioneers' diet. It was eaten as hominy and as cornmeal. The cornmeal was cooked into mush, or baked into bread known as corn pone (from an Indian word meaning baked) or johnnycake (from “journey cake,” because it was dry and could be carried when traveling). It was also made into dumplings and put in meat stew, which was called potpie.
Hunting was an important source of meat, most commonly deer, bear, and fowl. Hogs were among the first domestic meat animals on the frontier. Most meat was smoked, salted, or made into sausage to preserve it. “Hog and hominy” was a common hot dish. Lard was the most common cooking fat. Surplus animal fat was saved to make soap and tallow candles, or to burn in Betty lamps.
Cows were kept for milk and beef. Milk and butter could be kept from spoiling in the springhouse, where perishable foods were stored in crocks lowered into the cold spring water. Maple syrup, maple sugar, and honey were used as sweeteners; after the Mississippi River trade began in the 1790's, it became possible to buy molasses and cane sugar from Louisiana. Whiskey and brandy were produced from grain and fruit for home use and for barter.
Home-tanned deerskin was the standard material for men's trousers. Cloth was preferred for men's shirts and for women's and children's clothing. Flax was grown and sheep were raised as sources of fiber for the pioneer family to make cloth. Preparing flax for spinning into linen thread was hard manual labor in which both men and women joined. The flax and the wool were spun into thread and woven into cloth. Cloth could be dyed brown, blue, or black with home-prepared tree-bark dyes.
The cloth most often used for clothing was linsey-woolsey, a combination of linen and wool. For summer, linen alone was used—a coarse grade for work clothes and a fine, smooth cloth for dress. Commercially woven cotton was a luxury to the early pioneers. In the 19th century, it became more readily available.
Stockings were hand-knitted of woolen yarn. Footwear, if made at home, generally consisted of shoepacs, shoes similar to moccasins, but with hard soles and a high ankle. Later, boots made by a shoemaker became common, but shoe repair was still generally done at home; many households had a cobbler's bench.
When a pioneer settled on a tract of wooded land, the first task was to clear it of trees so that crops could be planted. The smaller trees were cut down immediately, but the larger ones were first killed by girdling (removing a strip of bark completely around the trees). After they had died and dried out, they were cut down and burned. Wood ashes were a source of lye, used for making soap and for soaking the hulls off dried corn to make hominy. Lye also could be boiled down into potash, also known as black salt, a product for which there was a demand in the East.
Although the settlers were remarkably self-sufficient, some necessities had to be purchased. Chief among these were gun-powder, lead for bullets, and salt. Cast-iron pots, gunlocks, pewter ware, printed calico, and cane sugar were other items that might be bought from a peddler or on a trip to town.
There was very little money in circulation in frontier areas, so most trade was by barter. The settlers might offer such goods as potash, furs, deerskins, medicinal herbs, liquor, or livestock in trade. Millers took a portion of the flour ground for each customer as a fee. Professional weavers and tanners who set up business in pioneer areas also took payment in kind.
As more land was cleared and cultivated, frontier areas began to produce agricultural surpluses. In time, small herds of cattle were built up and driven to markets in the East. Grain, however, was a bulky commodity, difficult to transport economically. The solution that many settlers adopted was to distill their grain into liquor, which was easier to transport and would fetch a high price in eastern markets. The distillation of whiskey was so important to the frontier economy that in 1794 federal taxes on liquor led to the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising of farmers in western Pennsylvania.
Any task more easily done by a group than alone provided an occasion for a social gathering. People assisted their neighbors with the knowledge that when they needed aid they could count on help in return. At quilting bees, women gathered to sew quilts. At husking bees, the tedious chore of cleaning corn was made easier by turning it into a contest to see who could husk the most ears. At a cloth fulling, newly woven wool was dampened and stamped on with bare feet to shrink and thicken it. On such occasions a meal was served and a festive atmosphere prevailed.
A funeral drew people from a great distance, and it was a time of much visiting, not all of it solemn. The most prolonged and unrestrained celebration, often lasting three days, was the one that followed a wedding. The first day's festivities were at the house of the bride's family, the next at the house of the groom's family, and the third at the cabin of the newlyweds. The housewarming began with a shivaree, a serenade with banging kettles, clanging bells, gunfire, and shouting.
Western Pioneers
In the early 1840's the wagon trains of settlers began rolling along the Oregon Trail to the Far West. Independence, Missouri, was the “jumping-off” point at that time. Members of a wagon train usually organized themselves in a military manner, often with elected officers and a professional guide.
Each evening the guide selected a campsite and directed the wagons into a circle for defense against hostile Indians. Most wagons carried tents, which were set up inside the circle as sleeping quarters. On the western plains, where bison were plentiful, the usual food was buffalo meat, brought in during the day by the party's hunters. Fires were often made of buffalo chips (dry dung), and were lighted with flint and steel. The men and boys went on foot, leading the animals that pulled the wagons. Many of the women also walked most of the way; walking was not as tiring as riding in the jolting, springless wagons. It normally took five months to get to Oregon.
The Gold Rush to California that began in 1849 was part of a different pattern in pioneer life. People traveling to the gold fields were seeking not land, but quick wealth. They had no time to spare for growing their own food or making their own tools, but had to purchase all their needs. The supplies, coming mainly from the East Coast, could not meet the demand, and prices for even the simplest necessities became exorbitant. Many a prospector found gold in a quantity that would have seemed to him, back home, a fortune—but spent it all just to support himself at the diggings.
The communities that grew up overnight in mining districts were known as mining camps. They soon attracted merchants who catered to the needs and desires of prospectors. Because of the relative prosperity of the mining camps, the citizens were able to afford luxuries unavailable in other frontier communities. Log buildings were given false fronts of lumber. Huge mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and carved furniture were hauled over the mountains to give a touch of elegance to the saloons and dance halls. When the mines played out, many of the mining camps were abandoned and became ghost towns.
The log-cabin frontier extended, in the South, into east Texas, where the main crop was cotton. Cattle raising began in western Texas before the Civil War. Because cattle required large amounts of grazing land, settlements in cattle country were widely spread out. Settlers adopted from the Mexicans the mud-brick adobe house; its thick walls kept the interior cool in the hot summers.
In the late 1860's the railway from the East reached Kansas, and the great cattle drives to the town at the “end of track” began. Abilene, Wichita, and Dodge City flourished in turn as “cow towns.” To them, as to the mining camps, came the gamblers, saloonkeepers, and dance-hall girls. Many of the pioneer citizens of the towns came directly from Eastern cities. The presence of these lively and worldly communities on the forward edge of settlement gave a unique tone to pioneer days on the Great Plains.
At first, the pioneers hesitated to settle on the Great Plains, a land that was considered impractical to farm because of its tough sod and arid conditions. However, new farm machinery was developed, especially John Deere's self-scouring steel plow, that made cultivation of the prairie lands practical. In 1862 the Homestead Act enabled settlers to acquire, for the cost of the recording fee, parcels of 80 or 160 acres (32 or 64 hectares) of land, providing they lived on it and cultivated it.
The homesteaders took up their claims in a land where there was almost no timber. The common building material was sod—blocks of turf that could be stacked up to form a wall. If the home could be situated against a small hill, the major portion of it would be dug into the hill, like a cave. This type of dwelling was called a dugout; the sod house, a soddy. If stones were available, the settler used these as building material. Where there were no stones and no turf, rough lumber had to be purchased at the nearest railway town.
Water was hauled at first from the nearest stream, while the homesteader drilled a well. There was often no wood for fuel, so buffalo chips and cow chips were burned, as were cornstalks and corncobs. When no other fuel was available, dry prairie grass was twisted into bundles and burned.
Another change from woodland-frontier life was the diet. Wheat grew well on the plains, and wheat flour replaced cornmeal as the main breadstuff. Cattle were more plentiful, and beef became a common meat.
The sod-house frontier was of short duration. More railways were built, more towns sprang up along them, and more markets were opened up to the plains farmer. Within a decade or two, most homesteaders had a frame house and barn, and were part of a well-settled rural community.
Frontier Religion
In the late 1790's, James B. McGready, a frontier Presbyterian minister, held a series of services in Kentucky. He aroused a spiritual fervor that came to be known as the Great Revival of 1800. Gatherings soon grew too large to be held inside. At Cane Ridge in 1801, a mammoth outdoor meeting, lasting several days, was led by Barton W. Stone. Most of the 20,000 persons present camped out at the meeting grounds. This was the beginning of the camp meetings that became a prominent feature of frontier life.
The evangelistic fervor of the Great Revival led the Methodists to establish a system of circuit riders, ministers who made the rounds of the backwoods settlements on a regular schedule. Other denominations also adopted the system. Often the traveling minister was the only trained religious leader available to remote areas.
In most rural communities, a church was one of the first public buildings erected. If a settlement had no church, or if some of the pioneers belonged to a denomination that had no church in the area, groups gathered in cabins and barns for religious services led by someone who “had a call" (felt inspired) to preach.
Education and Culture
Education was neither free nor compulsory when the frontier was being settled. At the time the United States was founded, however, a large part of the adult population was able to read at least a little, and it was considered important to educate children. School buildings were simple—usually a single room that served children of all ages.
Anyone with a few years of schooling was qualified to be a teacher, hired by the parents of the community at a meager wage. There were often no regular terms or grade levels. When farm work demanded their presence at home, the children did not come to school. The Bible, simple primers, and McGuffey's Readers were the most common texts used.
Having learned to read, the early pioneer had little opportunity to use this skill. Kentucky had its first newspaper in 1787, but such publications rarely reached the frontier settlers. Except for the Bible or an agricultural almanac, pioneers had few books in their homes. Schoolteachers and ministers were the exception, and schools and churches were the frontier's cultural centers. Literary societies, which flourished in the 19th century, generally met once or twice a month to discuss literature, hold debates, or listen to dramatic readings. Spelling contests and social gatherings were held at schools.
Singers, actors, and other performing artists traveled through frontier areas, performing wherever their act could be accommodated and they could find a paying audience. Many of the larger frontier settlements had a theater or an opera house, usually rather crude, but sometimes surprisingly ornate.
Travel
A pioneer traveling over an established road could stop for meals and a night's lodging at an inn. In frontier inns, there might be so few beds that it was not uncommon for each one to accommodate several guests. No personal service was provided; in the morning the guests went outside to wash at the water trough and share the same towel. Meals were served family style, at one table, with the same food for all.
Early railways offered fast transportation but were often uncomfortable and inconvenient. Railway lines were of comparatively short length, and various gauges were used. (Gauge is the distance between the rails.) Therefore, cars often could not pass from one line to another, and travelers might have to change lines 8 or 10 times between the East Coast and the Mississippi River. Meanwhile they had to provide their own meals, which were generally carried picnic-style in a basket, and had to stop off in a town if they wished a night's rest in a bed.
Sleeping cars and more comfortable passenger cars came into common use after the Civil War. When the longer western railway lines were built, arrangements were made for passengers to get off at certain stations where meals had been prepared for them. Train travel still presented its problems, however; smoke and sparks came in through car windows, the cars were often overcrowded and dirty, and accidents were common.
In contrast to road and rail, water travel was usually comfortable and sometimes luxurious. Packet boats on the canals offered separate cabins for women passengers, and meals were prepared and served on board. On river steamboats the stateroom and dining-saloon facilities were more elegant than could be found by a traveler anywhere else.
Frontier Medicine
In early pioneer days even doctors of medicine had little scientific knowledge. On the frontier, where doctors were unavailable, home remedies were frequently based on superstition. For example, carrying a horse chestnut would discourage rheumatism, it was thought, and hanging a bag of asafetida (a vile-smelling resin exuded by certain plants) around a child's neck would keep disease away.
Herbs, roots, barks, and berries were used for medicinal brews and extracts in the apparent belief that the stronger they tasted and smelled the more effective they would be. Sassafras tea was drunk in the spring with the belief that it would thin the blood, a condition believed desirable for summer. Sulfur and molasses was a spring tonic believed to purify the blood. Onion syrup was considered good for coughs, colds, and influenza.
Some folk remedies were found, later, to have real value. A poultice of moldy bread and water often was applied to an abscess. The mold on bread, it has since been discovered, contains the antibiotic known as penicillin.
