The Winning of the West, Volume Three | Page 7

Brantz.] The population of Louisville
amounted to about 300 souls, of whom 116 were fighting men
[Footnote: State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress, No.
150, vol. ii., p. 21. Letter from Major W. North, August 23, 1786.];
between it and Lexington the whole country was well settled; but fear
of the Indians kept settlers back from the Ohio.
The new-comers were mainly Americans from all the States of the
Union; but there were also a few people from nearly every country in
Europe, and even from Asia. [Footnote: Letter in _Massachusetts
Gazette_, above quoted.] The industrious and the adventurous, the
homestead winners and the land speculators, the criminal fleeing from
justice, and the honest man seeking a livelihood or a fortune, all alike
prized the wild freedom and absence of restraint so essentially
characteristic of their new life; a life in many ways very pleasant, but
one which on the border of the Indian country sank into mere savagery.
Kentucky was "a good poor man's country" [Footnote: State
Department MSS. Madison Papers. Caleb Wallace to Madison, July 12,
1785.] provided the poor man was hardy and vigorous. The settlers
were no longer in danger of starvation, for they already raised more
flour than they could consume. Neither was there as yet anything
approaching to luxury. But between these two extremes there was
almost every grade of misery and well-being, according to the varying
capacity shown by the different settlers in grappling with the conditions
of their new life. Among the foreign-born immigrants success
depended in part upon race; a contemporary Kentucky observer
estimated that, of twelve families of each nationality, nine German,

seven Scotch, and four Irish prospered, while the others failed.
[Footnote: "Description of Kentucky," 1792, by Harry Toulmin,
Secretary of State.] The German women worked just as hard as the men,
even in the fields, and both sexes were equally saving. Naturally such
thrifty immigrants did well materially; but they never took any position
of leadership or influence in the community until they had assimilated
themselves in speech and customs to their American neighbors. The
Scotch were frugal and industrious; for good or for bad they speedily
became indistinguishable from the native-born. The greater proportion
of failures among the Irish, brave and vigorous though they were, was
due to their quarrelsomeness, and their fondness for drink and litigation;
besides, remarks this Kentucky critic, "they soon take to the gun, which
is the ruin of everything." None of these foreign-born elements were of
any very great importance in the development of Kentucky; its destiny
was shaped and controlled by its men of native stock.
Character of the Frontier Population.
In such a population there was of course much loosening of the bands,
social, political, moral, and religious, which knit a society together. A
great many of the restraints of their old life were thrown off, and there
was much social adjustment and readjustment before their relations to
one another under the new conditions became definitely settled. But
there came early into the land many men of high purpose and pure life
whose influence upon their fellows, though quiet, was very great.
Moreover, the clergyman and the school-teacher, the two beings who
had done so much for colonial civilization on the seaboard, were
already becoming important factors in the life of the frontier
communities. Austere Presbyterian ministers were people of mark in
many of the towns. The Baptist preachers lived and worked exactly as
did their flocks; their dwellings were little cabins with dirt floors and,
instead of bedsteads, skin-covered pole-bunks; they cleared the ground,
split rails, planted corn, and raised hogs on equal terms with their
parishioners. [Footnote: "History of Kentucky Baptists," by J. H.
Spencer.] After Methodism cut loose from its British connections in
1785, the time of its great advance began, and the circuit-riders were
speedily eating bear meat and buffalo tongues on the frontier. [Footnote:
"History of Methodism in Kentucky," by John B. McFerrier.]
Rough log schools were springing up everywhere, beside the rough log

meeting-houses, the same building often serving for both purposes. The
school-teacher might be a young surveyor out of work for the moment,
a New Englander fresh from some academy in the northeast, an
Irishman with a smattering of learning, or perhaps an English
immigrant of the upper class, unfit for and broken down by the work of
a new country. [Footnote: Durrett MSS. "Autobiography of Robert
McAfee."] The boys and girls were taught together, and at recess
played together--tag, pawns, and various kissing games. The rod was
used unsparingly, for the elder boys proved boisterous pupils. A
favorite mutinous frolic was to "bar out" the teacher, taking possession
of the school-house and holding it against the master with sticks and
stones until he had either forced an entrance or agreed to the terms