The Minute Man on the FrontierPuddefoot, William George
History
The Minute Man on the Frontier
Puddefoot, William George
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Missions -- West (U.S.)
We hear much about the dangerous foreigners that come to us, but
little about the dangerous native. There is not a type, whether of
poverty or ignorance, but what we can match it. Leaving out the negro,
we have over ninety per cent Anglo-Saxon in the South. Here we find a
strange lot of paradoxes,--the most American, the most ignorant, the
most religious, the most superstitious, and the most lawless. Take the
lowest class of Crackers, and we have the whole of the above combined,
with millions of mountain whites to match. Yet in this same South land
are the most gentlemanly, and the most lady-like, and the most
hospitable people in the country. The Cracker classes are descendants
of the English, but what kind of English? The offscourings of prison
and dockyards, sent over to work on the plantations before slave labor
was introduced.
The mountain whites are the descendants of the Scotch-Irish. As many
people seem to think this means a Scotch parent on one side and an
Irish upon the other, it may be well to state that the Scotch-Irish
are the descendants of Scotch people who immigrated to Ireland. But it
ought not to be forgotten that the mountain whites are the descendants
of Scotch-Irish of two centuries ago, a very different people from the
Scotch-Irish of to-day. Here in the mountains we find some three
millions, often without schools, and waiting sometimes for years for a
funeral sermon after the person has been buried. Towns can be found
over seventy years old organized with a court-house and no church.
"Yes," they say, "the Methodists started one some years ago; but the
Baptists threw the timber into the Cumberland, and sence then we ain't
had no church."
Here one of our minute-men had two horses shot under him, and another
missionary was nearly killed.
Here you may find families of twenty and more, living in a wretchedly
constructed house, on bacon and corn-meal, hoe-cakes, and dodgers. I
started once to stay over night in one of these houses. As we came
near to the place, I found that my host was a school-teacher. He had
taught twenty-two schools. He meant by this that he had taught that
many years. The kitchen was as black as smoke could make it; the
butter was stringy, caused by the cows eating cotton-seed; and my seat
a plank worn smooth by use, with legs which stuck up through it, which
would have been better had they been worn more. I suppose in some way
I involuntarily showed my feelings; for the woman noticed it, and
said, "Yer oughter put up with one night what we uns have ter all the
time."
I said "That's the trouble; I could when I got used to it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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