Nodaway County, Missouri - Chapter 4: Life and Customs of the Pioneers, 1910

Chapter 4: Life and Customs of the Pioneers

While in the settlement of every new country, hardships must be endured and obstacles almost unsurmountable have to be overcome, there is something within the average human breast that longs for the many bits of romance con¬ nected with the first decade, at least, in the days of real pioneer life. To fell the first tree, to hew the first log and place it in the first human habitation in any given section is usually the work of hope and love commingled - love for the home and fireside anticipated, and an ardent hope for the future years of life. While the first meal in the rude cabin home may be the coarsest food, the dishes of the cheapest quality, the stool upon which the pioneer and his young wife sit, only a piece of a puncheon placed upon three legs made from a sapling, and the only light in the room made by the flickering flames in the huge fireplace, yet all who have passed through such earlv-day experiences attest to the fact that no meal ever was eaten with more thankful hearts or tasted better. These incidents were frequently narrated a score or more years later, at the homes of the pioneers, and were made the subject of poem and song and rendered with great effect at old settlers' reunions. Children and grandchildren love to talk of such experiences, the good father and mother having passed to the home eternal beyond the trials of this life. Verily, the log house will ever have a place in the heart of all true Americans, even though the latter may live in marble mansions themselves

The first night's lodging in the pioneer cabin, away in the wilds of some ''green glad solitude," is likely to produce dreams in which the frontiersman and his good wife seem to live.

Today, the most that can be known of the struggles and triumphs of the men and women who sought to build for themselves homes in Nodaway county, away back in the early forties, necessarily must come from a few of the men and women who were then but toddling children, or youths at most, when the county was first appropriated to the use of white men. The balance must be from inference and tradition.

In the pioneer days men built and made history, but were too busy to even think of preserving it. Yet those first years were the most important, in some ways, of all the years in the history of the county, for it was then that there were laid the foundation stones of the county's present prosperity, though long years have elapsed in the building of the superstructure. While no stirring events marked the first decade, it was nevertheless a period replete with self-reliance and brave, persevering toil; of privations not a few, but all cheerfully endured through faith in the "good time coming." The first com¬ ers to this county, in common with other western counties, were almost all poor people, hence caste and class were seldom known and never counted a badge of nobility, hut all were equal, all working for the same object - the es¬ tablishment of a home on the western frontier, which now is within the heart and garden spot of the Middle West.

Here, as elsewhere, the experience of the pioneer goes far to show the theory that, after all. happiness is pretty evenly balanced in this world. Sor¬ rows were sometimes their lot and their joys were not a few. With few neighbors, they were on the best of terms. Envy, jealousy and strife had not yet entered into the society here. A common sympathy and common interest seemed to cement the few settlers together - in fact they worked together al¬ most like organized communists.

Neighbors never stood on ceremony, men and women saluting one an¬ other, whether they had ever been introduced or not. Was a settler's house to be raised, no sooner was the fact known throughout the community than the settlers assembled to assist the new comer. One man's interest was in¬ deed every man's interest. The very circumstances under which pioneers lived made it almost a natural thing to have mutual interests and friendly feelings toward one another. They had, for the most part, come in from older states where laws and courts were in force, but here the judicial ma¬ chinery had not as yet been set in motion, hence every man took it upon him¬ self to be his neighbor's protector; but woe to him who offended and abused this community interest by violating any of the regular pioneer usages - it (4) were better for him had he settled in some other place than in Nodaway county. The settler's action was far more terrible and forceful than the law which now compels men to do the right thing with his brother man.

Early-Day Home Comforts

In Nodaway county the first buildings differed somewhat from those built at a little later period. The earliest buildings were a cross or modifica¬ tion between the "hoop cabins" and the Indian bark huts. But as soon as enough men could be gathered together to make a "raising" then the genuine log house came into style. Many of the pioneers can remember the happiest time in his career as that when he lived in one of these homely but comfortable old cabin homes.

A window with sash and glass was a rarity, and was an evidence of "puttin' on style," bordering on aristocracy, which but few in that day could support the title of. These primitive windows were made with greased paper put over the opening cut or left in the log walls. This admitted sufficient light to enable one to see to do the ordinary household duties. The doors were fastened with old-fashioned wooden latches, and for a friend or neigh¬ bor, or the weary traveler, the string always hung out, for the pioneers of this section of the West were hospitable and entertained visitors to the very best of their ability - giving them preserves and the choicest slice of meat, with coffee, if any was in the house. These log houses sheltered robust bodies and within the pioneer's breast beat a warm heart. The present and future genera¬ tions, who have the advantages of modern houses, with steam heat and fancy illuminating apparatus, carpeted floors and frescoed ceilings, may appreciate their holdings all the more if the following description of one of these oldtime log palaces be given, landmarks of but very few of which still remain as monuments of the forties, fifties and sixties in Nodaway county:

"These were usually of round logs, notched together at the corners, ribbed with poles, and covered with boards split from a tree. A puncheon floor was then laid down, a hole cut in the end and a stick chimney run up. A clapboard door is then made, a window is opened by cutting out a hole in the side or end two feet square, and finished without glass or transparency. The house is then chincked and daubed with mud. The cabin is now ready to go into. The household and kitchen furniture is adjusted, and life on the frontier is begun in earnest.

"The one-legged bedstead, now a piece of furniture of the past, was made bv cutting a stick the proper length, boring holes at one end one and a half inches in diameter, at right angles, and the same sized holes corresponding with those in the logs of the cabin the length and breadth desired for the bed, in which are inserted poles.

"Upon these poles clapboards are laid, or linn bark is interwoven con¬ secutively from pole to pole. Upon this primitive structure the bed is laid. I'he convenience of a cook stove was not then thought of, but instead the cooking was done by the faithful housewife in pots and kettles and skillets, on and about the big fire-place, and very frequently over and around the dis¬ tended pedal extremities of the legal sovereign of the household, while the latter was indulging in the luxuries of a cob pipe, and discussing the probable results of a contemplated elk hunt up about the One Hundred and Two and Nodaway rivers."

These log cabins were not so bad for abodes, after all. Still, the presentday housewife would be ill at ease in trying to get up a dinner for her neigh¬ bors, all of whom are now used to steel ranges, with the thermometer gauges in the oven doors and hot water tanks attached, together with the spacious warming ovens and numerous shelves. Necessity is the mother of invention and this was more than once proved in pioneer days in this western country.

Rude fireplaces were built in the big chimneys, composed of mud and sticks, about half and half in proportion. These fireplaces served both for cooking and heating purposes ; also ventilation was guaranteed by the same contrivance. The food prepared about these dingy "andirons" with the spooky-looking iron crane, which only the well-to-do could afford, was not of the modern type, but no one will question that it was not just such food as the sturdy pioneer and his family most needed to furnish pure blood, plenty of good, hard muscle and a clear brain. At least the biographies of the men and women of fifty years ago never refer to the fact that they were troubled with gout and dyspepsia. Again profanity was never fostered by the annual putting up and taking down of stoves covered with brass and nickle-plate. nor of falling stove pipes on a wintry night.

Another relic of the long-ago days, when our grandfathers lived, was the hominy block, used before many grist mills were set in motion. Some¬ times one of these fearfully and wonderfully made "blocks" served a whole neighborhood. It was made from the butt of a hardwood tree, hollowed out with an ax and burned or charred smooth, and when completed resembled a mammoth mortar such as one sees in a drug store. Then, with a wooden mallet to fit the concaved shape of the "block." the corn was bruised and battered until of suitable size to eat when properly cooked.

Meat must not be forgotten in the pioneer bill of fare. This commodity was fortunately always quite plentiful. Deer could have been seen daily from the cabin doors in this county, in droves of from twelve to thirty.

Elks were also found, as well as wild turkeys and prairie chickens in immense flocks - these were the best eating of all. A few bear were to be seen roving about. The music of the nightfall was loud, but not pleasing to the cultivated mind and sensitive ear. The first few years after the settle¬ ment was made in Nodaway county, the pioneer was lulled to sleep by the screeching of the panther and the never-ceasing howl of the wolf. The faithful house-dog was not un frequently driven back to the cabin's door by a pack of angry, half starved wolves. Trapping wolves became quite a source of cash revenue after Missouri began to allow bounties for wolf scalps.

Fishing in those good old days was sport supreme. No one was ever ordered off the grassy banks of stream or pond as being a trespasser - Uncle Sam owned most of this county and he was never here personally.

In the language of another: "Rough and rude though the surroundings may have been, the pioneers were none the less honest, sincere, hospitable and kind in their relations. It is true, as a rule, and of universal application, that there is a greater degree of real humanity among the pioneer classes of any country than there is when the county becomes old and rich and people live elbow to elbow. If there is a lack of refinement, that absence is more than compensated in the presence of generous hearts and truthful lives. They are bold, enterprising and honest. And generally speaking, they are earnest thinkers and possessed of a diversified fund of useful practical information. The pioneer hates a coward even as he does a sham in anything. He never covers up and makes believe, but always speaks his mind freely and without fear."

The brotherly-love spirit usually prevailed to a good degree. If a house was to be raised, every man "turned out," and often women, too, and while the men piled the logs that fashioned the rude dwelling, the women prepared the dinner. Sometimes it was nicely cooked by a rousing fire upon dry logs out of doors, near the site of the house-to-be. In other instances it was pre¬ pared at the nearest neighbor's house and carried by the faithful women to the place the men were at work. If one man in the neighborhood killed a beef, a pig or a deer, every other family in the community was sure to receive a piece.

It is believed by one writer, who has lived his four score and more years and seen both sides - pioneer and latter-day methods of living - that in many respects the modern way is not as good as the former days when each had a kindly feeling for his brother man. He says this :

"We were all on an equality. What one had, all shared. But today, if you chance to lean on a man's shade tree, he feels like charging you for it and should you be left penniless and a person were to report your condition to the county authorities, the same man would probably put in a bill before the county court for reporting the case."

With this we do not fully agree. There may lie some truth in the pioneer's statement, but we have come to believe that things are not so bad after all. There are more people now, and hence we see more of the unchar¬ itable than when few lived in the country. For example, in those good days of long ago they had no humane societies, no orphans' homes or homes for the aged. They had no societies for the prevention of cruelty to dumb animals and a hundred and one more benevolent institutions that have come into existence since the log-cabin days. What poineer band in the fifties, in Missouri, would have started a plan by which all the faithful, not-over-wellcared-for freight and dray horses in any given community were to have a Christmas dinner of clean, bright oats and upland hay served to them? This was the fact carried out, to the satisfaction of thousands of illy-kept horses working on the streets of Kansas City, on last Christmas day- It was the work of the Humane Society. Good men and women have always lived and are more numerous in the twentieth century than ever before.

Newsboys, bootblacks and even hardened criminals in all the great cities of the land are annually favored with sumptuous dinners, flowers and excel¬ lent reading matter. While times and customs have changed since Isaac Hogan built the first cabin in Nodaway county in 1839, and men work with different appliances, yet the amount of good done is certainly on the rapid increase. Boys are no longer "bound out," but furnished good Christian homes, and are soon paid for all the work they perform. The virtues of the long-ago days were indeed virtues to be prized; nevertheless, virtues as excellent obtain today.

Of the early settler it may be truthfully stated that he lived within his means, however limited, not coveting more of luxury and comfort than he could well afford to pay for. As a natural result, prosperity and contentment were ever his lot and he always had room for one more stranger at his fire¬ side and a welcome place at his table for even the most hungry guest. After all, the secret of true happiness lies in one's ability to accommodate himself to his surroundings.

The pioneer has gone from among us. His race is run and he has been gathered to his fathers. All of the first settlers - those who wended their way to these beautiful valleys, groves and uplands during the first decade of settlement - have, one by one, dropped from earth's shining circle. Suppos- ing a man to have been twenty-one years of age (and most all were older) when they effected the first settlement in Nodaway county, of they were living today they would be ninety-two years of age - an age that is reached by few men. Hence the earliest settlers have given place to a second generation and even many of the sons of the pioneer band are now aged men. Some still linger with us, others have followed the star of empire westward and are hard by the waters of the Pacific, or spending the remainder of their pilgrimage in some secluded spot in or beyond the Rockies, ever sending a wish or a thought back to the scenes of their early manhood, when life was active and earnest within them. Much of the land within this county is now held by strangers who know nothing of the burdens of forty and fifty years ago here. Again, there are many native-born men and women here today who are proving an honor to their fathers and mothers, who came West for the purpose of rearing their families in a new, uncontaminated country, where school and church privileges abound in all this fair domain - the Kingdom of Nodaway.

Implements Used By Pioneers

Great have been the changes wrought out in the way of farming and the farm implements employed in seeding, cultivating and harvesting the various crops in Nodaway county since the first settlers broke up the rich virgin soil. The only plows used at first were what were termed "bull plows." The mould-boards were generally of wood, but in some instances were half wood and half iron. The man who possessed one of the latter description was looked upon by the others as an advanced farmer. However, the old "bull plows" did excellent service and were probably better adapted to the soil and condition of the surface of the fields, that abounded in stumps and ugly roots, than would the modern plow have been. The first settler invested but little in machinery, first, because he had no ready cash with which to pur¬ chase it and also because of the fact that such machinery, if to be had at all, had to be brought, at much expense, from the eastern markets where they were manufactured. Then, too, the prairies were seldom settled until after the pioneer period, and that portion of the county which was the hardest to put under cultivation, and the most difficult to cultivate after it was improved, was cultivated first. Indeed, it was well for the country that such was the case, for the present generation, familiarized as it is with more improved methods and improved machinery, would hardly have undertaken the task of clearing off dense forests and cultivating the ground with the kind of implements their fathers used.

Going To Mill And Market

Among the pioneer band were found many men who could do good mill¬ wright work, and many of them put in their time at constructing rude mills for sawing lumber and grinding corn and wheat, the same being situated on the best water-power sites that the county afforded, yet going to mill in those early times, when there were no roads, no bridges and no ferry boats, was a task not enjoyed by anyone. But with no way of easily crossing the many swollen streams, the pioneer of the more daring type found the way to gain the opposite shore and succeeded in making the round trip with his grist. But at other times, he was compelled to remain several days until the waters of the unbridged streams receded, and in some instances had to depend upon the hospitality of his neighbors near the water-mill for his accommodations until two weeks had elapsed.

The first of these mills was built on the One Hundred and Two river in 1840, by William A. Cox, who came from Ohio. It was erected eight miles south of present Maryville, at the place later called Bridgewater. This was a grist- and saw-mill combined. At first it only ground corn, which had to be sifted after it was ground, as bolts were unknown in pioneer milling in all the newer countries of the West. The mill only had one run of buhrs, which, as well as the mill irons, were brought from St. Louis, via the Missouri river. A brush dam was thrown across the river, and rock then piled in upon it. which was finally covered with dirt. The mill cost about fifteen hundred dollars, and the mill-site was considered by all odds the best in Nodaway county, the One Hundred and Two river having a rock bottom bed and rock banks. The mill had no gearing, the buhrs being located over the wheel and running with the same velocity as the water-wheel. It was a frame mill, one story high, and had a grinding capacity of one hundred and fifty bushels per day. People, attracted by the reports of the completion of the mill, came from far and near with their grist, so that for days before it was ready to work the creek bottom was dotted over with hungry and patient men waiting until it was ready to do their work, so that they might return with their meal and flour to supply their families and those of the neighbors, thus enduring hard¬ ships of camp life in those early days, in order that they might be able to se¬ cure the simple necessities of life. The first corn bread and biscuit, black though the latter was, which came from the "New Mill,'' were relished greatly and were never forgotten by the little folks about the first settlers' homes. The waters of this river came and went a thousand times to and from the sea, while the miller ground out the golden grain and thus supplied a want beyond all others. With the coming and going of the years the mill went to decay, with the advent of more modern machinery, and at last came the perfect "roller system'" of flour making that we have todav.

Hunting Wild Animals And Bee Trees

The otherwise lonely hours of the first comers to Nodaway county were livened by the sports found in hunting and trapping and locating "bee trees," from which a bountiful supply of honey was taken, sometimes a whole washtubful being taken from one tree. Hunters today would only be too glad to be able to find and enjoy so favorable an opportunity for hunting and fishing and would be glad to travel dozens of miles for the sake of getting a shot at even one of the animals then so common. There were a good many expert hunters in this county forty and fifty years ago, some having come from the old hunting scenes of famous Daniel Boone and David Crockett and other notorious characters who adorn the pages of American history. Wild animals of almost every species were found in great numbers. The forests and prairie abounded with them - the streams and ponds were alive with fish and fowl, the latter easily brought down by the trusty rifle, though it was before repeat¬ ing fire-arms were invented.

Snakes were also numerous and often of such immense size that some of the snake-stories told by the pioneers are today incredible to us who are only accustomed to the small striped snakes, with an occasional rattler. Deer, turkey, ducks, geese, squirrels and other small game were found every¬ where for the first ten or twenty years of this county's settlement. The fur¬ bearing animals were abundant, such as otter, beaver, mink, muskrat, raccoon, panther, fox, wolf, wild-cat and bear. A reliable pioneer states that on a journey of six miles he saw as many as seventy-three deer, in herds of from six to ten.

The matter of sweetening was largely provided for by the fine quality of wild honey found in the bee trees already mentioned. The forests along the larger streams were. especially prolific of bee trees. On the Nodaway, Platte, One Hundred and Two rivers and on Honey creek, these natural bee-hives were very common. Many of the pioneers would go in the autumn time, when the leaves were turning amber and golden, and when the season was putting on her robes of rare beauty, and camp out for many days at a time, for the purpose of hunting and securing honey, which was not only extremely rich in flavor but found in great abundance; yet it always commanded a fair price in the community, as not many were good hands at smoking out the bees and securing the coveted honey.

The Indians always claimed that the honey bee was a sure forerunner of civilized life, and also that it is well known that the nimble winged quail also comes just in advance of the white man's tracks.

Gregg, in his "Commerce of the Prairies," savs, "The honey bee appears to have emigrated exclusively from the East, as its march has been observed westward. The bee was among western pioneers, and is the proverbial pre¬ cursor of the Anglo-American population. In fact, the aborigines of the frontier have generally corroborated this statement, for they used to say that thev knew the white man was not far behind when the bees appeared among them."

Old-Time Sports

Among the pioneer day sports may be mentioned the shooting matches and quilting parties, both of which were enjoyed by old and young alike. The quilting parties were especially pleasant to attend, and were often con¬ ducted jointly with "rail splittings." The established rule in those days at these gatherings, was to pay either one dollar in money or split one hundred rails during the course of the day. The men would split the rails and the women would remain in the house and do the quilting. After the day's work was done, the night would be spent in dancing. When broad daylight ap¬ peared the music would cease, likewise the trip of the "light fantastic toe."

The evening visits, when the near-by, and at times even far-away, neigh¬ bors would gather in some pioneer house and spend the first half of the long winter night, were also among the feasts for the early settlers. At a late hour the good housewife would spread her table and soon a tempting supper was placed before the visitors. These and many other pleasant meetings made life easier to endure, driving away the homesickness and "blues" that often came upon both the husband and wife of the house. By this they were made cheer¬ ful for the time being and received a hearty invitation to "come over to our place some evening," which went on from house to house, until seeding time arrived in the spring, when pioneers had minds and hands all too full for seeking such visitations. These were some of the bright spots in the days of