PIONEER LIFE IN OHIO

NCE beyond the mountains, and free from the excitement incident to travel, the emigrant found abundant proof that he was indeed in a new country. An unbroken forest, the home of wild animals, serpents and savages, marked the view line of his horizon. To remove the forests, kill the wild animals, drive away the Indians and transform this wilderness into a paradise, was the task set before them.

His first home, if such it may be called; was often little superior to that of the wild animals, and usually consisted of bark from the wild cucumber trees, laid across poles. This first home, in a very few days, gave place to the cabin which was usually about twenty feet square, to which was often added a "lean to," or shed kitchen. Upon the marriage of a member of the family, another cabin was built a few feet away and facing its front. The intervening space was covered with split boards and a double cabin was the result. A single log cabin could be built for about one hundred and fifty dollars and a double one for about a hundred dollars more.

The furniture for these new homes was very

rude and simple, being made almost exclusively by unskilled mechanics, from the surrounding forests. The tables and chairs were made of split slabs, and the beds were made by placing forked sticks in the floor at the proper places and running poles in two directions to the walls. Bed-springs were made of clapboards. A huge fireplace was made of sticks or stones, and plas tered with mud, and the new home was ready for occupants.

Stock raising in Ohio was at once commenced on a small scale. Horses were scarce and sold for sixty to one hundred dollars. Hogs, cattle and sheep were were more numerous. The stock were marked by clipping the ear, and were allowed to run at large in the forests after bells had been securely fastened around their necks.

Corn and garden vegetables were the chief farm products, but later wheat, oats, buckwheat and tobacco were grown. The wild game furnished an ample supply of fresh meat. Beef sold at four cents a pound, and deer meat at three cents. Mutton was not eaten on account of the scarcity of wool for clothing. Sheep had to be penned at night to protect them from the wolves. Squirrels were numerous and often very seriously damaged the farmers' crops. Large hunting parties were frequently formed, and in Franklin county, in a single day, 19,660

squirrels were killed in a combined or circular hunt.

The work of clearing the forests was slow and tedious. Vast quantities of the most valuable timber was burned as the most convenient manner of disposing of it. Farm machinery was unknown. Metal plows were unheard of and wooden ones were very scarce. Grubbing hoes and mattocks were almost the only farm implements in use. The grain was harvested by the sickle and threshed with the flail or tramped out by horses or cattle. Large branches of trees dragged over the ground were substitutes for harrows and drags. In a remarkably short time the little "clearings" around the cabins were enlarged into broad and fertile fields capable of supporting a dense population.

Indian outbreaks and massacres were of frequent occurrence. It was no unusual thing for a settler to be captured and carried away by the Indians while attending his crops or clearing the forests. Illustrative of these atrocities is the capture and escape of Doctor John Knight, the details of which are as follows:

After the burning of Colonel Crawford, his brother-in-law, Knight, was painted black, and the next morning put in charge of an Indian named Tutelu, a rough looking fellow, to be taken to Wakatomika for execution. Early in