614 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



of rice, corn, tobacco, beans and potatoes were sometimes rudely fenced 

 in with split liickory poles. 



"For food they used all these vegetables, as well as beef and pork 

 and venison stewed in bear's oil; they had hominy and corn-cakes, and 

 a cool drink made from honey and water, besides another made from 

 fermented corn, which tasted much like cider. 



"They sifted their flower in wicker-work sieves, and baked the bread 

 on broad, thin stones— moreover, they gathered the wild fruits, straw- 

 berries, grapes, and plums, in their seasons, and out of the hickory 

 nuts made a thick, oily paste, called hickory milk. 



"They spun the coarse wool of the buffalo into blankets, which they 

 trimmed with beads. They wove the wild hemp in frames and shuttles. 

 They made their own saddles. In summer they wore buckskin shirts 

 and breech clouts; in the winter they were clad in the fur of the bear 

 and wolf or of the shaggy buffalo." 



We read so much in our histories about the Indian on the warpath 

 and so little about his domestic life and struggles for food, that a 

 glimpse' at this latter side of his life is very refreshing. 



The story of the American Indian is the story of all peoples of the 

 earth since the angel at God's command led our first parents out of 

 the garden of Eden and shut the gate— and the decree went forth, "In 

 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the 

 ground." 



Our early pioneers were men and women of strong, vigorous bodies 

 and they produced large families and these with the stream of immi- 

 grants from over the seas soon filled up the seaboard land, and the rest- 

 less pioneer unused to close communities and imbued with the free- 

 dom of the Indian life turned longing eyes toward the land of the 

 setting sun. He stood and looked at the "great blue wall" that as a 

 barrier obstructed his progress towards the lands to the westward and 

 dreamed of their fertility and their beauty and their abundance of game. 

 George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Nollichucky Jack Sevier, Hen- 

 derson and Harrod — along with other pioneer heroes blazed a way through 

 the "Blue W^all," led forth a stream of hardy settlers, w^ith their wives 

 and children into the new garden of Eden — the blue grass country of 

 Kane and turkey — of deer and buffalo — and here amid hardships — 

 almost unbelievable by this generation — where every step of their 

 progress was contested by the Indian they laid the foundations for the 

 great commonwealth of Kentucky. 



From time to time there drifted into this land the refuse, cast off 

 by the older colonies. However they got their share of their best stock 

 along with these. At times whole churches marched singing into the 

 forts. The preacher leading and thanking God loudly that He had 

 delivered them from the wilderness and the savage. 



These earlier pioneers were no husbandmen. They were the scouts, 

 the advance guards of civilization, not the tillers of the soil nor lovers 

 of close communities, and as the land filled with settlers, farther and 

 farther they went afield for game and always grumbled sorely against 



