196 The Winning of the West 



nestly in the bare meeting-houses on Sunday, be- 

 cause their hands were roughened with guiding the 

 plow and wielding the axe on week-days; for they 

 did not believe that being called to preach the word 

 of God absolved them from earning their living by 

 the sweat of their brows. The women, the wives of 

 the settlers, were of the same iron temper. They 

 fearlessly fronted every danger the men did, and 

 they worked quite as hard. They prized the knowl- 

 edge and learning they themselves had been forced 

 to do without; and many a backwoods woman by 

 thrift and industry, by the sale of her butter and 

 cheese, and the calves from her cows, enabled her 

 husband to give his sons good schooling, and per- 

 haps to provide for some favored member of the 

 family the opportunity to secure a really first-class 

 education. 5 



The valley in which these splendid pioneers of 

 our people settled, lay directly in the track of the 

 Indian marauding parties, for the great war trail 

 used by the Cherokees and by their northern foes 

 ran along its whole length. This war trail, or war 

 trace as it was then called, was in places very dis- 

 tinct, although apparently never as well marked 

 as were some of the buffalo trails. It sent off a 

 branch to Cumberland Gap, whence it ran directly 

 north through Kentucky to the Ohio, being there 

 known as the warriors' path. Along these trails 

 the Northern and Southern Indians passed and re- 

 passed when they went to war against each other; 



5 Campbell MSS. 



